Tag Archive: TV
Hulu Plus passes 1.5 million paying subscribers
Jan. 12, ‘12: An update from Hulu CEO Jason Kilar: We grew the business 60% from 2010 to approximately $420 million in revenue. That’s actually a disappointment, as Peter Kafka notes. Hulu Plus has reached 1.5 million paid subscribers faster than any video … Continue reading →
Vizio’s Google TV remote control
Jan. 11, ‘12: Not as hilarious as the first Sony one, but still — all those buttons? This is still an obvious area for improvement.
Microsoft hits pause on web TV service because shows cost too much
Jan. 11, ‘12: Yinka Adegoke, reporting for Reuters: “They built Microsoft TV, they demoed it for us, they asked for rate cards but then said ‘ooh ah, that’s expensive,'” said one senior media executive who had been involved in the talks. That’s one … Continue reading →
Peter Kafka: Why the future of TV won’t be here soon
Jan. 11, ‘12: There’s plenty of cool new tech at CES for watching television. But the real future of TV — where you can pick exactly which channels and content you want to pay for, instead of today’s giant, overpriced bundles — is … Continue reading →
Here’s what I’m actually looking forward to in tech this year
Jan. 6, ‘12: “Predictions” season is over — thank goodness. But the folks at SAY Media — my advertising partner for SplatF, and my new employers via ReadWriteWeb — asked me to write a piece for their weekly newsletter about some of the … Continue reading →
Roku sold 1.5 million boxes last year, 25% below expectations
Jan. 4, ‘12: Roku reached 2.5 million total streaming boxes sold last year, USA Today’s Jefferson Graham reports, which was behind its estimate of 3 million, according to GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers. After passing 1 million boxes sold early last January, that suggests about 1.5 million … Continue reading →
What the cable industry could learn from Twitter
Nov. 22, ‘11: Something awesome happened last weekend: I downloaded an iPhone app — BTN2Go from the Big Ten Network — logged in with my Time Warner Cable credentials, and a few seconds later, was streaming a live football game on my phone. … Continue reading →
People! Let’s be realistic about this cord-cutting stuff
Nov. 16, ‘11: This is Brian Roberts, CEO and Chairman of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. And he is smiling because the efforts to topple his industry, so far, are not progressing very well. (Well, actually, he’s probably smiling because photographer Tim Shaffer told … Continue reading →
Snapshot of our time: Sirius XM has 85 times more subscribers than Spotify
Nov. 4, ‘11: Starting now, I’ll be collecting and maintaining a master list of subscription-based media services, and tracking their growing and shrinking popularity. Here’s the first edition, which I’ve assembled from earnings releases, SEC filings, press reports, blog posts, and a few … Continue reading →
Here’s the trouble with “Apps as TV channels”
Nov. 1, ‘11: One of Apple’s big opportunities to reinvent TV is to change how shows are distributed. So far, it has had modest success with iTunes TV downloads, but little beyond that: iTunes TV “rentals” never took off, and Apple seems to … Continue reading →