Items tagged with Streaming video
At this point, we know that Apple has been working on a streaming service for several years. It was delayed back in 2015 with reports indicating that the delay was due to negotiations for local content. The service will have original programs that Apple has made with a strict insistence on the shows refraining from sex or violence and being very family friendly. Reports indicate that the service will offer programming at no cost to Apple device owners. A new report has surfaced that claims sources familiar with Apple's plans have stated the streaming service will launch in April, with early May as another possibility. The sources also claim that Netflix and its top-rated original programming...
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Apple's planned TV service has been long talked about and long delayed. In 2015, reports indicated that the delay in bringing the service to market had to do with negotiations for local programming. Last month, a report surfaced that claimed Apple's insistence on staying away from programming with sex and violence was threatening the service. Many wondered how Apple planned to lure in subscribers, in a Netflix world, with bland original content. The answer is that Apple reportedly has no plans to sell subscriptions to its service, for now. People who claim to be familiar with its plans say that Apple plans to give its original programming away to all Apple device owners. That means anyone who...
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Apple has been hard at work on its streaming media service for several. In 2015, reports suggested that the service was delayed as Apple worked through negations for local programming. Apple has plowed on in the years since, and has signed up several shows that sound interesting, but all of that content reportedly has a strict focus on not showing excessive sex or violence. Some see Apple's insistence on focusing on family-friendly content as putting a limit on the appeal of the service and slowing down its road to market. Word is that Apple passed on a show focused on rapper and Beats headphone icon Dr. Dre's life called Vital Signs. The reason Apple passed was that the show was too violent....
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The adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same" seems very apt for the cord cutting streaming TV market. Many TV fans left behind cable and satellite services because the prices were always increasing and the service never got better. The rub is that now that cord cutters seem to have reached a sort of critical mass and streaming services are plentiful, streaming firms are starting to raise prices just like cable companies. AT&T DirecTV Now raised its prices earlier this month by $5 per month. YouTube TV and Sling TV also recently raised prices. Now PlayStation Vue is following right along with the masses. All Vue plans are seeing $5 monthly price increases across the board....
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YouTube announced that last quarter its software helped to pull down millions of objectionable videos before any users were able to view them. The machine learning software that helped YouTube to pull this off has been trained with the assistance of human moderators and has made policing the crush of new videos uploaded daily easier. YouTube has offered up hard numbers noting that it has pulled down 8 million videos in the last quarter and that of that number most were spam or adult content videos. Of that 8 million, 6.7 million were first flagged by computers. YouTube has been targeting violent extremism and says that at the start of 2017, only 8% of that sort of view was taken down before...
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If you are looking for another reason to cut the cord with your cable company, Philo has an announcement that you might be interested in. Philo is a streaming TV service that has been around for a while now and the service has bundles of channels that you can subscribe to that are much cheaper than traditional cable TV. Philo announced that the service has now launched on the Apple TV and on Amazon Fire TV streaming devices. Prior to launching on those two devices, the primary way to watch the service was via a web browser on your computer, Apple mobile devices, or by casting to your Chromecast. Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV support slots in alongside the support for Roku devices that has been...
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Netflix is easily the most notable streaming video service out there and the thing that helps keeps it that way is the wealth of original programming that the network offers. Not only does it have a lot of original content including shows and movies, but that content it's typically VERY good. The downside to this expansive catalog of high quality original content is that it costs a lot of money to produce. To cover the costs for making such good shows, Netflix has announced that it is increasing the price for higher tier subscriptions. Reports indicate that the $7.99 basic monthly plan is staying the same price for now. However, the Standard plan with HD content and two screens at once that most...
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Media giant Comcast has a cunning plan to develop a new video platform, infiltrate tens of millions of homes with it by 2017 using its existing infrastructure, and seduce customers and content publishers along the way. It's called "Watchable" and it could launch within a matter of weeks. According to Business Insider who cites several anonymous individuals familiar with the plan, Comcast wants to tap into the creativity of digital-video producers like The Onion, AwesomenessTV, Vice, and more established brands like NBC sports and roll it into a service that will be watchable on Comcast's XFinity set-top boxes. Sources indicate that not only does Comcast plan to replace all existing...
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Sprint is bringing out the big guns to promote its new All-In “unlimited” calling, texting, and data plans. The third-player U.S. wireless carrier has brought out none other than David Beckham to pitch All-In, but there are a lot of “gotchas” that you must take into consideration before you start jumping up and down for joy. For starters, at $80 per month with an included smartphone lease, All-In is actually $10 a month more expensive for iPhone users that were on Sprint’s old iPhone for Life program. But by upping unlimited plan pricing $10 (CEO Marcelo Claure is a man of his word), Sprint is hoping that it will garner more attention from potential customers by expanding the number of handsets...
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Amazon is in the unique position of being able to transform its business model to stay current with the times. For example, with demand for DVDs giving way to streaming options, Amazon has decided to be aggressive with its Prime Instant Video service by offering cable network Epix a deal it simply couldn't refuse. Citing an "executive directly involved in the deal," Reuters claims Amazon agreed to a performance-based bonus payment incentive, one in which Epix will receive additional funds if Instant Prime Video membership rises above a certain level. That bonus payment is on top of whatever fixed rate the two sides agreed to in the first place. Just as important here is the fact that Amazon and...
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As more and more wireless carriers impose caps on data plans, customers are becoming increasingly aware of how much data they are consuming on their mobile devices. Recognizing that streaming video can quickly gobble up one’s monthly allotment, Netflix is working to help users with a new feature that lets you change video quality. Although you might not get as good of quality video if you turn the settings down, you will save bandwidth from your mobile data plan. The feature is appropriately called “Manage Video Quality” and is specifically aimed at 3G and 4G users who don’t have an unlimited data plan. Netflix has rolled out this feature over the last week or so in the...
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A big battle is happening over Internet service so, naturally, people have added large dollops of fear and misinformation and are shouting about it on Facebook. On December 21, the FCC will finally vote on adopting net neutrality rules. This may (or may not) have been caused by Comcast's spat with Level 3 now that Level 3 won a big contract to handle Netflix's video streaming. Grind it all together, output it to Facebook and you get this campaign: "Save the Internet: Stop Comcast from Blocking Netflix. Without strong net neutrality rules, companies like Comcast can demand fees from innovative companies like Netflix in an attempt to choke consumer freedom and coerce users to adopt its own video...
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With the near ubiquity of widescreen high-definition TVs (HDTVs) in so many homes, the desire to consume media on them that was traditionally relegated to computer displays is starting to gain popularity--especially since a growing proportion of this media is HD video. To meet this growing desire, Western Digital has just released the WD TV Live HD media player.The WD TV Live HD media player is a device that sits between your HDTV and your home network, allowing you to stream media from networked drives (such as a NAS device) and "Internet content from popular Web sites"--the device also includes two USB 2.0 ports for streaming from USB-connected hard drives or flash drives. The WD TV Live HD...
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The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a little late to the game, but it has just launched an official online video portal where users can watch streaming video from a wide selection of PBS shows. Not that PBS hasn't offered some of its shows online before this, such as NOVA, but this marks the first time that PBS has consolidated a significant selection of its current and past shows into one place, accessible online to anyone with a broadband Internet connection--much as many of the major commercial networks have already done, such as Fox or ABC.The PBS Video site officially launched on Wednesday, April 22, and it is currently labeled as a "beta." In the short time that we played around with...
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