The Future Of Home Entertainment Content Delivery

[Mark Collins]

So, not sure how many people are gamers here, but The Electronics Entertainment Expo is going on right now in LA, and Microsoft just announced at their press conference their plans to make the Xbox 360 a better home entertainment console.

And oh boy does it look awesome. They've brought the gestures into Xbox Kinect (motion tracking system), which allows you to use Apple Like gestures to control your TV rather than a remote, as well as voice commands and a remote if you so choose.

The console now also combines Live TV, in home content delivery for movies and game, and access to a massive library of music.

All in all, it's a one stop media centre, and can/will replace your cable box and dvd/blu ray player. It actually looks really really cool, simple to use and very responsive based on their live demo.

One of the things they showed off was Bing search for content. Say you wanted to watch anything Xmen related, you simply asked the xbox to bring it up and it showed you all the movies, game and TV shows available for that title.

Tis pretty awesome and adds a whole other of craziness when we're thinking of content delivery now.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

I've been using Netflix streaming via my PS3 console for a while(about a year?) It's awesome... Antenna on the roof for pristine HD live broadcast.
Never going back to cable/satellite.....
Not to mention Amazon Prime with their 20,000 titles in the library- free!!!

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Apple's iCloud is very interesting too.

They will store all your music from iTunes in their iCloud, and sync it to all your devices. You can download them multiple times on up to 10 devices - or play it from the cloud.

for $24.99 a year they'll "match" any songs you've ripped yourself and let you access those on the cloud as well. This weekend I'm going to take a look at my collection and see if its worthwhile - also I don't know if you get to keep the songs you've matched without paying every year ad infinitum.

I just read it on Ars Technica - so I don't have all the details yet, but this is the way things are going more and more.

My complaint is that a lot of material is NOT high end. For example the iTunes is just 720p and Netflix only offers 1080p streaming on PS3 last I checked. HBO GO seems to be SD or 720p - plus its browser based interface isn't so hot. the iOS application is much better ... I wish there was one for the desktop computer.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Actually, iCloud doesn't work that way -- it's temporary 5GB storage plus your last 1000 photos (or videos). It facilitates syncing and moving content, the way the cloud should, but content is downloaded to your devices and ultimately still stored in your iTunes repository. Their new licensing allows us to re-download purchases if needed and we can register up to 10 devices per account. We don't stream from the cloud, we play it from local data. The cloud is the intermediate connective hub that transcends localized networks, iTunes, etc.. Have to say that while most of the competition has been claiming Apple to be asleep at the wheel as far as the cloud goes, iCloud just leap-frogged that competition by a couple years. The only two that have the potential to step up and match are Google and Microsoft. Google has the best chance, but with Android being so fragmented, it's getting more and more difficult to maintain consistent app experiences across devices, let alone to start thinking about unified cloud repositories. Oh yeah, and iCloud is frickin' free. Full app access and iCloud API support too, so developers can incorporate cloud functionality in their apps.

And yeah... I'm anxiously awaiting the Apple Dev Center to come back online (hopefully any time now) to grab the iOS 5 developer preview. The new notification system plus iCloud together seem to make this a great upgrade. Notifications have been a long time coming, looks like they are doing it right. ...Anything would be an upgrade from what we have with current iOS.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Leapfrog Schmeapfrog. My Zunepass will stream to any Windows or Mac PC through a browser. And I don't even have to buy the album or download the song. But I can download the song.

Whenever I get a new computer I just hit the "Restore All" button. Now for purchases admittedly you can only do that like 3-4 times. But for subscription downloads you can do to infinity and beyond. And unlike iTunes I have access to the entire Zune library and am only limited by what I want to listen to. Owning music is so 1999. And if you do want the MP3 you can download and keep 10 per month for 'free' as DRM free MP3s. So if an mp3 is about $1.00 and the zunePass is $12.50 a month you're essentially paying $2.50 a month for unlimited downloads.

I am happy to see though that the notifications pane drops down like Android. Hopefully that just becomes standard on everything: Android, WebOS, WP7, iOS and Blackberry.


As to Xbox 360 TV. It looks great. But a grand total of 5 people in the united stated evidently can use it. Bah! They should be streaming from MS servers and cutting AT&T, Comcast etc out of the loop. If they don't want to offer MS IPTV then they can deal with the competition.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Leapfrog Schmeapfrog. My Zunepass will stream to any Windows or Mac PC through a browser. And I don't even have to buy the album or download the song. But I can download the song.

Whenever I get a new computer I just hit the "Restore All" button. Now for purchases admittedly you can only do that like 3-4 times. But for subscription downloads you can do to infinity and beyond. And unlike iTunes I have access to the entire Zune library and am only limited by what I want to listen to. Owning music is so 1999. And if you do want the MP3 you can download and keep 10 per month for 'free' as DRM free MP3s. So if an mp3 is about $1.00 and the zunePass is $12.50 a month you're essentially paying $2.50 a month for unlimited downloads.

I am happy to see though that the notifications pane drops down like Android. Hopefully that just becomes standard on everything: Android, WebOS, WP7, iOS and Blackberry.


As to Xbox 360 TV. It looks great. But a grand total of 5 people in the united stated evidently can use it. Bah! They should be streaming from MS servers and cutting AT&T, Comcast etc out of the loop. If they don't want to offer MS IPTV then they can deal with the competition.

So ... you're that one Zune user!

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

So ... you're that one Zune user!

I'm that one BROWN Zune user. "Count Chocula"

Well, not anymore. I have my Zune Phone now.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Leapfrog Schmeapfrog. My Zunepass will stream to any Windows or Mac PC through a browser. And I don't even have to buy the album or download the song. But I can download the song.

It's not about streaming. Not really about downloads, etc.. It's about cloud integration. There's a lot more coming that hasn't been talked about.

Also have to appreciate how Apple has just managed to monetize pirated audio content with their matching service. It remains to see how well it's received, but if they can pull this off, then OMG...

I am happy to see though that the notifications pane drops down like Android. Hopefully that just becomes standard on everything: Android, WebOS, WP7, iOS and Blackberry.

Agreed.

As to Xbox 360 TV. It looks great. But a grand total of 5 people in the united stated evidently can use it. Bah! They should be streaming from MS servers and cutting AT&T, Comcast etc out of the loop. If they don't want to offer MS IPTV then they can deal with the competition.

Also agreed. I actually thought most of the XBOX announcements today were pretty meh. No real surprises. I like where they're going with the control gestures though... I think Microsoft has a lot more up their sleeves with the whole visual recognition system and it's smart letting the gaming market pioneer the tech for them.

I'm that one BROWN Zune user. "Count Chocula"

Hehe... I almost bought the poop Zune when it came out. Just because I could. But didn't.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Point is, digital delivery.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

It's not about streaming. Not really about downloads, etc.. It's about cloud integration. There's a lot more coming that hasn't been talked about.

And Live.com already does a lot too. Sync'ed calendars/pictures/settings was already covered by Android/WP7. In fact I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my WP7's calendar started reminding me of Google calendar appointments. My camera automatically gets saved to my Live.com account. As far as I'm concerned my Zune account is far more cloudy than the new iCloud. I can't just stream something from the iCloud and I'm not limited to my own music in the cloud. It's kind of why I yawn.

$25 a year to convert my pirated music to legit music that I have to download to iTunes. (iCloud)
or
$30 a year to stream or download pretty much every song in the iTunes library on demand. (Zune)

My music consumption has *completely* changed with Zune. Now I actually just browse, listen and explore new music. Want to listen to some new Artist's album? Click. Done. No decision or weighing of whether it's "Worth the risk". There is no cost so there is no risk. It's free. Everything is free. All I see the iCloud do is take the old clunky archaic album and single model but with DropBox functionality. That wouldn't change how you consume media. Switching to Zunepass was as fundamental of a shift in consuming media as when I first got Netflix for my movie watching.

This is how the industry is going to conquer piracy: high volume and cheap. Imagine if your local movie theater offered weekday passes for $40 a month. You could watch any movie you wanted for $40 a month Mon-Friday. I would absolutely do that. And I would suddenly be watching tons of movies in the theater (and probably buying more popcorn). You have to lower the cost of the item to "impulse buy". We're the Groupon generation. We'll buy a ticket to anything if it's 80% off. When HD-DVD was going down in a flaming glory I bought more HD-DVDs and spent more on optical media than my entire life previous to that. At $2-4 an HD-DVD why not? I still have HD-DVDs I haven't watched. Why? Cheap! The music industry probably extracted less than $300 in my entire life prior to Zune. Now I spend $150 a year. If they can do that for a sizable portion of the population their profits will be through the roof.

 

[Mark Collins]

Also agreed. I actually thought most of the XBOX announcements today were pretty meh. No real surprises. I like where they're going with the control gestures though... I think Microsoft has a lot more up their sleeves with the whole visual recognition system and it's smart letting the gaming market pioneer the tech for them.

No, it was all sequels and such, but it's stuff I'm interested in so, I was happy with what they announced.

The new Dashboard looks slick, and it looks very much like an iOS styled interface. I'm quite interested in that. Being able to use a touchscreen without having to touch the screen is actually pretty cool, very Minority Report looking.

The digital delivery is also getting more impressive every year. The only issue is ISP's. Here in Canada, ISP's can't necessarily keep up with the demand in terms of pricing and bandwidth. Fiber optic is getting there, but is still pretty expensive. Hopefully that can catch up soon, otherwise the access to content is simply a dream.

This is interesting from a filmmaking perspective becuase now we're no longer optimizing our deliverables for just theatre and television. We're optimizing for theatre, television and more importantly, internet.

How does this relate to Red and what Jim is doing: 4K and up is great for theatre. For home television it is at this point in time pointless as 4K TV's are not realistically on the market yet. And for web, the bandwidth simply cannot handle 4K streaming. Youtube is trying 4K, but based on my experiences with it, it is nowhere near a viable option for me (bandwidth capacity and computer specs). So, digital delivery is an added element to think of when choosing your camera to shoot on.