Fox network creator Barry Diller introduced a new over-the-top video service yesterday called Aereo. Many are already calling it dead in the water, but there are several reasons I’m more optimistic about Aereo than competitive OTT services launched in recent years.

To take a step back, Aereo is offering a service that delivers broadcast TV stations over IP and bundles them with a DVR. Stations are available on iOS and Roku devices, with Android, PC and Mac browser support scheduled to kick in by mid-March. The service is $12 a month, and is currently invitation-only in New York. Aereo will open up to the public in NYC on March 14th.

In order to be successful, Aereo will have to deliver stellar quality of service. These are free broadcast TV channels after all, which means people can use their own antennas to get the same content at no cost. However, in addition to the DVR add-on (which is pretty compelling in itself for today’s non-cable households), Aereo promises decent picture quality – no need to futz with antenna positioning or manipulate around dead zones. That’s a potential combination of DVR, picture quality and convenience. Not bad.

In addition, I think Aereo’s got a few other things going for it:  Read the rest of this entry »

Panasonic announced a few weeks ago it was getting out of the US set-top biz, something it pursued briefly in retail, but far longer through cable operator channels. That headline wasn’t terribly surprising, but today’s company news is a little different. According to The Wall Street Journal, Panasonic has also stopped manufacturing VCRs in its home country of Japan. Yes, VCRs. You know those old machines that your mother still hopes you’ll use to copy her VHS tapes over to a new medium? Panasonic is selling out its inventory in Japan, and then VCR sales there will be no more.

As a corollary to the Japanese news, The Wall Street Journal does point out that Panasonic will continue to manufacture VCRs in China and Slovakia. That’s likely because there continues to be a market among consumers who still cling to their VHS collections. Reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi characterizes the generational VCR divide this way:

One final note: It’s staggering to watch how quickly DVD players are following VCRs down the path of obscurity. The Digital Entertainment Group reported last month that DVD sales dropped 20% in 2011 to $6.8 billion. Blu-ray disc sales fared better, up 19% last year, cresting $2 billion in sales.

Saturday Night Live ran an amusing advertisement that lampoons Verizon’s copious use of jargon and perplexing product branding, spotlighting 4G LTE and concluding with the tagline: It’s an old person’s nightmare. But don’t take my word for it, play the embedded skit above.

When asked if I found the bit entertaining, I was reminded of MadTV’s “iPad” prognostication and (the very real) Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II EPIC 4G Touch television commercial – a smartphone so impressive, it requires six names!

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Click to enlarge.

We’ve followed the retail Moxi DVR story arc for years… and, thanks to ARRIS, we finally know when it inevitably concludes:

Boxee, makers of software powering digital media streaming boxes and computers, recently launched a campaign that seemingly encourages folks to “cut the cord” (and find fulfillment via their new Live TV USB dongle):

Let’s skip for a moment the fact that most modern televisions tune over-the-air HD broadcasts and so Boxee’s cost “savings” pitch fails to incorporate their hardware fees. Instead, we’d rather focus on Boxee’s spat with the cable industry. And the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) takes issue with Boxee’s possible hypocrisy:

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Dave threw the gauntlet down back in 2006(!) when he suggested the Xbox was a Trojan Horse, designed to be activated in the future as a central device in the connected living room. Today, that reality has, in many ways, come to pass. According to Microsoft exec Russ Axelrod, more than 20 million Xbox homes are connected to Xbox accounts, and of the total time users spend on their Xbox consoles, 44% is dedicated to non-gaming activities. Analyst firm SNL Kagan points out that in addition to those 20 million Xbox-connected homes, there are also 30 million homes in North America connected to PlayStation Network accounts. That’s 50 million households with connected game consoles. Not a shabby number considering there are roughly 120 million households across the entire US.

Yet despite the growth of connected platforms, the world of distributed entertainment is still limited, at least where TV is concerned. The Xbox can be used as a set-top, but Microsoft has shed its ambitions to become virtual MSO thanks to the high cost of content licensing. And while cable industry veteran Jeff Baumgartner thinks that change is coming, there are still a lot of messy battles to be fought where streaming rights are concerned. The soldiers have emerged, but the war for the connected living room is far from over. It may be several years yet before the victors are decided.