An Ignoble Experiment

2. Comcast gives 'mini-binging' a look in trial with FX Network

Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), Bright House and Mediacom have expanded their TV Everywhere offerings to include more content for authenticated video subscribers.

TWC and Bright House announced they are adding content from Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA)-owned NBCUniversal's broadcast and cable networks including USA Network, Syfy, Telemundo, Bravo, Oxygen, CNBC, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Sports Network and Golf Channel. Local NBC and Telemundo stations will also be added to the package, available across multiple platforms and devices.

In an unrelated announcement, Mediacom said it was adding NFL Network and NFL RedZone to its platform, bringing its mobile channel offerings to 40 networks for authenticated video subscribers. The MSO also said it expects to add FOX Sports Go and other sports channels in the near future.

"Adding new channels to this service extends the value of a video subscription by giving customers more options to view their favorite programs when and where they want, whether that's the big screen in the living rooms or with the convenience of a mobile device," Mediacom Senior Vice President Ed Pardini told CornerStone Media.

For more:
- Time Warner Cable has this press release
- CornerStone Media has this story

Read more about: NBCUniversal
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This week's sponsor is Clearleap.

By Jim Barthold

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3. SK Broadband claims industry's first UHD up-scaling

Never one not to fast-follow, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) has given the concept of TV binging a run-through on a smaller, more compact stage--'mini-binging' as USA Today put it--in an effort to combat OTT and drive subscribers from DVRs to video on demand.

Working with FX Network in a trial that ended this month, Comcast offered viewers of The Bridge the chance to stream the next episode as soon as the current one finished airing. FX, for its part, made six episodes of the current season available so it could observe VOD viewing habits.

As is to be expected, Comcast declined to offer traffic numbers but said the program be expanded if other networks want to take part.

Binge watching has become a fact of life on both pay TV services--where viewers record multiple episodes of a program on DVRs and go through them sequentially--and OTT, where viewers just grab a block of a program and watch episodes back-to-back. DVRs, while convenient for consumers, also allow them to fast forward through commercials, which does nothing for cable operators' relationship with advertisers. VOD, hailed as a more convenient way to get programming, disables fast forward.

"They're (pay TV providers) all trying to slow the usage of DVRs," Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research told the newspaper. "The more they can push you to on-demand, the more they can make sure you see advertising. The question is whether forcing you to watch 20-plus minutes of advertising (for an hour show) will work in the world where DVR continues to be popular."

And thus the concept of mini-binging built around Comcast's X1 platform, with the carrot of seeing the next episode of a program just after the current one--available to all viewers--has expired.

"Blurring the lines between live, on-demand and the DVR content was a key strategy in the X1 development," Matt Strauss, senior vice president of video services said in the story.

For more:
- USA Today has this story

Read more about: Comcast, OTT
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By Jim Barthold

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4. AT&T to launch LTE Multicast in 2015

South Korea's SK Broadband is taking credit for being the first service provider to up-scale full HD video contents into Ultra HD (UHD)--or 4K--images using a proprietary solution that delivers a UHD experience with existing HD videos.

SK, the second largest broadband Internet service provider in South Korea, said its plan is to use its technology to upscale the film Divergent from HD to UHD for delivery through its UHD set-top-free service.

According to a news release, up-scaling transforms HD into UHD by adjusting colors and definition and artificially enlarges the definition to avoid noise and image distortion. The carrier's goal is to use its solution to boost the amount of UHD content by up-scaling "one or two famous movies or animations a month."

Last April, SK Broadband rolled out its set-top-free service to enable users to watch UHD video by installing its BTV mobile app directly on their smart TVs.

For more:
- SK Broadband has this press release

Read more about: HD, SK Broadband
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By Phil Goldstein

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5. Comcast Business leverages fiber to boost broadband in Wash., Calif.

AT&T (NYSE: T) expects to begin deploying LTE Broadcast technology, also known as LTE Multicast, sometime in 2015, according to a top AT&T executive.

AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Stankey disclosed the timeline in an appearance at the Oppenheimer Technology, Internet & Communications Conference. "You should expect that you'll see us begin to roll out Multicast capabilities as we move through next year," he said. "Initially, we'll be doing it on a targeted basis and we'll be doing it in some specific areas where we think there's immediate deployment."

Stankey said that as AT&T gets more scale and normalizes its relationships with content providers, the carrier wants the "flexibility to use that technology on a broader application."

LTE Multicast is based upon evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), and it allows the same content to be sent to a large number of subscribers at the same time, resulting in a more efficient use of network resources than each user requesting the same content and then having the content unicast to each user.

Until now AT&T had only disclosed it was "exploring the possibility of offering eMBMS services" using the 700 MHz D and E Block spectrum it acquired from Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in 2011.

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) plans to start seeding its device base with phones that can support LTE Multicast in the fourth quarter and also plans to commercially launch the service in 2015. Speaking at the same conference earlier this week, Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo called the advent of Multicast "the pivotal point that starts to change the way content is delivered over a mobile handset which opens up content into the wireless world."

Stankey expounded on AT&T's philosophy of how wireless customers' relationship to mobile content will change over time. "Inherently, customers want to be able to watch and entertain themselves wherever they are, under their terms," he said. He added that "the reality of the industry today and how content is licensed and sold doesn't fit elegantly into that model."

The AT&T executive said that he thinks there is a strong customer desire to get content any time they want and "there's a willingness to pay." He said he thinks the content delivery model "is going to change pretty dramatically."

As the wireless market matures and growth from smartphones and tablets slow over the next few years, Stankey said, the "basis of competition will shift onto other terms. We know that what customers want to do with their mobile devices is they want to entertain themselves." He said that video and to a lesser extent music are what drives the bulk of wireless data traffic.

"It's important that we understand how customer buying decisions are going to be linked to content over time," he said, noting that a top reason customers buy broadband today is linked to TV services in their homes. "I think over time in the mobile space there will be a tighter link to aspects of what kind of content people can consume and how easily they can get at what they want to watch."

For more:
- see this webcast

Read more about: Verizon Wireless, AT&T
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By Jim Barthold

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