Hacking NetFlix

Netflix & Other Companies Appointed to FCC Net-Neutrality Panel

The Hill reports that Netflix, Disney, Comcast, Mozilla, and AT&T have been appointed to a FCC panel to help oversee net-neutrality.

The new Open Internet Advisory Committee is tasked with monitoring the implementation and impact of the FCC’s controversial net-neutrality order, which was adopted in 2010 after a party-line vote. Verizon has challenged the rules in court.

The net neutrality rules prevent Internet service providers from discriminating between two similar content providers by slowing down or speeding up access to their sites.

The advisory panel, which was established by the 2010 order, will have the power to make recommendations to the commission about the implementation of net neutrality, and on matters related to the general goal of preserving an open Internet.

Copyright Warnings on Movies & TV Shows are about to Get Really Annoying

ArsTechnica reports that there will now be two unskippable piracy notices on DVD's and Blu-ray discs, even if we PAY for the discs. 

The idea isn't to deter current pirates, apparently (the new scheme requires all legal purchasers to sit through 20 seconds of warnings each time they pop in a film, but will be totally absent from pirated downloads and bootlegs). It's to educate everyone else. As ICE Director John Morton announced in a statement yesterday, "Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort."

This is almost as annoying as that loud piracy commercial they used to ship on discs.

I'm wondering if the new notices will drive more people to piracy. 

Mercury News Covers Cord Cutters & 1.5 Million Cut the Cord in 2011

Chris O'Brien from the The San Jose Mercury News wrote about his experience in cutting the cord. 

Now came the hard part: Figuring out how to watch all the shows we used to watch. The Panasonic Viera comes with a large selection of apps installed, including Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon. We are longtime Netflix subscribers, so that didn't cost anything extra. We also had Amazon Prime, a $79 annual service that gives you free shipping and access to a modest selection of free "Prime" TV shows and movies.The one addition we made was to subscribe to Hulu Plus for $7.99 a month. This gave us a full library of shows we watch on Fox, NBC and a collection of secondary cable channels. So far, so good.

I also paid $99 to get Apple TV, which allows me to turn the TV into a stereo by streaming our music collection from our PC. I can also download videos right from the iTunes store and mirror content I'm playing on my iPad or iPhone right onto the TV. It's kind of awesome, actually.Mostly, it's been great. But there are a few pitfalls. We have to remember what shows we can find on which service. Even then, there are random headaches. For instance, we're fans of "30 Rock," which is available on Hulu Plus. But when we punched it up the other night, we saw a notice saying "Web only."

In related news paidContent reported that more than 1.5 million people cut the cord in 2011.

In fact, belying several earlier research studies, which said growth of U.S. multi-channel services has slowed significantly but not stopped, Nielsen’s latest “Cross-Platform Report” says the number of U.S. homes paying a multichannel provider for TV services last year actually declined by 1.5 million, or about 1.5 percent.

Subscription gains made by telco providers AT&T and Verizon (about 1.1 million) and satellite service companies DirecTV and Dish (added 280,000 subscribers) could not offset the over 2.9 million subscriptions lost by cable providers, Nielsen reports.

Will 2012 be the year that cord cutting takes off?

Netflix Not Hurting Viacom, "Impact Minimal"

paidContent reports that Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman says that the impact of Netflix on Nick shows is "minimal."

At least that’s what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman thinks, as his company announced a 56 percent rise in first-quarter net income to $585 million Thursday despite a 30 percent ratings drop on its flagship kids channel, as well as some floundering box-office performances by Paramount Pictures films.

Dauman said that the total time spent by viewers watching Nick content on Netflix was only about 2 percent of the time they spent watching shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer on the cable channel. Any Netflix impact, he said, was “minimal.”

Is Netlix Really Hurting Nickelodeon?

paidContent has posted an update on the Netflix & Nickelodeon Controversy: "We've got hard data: Netflix really is killing Nickelodeon."

“Turns out, Netflix streamers watch just as much traditional TV as non-streamers,” Juenger wrote in his report. “However, there is a significant share shift among streamers. Kids’ networks (not just Nickelodeon) and syndicated shows are getting severely whacked.”

For the study, Bernstein pulled out about 9,500 Netflix streamers and 9,500 non-streamers from a sample of about 35,000 TiVo set-top users.

Analyzing viewership of the two groups over the first quarter, Bernstein found that usage among streamers of Nickeloden’s flagship channel dropped 6 percent from the year-over-year average; viewing also declined a whopping 11 percent for Nick Toons and Teen Nick. For non-streamers, ratings actually grew 2 percent for Nickelodeon, 5 percent for Nick Toons and 26 percent for Teen Nick (a huge 37 percent differential).

Roku Launches Players in Canada with 100+ Channels

Roku announced that they have launched streaming players in Canada:

At launch in Canada, Roku features more than 100 entertainment channels including movies and TV shows from Netflix and Crackle; live and on-demand sports from the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball; music from Rdio and TuneIn Radio; photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr; news and weather from the Wall Street Journal and CNBC – plus casual games like Angry Birds, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Roku expects to broaden its channel selection in Canada at a pace similar to its growth in the U.S. – now at more than 450 channels.

Two Roku models are available for pre-order: the Roku 2 XD and Roku 2 XS (suggested retail prices of CAD 89.99 and CAD 109.99) from Roku.ca, Amazon.ca, LondonDrugs.com, and Walmart.ca.

Roku CEO Talks about the Future of TV

Home Media Magazine interviewed Roku CEO Anthony Wood and they talked about the future of TV. 

HM: The ability to access TV programming anywhere on anything is at the heart of TV Everywhere platforms slowly being rolled out by cable and satellite TV operators. Is Roku a facilitator or direct competitor to multichannel video program distributors (MPVDs) seeking to retain or lure subscribers?

Wood: We are a partner to cable and satellite companies and want to give our customers the most choice possible. This means traditional OTT channels and “authenticated” channels.  We expect Roku to become an open set-top box in the living room that will give consumers their choice of content from a variety of companies and services.

HM: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has always insisted that the streaming service is complimentary to cable/satellite TV. With Comcast bowing streaming option Xfinity Streampix and Time Warner’s HBO Go, it would appear the gloves are off in the SVOD battleground. Is Roku working with MPVDs to offer signature SVOD options to subscribers, or does it want to remain neutral?

Wood: Yes, we view cable and satellite as our partners and we are talking to all the players in the market. In general we don’t favor one brand over another.

Streaming to Overtake Discs in 2012

CNN Money cites a research stury that forecasts streaming to beat DVDs this year.

The stat comes a report that research firm IHS iSuppli released late Thursday. Online views, or paid "transactions," will hit 3.4 billion this year, compared with 2.4 billion for physical copies, according to IHS's forecast. It's a big change from the figures IHS clocked last year. In 2011, physical videos easily stayed on top with 2.6 billion views, compared to 1.4 billion for online.

Thanks to FearNo1 for sending this in.

Roku's Wood Says A La Carte Cable Coming This Year

Roku CEO Anthony Wood told PC Magazine that he believes a la carte cable TV is coming this year.

So far, companies like Comcast have only made live streaming, plus on-demand content, available on the Apple iPhone and the iPad. To view it, however, viewers must have an existing cable TV subscription. Wood said rumors have circulated that that business model will crack in 2012, allowing customers to sign up for over-the-top rights to the content - cable service, essentially, but without a set-top box.

"I think that's going to happen this year," Wood said. "But there's going to be a lot of hesitancy about who will be the first company to go."

The most likely candidates, Wood said, would be an incumbent like Cox or Comcast. But, Wood said, he didn't have any hard information.

Wood also said that they're working on a way to beam photos from mobile devices to the Roku.

Tidbit from the story: "The five most popular channels on Roku are Netflix, Pandora, Hulu Plus, Amazon, and Crackle, with HBO Go coming in sixth, Wood said."

Netflix Going After TV Movie Rights To Get Movies Faster

The Financial Times reports that Netflix is going after TV movie rights so they won't have to wait 10 years for a movie to be available for streaming.

Netflix is keen to add more, said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, in a Financial Times interview. The company recently licensed films from DreamWorks Animation, which has a long-term deal with HBO, and documentaries and foreign films including The Artist from The Weinstein Company, which has a long term deal with Showtime, part of CBS.

The agreements studios have with pay-TV channels are typically worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year to each studio. The channels get the films exclusively for the first two to three years: after that the studios are free to license the titles to free TV channels, before the films revert back to the pay-TV operators.

But with free TV channels buying fewer movies and pay-TV operators increasingly concentrating on producing their own original programming, an opportunity has arisen for Netflix.

Thanks to Noor for sending this in.