Football streaming on Twitter -- too many commercials and need to be able to filter tweets -- but like all new media, it will improve.

I watched a bit of Thursday Night Football on Twitter last night. You could watch a small screen with tweets as shown above or go full screen and lose the tweets. I watched it on a laptop with a large, high resolution screen and on a Mac with a 21-inch display and the video was smooth and looked good on both. That was the good news.

The bad news was the commercials. I am not a football fan, so do not know how many commercials a typical broadcast game has, but it seemed like Twitter spent more time on commercials than the game. I would be curious to see statistics on the number of minutes spent on commercials, commentary and game action on Twitter versus broadcast television.

I “cut the cord” years ago, so am used to paying Netflix and others for streamed content without commercials. If I am typical, Twitter will fail with this commercial-based business model. (The Motley Fool Web site says the ads did not pay off in the first game, which was streamed last week).

For a while, I watched both the TV broadcast and the Twitter stream. The Twitter stream was relatively delayed, but the lag time varied and they did not have the same commercials. I wonder how the commercial sales and revenue are handled.

Turning to the user interface – I did not time it, but it seemed like there about 20 tweets every thirty seconds. With that many tweets coming in, I think the best way to watch would be to go full screen during the live play and mute the audio and read tweets during the commercials -- not a good deal for advertisers.

I did not notice any obviously malicious tweets, so I assume there is some automatic or human filtering, but it would be better if they would let the user control the filtering. For example, to let one see only tweets from a selected group of friends or a selected group of experts like professional football players, sports analysts or professional gamblers.

But, lest I seem too negative -- this is their first try at streaming sports. All new media stumble at first, often copying what came before. The first movies were made by filming stage plays and there are many other examples from radio, TV, textbooks, online learning, etc.

Twitter is streaming the US presidential debates next -- let's see how they do on that.

A quick look at CBS All Access video streaming

The technical problems will be resolved, but I don't want to watch commercials, so I will pass.

Last week, CBS announce the availability of CBS All Access, allowing subscribers ($5.99 per month) to watch CBS TV shows online. You can stream episodes of CBS series using a browser or portable app and, in selected markets, you can watch live programs as they are broadcast. Broadcast episodes are available the following day for streaming.

I signed up, and streamed an episode of the Big Bang Theory as my first test. As you see below, I viewed it on my phone (a Nexus 5) and mirrored the screen on my TV set using a Google Chromecast.

The video quality was decent, but not super sharp and from time to time it jittered or the audio got a little bit out of synch. Still, it was definitely watchable. That was the good news. The bad news is that in addition to the monthly fee, you see tons of commercials -- before the program starts and at commercial breaks -- just like broadcast TV.

Next, I tried watching in the Chrome browser on my laptop. The picture quality was fine as long as I watched it in a small window, but, when I went full screen on my 15-inch, 1920x1200 pixel display, the quality was very poor, as you see below. (Click the image to see it in its blurry full size).

But wait, it got worse. After a few minutes of viewing, my (admittedly slow) laptop fan started running and the video stuttered and eventually froze. I restarted the video and watched the task manager as it ran. This is what I saw:

It was using about 3 GB of 8 GB of memory and the CPU load was highly variable around an average of about 50%. Then the CPU load jumped to 95-100% and stayed there, rendering the video unwatchable.

I'm not sure what caused the change of state -- perhaps it tried to raise the frame rate and and overwhelmed my laptop. I have an 802.11 ac access point, but the laptop radio is a/b/g. Perhaps it had exhausted an initial buffer, but there was not a noticeable pause for buffering when the stream started.

Next, I tried watching a live stream. The live stream is only available in certain parts of the country, but the small map on their site seemed to have a dot over Los Angeles, where I live. It may have been a temporary outage, but all I got was a message saying to wait:

I gave up after about five minutes of watching the little animated circle rotate.

My test went poorly, but the technical problems will be solved. I'm sure they will get live streaming working soon and improved video algorithms and my getting a new phone and a new laptop will take care of my quality complaints. But, even if the video is rock solid and high definition, I will not subscribe if they continue to run commercials.

I don't want commercials (but maybe you do)

Major content providers like HBO and CBS offering Internet service marks the beginning of the end for cable TV as we know it. Eventually, we will all cut the cord and get our video online, but regardless of the technology, we have four video business models:

I suspect that in the future, most of our viewing will be on demand and scheduled viewing will be mostly used for sports and other events. I can wait to see the current episode of Big Bang Theory until the day after it is broadcast.

When I asked my students whether they would pay $5.99 a month to watch CBS TV with commercials, they all said "no." When I asked if they would watch if it were free, but had commercials, they said "yes." Before the courts put them out of business, Aereo also showed us that there is a market for on demand local TV with commercials. My students are young and on limited budgets, but, as Netflix and Amazon Prime have shown, there is also a substantial market for paid, commercial-free video.

I've no idea what the prices of these video options will be in the future, but I doubt that we will be paying less after we cut the cord. Our ISPs are also our video providers, and, since we generally have only one or perhaps two ISP choices, I expect them to raise broadband prices to compensate for any lost revenue. We will end up with ala carte video and higher monthly bills.

But, that is the speculative future. For now, I will stick with Amazon, Netflix and Hulu Plus, and watch an occasional CBS program over the air with my trusty rabbit-ears antenna.

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Update 10/31/2014

There is a fairly long discussion of this post on Slashdot.

A tale of two industries: package delivery and Internet service

Why do customers like the package delivery industry and dislike information delivery service? Competition and the US Postal Service.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recently complained that Netflix paid the Post Office for delivery of small packages (DVDs), but did not want to pay Internet service providers (ISPs) to deliver the same content over the Internet.

In his view, the Post Office is in the consumer package delivery business and Comcast and other ISPs are in the information delivery business and both should be paid for their service.

The University of Michigan publishes the American Customer Satisfaction Index in which they rate both companies and industries. Let's look at their latest ratings of the consumer package delivery and ISP industries.

They rate 48 industries and it turns out that the package delivery industry is rated seventh overall and the ISP industry is 48th. Furthermore, merger hopefuls Time Warner Cable and Comcast are the lowest rated.

How might we explain the differences in customer satisfaction in these two images that Mr. Roberts considers similar? The difference is that there is competition in customer package delivery between Federal Express, UPS and the Post Office. We would normally expect three companies to tacitly establish oligopoly prices, but in this case the Post Office is disruptive -- Federal Express and UPS must compete with a government agency.

The best video ever on network neutrality and the state of the Internet in the US

As long as analysts, geeks and lobbyists are the only folks who care about Internet infrastructure and policy, we can be pretty sure that nothing will improve, but what if the general public becomes interested?

Last night I watched episode five of the HBO comedy news cast "Last Week Tonight" in which host John Oliver narrated a 13 minute segment on network neutrality and the sorry state of the Internet in the United States.



I may be a biased geek and disgruntled consumer, but the segment was right on and, more important, extremely funny.

Is the Internet finally becoming a politically important issue? (Be sure to listen to the audience reaction at the end of the clip before you answer).

----
Update 6/26/2014

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler responded to the video and Oliver followed up with another very funny segment.

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Update 6/28/2014

Terry Gross interviewed John Oliver about his new HBO show -- the first 7 minutes are devoted to Oliver's Internet piece -- funny and informative.

---

Consumer groups and big corporations like Google and Facebook agreeing on net neutrality is like Lex Luther agreeing with Superman.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts explained that there is no competition between Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Picking Tom Wheeler to head the FCC is like hiring a dingo as your baby sitter.

President Obama golfing with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

Comcast speed dips then recovers rapidly after the Netflix agreement is made

What caused the sudden improvement in Comcast service and how much did it cost?

As shown here, Netflix download speed began dropping for Comcast customers last November and began picking up in February. It rose another 2% in April.

What happened? The cynical, but quite plausible, answer is that Comcast refused to upgrade their equipment while negotiating with Netflix on fees for faster service, resulting in poor performance and angry customers, and they made the necessary investment after a deal was concluded in February.

Infrastructure investment is central to the network neutrality debate. If this improvement was due to investment upstream from Comcast, they should present data demonstrating that. Regardless of who made it, I would like to know how much we are talking about here -- what did it cost to increase performance so dramatically?

The public, the FCC and the FTC need that sort of transparency to formulate policy that will incent infrastructure investment.

Tourtracker -- a better way to stream the Tour of California

In a recent post, I criticized NBC's streaming coverage of the Tour of Califronia for having way too many ads and reflecting conflicts of interest and requiring bundling with TV service. That was bad news.

The good news is that Tourtracker does a way better job of streaming the race.

For a start, there are fewer ads on Tourtracker. I don't know if that is by design, but, at least for now, their coverage is much less annoying than that of NBC.

NBC is owned by Comcast, and they require streaming viewers to have an authorized television subscription, but Tourtracker does not. It is freely available on the US Web -- I did not check to see if can be reached from other countries.

It is also apparent that the Tourtracker site was designed with cycling in mind. As shown below, there are a number of cycling related statistics, commentary and status displays:

Note that the video is surrounded by race information, not ads as in the case of NBC.

The user can toggle the race information on and off, as shown below, and, in-full screen mode, there is only a thin row of display ads (as is the case with NBC).

Off the top of my head, the only thing I liked better on the NBC site was their 15-second "rewind" button -- let's hope Tourtacker adds one of their own.

Why is the Tourtracker stream better than NBC's? It was designed for cycling, not sporting events in general, and Tourtracker does not have a conflicting TV or ISP businesses to protect. I was pleasantly surprised when commenter Matthew Ferdinand1 told me about Tourtracker, but wonder about rights to the broadcast -- are they licensed from NBC/Comcast?

Are the new Roku radios less sensitive than the old ones?

I had an old Roku XD in my bedroom but, when Roku added PBS, it turned out their programs were incompatible with my XD. (The explanation of the incompatibility is interesting in its own right -- See this discussion and this post from Roku for the details).

I had gotten my money's worth out of that old Roku and also wanted the remote headphone feature and faster processor in the newer Roku 3, so ordered one.

When it arrived, I installed it and settled back to watch TV, but it went through the menus more slowly than the old XD had and I began seeing pauses for buffering, which I had never seen with the XD.

I checked the signal strength using inSSIDer and saw that it vacilated around -60 dBm as shown in this two minute sample:

It was not robust, but the old Roku XD had functioned well with that signal -- could the new Roku radio be less sensitive than the old one?

I had been meaning to return my ISP's WiFi router/radio, so I purchased a new one and was happy, but surprised, to discover that the Roku 3 worked well with it. I checked the signal strength with the new router/radio and found that it was more stable over time:

and, as shown in this overlay, a little bit stronger:

Neither is a "five bar" signal, but my old Roku works with either. I may have gotten a bad Roku 3 (Roku is willing to exchange it, but that would leave me without TV for a week or so) or it may be that the radio in the newer model is less sensitive.

Regardless, it would be helpful if radio sensitivity were included in product specs and reviews -- by Roku and any other WiFi device manufacturer.

Thirty eight percent in the US watch Netflix online -- each one knows how to "cut the cord"

Yesterday I posted a note on Netflix' vision for their company and the TV industry in general. They now see themselves as a "movie and TV series network" and predict rapid growth for Internet TV. Today, I came across a Nielsen survey that supports both of those contentions.

The survey showed that 38% of the people in the U. S. subscribe to or watch Netflix streaming video service. That is up from 31% last year.

I don't know about you, but that is a lot more than I would have guessed. It is about 119 million people if they consider the entire population -- babies and all. Note also that Hulu and Amazon also have significant, growing numbers of subscribers.

Netflix' view of themselves as a series network is also confirmed by the study. Forty five percent of Netflix streaming subscribers say the types of shows they watch when they stream are original programming -- series like "House of Cards."

And, when they watch those series, they tend to “binge.” Eighty eight percent of Netflix users and 70 percent of Hulu Plus users report streaming three or more episodes of the same TV show in one day. As we pointed out in our previous post, both consumers and creators like the full-season format of Netflix productions.

The survey also showed, that Netflix and Hulu are watched on a variety of devices:

The above figure also suggests a trend away from computers and game machines toward phones and tablets. People want to watch TV on any device at any time and at any place.

"Over the top" Internet television is not just for geeks any more -- 38 million people understand how easy it is to defect from cable and satellite TV, to "cut the cord." As the quality and variety of Internet TV material improves, it will be easy for them to drop their cable and satellite subscriptions. When we reach the tipping point, the transition will be rapid.

Netflix' vision of their company and the future of television

Check out the Netflix Long Term View document for investors. It is interesting because it reveals their vision of the company and for the future of television in general.

As to the vision of the company, they say they are a "movie and TV series network." Note that they see themselves as a "network" -- will Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and the BBC become the new television networks?

But, they are not just a network, they are a "TV series network." That is a testament to their success producing multi-episode series for Internet distribution. People like to watch TV without commercials. They also like watching two, three or maybe all the episodes in one sitting. They like watching TV on phones, tablets, PCs or television sets whenever they want to.

Creators also like the artistic freedom and financial security of the Netflix format. They have the freedom to craft a long story. We can think of the Netflix series "House of Cards" as a 661 minute story, to be watched in one or several sittings. The 13 episodes vary from 46 to 56 minutes in length -- the writers are not constrained by time slots and commercial breaks. They could have created more or fewer episodes if they that was the best way to tell the story.

For more on a creator's view of Netflix, watch Kevin Spacey's excellent 2013 James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture 2013 (below). Spacey, who produced and starred in "House of Cards," says he pitched it to the TV networks and cable companies, but he went with Netflix because they gave him total creative control, funded 26 episodes up front and did not request a pilot episode. He feels that pilots are an expensive, misleading digression. He is producing very long stories with evolving characters, and trying to cram that into a single TV pilot or a two hour movie is impossible.

How about the Netflix vision of the future of television?

They sum it up saying that "While Internet TV is only a small percent of video viewing today, it will keep growing because:"

• The Internet is getting faster, more reliable and more available;
• Smart TV sales are increasing and eventually every TV will have Wifi and apps;
• Smart TV adapters are getting better and cheaper;
• Tablet and smartphone viewing is increasing;
• Internet TV apps are improving through competition and frequent updates;
• Streaming will be the leading source for 4k/UHD video;
• Internet video advertising is becoming more personalized and relevant;
• TV Everywhere provides a smooth economic transition for existing networks;
• New entrants like Netflix are innovating rapidly and driving improvements.

Do you like "binging" on a commercial free TV series? (I just finished "Orange is the New Black"). Do you agree with Netflix' reasons for the future growth of IPTV? Are they enough to overcome the power of the incumbents?

Check out Kevin Spacey's lecture:

Experience casting tabs

The other day, I posted a note on my experience with the Chromecast radio. Today, I will talk about experience with video.

My Chromecast works well when showing video from a cast-enabled site like YouTube or casting a Chrome browser tab with still images in it, but poorly when casting a tab with streaming video. (Note that "to cast" is becoming a word, like "to google" or "podcast").

The first thing I tried was casting a tab in which I was surfing the Web and stepping through a Google Docs presentation. The TV image was shifted a little bit to the left, cutting off a few pixels; there was a noticeable, but sub-second, delay in updating the TV screen and data compression made small text difficult to read. The performance was imperfect, but generally satisfactory. (PDF documents do not work because they are handled outside the browser).

As you see below, the CPU load was seldom over 50% of capacity and usually less than 30%, but that was enough to turn the fan on. (My laptop was plugged in).

Next, I went to the CommonCraft Web site and watched a video that played in a 579 by 294 pixel widow. I picked Commoncraft because they make simple teaching videos with little movement on the screen. As you see below, the CPU load increased, but I was able to watch an entire video, which started at the arrow point:

For my final test, I watched a video of the Daily Show in a 512 by 288 pixel window. This is faster-changing video than Commoncraft's. At first, the video played satisfactorily, but CPU use quickly moved up to the vicinity of 100% and the the audio and video degraded severely. The audio went before the video, but the program was un-watchable.

It should be noted that I ran these test using a three-year old Dell Precision M4400 laptop with a 3.06 Ghz core duo CPU with 8 GB of memory running 64-bit Windows, connected to an old 802.11a/g Wifi network. The results would have been better with a newer, faster laptop or an 802.11n network.

The bottom line is that, given my computer and network, tab-casting is fine for PowerPoint presentations and Web surfing, but it is not up to streaming video in a window, much less streaming full-screen video. That is the bad news. The good news is that this is Chromecast version 1.0. Redesign and Moore's will take care of the performance problems soon enough.

For more on variables that can affect tab-casting quality, see this Google help page.

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Update 9/16/2013

+Zarthan South pointed out that my laptop lacks Google's minimum CPU for casting video tabs. With Windows 7, one should have a Core i3 or equivalent for standard quality video casting (http://bit.ly/17E3agi). My laptop is fast enough to cast stills like Web pages and slide presentations, which is quite useful. Note also that RAM utilization was around 3GB while running these tests.

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Update 10/22/2013

K. J. Kim has found that switching to the developer channel a Chromebook significantly improved video tab casting.  That shows that Google is continuing to improve the Chromebook.

I love my Chromecast, but the radio is kind of lame.

I ordered a Chromecast right after they came out, but Amazon back ordered mine. It came a few days ago.

I plugged it in to my TV set, ran the setup and discovered that it could not connect to my home WiFi network. After fooling around with the base station position and antenna and using Google's short HDMI extender cable to move the Chromecast to the side a bit and change its orientation, I eventually established a weak (2 bar) connection.

I used Metageek's inSSIDer software running on my laptop to see the signal strength on the clearest 2.4 Ghz channel available in my TV room and, as you see here, it varied from -50 to -60db.

That is not a terrific signal, but I have a Roku box plugged into the same TV set and neither it or my laptop or my wife's iPad have difficulty connecting to the WiFi network from that room.

I looked online for radio sensitivity specs, and discovered that the folks at Tom's Hardware have speculated that the Chromecast uses an AzureWave AW-NH387 with 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth and FM radios. (If that is the case, I wonder if Google has plans for the Bluetooth and FM radios).

They came to that conclusion based on this photograph from Google's FCC Chromecast application:

(If you want to have some geek fun and see how they tested the device, check Google's report to the FCC).

Google's tests show that the Chromecast and its power supply satisfy FCC noise requirements, but I am still in the dark on the sensitivity of the radio.

Is there some way to get finer grained feedback on connection strength than the ill-defined "number of bars?" It would be nice if there were better specs so we could compare devices and guess ahead of time whether they would work in our locations. For now, I can only conclude that the radios in my laptop, my wife's iPad and our Roku box are better than the Chromecast radio. (By the way, a couple years ago, I found that the radio in my wife's iPad was weaker than my laptop radio).

Lest I end on a sour note, you should know that I love the Chromecast and expect to find Chromecasts connected to and built into many future TVs and boxes like my Roku. Chromecast radios will improve with time and I will upgrade my lame WiFi network to 802.11n. I won't be surprised if one day we find all sorts of "Chromecasts" plugged into formerly dumb, disconnected things like heaters, air conditioners, washing machines, etc.

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Update 9/12/2013

Google decided to place the Chromecast antenna inside the dongle case, which means it has to zig around chips and is constrained by the size of the case, so your WiFi reception will depend upon the location and orientation of the dongle itself. Luckily, I was able to get my Chromecast to connect to my home network by fiddling with its orientation and getting it away from the TV set using Google's short HDMI extender, but I was flying blind.

Anyone who has adjusted the rabbit ears on an analog TV set knows that reception varies with the orientation and position of the antenna -- you see the picture improve or get worse as you move the antenna. Unfortunately, the Chromecast gives you no feedback as you move it around.

If you succeed in connecting, Google displays the "strength" of the connection using "bars" like on your cell phone. But those bars are a course, undefined measure of signal strength and they are not shown while you are adjusting the position of the Chromecast.

Google should let you monitor connection strength as you move the Chromecast around. The familiar bars would not be good enough -- you need something more precise like, say, a two digit number or a graphic meter of some sort. The user would not have to know what the meter was displaying, just that it increased or decreased with signal strength.

The dongle would need to be mounted on a swivel that mechanically constrained it once you found the optimal orientation.

Another alternative would be to use an external antenna something like this:

It seems that Google tried to emulate Apple with the Chromecast. It comes in a really nice box and all the user has to do is plug and play -- let's not bother them with details like signal strength and adjusting the antenna position. That is great when it works, frustrating when it doesn't.

Google Chromecast delay -- production or legal or hardball?

It may have been a data input error or perhaps Amazon has been hacked, but I received an email on August 8 saying the Google Chromecast I had ordered on July 27 would be delivered in mid October.

I checked the Amazon Web site, and, sure enough they were now saying it "usually ships in 2-3 months:"

As we noted last week, the first production run sold out in a few days, and, at the time I placed my order, they said it would ship in 3-4 weeks:

On August 3, they seemed to be on schedule:

This is a simple electronic device -- why are they having so much trouble?  Why did the shipping date slip?  Are they poor production planners?  Having trouble getting parts?  Having legal problems? Playing hardball with Amazon?

If it is legal problems, it may be a trademark conflict with Chromecast.com, a Web development company.  Here is their Web site:

Note the link to legal information near the bottom of the screen.  Follow the link and you will see a lot of legal information.  There is also some very faint black-on-blue text at the bottom of the page.  It is illegible on my display, but here is what it says:

© 2013 Chromecast Inc. All rights reserved. Chromecast, Chromecast Digital Media, chromeTone, The rADium LDAP suite, and project|aurora, are trademarks of Chromecast Inc. and may not be used without written permission.

Did Google forget to get that written permission? If so, the can always change the name to "Metro."

Perhaps they are just playing hardball with Amazon.  It turns out the Google Play Web site still says the Chromecast ships in 2-3 weeks.  If they cut Amazon's quota to induce people like me to cancel their Amazon orders and order from the Google Play Store, they may gain a few sales, but, as a Google customer, that strikes me as doing evil.

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Update 8/9/2013

At first I thought my Amazon delivery date may have been an error, but a day later, Google is still promising 2-3 weeks for shipping, Amazon 2-3 months and Best Buy is just out of stock period:

This pisses me off a bit and must also rankle Amazon.  At $35, there cannot be much (any?) profit in a Chromecast, so it seems foolish.  I guess Google wants me to cancel my Amazon order, but I'll wait till Amazon ships it in October.

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Update 8/10/2013

Amazon sent out an email saying "customers who placed orders prior to August 7 should receive their orders in the coming weeks and into mid-September." The expected ship date for new orders remains 2-3 months.

Chromecast blunders -- does Google need a few MBAs?

Google's new Chromecast, a device for streaming video on a TV set, might turn out to be terrific, but they have bungled the marketing and production.

I was on the Yet Another Tech Show podcast Wednesday and, based on what they had read, all the panelists agreed that Google's new Chromecast was a terrific product at a no-brainer price.  So, being a cord cutter, I ordered one.

After I placed my order, I learned that I had missed the deadline for a three-month Netflix credit premium. I was satisfied with the purchase at first, but now I am somewhat pissed at Google for giving all those folks who ordered a few days earlier a better deal.

It also turned out that Google blew the production planning -- my Chromecast is expected to ship in three or four weeks.

I came across a tweet saying that nearly 250,000 people had ordered them before the Netflix promotion was pulled -- who plans logistics and production?

I had to wait, but it will be worth waiting for, right? I hope so, but astute blogger Bob Cringley suspects that the Google demo overstated the capability of the Chromecast and when I checked the customer reviews on Amazon, I found that, while most are favorable, there is some dissent.  Some folks could not get it to work, experienced poor quality audio or video or discovered that they needed a second port to power the device if they had an older TV with pre-version 1.4 HDMI ports.

I didn't cancel my order -- I still hope to love the thing, but I can't help wondering if Google, with all their PhD engineers and scientists couldn't use a few more folks with MBAs in production management and marketing. Remember the Nexus Q?

Netflix drops Sponge Bob Square Pants (and why it matters)

Netflix is on a roll. They had the first big "made for the Internet" drama, House of Cards; they are by far the largest source of North American Internet traffic and their stock price and subscriber rolls are growing.

But, when my grand daughter and I settled down to watch an episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants yesterday, it was not available! (It still turns up as a search choice -- a tantalizing bug for fans of The Sponge).

A quick Google search turned up this quote in Netflix' bullish April 22nd, 2013 letter to shareholders:

As we continue to focus on exclusive and curated content, our willingness to pay for non exclusive, bulk content deals declines. At the end of May we’ll be allowing our broad Viacom Networks deal for Nickelodeon, BET, and MTV content to expire.

That sounds good in theory, but in practice, they zapped Sponge Bob, one of the leading entries in the frequently-viewed list in my house. We are still a long way from ala-carte TV.

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Update 6/5/2013

Sponge Bob is back -- Amazon picked up the children's programming that Netflix dropped.

This is a strange market -- -- we have two (three if you count Hulu) buyers and one seller (more if you think of the item for sale as TV content in general).  Kind of an oligopsony, but not.

New UI and content incompatible with older Roku boxes

Roku recently changed their user interface and added a lot of new PBS and PBS Kids content to their offering, but older models cannot run the new version of their software or display the PBS content.

I have two Roku boxes. One received the Roku Version 5 update, but the other is older hardware and is stuck with Version 3. (Was there a Version 4)?

I do not care all that much about not being able to use the new, improved interface, but I was surprised and disappointed that I could not see the new content. In retrospect, I can think of business and technical reasons for Roku not supporting the new content format.

Well, I am going to have to replace my older Roku, and, this time, I will be aware that it may not be capable of playing future Roku content. It would also be good if they published a list of their channels, indicating which ones are compatible with which hardware.

A gold medal for the BBC's Internet coverage of the Olympics

BBC's Olympic Internet coverage was better than NBC's. In this post I'll tell you why I say that and also take a look at BBC's terrific Sports blog.

I watched both the BBC and NBC Olympic coverage on the Internet and the BBC did a better job than NBC. Four BBC pluses come to mind.

1. The BBC Web viewer was more interactive, less passive and TV-like, than NBC's and they are continuing to improve it. As you see here, the user could display and hide data on demand and jump to the start of a "chapter" corresponding to an event.

2. I watched the BBC stream via a VPN, which, as shown below, slowed my connection considerably.

In spite of the increased latency and decreased speed, the BBC's video experience was as watchable as the video when using YouTube's content delivery network in the US.

3. Many of the NBC events I watched were video feeds with no commentary and every event I watched on the BBC had commentary. That could have been random chance and I watched more NBC than BBC, but it was my experience. (Commentary is more important for some events than others and some people dislike it. Users should be able to toggle commentary and the ambient sound on and off).

4. The BBC was commercial free -- paid for by the British TV license fee.

The BBC also wins the gold medal for Olymic blogging. The developers of BBC sports have a blog with suprisingly informative posts, and around 20 of the recent posts pertain to the Olympics.

Here are snippets from a couple that caught my eye.

Phil Fearnley, General Manager, News and Knowlege at BBC Future Media outlined their goals for the Olympic coverage and placed it in historical context.

The goal was to deliver over 2,500 hours of live sport online via 24 high definition streams - to cover every sport, from every venue on every day – across four screens: PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV. There were not 24 events going at all times, but the screenshot below was taken at a moment when there were -- the user could choose among 24 video streams.

Finley saw this as the start of a new era, writing

Broadcast television’s first big moment was the coronation in 1953, which brought the nation together around the TV screen for the first time. Our aspiration is that 2012 will do for digital and connected televisions what the coronation did for TV.

Cait O'Riordan, Head of Product, BBC Sport presented some statistics and analysis of the site traffic.

Below, you see the number (millions) of people watching the six streams with highest peaks on the first of August. People could easily switch between streams, and chapter links on the time-line let them find specific events they were interested in.

This graph shows relative usage during the day for each of the four screen types between July 28 and Aug 9. It looks like people watched on their computers (at work?) during the day and took their tablets to bed during the evening.

Matthew Clark, the Senior Technical Architect for BBC Online's Olympic website and apps described the site architecture. Here is his architecture diagram -- frustratingly small and impossible to read, but it conveys complexity:

In the post, Clark states that "Over the coming months we'll be working on bringing many of these features to the rest of Sport, and perhaps other parts of BBC Online too."

Alex Perry, Project Manager for the Live Interactive Video Player, outlined its key capabilities, including:

• Easy switching between up to 24 live streams at any time
• The ability to pause and rewind live video or jump straight to key moments you may have missed by using chapter markers (eg the Men's 100m final)
• Alerts for the key events that have happened or are coming up so you don't miss the moments that matter to you
• Extra facts and info on the sports and competitors you are watching alongside the video

this gives you a taste of the blogs -- if you are a live-stream event coverage geek, be sure to check them out.

Why did BBC do better than NBC? Two things come to mind. BBC's non-commercial culture makes a difference -- the viewers are their customers while NBC's customers are their advertisers. There is another clue in two of the tags on the BBC blog posts open source and open standards. Those tags indicate that BBC "gets" the Internet, and maybe NBC doesn't.

Regardless, the BBC team gets the gold medal for streaming live events.

(I've written several other posts on NBC's coverage of the Olympics and the Tour de France. You can see links to my observations as well as predictions for future event coverage here).

The Olympic live stream -- observations, recommendations and predictions

I watched the Tour de France and the Olympic Games (from both NBC and BBC) online this year. I'm a sports fan, but I also spent a lot of time focusing on the Internet content and experience. You can see my detailed observations here.

For this, the short version, I will list a few observations and conclude with some predictions for the future of live-event coverage on the Internet. First the observations, in no particular order.

• There were examples of three sources of revenue for live streaming of events: the BBC's coverage of the Olympics (free with a license fee), NBC's coverage of the Tour de France (pay per view) and NBC's Olympic coverage (advertising). My favorite was pay-per-view, but there is a lot of room for improving NBC's advertising presentation and many people would rather pay by watching ads.
• The BBC's Internet coverage was better than NBC's. It was more interactive, had better video quality and commentary and no advertsing. BBC also has a terrific sports blog. They win the gold medal because the viewers are their customers while NBC's customers are their advertisers. BBC "gets" the Internet.
• NBC could learn something about Web design from BBC. The BBC Web site was more interactive, giving the user control, while NBC's more closely followed a passive television model. They also need to clean up glitches like broken links.
• NBC's Olympic coverage needed better direction -- adding expert commentary to all the streams, better timing of commercials and intelligent camera selection.
• Sadly, NBC deleted the archives of the Tour de France soon after end of the race. I believe they have an information stewardship obligation and should maintain the archives of important events for analysis by journalists, scholars, fans, remixers, etc. The cost of doing so would be low.
• NBC's Olympic archive is still online, but they have not said for how long. Since it contains ads, they may leave it up. The BBC archive will remain online until January.
• NBC allowed viewers to watch two streams at once (one in a larger window), but then they had to watch two streams of ads.
• The quality of NBC's Web stream was very poor at first, virtually unwatchable. The video quality using their phone and tablet apps was much better. The video quality of NBC's earlier streaming of the Tour de France was nearly as good as that on television.
• NBC's Web video quality seemed to improve during the Olympic games. I did a subjective evaluation on day nine and, while it was far from perfect, it was in the same ballpark as BBC's streaming coverage. (Note that I watched the BBC coverage using a proxy server, which limited my download speed to about 2.3 Mbps while I was getting around 15 Mbps when accessing NBC).
• NBC's video seemed to improve even further by the end of The Games. Looking at various performance tests during the games, I tentatively concluded that the bottleneck was in the network, although there are too many variables to be sure.
• NBC made changes to their user interface during the Olympics. They were acting a bit like an agile Internet start-up -- release early, revise often -- tweaking the network to improve performance and revising the user interface.
• The Olympic Organizing Committee did its best to control leaks of Olympic material. For example, WiFi hotspots were not allowed in the stands and they did their best to stop social media leaks.
• NBC did a much better job on the Tour de France than the Olympics, but it was an easier event to cover, they had experience covering it in past years and they did not have to deal with the presentation of ads.

Now for a few fearless predictions.

NBC paid the International Olympic Committee $4.38 billion for the media rights to 2014 - 2020 Summer and Winter Olympics. We will see major changes in the coverage and the industry by 2020.

There will two separate markets. The first will be for producing content -- video, commentary, interactive features, Web design, and so forth. NBC was the content producer in this case. The second market will be for efficient networking to distribute that content. During these Olympics YouTube (Google) provided the networking expertise.

Both the content producers and the networkers will have learned a lot from past experience and will do a much better job than they did this year. We have even seen improvement during these Olympics. This is just the start of the IP TV era -- it is like the crystal set era in the early days of radio.

Given the expected improvement, the majority of people will be watching live events and other video on the Internet by 2020 -- we will have cut the cord and be watching over the top.

While there will be both network and content industries, the content industries will not have a lock on production. As the comedian Louis C. K. showed us, the production company will be dropped in some cases. Louis C. K. decided that he could do a better job of producing his comedy DVDs than Sony, and the Internatinal Olympic Committee might decide that it can do a better job than NBC or another production company.

It will be interesting to see what Google does in this area. If their fiber pilot study in Kansas City looks promising and replicable, they may become a networking powerhouse. At the same time, they are developing content and learning by working with folks like NBC. They may end up being able to offer the whole package.

Of course, there is a disclaimer to these predictions -- never underestimate the power of well-funded, entrenched lobbyists and huge corporate legal staffs. On the other hand, it is hard to find good buggy whips these days.

Three revenue models for online coverage of live events

With the Olympics and Tour de France, we saw examples of three live streaming revenue models: license fee, advertising and pay per view. Here is a quick look at each.

BBC Olympics, license fee

The BBC streamed 2,500 hours of free, live coverage, but you had to have a British TV license. The TV licenses cost £145.50 per year for a color TV and £49.00 for a black and white TV. The fee allowed you to watch the video streams on any device and gave you permission to store, but not distribute, the content. If you came to the site from a non-British IP address, you were blocked, but that was easily circumvented using proxy servers. In the future, they may be more aggressive about discovering and blocking proxy servers.

Archived footage will be available until January.

NBC Olympics, advertising supported

To view their live coverage of the Olympics, NBC required you to have a cable TV account with an authorized provider and a subscription level with access to several NBC cable channels. (That restriction may have been imposed by NBC's owner, Comcast). On top of that, they showed a lot of ads.

Like the BBC, authorized users were free to view the live coverage on the Web or their tablets and phones. One could circumvent the account restrictions by using the user name and password of a friend with a qualifying account. Again, in the future they might be more aggressive in blockng that sort of access.

NBC's archives are on line at this time, but they have not announced their plans for future access. Since they run ads, they may leave them up indefinitely.

NBC Tour de France, pay per view

For the Tour de France, NBC charged a $29 fee, which, as with the other events, entitled the user to watch on the Web, a phone or tablet. There were no ads, but, unfortunately, access to the archive footage was dropped shortly after the end of the event.

My least favorite this year was the ad support model, which was done poorly. When navigating the Web site, it seemed that every new page view had a pre-roll commercial, and arbitrary commercial breaks in the middle of event coverage were irritating and distracting -- the screen would go black for a few seconds in the middle of an event, then they would run as many as six commercials before resuming the action. To add insult to injury, they boosted the audio volume during commercials.

I preferred pay per view, but many viewers would opt for ads, and there is a lot of room for improving the experience. For a start, NBC needs directors to watch the action and insert ads intelligently. Ad targeting -- showing individuals ads based on demographic, social networking and search signals or asking them for hints as to the kinds of ads they were interested in -- would also improve the experience. There could be hybrid models like allowing the user to choose between pay per view with no ads and paying a smaller fee and seeing just a few, well-placed ads.