BIT RATE
Covering cable TV, broadband and Internet video technologies
FiOS TV Swings Interactive Bat
America’s two pastimes — baseball and TV — are getting hitched in Verizon’s newest interactive TV widget. The FiOS TV baseball widget, available this week to subscribers, will provide scores, standings, player info and news, Verizon announced Wednesday. But really, the widget looks designed to tempt subscribers into buying the MLB Extra Innings ($189 per season) out-of- ...... Read More
Comments (0)Free Fiber Lunch!
Willy Wonka has nothing on the Google guys. The Googlers’ promise to build a 1-Gbps fiber-to-the-home network touched off a Golden Ticket frenzy among U.S. towns and municipalities over the last six weeks. Last Friday morning, the deadline for submissions, Google reported that north of 600 communities had applied to serve as guinea pigs for the free “experimental” fiber build ...... Read More
Comments (0)FiOS TV Slowdown Hits BigBand Hard
Some equipment vendors are feeling the pinch now that Verizon is winding down the expansion of the FiOS fiber-to-the-home network (see The FiOS Finish Line). According to BigBand Networks’ 10-K annual report issued this month, most of the video-equipment vendor’s 25% year-to-year revenue decline in 2009 was attributable to a drop-off in spending by Verizon on FiOS TV buildout. Overal ...... Read More
Comments (0)TiVo 'Neutron' Drops Into Retail Channels
Can this DVR turn the tide for TiVo? The next generation of TiVo boxes — Premiere and Premiere XL, code-named “Neutron” — are now available for sale at U.S. retailers (see TiVo ‘Neutron’ Aims To Blow Away Other Set-Top Boxes). Designed for 16:9 HD displays, the set-tops provide enhanced graphics and are supposed to provide better navigation, search and per ...... Read More
Comments (4)The FiOS Finish Line
Verizon is nearing the end of its $23 billion FiOS buildout, on track to pass at least 18 million homes this year, as the company has said for the last several years. Left out of the fiber ring: Boston and Baltimore, among other communities including Alexandria, Va. At this point, Verizon will focus on building FiOS in cities where it has cable TV franchises, including New York City, Philadelphia ...... Read More
Comments (5)Hulu Still Playing Whac-A-Mole With Web-on-TV Apps
Just a few hours after Hillcrest Labs officially released its Kylo browser — specially designed for viewing on a big-screen TV (see Hillcrest Goes Big-Screen Surfing) — Hulu apparently has blocked the software from accessing its videos. Recall that Hulu, the joint venture of News Corp., Disney and NBC Universal, has been engaged in an ongoing game of keep-away with startup Boxee, com ...... Read More
Comments (0)Why Google Won't Conquer TV Anytime Soon
If ever. Just look at TiVo: The company has had 10 years to build on DVR, hands-down most awesome interactive TV application of all time, and spent millions of R&D dollars over much of that time researching exactly what people want to do with their TVs. TiVo has crammed a bunch of Internet content, advertising, advanced search features and widgets into its boxes. And it’s teamed up wi ...... Read More
Comments (0)DirecTV Strikes Back Against Dish
Turnabout is fair play. DirecTV last month filed a false-advertising suit against Dish Network over a comparative ad (and was denied its request for an emergency injunction to block the ad — see Dish Can Keep Tweaking DirecTV). Now the No. 1 satellite guy is running a TV ad implying that the rival DBS operator is, well, not telling the whole truth. In the spot, Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek ...... Read More
Comments (0)Comcast Expands Usage-Meter Rollout
Comcast continues to widen the availability of its Web-based bandwidth-usage monitoring tool for customers, making it available today in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Delaware and Maryland. It’s now available in more than 20 states, after the MSO first launched the metering feature last December in Portland, Ore. (see Comcast Tests Data-Usage Meter ...... Read More
Comments (0)FCC Wants Its 'Stupid' Gateway Everywhere Starting in 2013
UPDATED: The FCC’s dumb-TV-gateway plan is perhaps even dumber than I thought (see The FCC’s Dumb-Box Idea: Who Wants Interactive TV, Anyway?). The agency is proposing that all pay-TV distributors be required to install such a device for all new subscribers — as well as those who need a new set-top — within three years. “The FCC should initiate a proceeding to e ...... Read More
Comments (0)The FCC's Dumb-Box Idea: Who Wants Interactive TV, Anyway?
After considering evidence that CableCards don’t work, and the fact that the vast majority of consumer prefer to lease their set-tops from their TV provider, the FCC apparently is proposing to require the cable industry provide severely dumbed-down “gateways” to customers who don’t want a cable box (see FCC Wants Cable To Adopt Open-Standard ‘Gateway’ Devi ...... Read More
Comments (0)Rabbit Ears on a Set-Top? Probably Not
Cable operators and broadcasters are at each others throats over the issue of retransmission fees. In the most recent dust-up, Cablevision subscribers this past Sunday lost WABC for the better part of the day, with the parties coming to terms just as the Academy Awards telecast started (see WABC-TV Returns To Cablevision). The FCC is now looking into whether the retransmission-consent system needs ...... Read More
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