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Apple TV merely dips its toe into the Internet TV waters
The re-launch of Apple TV prompted, beyond the usual hyperbole, some intriguing rumours. A re-brand to iTV, an Apple subscription service and an iPhone-style TV application store were among many things mooted, but what we ended up with was merely a smaller, less expensive version of the same box, with broadly the same content as was available on the first Apple TV.
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Google plan highlights rather than closes gaps between web and TV
Google’s plans for its Smart TV product are finally out of the box. Some of the things it announced for truly lived up to the considerable pre-launch hype, and it was certainly the shot in the arm for TV that it promised to be.
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IPTV’s uneasy alliance with OTT video
One aspect of the IPTV World Forum which was perhaps surprising and completely unsurprising at the same time is how little of the event was developed to pure IPTV. Sky, Opera and UK online video start-up Blinkbox are just three of the names on the agenda who have relatively little to do with IPTV as it has historically (can the word historic be used for a technology that has been comercailly available for under ten years) been known. Opera, of course, is part of the Open IPTV Forum, but is at the event launching its HbbTV solution, something which may prove extremely disruptive for the likes of Deutsche Telekom and Orange.
Yet the presence of such companies at the show was not a result of them sneaking under the fence while the steely glares of the traditional operators were turned elsewhere. Many companies other than telcos have now started to use IP to deliver their content. In fact, I’ve lost count of the number of vendors who have claimed that they “have stopped calling it IPTV now”.
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Online music services: made by geeks, for geeks?
I’ve just returned from Midem, the music industry’s annual knees up held in (usually sunny, but not really in January) Cannes. The general mood was the mixture of optimism (Spotify, new business models) and pessimism (piracy, stalling digital sales) that has long been par-for-the-course at music industry events.
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ESPN 360: Not a net neutrality issue, but is it a good business model?
There’s been recent renewed interest in ESPN’s attempts to charge US operators to provide its ESPN 360 online service, mostly prompted by this article in Wired.
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Ya-har! The Pirate Bay busts some piracy and peer-to-peer myths
The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s leading peer to peer sites and tormentor in chief of the music and movie industries, has released statistics breaking down the location of its users by country.
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Broadband as a universal service: a (dumb) pipe dream?
Lord Carter, the UK government’s new communications minister, has wasted little time in creating a splash in his new role. At a Westminster eForum event earlier this week, he hinted heavily that the government was to make broadband a universal service obligation.
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Keep It Simple, Stupid: Orange’s Partner Camp mantra
I’ve just attended Orange’s Partner Camp in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Swapping London’s miserable climes with those of the Sunshine State was an attractive enough proposition, one not even tempered by a nine hour flight full of sugar-addled kids heading to Disney World.
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O2’s new developer programme shuns the API litmus test
The appearance of the O2 Litmus site site prompted much excitement among the Broadband & Internet IC team. Was another operator about to expose the inner workings of its voice, SMS and other network services to the world?
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Analyst
Giles Cottle
Giles is an analyst for Informa’s Broadband and Internet Intelligence Centre.
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