Monthly Archives: June 2011

Who should buy Hulu?

June 23, 2011
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Deals Now that Hulu’s parent companies have retained investment bankers to explore a possible sale of the catch-up TV service — following earlier reports of an unsolicited bid from Yahoo — handicapping the Who Buys Hulu sweepstakes has become more or less de rigueur for industry pundits and bloggers. Therefore, in order to maintain my membership in good standing, here are my picks:

DirecTV: The sat-caster has been working on a streaming video service and TV Everywhere play for at least the past year and acquiring Hulu could greatly accelerate those efforts. While DirecTV might be able to negotiate for rights similar to what Hulu has directly, without having to Read more »

Streaming in flyover country

June 14, 2011
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Retail Good on Sony Pictures for partnering with Walmart and Vudu on a digital movie card for Battle: Los Angeles. Starting Tuesday, Walmart shoppers will be able to buy the cards for $14.96, and then use the provided code to watch the movie on their PC from the Vudu website or on any of the 300-odd connected TVs and other devices that have the Vudu streaming app embedded.

Since the offer is a purchase, not a rental, card buyers will be able to watch the movie (in standard definition only) as often as they like, just as they would with a purchased DVD or Blu-ray Disc. Walmart is selling the Battle: Los Angeles DVD for $16.96 and the Blu-ray for $19.96. The movie Read more »

The iCloud will not be televised

June 8, 2011
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Digital Living Room The Apple TV cheese stands alone. For all the nifty new functionality built into iOS 5 and Apple’s new multi-device iCloud platform it appears that very little of it will find its way into Apple TV. About the only new reindeer game Apple TV will get to join in for now is Photo Stream, which automatically syncs and downloads your photos to all your registered iOS devices, including the Apple TV set-top. For everything else — including your own home videos — Apple TV is on the outside of the iCloud looking in.

I’m starting to believe Steve Jobs when he describes Apple TV as a hobby, rather than as a strategic business for Apple. Read more »

Did Apple just clean the record labels’ clocks again?

June 6, 2011
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Cloud Now that we know the basic contours of the new iTunes in the cloud from Apple we can make some guesses as to why it took so long for Apple to nail down deals with the record labels. As it did when it when it first persuaded the labels to lock themselves into a 99 cent price for downloads, from which it took the labels years to extricate themselves, Apple once again seems to have done some fancy negotiating. And as it did in the beginning, it again seems to have managed to limit the labels’ financial participation in the iTunes value chain to one, rather smallish revenue pool.

Consider: Read more »

The iCloud vs. the us-cloud

June 3, 2011
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Cloud Steve Jobs himself, back at least temporarily from medical leave, will take the stage Monday to keynote Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where he’ll officially unveil Apple’s new iCloud service. According to numerous leaks, Apple has inked deals with all four major music distributors allowing it to launch a fully licensed, cloud-based system in which music is stored remotely and can be accessed from any iTunes-enabled device. Read more »