Brother, can you spare a card?

About six months ago, when Netflix was back on its heels after jettisoning some 800,000 angry customers, StreamingMedia.com received lots of traction around the whole story including a number of radio and television interviews on the story. One piece that got little attention, though, was our conjecture that Redbox and other kiosk-based DVD delivery systems might prove problematic for Netflix as the DVD-by-mail company morphed into a streaming media delivery giant.

Turns out the hunch about Redbox was right, and it's affecting not just Netflix but also Verizon and Blockbuster. 

Yesterday's announcement that Coinstar, the "coin-operated" company that runs the Redbox kiosks—among other types of entertainment stations—had tripled revenue for the year and was using some of that cash on hand to buy Blockbuster Express kiosks from another point-of-sale company, NCR of cash register fame.

The news sets the streaming world on edge a bit. The Blockbuster Express name was licensed out to cash-register maker NCR for the kiosk-based system NCR had cobbled together to compete against Redbox. The interesting irony here, of course, is that the Redbox name is now being licensed out to Verizon Communications for the streaming service (in much the same way that the Blockbuster name was licensed to NCR for Blockbuster Express).

As I mentioned in the KOMO interview around the Netflix debacle of late 2011, the problem with Blockbuster and Netflix is that neither offer—to steal a marketing phrase from Blockbuster—Total Access to their disparate DVD and streaming libraries.

Coinstar might just be on to something, though, with its simple-to-use kiosks popping up all over the USA (34,000 and counting, before the Blockbuster Express units are accounted for). If it can pull off an equally simple approach to streaming in its newfound partnership with Verizon Communications—especially a non-subscription model akin to the kiosk approach—there just might be hope yet for a "total access" option.

Out of all this comes one truth: the days of brick-and-mortar DVD rentals are well past being numbered, but the pax romana of physical DVD rentals is still ahead. Still, the other major difference between Netflix and Redbox is the one-off impulse rental nature of a kiosk delivery—available to anyone passing a Walgreens, 7-11 or Wal-Mart in any corner of the USA—versus the subscription-only nature of Netflix's DVD or streaming models.

Read the StreamingMedia.com article for more details.

What will the New Era of HP entail?

About this time of year, every other year, HP's workstation division unveils something new. A few years ago it was the z800 workstation, unveiled at a presentation at BMW Designworks, the agency that helped shape the unique design of the z-series cases.

This year, though, HP is moving the event to Las Vegas, and is teasing—complete with 2001:Space Odyssey "monolith" imagery— that a New Era is just over the horizon. We'll keep you informed as soon as we peek over the rainbow, or around the next planet...

Super streaming Bowl fail?

The fine folks at StreamingMedia.com have an article I wrote late last night, after the Super Bowl ended, about the failure of large-scale streaming for those trying to watch the big game on their desktop or laptop computers.

It's touched a nerve, apparently, and the article has rocketed to the top of the most popular list on this  Monday morning after the game. Some commenters are expressing embarrassment over having tried to show their friends the alternate angles offered by the online stream—that is, if you didn't mind waiting a full minute after the game play to actually view the "live" stream.

Something's gotta get better in this whole live streaming scenario...

[Update: The New York Times' Media Decoder blog from Brian Stetler quotes a bit from—and links to— the StreamingMedia.com article.

Stetler notes that NBC is blaming low-quality streams on last-mile issues or "connection issues" as Kevin Monaghan, managing director of digital media for the NBC Sports Group, calls them.  It's disingenuous for NBC to blame last mile issues when a) much higher-quality live content was also delivered across the same networks during our testing and b) there are many consistencies in the overall problems that viewers have commented on—from variable lag times to consistent poor quality at the height of the game's key moment, one of which Monaghan mentions.

It's as if, in the early days of TV, the broadcast engineer says "hey, the signal looked good when it left our building" and it's a reminder that we're in the early days of large, live events—enough so that we can all "blame it on the blockbuster" if the event has problems.

We look forward to eventually seeing the numbers from NBC Sports, which we suspect will show that the adaptive bitrate worked but only if measured by the fact that the number of viewers seeing sub-standard, low-bandwidth streams are considered an acceptable viewing experience.]

And you thought Paypal was bad...Amazon Payments reaches new low

This is one of those blog posts I've thought long and hard about; on one hand, I want to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt, since their customer service has always been top notch. On the other hand, I wish someone at Amazon would get a clue.

So one of the companies I'm involved with, Braintrust Digital, recently signed up for Amazon Payments using a business account. The system asked for a number of verifications, completely fine, including bank account information. A days after all these verifications were completed, the trouble started.

After receiving a large payment, the company sent one last verification, asking for the last four digits of the SSN (social security number)—an odd request for a business account, since corporations, while recently ruled to be people, still have FEIN (Federal Employee Identification Number). I enter the last four of the EIN, get an automated response thanking me for my entry, and then...Nothing.

A day later, I get an email saying I'd entered it wrong, and that I need to re-enter the information. Ok, fine, so I re-enter the last four digits, again get the automated response thanking me for successfully entering the information, and...

The account is now locked.  No worries, as the small warning at the top of the page tells me there are things that can be done with the account and things that can't be done with the account. Here's the warning:

Click on the "here" link (isn't that sort of 1990s linking, to use "here" for the link—but I digress) and here's what we see we're allowed to do:

So the corporation can't send money or receive money, but it can withdraw it, right? Yes, according to the list, the only thing we CAN do is withdraw the money. So we go through the process of performing a sweep into the corporate bank account, and...

No, it's not telling the truth. At all. The transfer fails, and fails fast.

So we try to launch an inquiry into the failure, using these two links ("Problem with this transaction?" and "click here to inquire about an error" to, well, inquire about the error.

We enter the transaction ID and asking, simply, why it failed. Very simply, as in: "It failed. Why?"

Apparently these are fighting words, because we're told that we're disputing the transaction. Really? Yep, says so here...

Ok, so now what? Can we find a live person to check in with to find out why it failed? Well, only between 7am - 4pm PST (did we mention this was Amazon, based in Seattle, WA, USA?) Says so right here, in a rather snarky way:

No number to call, just a call-back request, either now or five minutes from now, meaning we have to be online to make the call (a call back service, yes, but not so convenient for real business folks, but that's another story all together...)

Tomorrow's blog entry? The incessant requests by Amazon to send Social Security information, date of birth and full legal name by (drumroll, please) EMAIL.

Sony expands Google TV offerings while Google TV universe expands

The Google TV universe is expanding.

The whole universe was in question just a few weeks ago, when Logitech rapped the  Google TV mediaware as "beta" software and jettisoned its Revue set-top box unit as a "mistake" (although not enough of a mistake to cease sales throughout the US Christmas shopping season and in to 2012 as a highly sought after Amazon sale of  refurbished unit at $79.99 with Prime shipping) 

Now, out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas comes news of not just one, or even two, but three new partners that will be launching products. LG, rival Samsung and upstart Vizio all will be launching internet-connected TVs that will contain at least the Android 3.1 (Google TV 2.0) operating system.

In addition, Sony tried to set the record straight about its ongoing decision to continue forward with Google TV based units. Sony announced that the NSZ-GT1 (a Wi-Fi-enabled 1080p Blu-ray disc player featuring Google TV) at almost twice the price of the Logitech Revue, had sold better than expected, and that the Sony Google TV-powered smart TVs (the 40" NSX-40GT1 and 46" NSX-46GT1) are the best selling TVs in Sony's stable of products.

“They’re among the best-selling TVs we have," Brian Siegel, Sony TV vice president told USA Today in a late 2011 interview. "Media has done a real good job of beating [Google TV] up." 

The one major change in all this, including Sony's newer devices (the Blu-Ray player equipped NSZ-GP9, and its Logitech Revue mimicking NSZ-GS7 set-top box may both use an ARM chip from Marvell rather than the Intel Atom chip that Intel offers for the set-top box market but discontinued support for in the internet-connected or Smart TV market.

As reported in a recent StreamingMedia.com article on the Logitech Revue, the Intel Atom CE4100 chipset powers both the Sony NSZ-GT1 Google TV box and the Logitech Revue. Google's reference platform for all Google TV-powered set-top boxes was based on the Atom chipset, so that the original Google TV firmware—and subsequent updates—would run consistently across all consumer devices.

Sony used the CE4100 chipset to its maximum advantage—selling a significant number of NSZ-GT1 set-top boxes and smart TVs in the process—while Logitech opted to hold back on the CE4100's capabilities, as we reported in the Workflowed blog on Logitech's refusal to support the MPEG-2 codec and MPEG-2 transport streams.

The new chipsets provide some interesting opportunities, and we think Google TV-powered products, especially Smart TV products, will gain an advantage using these new ARM processors.

"You're in luck" -- Pinger TextFree and the fatal flaw

Sometimes a company makes a product or service that is *almost* perfect, but has a fatal flaw.

Pinger.com's TextFree is just one such service: its apps for Android and iPhone are fairly decent; even with the buggy interface within the newer TextFree with Voice, the call quality is great and the texting is, well, something to text or tweet about.

Yet the web version lags considerably, especially in one key area: the web service is inaccessible from an iPhone's browser.

Typing in www.pinger.com/textfree yields the typical CSS redirect to http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html with the "You're in luck" tagline displaying the iPhone app.

What if you can't download the app or are in a situation where the app doesn't work, as I found myself in today, where a restricted network only allowed access via http in the browser?

You're out of luck: choosing "full site" yields the full site page in the iPhone Safari browser, as it should, but choosing "login" from the main page's top right corner tosses the user back into the endless loop of http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html

Great idea, poorly executed.

iPhoned

This is Your Father's iPhone

[Editor's note: see additional analysis on the topic at StreamingMedia.com]

After years of desire and months of speculation, today Verizon Wireless announced that the iPhone would be available on their network in February. This is of course really good news for those who either can’t get or don’t want ATT service here in the US. Verizon said that they have been working on supporting the iPhone since 2008, so, they are anticipating a great success for them and their customers with this thoroughbred device in their stables. All current iPhone features will be available in the Verizon iPhone, with two notable exceptions.

First, there is the network technology this device will be using. During the almost constant tea leaf analysis that was occurring over the past several weeks in anticipation of this announcement, there was debate over which network technology would be built into the Verizon-flavored iPhone. That speculation has now been put to rest.

The Verizon iPhone will be CDMA and EVDO only, making this iPhone a device built for Verizon’s legacy 3G network. What this means is that you cannot use data while you are on a voice call, unless, perhaps your iPhone has a WiFi connection. Good for the home or office, but not while you are out and about, which is where most iPhones are used. For those of you keeping score at home, the iPhone on non-CDMA carriers such as ATT’s 3G GSM network in the US can use voice and data at the same time, which, I believe is a large part of the iPhone’s functionality appeal. You don’t have to hang up your voice call to check your email.

When Apple’s Tim Cook was asked why the phone was not taking advantage of nascent Verizon’s 4G network (aka LTE), he basically said that folks really want a Verizon iPhone, and will be willing to make the functionality trade-off. Mr. Cook also stated that incorporating LTE into the current iPhone design would not be possible without design trade offs they were not willing to make. Given the comments that Verizon’s Lowell Macadam made about being the hub of collaboration, there will likely be an LTE version of the iPhone in the future so that it can be a true collaboration hub. Until then, this phone will be a single tasking device, unable to truly multitask.

Second on the feature front, there is one interesting bright spot in today’s announcement. The Verizon iPhone provides WiFi hotspot functionality for up to five devices, which is a feature that is not available on other carriers. This will allow WiFi enabled devices, such as the iPad’s that Verizon has been selling since late 2010, to be able to use the iPhone’s Verizon 3G data connection to get on the Internet. So, expect there to be a much demanding by current non-Verizon iPhone owners to bring this connectivity feature to their phones.

During Q&A, Verizon and Apple indicated that this is a non-exclusive agreement with Verizon, so, one could expect that Sprint could get the phone after some period of time here in the US. And, there are a handful of carriers overseas that don’t use the GSM technology the iPhone has sported to date, so, they will likely get their own iPhone in the not too distant future.

All in all, it is certainly good news that the iPhone has come to Verizon, as many more people can experience the game changing benefits of this device. However, the lack of data connectivity when on a call almost makes the Verizon iPhone feel like “your father’s iPhone,” not “your son or daughter’s iPhone.” After all, what twenty something wants to hang up to tweet? Anyway, ATT should not be sweating the shift in the gravitational pull of the iPhone from another carrier. Yet.