You might well think that, in a recession as bad as the one we’re facing now, one of the first things to go would be subscriptions.  Well, newspaper and magazine subscriptions are definitely flatlining…but as it turns out, subscriptions for cable and internet and video games like World of Warcraft and even DVD series like Netflix are still holding their own, and in some cases, increasing.

Now, on the surface, one might call this a push toward a post-literate America that’ll be indistinguishable from Idiocracy in about twenty years or so.

But I think the issue is really one of value rather than literacy.  A magazine subscription, the product arrives once a month.  The newspaper, once a day.  But the rest of these might deliver as many as eight items in a single day, and might run continually all day every day.  The internet provides everything a newspaper does, and in much more rapid fashion, with constant updates.  A magazine can’t compete either.

The internet is rapidly becoming America’s dominant communication medium, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find the rest of the world sharing in that assessment.

I say possibly, of course, because it isn’t like this is the first time Netflix managed to link up with a device provider to make their streaming video a bit easier to deal with.  Samsung, a host of Blu-ray players, lots more.  So now Sony’s Bravia television becomes one more brick in Netflix’s wall of streaming video.

All you’ll need is an internet capable Bravia, and the latest software upgrades, and you’ll be able to stream from Netflix’s pretty well massive library of at last count over a thousand titles.

This is, of course, awesome.  But as far as I can see it’s like polishing the brass on the Titanic.  There’s still a huge portion of the populace that can’t use this service, or can only use it in vastly reduced quantities because they plain old don’t have the bandwidth.  It’s great that the number of devices that can access this service increases almost with every passing week, but until that basic hurdle is overcome, there’s just no way it’ll get as far as it can.

Okay, while I’ll admit the thought of being able to download the latest movies and watch them, in your home, any time of the day or night thanks to stuff like Netflix and Blockbuster, and TV shows thanks to Hulu, plus any of a dozen less legally clear alternatives, is a massive slice of fried awesome, it’s not a huge surprise that the internet service providers don’t agree.

See, if people can just get whatever they want from the internet, well, then people are basically paying one price for all their entertainment needs.  Suddenly, media companies take a nosedive and the ISPs are left running a massively backlogged information superhighway.  So sensing their opportunity to take THEIR pound of flesh, most of the big providers are already engaged in proactive bitching and moaning about how hard it is to keep all this infrastructure up and running and why, in order to survive, they MUST start gouging their customers by requiring them to pay based on their usage.

You think I’m being funny there, but I’m not.  Check this out:

So the ISPs are eyeing metered usage as a new tactic. Time Warner got as far as running an experiment in Texas and was considering expanding it to other cities until it was beaten back by consumer advocates and Congress, where a bill banning metered usage was introduced. But AT&T has implemented usage-based pricing in Texas and Nevada, Verizon is threatening to do the same, and Comcast has imposed a usage cap.

So can we continue to get all we can use internet?  Or will we soon be facing massive price hikes for literally every second spent online?  Only time will tell.

So I’m still hearing dark muttering out of Camp General Electric, which indirectly owns Hulu, that they need to start making people PAY for this stuff.  But they’re considering a whole lot of different plans, including one I actually suggested a few months back.

After reading Chris’s piece over the concept, my own idea suddenly took on a stark new importance.  Why is Hulu not getting more involved with advertising if it wants to boost its revenues?  They’re talking in that direction, but nowhere near as aggressively as they should.

“I know [Hulu is] looking at any number of things, like adding inventory (more advertising) or creating a subscription model with different windows.”

More advertising.  That’s your ticket right there.  Frankly, I’ve long believed that internet advertising models are WILDLY divorced from reality.  Pay per click?  Excuse me?  No.  You don’t pay a newspaper or a magazine or a TV station based on the number of people who come into the store after the ad.  No. You pay a RATE based on viewership numbers.  Higher the viewers, higher the ad bill.  You don’t like the results, you go elsewhere AFTER you cut the check.

But Hulu’s pretty popular as it sits.  If it can present more ads, or bigger ads, to the wide audience that shows up for free Hulu TV, well, then why not?  There’s how you make your money.  And if a big name like Hulu can help lead Internet advertising AWAY from the pay-per-click model and into a model more in line with the rest of the advertising industry, then what we have here is a whole new paradigm.  Frankly, the world is moving to the Internet anyway–newspapers are shutting their doors, magazines are fleeing to their web sites and dumping their paper equivalents, Kindle is the new bookstore.

Let’s get Internet advertising to a respectable state for all web sites.

I can hardly believe it either, but the sheer impossibility of it all does not preclude it from being true.

What is this startling new development of which I speak? Simple,  yet terrifying– television is no longer the primary advertising medium of Great Britain.

It’s been replaced by the Internet.

No seriously, it’s true; Internet advertising sales rose to a nearly twenty four percent market share,  while television fell to just over twenty one percent market share.

Of course, in this study, the weight of market share is somewhat affected by the fact that the BBC is entirely advertising free ( at least for now) which in turn drives down the average, but thanks to the growing English trend of online shopping, advertising based on searches and Google has been driven upward.

The implications are staggering– while the world’s biggest market still relies on television over the Internet for advertising by a factor of almost four to one, the growing foothold in Great Britain suggest that advertising via the Internet may be the primary marketing medium within the next five to ten years.

Well, folks–the word coming out on digital piracy in Europe is that European governments will do pretty much anything short of sexual congress with farm animals (and even that may not be off the table) in order to keep Big Media happy.

The push for cutting off Internet access for suspected pirates continues on unabated.  Interestingly, when we first reported on such a program, it was intended for Great Britain, who later announced that it wasn’t interested in such a program, until later when it announced that it was.  And further, the British program was actually based on a FRENCH program, which also faced some hurdles from legislators before they promptly rolled over and laughed at their constituents for being suckers of sufficient size to believe that–har!–they were put in office to PROTECT PEOPLE’S RIGHTS.

If we’ve got any readers around France and England, we’d love to hear from them on what they think about the whole “lose your internet access if they think you download” policy.

Let me go on record right now–if the way things are right now remain in this state for the next five years, without significant changes in technology or socio-political factors, streaming WILL NOT replace DVD and Blu-ray within the next five years.

It’s a bold pronouncement, I know…but you don’t come here for weak sauce and milquetoast ideology.  Plain and simple, unless there are significant changes in the way people live, work, and use the internet, streaming won’t replace discs any time soon.

Why?  Three important factors:

1. Internet access.  Even your standard tiny YouTube video weighs in at roughly two meg per minute.  The highest download speed I’ve ever seen here is ten meg per second, and that’s for a YouTube video playing at roughly the size of your hand.  And in many, MANY, places, Internet access is still limited to dialup or satellite high-speed with draconian usage limits.  You can FORGET about getting all the latest movies on demand, not unless everyone suddenly manages to be able to get ten or twenty meg / sec speeds without limits and without outages.  You’re talking about a HUGE revolution required to access most of the country.

2. Expense.  To watch a DVD, you need a TV, often available for under two hundred dollars, and a DVD player, available for as little as twenty.  Pretty much the same with a Blu-ray, only slightly more expensive.  But to watch your movies streaming, you need a computer or other means of download, a high-speed internet connection (and satellite doesn’t count if you want to watch more than one movie a week) and a display option.  For that, you’re talking at least an LCD tv, often over four hundred bucks.  That’s a LOT more cash to put out, and given the state of things, consumer electronics aren’t going to be a super-huge market any time soon.

3. Difficulty of use.  To watch a DVD requires you to open your DVD player, either via switch or onboard button, insert the DVD, close the player and press play.  Not too much different from the VCRs of yore, just with a different media.  But streaming video can, depending on the source and layout, require vastly, VASTLY more than just a click of a switch.

Until these issues are solved, and to solve them will require downright moonshots in the way we think, live and work, you can forget about streaming (or downloads) replacing the disc.

With the Netgear XAVB1004 home theater internet connectivity kit, you can now easily set up an internet connection in any room without running new wires. The kit is a convenient solution that enables extending your home network by using standard electrical outlets.

The Netgear XAVB1004 kit consists of the XAV101 Powerline AV Ethernet adapter and the XAV1004 Powerline AV adapter with 4-port Ethernet switch. The XAVB1004 has the capacity to connect up to four devices to your network that include gaming console, BD-Live-enable Blu-ray player, TiVo and many more.

Further, the XAVB1004 offers 200Mbps bandwidth, enough to stream HD video and 128-bit AES data encryption that ensures security and privacy. The kit is compatible with HomePlug AV.

The Netgear XAVB1004 kit will be available for $17.99.

It was recently announced that Comcast has updated their On Demand Online service effectively adding 18 new channels. This goes along with yesterday’s announcement of HBO and Cinemax hitting the service.

Below is the full list of all 18 channels:

TBS, TNT, HBO, Cinemax, Starz, AMC, BBC America, DIY Network, Fine Living Network, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, History, IFC, MGM Impact, Sundance Channel, WE tv, The Style Network, G4, and Fearnet.

While Comcast’s On Demand Online service hasn’t been made available to the public yet, it was also made known that a beta will begin next week for 5,000 testers. Comcast then went on to say that the On Demand Online service is on track to be made available to all subscribers by years end.

When the HDMI cable first hit store shelves it effectively took the market by storm; combining HD video and HD audio all into one cable was something people had never seen before. Well, HDMI has come along way and the guys behind the interface are gearing up to launch its latest version, version 1.4

This new version will not only continue to support both HD video and audio but it will now throw Ethernet and 3D into the mix. This means with one cable you’ll have HD video, audio, Ethernet and 3D an almost ridiculous amount of stuff to stuff into such a small space. But that’s not all, it was also announced that HDMI 1.4 will support video resolutions up to 4x greater than whats currently being offered today, 1080p.

When these cables do hit the market there will be 4 different versions, standard and high speeds. The only different between the versions is that they will come with or without Ethernet. This is obviously to keep the cable in the hands of those who can’t afford to pay a premium for such a luxury.

Read (ConsumerReports)

It looks like a new HD Online Streaming service is coming to the table. Epix is the name and behind it are important names like Lionsgate, Paramount and MGM. The service is said to offer you HD video-on-demand titles and it’s going to be kind of free. By free we mean that you will still have to pay for it if your cable provider includes it in its offer. That’s right, Epix will probably become a non-premium TV channel which cable providers might or might not like.

Once you will get Epix, you will be able to browse the online catalog using a Flash interface and you will get those pre-DVD release titles you want in 720p quality. Which basically means you have to get your Internet from your cable provider too. How does all that sound?

via arstechnica

It looks like the big cable names in the USA are interested in Internet TV and the service might roll out this summer. Comcast, Time Warner Cable are negotiating with Viacom and Discovery Communications so we don’t have all the details yet. It’s speculated that subscribers will be able to watch some TV content while online on their computers and even smartphones. We should have more specifics this summer if not later.

via Reuters

Chumby has announced it has reached an agreement with Broadcom and it will integrate its rich media Internet platform onto system-on-a-chip solutions which will be neatly placed in future HDTVS, Blu-ray players and set-top-boxes. That means Chumby will deliver some of its widgets to you right on top of that show you’re watching. And Chumby has over 1,000 of them so you won’t get bored too soon.

via Press

Philips has launched the Net TV service which will target its high-end TVs users. In case you own one of those Philips 8000 or 9000 sets you will be able to surf selected sites from your own home. Unfortunately not all the Internet will be available for you to enjoy. Sites like YouTube, TomTom, eBay, Funspot and MyAlbum will be available to browse, but we’re hoping that more will be added to the list. You will be able to check out other sites, but these will not be eye-friendly. The selected sites have been especially modified to fit the Philips Net TV service so your eyes won’t hurt after trying to read the text.

What do you think? Ready for Philips Net TV?
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It seems that satellite dish connectivity is not as secure as we were imagining. A certain Adam Laurie from the UK has managed to built a home made device that can intercept everything a dish uses to communicate.

At a security conference in Washington D.C. he explained how he has been able to use a standard size dish to intercept all sorts of communication, especially the kind of communication that’s supposed to be secure. Besides TV feeds he intercepted Internet traffic including emails, banking and credit card information and probably a lot more. What do you think? Still trust your satellite Internet connection?

via The Register

Sure we reported that YouTube would be increasing it’s video resolution, making it’s player more widescreen friendly, but compared to TV with even 720p capabilities the online video didn’t look so hot.

Well, it seems YouTube has finally lifted the curtains on the much sought after HD quality that everyone’s been using all sorts of tricks to get to.

This is all fine and dandy, but what else is there to expect besides being able to see every last blemish on the face of videobloggers everywhere? Well, with MGM’s recent anouncement they would begin offering full-length content on YouTube, who’s to say you can’t connect a PC to your 50-inch and stream some of this 720p goodness?

Read (NewTeeVee)