video

Account sharing is a $7 billion problem for online video platforms, but only if they want it to be

1 May 2020 by Steve Blum
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Elmer fudd

Californians who are fortunate enough to have fast, reliable broadband service can occupy their locked down, sheltered-in-place hours by watching a seemingly infinite selection of online video content. Some of it is free, but the good stuff usually requires a subscription to one of the many over-the-top streaming platforms. For most of those, all you need is a user name and password to log in and start watching.

Which creates a problem. It’s easy to loan your account info to family and friends, and hard to say no.… More

Telcos struggle as subscribers dump legacy video and copper subscriptions

29 April 2020 by Steve Blum
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San benito pole route 13apr2019

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for big wireline telcos. Frontier Communications’ bankruptcy led the parade of dismal news. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made a couple weeks ahead of going into bankruptcy, Frontier pinned the blame for its problems on its legacy copper business and the less-than-lucrative rural customers who depend on it. But that was no surprise.

AT&T’s and Verizon’s troubles weren’t exactly a shock, either. Some business lines, like video and copper-based broadband service, have been fading for some time.… More

Frontier’s slow video streaming platform is too fast for most of its California copper customers

17 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Outer limits intro

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.

Fewer than half of Frontier Communications’ legacy copper, i.e. DSL-only, homes in California can watch more than one high definition stream at a time on its chosen video streaming platform, Philo. More than a quarter can’t even watch one HD stream, and 14% will get jerky, low quality video, if they can get anything at all.… More

Streaming video hurts cable, but it’s killing AT&T

7 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Elmer fudd

The traditional, linear subscription TV business is in a nose dive. In the fourth quarter of 2019, AT&T shed 945,000 subscribers, mostly from DirecTv but also from its legacy Uverse service and its new AT&T TV platform. Add in the 219,000 subscribers who dumped its AT&T TV Now streaming service, and more than million customers walked away from AT&T’s video products.

Comcast and Charter lost TV subscribers, too. But for both companies, they each lost fewer subs over the 12 months of 2019 than AT&T lost in the last three.… More

California’s marquee industries are two halves of the same brain

19 November 2019 by Steve Blum
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Egghead

Disney and Apple launched online video services this month, with both companies falling short of perfection. It’s interesting to compare the two platforms, dubbed Disney+ and Apple+. One is the brain child of an entertainment giant struggling with technology, the other was created by a tech giant struggling with content.

When Disney+ went live last week, demand outstripped capacity and users were locked out. Apple+, on the other hand, had no such problems. Its programming could be seen by anyone interested enough to log in.… More

Mobile video viewing outruns desktops, is network capacity the next casualty?

22 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Brightcove 2q2019 global video index

Demand for mobile bandwidth continues to boom, as mobile devices overtake desktop computers as the streaming video device of choice for the first time, according to a study by Brightcove, a maker of online video tools and platform services which also makes a habit of tracking such things.

Their Global Video Index for the second quarter of 2019 shows that more than half of global video viewing they can monitor is done on a smartphone (mostly) or tablet (not so much).… More

Apple TV’s so so content depends on ecosystem integration for success

1 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Apple tv keynote aniston witherspoon 25mar2019

Apple unveiled a new subscription video service last week. If it were any other company except Apple making the announcement, there would have been a huge yawn from the market. The Apple TV service, at least what we know of it, isn’t significantly different from other over-the-top services. They’re borrowing business model bits from several different platforms and putting the pieces together a little differently and, but overall it looks very familiar.

Apple will have exclusive programming, as the big OTT players do, and that will help it position its video brand as it has for HBO and Netflix, but it’s just icing on the same cake as everyone else’s.… More

Video will drive the U.S. mobile market in 2018

31 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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Consumer electronics is collapsing into a two-product industry – smart phones and big screen televisions – and the balance is tipping towards phones. The end of network neutrality will accelerate the shift, as the big four U.S. mobile carriers use their control over network traffic and service pricing to sell more content and capture more viewing time.

The big beneficiary is AT&T. Its DirecTv Now over-the-top platform just passed the million subscriber mark. The Federal Communication Commission’s decision scrapping net neutrality rules allows AT&T to exempt DirecTv from data caps – zero rate it – while subjecting everything else you watch to monthly limits and hefty overage charges.… More

Big cable, telcos bleed TV subs, but monopoly broadband pricing could be the cure

20 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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It’s been a bad year for the traditional television subscription business. An analysis by Daniel Frankel in Fierce Cable shows that it’s not quite as awful as stock analysts expected, but it’s close and awful enough…

As earnings season has approached in each quarter of 2017, analysts have predicted the watershed moment where linear pay TV losses surpass 1 million customers.

The market came close in the always-volatile second quarter, losing 976,000 subscribers…

The top 10 publicly traded operators, which account for about 95% of the market, reported losses of around 398,000 video customers in the third quarter.

… More

Google Fiber gives up on video, and maybe fiber too

6 October 2017 by Steve Blum
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Google Fiber is throwing in towel on video service. In a blog post, the company announced that it won’t be offering a cable-like lineup of television channels along with gigabit Internet service in Louisville and San Antonio…

We’re trying something new in our next two Fiber cities. When we begin serving customers in Louisville and San Antonio, we’ll focus on providing superfast Internet – and the endless content possibilities that creates – without the traditional TV add on.

… More