Amazon Opens Fire On Apple TV And Chromecast

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Amazon this week has left little doubt as to the scale of its ambitions in over-the-top video. Just days after Amazon-owned Twitch announced plans to roll out new tools for uploading on-demand content to the platform to better compete with YouTube, the e-commerce giant declared war on Apple and Google for supremacy on the set-top.

In a memo to Amazon Marketplace merchants, first reported by BloombergBusiness, Amazon said it would stop selling the Apple TV set-top box and Google’s Chromecast streaming dongle, both of which compete with Amazon’s own Fire TV STB and Fire Stick dongle. No new listings for Apple TV and Chromecast will be Amazon_Fire_TVaccepted the memo said, and listings for existing inventories would be removed as of Oct. 29th.

According to the memo, the items are being removed because they are not fully compatible with  Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.

“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” the memo said. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”

Translation: We can’t get our fully enabled Prime Video app onto iOS devices or supported by Chromecast because we refuse to fork over the 30 percent cut of in-app purchases demanded by Apple and Google. Read More »

Live Sports Could Force Adoption of New Streaming Protocols

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This post originally appeared in M&E Daily.

For the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, Akamai delivered 7 Terabits per second of streaming video, an eight-fold increase over the 2010 Olympics. That was on top of Akamai’s normal daily volume at the time of around 20 Tbs.

For the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Akamai’s Media Products Division senior VP and GM Bill Wheaton told the 2nd Screen Sports Summit in New York last week, server_rackthe CDN expects to deliver 7 Tbs in the U.S. alone. Worldwide volume, Wheaton estimated, could reach 25 to 30 Tbs., on top of Akamai’s normal daily load of 32 to 34 Tbs.

By 2020, if current projections hold, the Olympics could generate 1,000 times today’s level of demand for video, Wheaton said, or roughly 25,000 Tbs of data. Other global sporting events, like the FIFA World Cup could generate similar levels of demand, as consumers around the world increasingly turn to the internet, particularly with mobile devices, for watching live sports.

As demand increases, so too do consumers’ expectations of quality.

“With television, it doesn’t buffer, it starts quickly, it’s always on, it always works. That doesn’t happen today on the internet,” Wheaton said But expectations are changing. “People are paying real money for this, they expect it to work.” he said. Read More »

With New Features For Chromecast, Google Ups The Ante In The Living Room

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Google fanboys seem underwhelmed by this year’s I/O developers conference, which ends today, judging the ho-hum reactions from bloggers and tweeters: No new Nexus phones or tablets, no new wearables, nothing on the next iteration of Google Glass. But there was plenty of intriguing live, linear and  OTT news if you knew what to listen for.

Google revealed, for the first time, that consumers have purchased 17 million Chromecast devices since the $35 streaming stick was introduced two years ago. And those devices are getting used. A lot. Chromecast users cumulatively have hit the “cast” button 1.5 billion times in the U.S. alone, and they have increased their YouTube viewing time by 45 percent. Active users now watch 66 percent more content than they did at launch, as more content sites become Chromecast-enabled.

Chromecast_game_managerGoogle also unveiled a host of new capabilities coming to Chromecast, including Netflix-like autoplay and queing. Developers will now be able to buffer a second video while the first video is playing, enabling the second video to start playing automatically when the first is done. Unlike Netflix, Chromecast will also allow users to rearrange the clips in their queues and even add their own.

Google will also make available new game-manager APIs, simplifying the process of developing multiplayer games that leverage multiple Chromecast-enabled devices. The APIs will make it easier for developers to create common game elements such as a shared game “board” or playing surface on the TV.

Remote display APIs will allow game developers to “cast” elements of a game to the TV, such as a driver’s view of a racetrack, while keeping the steering wheel and other controls local, on a mobile device. Read More »

Apple’s Non-Disruptive 4K Strategy

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For all the disruptive innovation Apple has unleashed on the markets for devices and software it has not been particularly disruptive to the content markets it has entered. Often just the opposite.

By the time Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store the record business was already reeling from the impact of Napster and its progeny. Rather than disrupt the business, Apple’s entry created a new market for paid downloads. The record companies later came to rue the terms of Apple_TV_portsthe deals they made initially with Apple, the iTunes store helped restore legitimate commerce to digital music platforms and on balance has been a net positive for the incumbent rights owners.

Apple is now trying to do the same thing in music streaming, relaunching a paid-only Beats Music service as the record companies try to marginalize free streaming platforms. Read More »