Cable is indeed losing subscribers, but it's happening very slowly. According to the latest data from Nielsen, the number of U.S. homes with cable subscriptions has declined 4.1% in the last year. Meanwhile, TV service provided by telephone companies like Verizon increased 21.1%.

Nielsen reports considerable growth in the sector of consumers who watch a combination of Web-based and non-cable broadcast television. This is the crowd that Boxee hopes to target with its live TV antennae dongle. They watch half as much TV and stream twice as much online video as the general population.

It's a group that has grown quickly, but still makes up only 5% of consumers. By comparison, nearly 71% of households subscribe to both broadband and cable television. Cable's penetration rate alone is more than 90%. In short, it's not going away anytime soon.

The cable industry faces real, longer-term threats from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and increasingly, Amazon Prime, as well as from set-top boxes and connected TVs. Trends in technology, coupled with the high prices of cable subscriptions, are slowly making cable less attractive to consumers Realizing this, the cable companies have put a renewed focused on innovating for a hyper-connected, multi-screened future.

TV content - wherever it may originate - still takes up an extraordinary amount of our lives. On average, Americans watch 33 hours of television per week. Television has long dominated the media diets of consumers, but what's changing is when and how they access it.

As Reuters notes, Google reported that only about 11% of YouTube views are monetized. That's not all the revenue Google makes from YouTube, since its Universal Search features YouTube video results prominently alongside search ads. But the YouTube business is still under construction, and it's growing fast. As YouTube's reach begins to dwarf even television, the whole landscape of video content changes.

Big Content Partnerships

One way YouTube seeks to unseat television is by replacing its most important content. It's cozying up with pro sports leagues and Disney movies, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt has toured the world talking to TV execs about the future. As part of its redesign in late 2011, YouTube launched tons of original content channels.

The other piece of this arrangement is Google TV, for which Google has rather wild ambitions. At Le Web last year, Schmidt told attendees, "By the summer of 2012, the majority of televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in it." That's quite a promise, but if Google can establish itself as a source of great original video content, the arrangement will be tempting for manufacturers.

Google's not moving into this space unchallenged. There's plenty of smoke surrounding rumors of Apple's plans to expand Apple TV beyond the hobby phase. iTunes is a valuable store of video content. But YouTube's importance in video cannot be overstated. Between the amateur creators that made YouTube what it is and the high-profile content deals on the table, Google has a key to the future of TV one way or another.

Social Video

Beyond the video content, YouTube can do things that TV can't. YouTube's late-2011 redesign put Google+ front and center, making one's social circles a part of watching and sharing videos. It even included prominent Facebook integration to make sure YouTube users could easily share somewhere, even if they aren't using Google+.

Google+ has lots of YouTube integration on its end as well. There's a floating YouTube search tab alongside the Google+ stream, and participants in a Hangout, the Google+ video chat service, can watch YouTube videos together. But Google+ is even a way to create YouTube content. Hangouts can be recorded and saved straight to a user's YouTube account.

YouTube's infrastructure allows Google to make even globally important, live events into social affairs. Tomorrow's State of the Union address will be broadcast live on YouTube, and then President Obama will answer questions live on the new White House Google+ page in a Hangout. Anyone can submit questions beforehand via the White House YouTube channel.

TV, as it currently stands, cannot compete with these kinds of features. YouTube, along with its integration into Google+, can reach more people in more significant ways than traditional TV can. That's not an exaggeration; by YouTube's fifth birthday in 2010, it reported "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined" every day. Since then, YouTube's daily audience has doubled again.

How much YouTube video do you watch per day?

Yet every now and then, even the most ardent cord cutter still has a need to tune in to something in real-time. It could be a sporting event or a local news broadcast. For me, it's the fact that members of my family are being featured on the current season of PBS's This Old House, something I like to check out when each episode first airs. Soon, I'll be able to watch those broadcasts without leaving Boxee.

The new feature is enabled by a USB dongle that will plug into the back of the Boxee Box. The company has not announced when the dongle or the software upgrade will be available.

When it arrives, it will help bridge the gap between live TV and Web video content in a way that may make devices like the Boxee Box a bit more attractive to the average consumer.

With this move, Boxee follows in the footsteps of Google TV, which already integrates with broadcast TV. Google's set-top box software recently saw a major update designed to reverse the product's initial failure to catch on with consumers. For its part, Apple is reportedly building its own HDTV set, something the late Steve Jobs saw as a major next frontier for the company.

Rather than killing off traditional TV, Web-based premium video services and set-top box software are better positioned to supplement it. Web TV is going to need to peacefully co-exist with its legacy media counterparts, at least for the time being. Updates like this are a step in that direction.

With multiple apps being promoted by shows, networks and even TV service providers for checking-in to these broadcasts as well as fan pages and hashtags used to centralize the conversation around each episode, there is a growing need for audience measurement beyond the traditional Nielsen ratings.

The Nielsen Company is the de facto provider of the ratings system used to determine how the 60 billion in television advertising dollars are allocated amongst broadcast and cable network line-ups. The company relies on the behavior of 50,000 Americans across its sample of 25,000 households to extrapolate ratings for the nearly 115 million households with television sets in the U.S. The resulting 'share' of audience Nielsen attributes to each TV episode on a nightly basis ultimately effects which series get renewed or cancelled (for a great primer on how Nielsen's TV ratings system works, check out this ESPN-style animated video on the topic from local Washington, DC creative agency JESS3).

Though with the number of households with television sets dropping for the first time in 20 years, on-demand video platforms taking viewing time away from traditional television and multi-tasking across multiple screens a growing reality, traditional means of measurement are failing to capture this evolving consumer behavior.

While Nielsen is working on ways to aggregate this distributed viewing audience through its "extended screen" initiative, the company isn't measuring the actual activity on the social web occurring around the episodes being watched. This represents an opportunity for services that provide a platform for social engagement as well as companies that aggregate TV show-related conversations from across the Internet to address this information gap. While both Facebook and Twitter have their own media-related initiatives that allow fans to interact with one another as well as with the shows and their stars, neither network focuses on quantifying this engagement on an industry-wide basis.

Services like BuddyTV, GetGlue, Miso and Tunerfish, on the other hand, have been built in a manner that can address this need. Having ridden the check-in wave popularized by location-based service Foursquare, these event-based social networks (EBSNs) capture when consumers are tuning in to watch television and aggregating the activity being generated around each show within their respective apps and websites. GetGlue, the largest of these services, already has more users checking-in to the most popular shows on its platform than the size of Nielsen's entire sample audience, making it statistically valuable to the ratings conversation.

Even though the demographic make-up of EBSN users is not representative of the overall U.S. population (which Nielsen does try to mirror in selecting its households), check-in services make up for this by highlighting the actual activity of the most desirable audience to advertisers (18 to 49 year-olds) and not just projections. For advertisers this represents a unique opportunity to target these consumers in a highly engaged environment by extending their TV advertising for particular shows to the equivalent social web channels and mobile devices. To bring the desired scale to this type of opportunity though, these social environments need to be aggregated somehow.

That's where companies like Bluefin Labs, General Sentiment, Social Guide and Trendrr come into play by not only aggregating publicly available social commentary but filtering and normalizing this data from disparate sources (EBSNs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to identify the underlying sentiment of a broader range of web users. This provides a more complete view of the engagement associated with shows across the social web in real-time as well as beyond the initial airing time slot of each episode. The resulting findings might be just the data set necessary to become the de facto social television rating to rival Nielsen.

Even with Nielsen's recent ratings calculation glitch, it's unlikely that the company will be replaced as the ratings system for the television advertisers industry in the near future. But as audiences for traditional TV continue to disperse across more mediums and content experiences, the need to compliment the ratings discussion, and ultimately how advertising dollars are allocated, with additional data will only continue to increase. This creates an opportunity for actual engagement-related metrics to gain equal footing with passive stream and tune-in projections over time.

While results from a recent NM Incite (a Nielsen/McKinsey company) study confirms the correlation between social activity and TV ratings, the opportunity for social television start-ups is in identifying and explaining the variations in popularity between Nielsen's most highly rated shows and those series being discussed online and how to benefit from it.

The combination of tune-in and conversation activity make EBSNs the most compelling data set for social television ratings. The challenge is that the company that popularized the check-in, Foursquare, only recently passed 10 million users worldwide itself, a far cry from Facebook's 150 million users in the U.S. alone.

Next page: For EBSNs to reach Facebook-like adoption, they need distribution

For EBSNs to reach Facebook-like adoption, they need distribution and a more automated process for socializing around TV shows (beyond the manual download of apps and checking-in to services). While BuddyTV and Miso have partnered with AT&T's television service offering U-verse, GetGlue and Miso have integrations underway with satellite television provider DirecTV that enables subscribers to check-in to shows through DirecTV's remote control. Other companies, such as Dijit, are by-passing traditional TV service providers entirely and competing for consumers with their own universal remote that layers in check-in functionality.

What social analytic companies lacks in proprietary data, they make-up for in business model by already working with advertisers and media companies to help them understand the volume and sentiment of chatter occurring online about their brands and shows across the social web. Gaining access to data on an exclusive basis from EBSNs and other social communities would be a key differentiator in winning the battle for advertising and media clients- the same companies that subscribe to Nielsen's television ratings data.

With so many companies vying for client dollars and mind share, the social analytics provider that can get the right media outlets partnerships to adopt and distribute their version of social television ratings can become the industry standard through sheer perception and market momentum.

Based on these factors, Trendrr, which launched a TV industry-specific real-time dashboard before the start of the fall television season could be that company. Considering Trendrr's breadth of data sources (Facebook, GetGlue, Miso and Twitter) and how well they've embedded themselves into the online media landscape (partnering with the likes of AdAge, Lost Remote and Mashable to distribute their data and findings), the company is best positioned to become the social television ratings provider of the future.

Absent Trendrr or another one of these start-ups gaining the necessary client or user clout to grow into the de facto social TV ratings provider, the most likely outcome for the companies with the most traction in this market is an acquisition.

If either Facebook or Twitter decided to focus on providing analytics as a value-add to their advertiser and media clients, they would make ideal acquirers of these types of companies.

For Facebook, adding a media-oriented check-in service to their massive user base would fit nicely with Facebook's recent overturns towards the television industry and turn the acquired ESBN into the immediate and undisputed winner in the social television data game. Twitter on the other hand would benefit from acquiring one of the leading social analytics companies, as it would fill a large analytics hole in their offering. Even though the company recently stated its intentions to stay out of the enterprise market, the opportunity might prove to be too lucrative to stay out.

Beyond Twitter, The Nielsen Company is a natural acquirer of a social analytics company since it compliments Nielsen's existing ratings and research business. With the company having held an initial public offering at the beginning of this year, Nielsen also has the necessary capital to do this.

Beyond these entities, media companies and television platform could benefit from owning one of the EBSNs by leveraging these services to gain insight into user activity and drive additional tune-in for themselves or partners. Yahoo was the first to act on this, acquiring 12-week old IntoNow earlier this year and releasing an iPad app last week that integrates into Yahoo's Connected TV framework. For GetGlue and Miso, who have raised capital from Time Warner and Google's venture arm respectively, they already have likely acquirers in the fold.

That being said, with the variety of relationships GetGlue (most recently with FX) and Miso (most recently with Showtime) have established with different broadcast and cable networks it's not out of the question that one of these media partners tries to acquire either company to be their underlying social TV platform. The engagement data would be very valuable to any company negotiating with advertisers during the "upfront" season as a way to justify advertising rates (beyond Nielsen's rating data) for the next television season or provide brands with a new way to advertise to their intended audiences (for an additional cost or as a make-good).

Stay tuned. This market will only get more interesting.

Television photo by Kevin Simpson

The deal, which covers such popular film series as Shrek and Madagascar is expected to net DreamWorks Animation $30 million per movie for the duration of the agreement. What makes this deal significant isn't so much its price tag or the content involved. Its significance lies in the fact that this is the first time such a major Hollywood content provider has inked a deal that skips over pay TV distribution in favor of the Web.

"The so-called pay TV window is one of the entertainment industry's most important business tools. In the past, HBO has paid steep licensing fees of about $20 million per picture for exclusive rights a few months after films arrive on DVD. But Netflix - capitalizing on a consumer shift to streaming content on computers, tablets and Internet-connected televisions - has been making similar deals, albeit mostly with smaller suppliers."

The two companies are touting the deal as a major achievement, but not everybody is convinced. CNet's Greg Sandoval wonders whether Netflix is "desperate to generate positive news" after several weeks of customer and shareholder disappointment.

The company has had a rocky September, which it kicked off by implementing a highly unpopular increase in their subscription fees. In the weeks that followed, more customer frustration followed as they spun off their DVD business into a service that's entirely separate from their streaming business. Meanwhile, the company is now expected to lose 1 million customers and has seen its stock price tumble.

Through a mobile app running on customers' phones, marketers can offer a variety of follow-up actions to the TV viewer, including coupons, reminders, contact info and more. In total, there are 10 follow-up actions offered. And the consumer is in complete control of which ones, if any, they respond to.

The company behind WiO, WiOffer, is the creation of Andrew Pakula and Matthew Greene, both of whom have experience working in and with major media, tech and digital marketing firms, including DoubleClick, Yahoo and Ogilvy. This experience, Pakula explains, has allowed them to learn a lot about what customers respond to and how.

How the WiO-Enabled TV Commercials Work

Before a customer can use the WiO app, the commercial or TV show has to first be WiO-enabled. To do this, the advertiser sends WiOffer their asset - that is, their commercial or the portion of the show where the product placement is visible and/or mentioned by the characters within the program. Using the clip as a digital ID, the mobile WiO app running on customers' phones can then "hear" when the commercial plays and pop up a screen offering more information.

There are 10 different options a customer can choose from, some of which are subject to what the advertiser is providing. These include access to coupons, PDF brochures, app downloads, website addresses, retail locators, contact information, calendar events, reminders and even one option which will auto-dial the advertiser directly, in the case of TV commercials where a phone number is displayed. The unique thing about connecting TV to the mobile platform in this way is how many of these tasks are automated. For example, choosing the reminders, calendar event or contact info options will instantly save that information to a customer's phone, with no manual effort required on the customer's part.

In addition, when coupons are provided, the customer can save these "WiOffers" on their phone, where they will be accessible until the expiration date. To use a coupon, the customer just has to show their phone to the retailer.

Meanwhile, on the advertisers' side, metrics surrounding customer response can be tracked in real-time, allowing them to adjust their advertising and offers on the fly to boost engagement, as need be.

Competition in the New TV Landscape

WiO is not the only company with this same idea. The music identification app Shazam recently raised funds to push into television. Some TV shows and ads now tell viewers to "Shazam" them in order to receive bonus content and discounts, AllThingsD reports. Another company, IntoNow, uses audio recognition to encourage users to "check in" to what they're watching on TV. GetGlue offers something similar. Even Microsoft is getting into the action with its NUads advertising platform, which uses the voice and gesture control in its Kinect for Xbox 360 to create interactive TV ads.

But unlike with Xbox, WiO is device agnostic, Greene says. He insists that WiO is different than the so-called "social apps," too. Even though WiO allows for sharing to Facebook, Twitter, SMS and email, its goal is not to socialize the TV-watching experience. "Check-ins are a bit of distraction," says Greene, "if not an enormous distraction." And, referring to Shazam, he claims the idea of connecting a music app to actual transactions is a bit complicated. The Shazam ads point you to a mobile landing page, he notes. WiO aims to connect the brand directly to the customer so they can start talking immediately.

The WiO app will launch in a few weeks, first on iPhone. It will arrive on Android 60 days later. The company says it can't comment on its advertising partners at this time, but from what we saw, there are some well-known brands in talks with the company now.

Customer trials of the new service will begin in "the coming months," but no exact date was given for the service's wider launch, only that more details will be made available "later this year."

Comcast users who sign up for the Skype service will be able to make both audio and video calls from their TV, even while watching a TV show at the same time. They will be able to accept incoming calls during a TV show, too, with help from Caller ID.

To use Skype via the TV, an HDTV will be required, plus a broadband connection, an adapter box, a high-quality HD video camera and a specially designed remote control. This remote will allow customers to text on Skype as well as control their television. Everything but the TV will be provided by Comcast, but the price for this Skype kit has not yet been determined.

Customers will also be able to switch from the TV to compatible mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and back, the companies state.

This collaboration is a first of its kind for Skype, which has not yet had a partnership with a TV provider in the U.S., but it's not the first time Skype has been made available on the big screen. The company's website lists a number of compatible TVs from partners who offer Skype built-in to the sets themselves.

The new addition of Skype to the TV won't impact Comcast's own phone service, it seems, as the company is planning to disable the Skype feature that lets users call actual phone numbers ("Skype out"). Instead, according to reports, Comcast will bundle a limited version of Skype plus its own phone service to the adapter it provides customers, with plans starting at $20 and up. This feature will not be available at launch, however.

Last month, Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion. Under that deal, Microsoft plans to bring Skype to a number of new outlets, too, including TVs by way of the Xbox 360, plus Windows Phone, Lync, Outlook and other Windows devices and communities.

But why would you want to jailbreak your Apple TV? How about access to streaming music from Last.fm, an HDTV-optimized Web browser, RSS feeds, weather forecasts, Twitter, additional support for video file formats and more?

Why Jailbreak Apple TV?

For those new to Apple TV jailbreaking, there's a software suite from fireCore that may tempt you over to the dark side. The package known as "aTV Flash," available for both the older and the newest generation of Apple TV products, includes a Web browser designed for HDTVs (Couch Surfer Pro), access to weather forecasts, Last.fm, and RSS feeds - the latter two provided by Apple TVs first jailbroken app NitoTV. Also included in the bundle is media center app XBMC.

With NitoTV, you can create playlists and play additional media file formats via your AppleTV beyond those supported by Apple. On newer Apple TV devices (the smaller, black units), this list now includes support for .m4v, .mp4, .move, HE-AAC, AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV, with more on the way.

Older Apple TV devices can play even more formats: .avi, .divx, .eyetv, .flv, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg, .mpg, .ogg, .ogm, .rm, .rmvb, .wmv, .xvid, VIDEO_TS/VOB, ISO, AAC, AC3, DTS, FLAC, MPEG3, MPEG4, VBR MP3, WMA, SSA and SRT.

Meanwhile, with the Web browser provided by Couch Surfer Pro, you can access Google search on your Apple TV, save bookmarks, view your browser history and even use your Apple Remote, USB mouse or Loop pointer to navigate the Web.

aTV Flash for older Apple TV units also includes additional software programs in the bundle, like Keyboard Magic, AirControl, XBMC, Boxee, Sapphire and others.

The process for jailbreaking your Apple TV with Ses0npass is documented in detail here. Although those instructions still assume a tethered jailbreak, the overall process is similar.

Disney and TNT are currently half-way through 8 year contracts with the NBA for an undisclosed sum that will conclude with the 2015-2016 season. Google began covering live cricket matches in India last year and another company staff member told Business Week's Jun Yang that "It's fair to say that there will be a lot more appealing sports content you'll see on YouTube." Live NBA games though? That would be insane. Such is the nature of the media disruption underway, though, is it not? Update: Staci Kramer at Paid Content got a denial from the NHL and asserts that NBA talks were only regarding broadcast in Asia. If that's the case, that's too bad.

This Summer, YouTube announced it would broadcast every Major League Baseball game of the next season in Japan, but 36 hours after the game was over. None the less, that deal was called by the company "the largest partnership for premium sports content" in its history.

Sports are high value content and live sports even more so. Across media types and across international borders, things get very, very complicated. Could Google steal the show from incumbent big-ticket TV broadcasters? If anyone could, it's the sprawling and deep-pocketed search, video and advertising giant.

It's entirely possible that one international Google team member made a passing comment that the Business Week reporter blew out of proportion and then put into a convenient context with other comments not intended to reflect on the ultimate subject of that publication's article. Entirely possible. It is, however, probably impossible that YouTube is not in fact talking to the NBA and other sports leagues whenever it has a chance to do so.

If I was a TV exec sitting on 4 years of multibillion dollar sports broadcasting rights, I'd be pretty concerned about what the internet was going to bring to the bidding game once that contract nears its conclusion.

Oh, for the days of "Broadcast Yourself." They certainly are long gone.

YouTube hasn't yet responded to our request for comment.

Update: A YouTube spokesperson replied to our request for comment and said "we don't have anything more to add at this time than what appeared in the BW story."

There were a few caveats to the use of these new apps, however. And oddly enough, there was no mention of an iPhone application.

According to the blog post, which set out to "make official" the BBC's plans in this area, the new native app for iPad is a major improvement over the original iPad experience -  essentially just a website designed for the iPad. The new app takes better advantage of the touchscreen user interface, says the BBC, which is a popular feature on the "iPad-ified" website.

Both the iPad app and Android app will offer live TV streams and radio, the latter which was never before available to mobile devices.

Mobile users can also access the full BBC catalog of "catch-up" programs (TV you may have missed), seven days' worth of TV and radio on demand and the "series stacking" feature that's also available on the Web, this last item being a feature that allows viewers to watch older programs from selected series up until the series has ended.

On Android: Froyo-Only, Flash Required

On Android, the iPlayer app will not be available for all devices, only on those running the Android 2.2 ("Froyo") version of the mobile operating system and Adobe Flash 10.1. This is because the player's Flash streams require "a powerful mobile phone processor and a Wi-Fi connection," says the BBC.

But as some may remember, an unofficial iPlayer app called myPlayer had arrived in the Android Market (before being booted out), but it did not require Flash. The speculation is that BBC had to implement the streaming service in Flash because of content provider pressure, not technical requirements. Content providers are concerned about pirating - that same fear is why the Netflix application for Android has not yet launched either. As stated by Netflix on its blog back in November:

"The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices."

But rumor has it, Netflix isn't going with a Flash requirement, but has been working with chipset maker Qualcomm on implementing specific technology like SecureMSM to get the Netflix app approved.

Where's the iPhone App? And What About the Global Audience?

What's odd about this iPlayer news is that the mobile applications will arrive for Android and iPad, but not the iPhone. For iPhone users, there is still the Apple-friendly HTML5 website. Of course, a native app would have its advantages. So, what's the status of the iPhone application, everyone wants to know? Here, the BBC clarifies nothing.

For those outside the U.K. pining for access to British TV, there is some good news. Although not addressed via this blog post, BBC.com's managing director Luke Bradley-Jones told the audience at the Digital TV Summit that the company will launch  a "global" iPlayer this year whose content would be available via subscription.

Hopefully, the BBC will consider a native iPhone application for that time, too.

Streaming TV and movie site Hulu said in a blog post today that it is "extremely happy to announce a broad content agreement between Viacom and Hulu that brings The Daily Show and The Colbert Report back to Hulu and now also to Hulu Plus, beginning this morning."

The shows have been absent from the service since last year when Viacom pulled them. At the time, Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman said that "on the current economic model for Hulu, there's just not much in it for us to continue at this time." It appears that things have changed.

The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the deal is a boost for Hulu.

Dauman said in the release that Hulu's subscription service, which had not launched at the time the shows were pulled, is a reason for their return.

"The Hulu Plus service offers us the opportunity to connect with our audiences through an exciting subscription and ad supported platform that is complementary to our existing distribution arrangements," said Dauman.

Whatever the reason, we know that we're excited for the return of one TV's best news sources to Hulu.

More and more, both TV networks and app developers are relying on the fact that watching TV is no longer a passive act to which we apply our undivided attention. From check-in apps like Miso and Get Glue to TV shows like Glee and Community, they want to assure that we watch our TV with our smartphone or tablet in hand, a-tweeting and a-checking in all the while.

According to a recent study by Yahoo's advertising division, the TV watching crowd is ripe for this type of prime time interactivity, with 86% of mobile Internet users fondling their mobile device while watching the old boob tube.

Last week, we looked at how the TV show Glee's use of in-show, character tweeting had caused viewers to rally around watching the show in real-time, instead of time-shifting it by recording it on their DVR and watching it later. With this many viewers watching TV with their mobile device in hand, expect tactics like this to be on the increase.

As Yahoo notes, this presents "a compelling opportunity for content providers and advertisers alike to complement the viewing experience on the mobile platform."

Yahoo, of course, wants a piece of our divided attention. Its upcoming Internet TV product, which we saw at CES, works to create an interactive experience that you can experience using both your smartphone and your tablet. ]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_86_use_mobile_devices_while_watching_tv.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_86_use_mobile_devices_while_watching_tv.php Internet TV Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:15:26 -0800 Mike Melanson During Samsung's keynote address at yesterday's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2011) in Las Vegas, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar joined Samsung U.S. President Tim Baxter on stage to announce that Hulu Plus, the premium version of the streaming service for TV and movies, will be coming to Android devices in the near future.

The app was then demonstrated, in complete, running on a Samsung Galaxy S phone.

Hulu Plus on Android: This Could be Big!

An Android app will be an important launch for the streaming service, a coalition between Hollywood studios and jointly owned by NBC Universal, News Corp., The Walt Disney Company and Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invested in Hulu in 2009.

On the desktop, Hulu had long been a free, ad-supported service, but in November 2010, it officially launched a premium version called Hulu Plus (previously in a closed beta), which offers back-catalog episodes of many popular shows. The service was available for $9.99 a month at the time. As Hulu continued to fight fierce competition from Netflix and find the sweet spot in its pricing, the company soon lowered Hulu Plus to $7.99 a month only weeks after its launch.

Hulu Plus is now available on a number of devices, including desktop computers, iOS devices, as mentioned above, a wide range of TVs, Blu-ray players and media center boxes, plus gaming consoles like the Sony Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Hulu Plus vs. Netflix: Who Will Reach Android First?

So why is Hulu Plus' Android debut so important? For two reasons: one, it may beat Netflix to the Android platform, and two, Android users are without a iTunes-like ecosystem of professional, Hollywood-produced content.

Netflix, Hulu's top competitor to date, offers streaming movies and TV shows to its subscribers, also on a wide range of devices, including the iPad and iPhone. It, however, has not made it to Android as of yet. According to a November post on the Netflix company blog, the Android platform is simply not secure enough for the content protection required by the Hollywood studios.

"The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android," said Netflix's Greg Peters of its product development division. "The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices."

No doubt Hulu Plus has those same concerns as it too must cater to Hollywood's overly-paranoid demands for content protection. (If Hollywood isn't convinced by iTunes that providing people an affordable, easy alternative to piracy opens up wallets, then nothing will.)

But will Hulu find a technical solution to the Android problem before Netflix does?

More recently, Netflix announced it was working on an HTML5 initiative. (HTML is the markup language used on the Web. The newest revision, HTML5, includes a <video> tag for streaming videos, something that was not available previously.) If Netflix is waiting for the community to resolve the complex issues relating to the still-not-standarized use of the <video> tag before launching an Android-compatible, Web-enabled version of the service, it could give Hulu Plus the edge it needs to grab a large part of the Android audience.

Android is a Large Market

Android, now powering more Americans' smartphones than Apple is with iPhone, according to recent statistics from comScore, currently makes up 26% of the 61.5 million smartphone users in the U.S. while iPhone accounts for 25%.

Despite its growing popularity, Android is, for now, just an operating system. It does not bundle with it a marketplace for music, TV and movies as iTunes provides for its users. (Although, on the music front at least, that will soon change with the launch of Google Music, expected this year).

Instead, Android users are left on their own, to essentially manage their own collection of previously acquired - and perhaps pirated - media through the use of third-party clients like DoubleTwist, for example. Outside of a very small handful of apps (e.g. mSpot, TV.com and someone please tell me what's going on with Samsung Media Hub!), there is a general lack of Hollywood content available to Android users. Without apps or an iTunes-like alternative, a service like Hulu Plus could easily gain traction. Even more so if Netflix isn't present.

Much of the development around the technology is concerned with bringing 3D to your living room, such as is the case with the 3D-enabled TVs from LG and Toshiba, for example, Samsung's 3D LED monitors, or the addition of 3D movies to the streaming service VUDU, which can pipe Hollywood entertainment directly into your living room. But 3D is showing up on other screens, too - mobile phones and tablets, gaming devices and mobile 3D DTV devices - although still in early forms.

But before you go all in, early-adopting this new craze, there's a little tidbit of not-inconsequential data you need to know first.

Apparently, viewing 3D images, even the glasses-free kind, can negatively impact the vision development in small children. According to a report from The Wall St. Journal, both Nintendo and Toshiba have recently issued warnings about the vision damage that could occur when children under six view 3D video images. To quote, Toshiba's warning says that "due to the possibility of impact on vision development, viewers of 3D video images should be aged 6 or older."

Outside the U.S., a Japanese 3D consortium with members like Samsung and LG for example, has issued similar warnings, the WSJ reported.

That sounds serious, right?

Engadget recently downplayed the dangers though, specifically referencing Nintendo CEO Reggie Fils-Aime's statement from six months prior that his company's warning is only in place because children, especially young children, have eyes that are not fully-formed. In other words, it's no big deal.

But the warnings, you should know, aren't just your run-of-the-mill precautions (do not eat silica gel packets, do not leave child alone with plastic bag) - they're based on the recommendations of an electronics industry group's recommendations, Toshiba says. The company's TV marketing chief, Yuji Motomura declined to tell the WSJ which one, however.

We think we may have an idea. The unnamed group could be the well-known 3D@Home Consortium, especially considering it recently held a meeting on an oddly related topic: using 3D to diagnose vision problems in young children.

Wait: 3D Identifies Vision Problems in Children? Doesn't Cause It?

According to 3D@Home's website, the group met on Dec. 7 in San Diego to discuss several topics relating to vision standards, including the "promotion of the benefits of utilizing stereo viewing for diagnosing and improving vision in children and adults." In fact, reads the article, "early research by experts has shown that binocular vision issues, which inhibit successful perception of 3D images, are often linked with reading and comprehension issues in children."

Or, more simply put, vision issues mean other developmental problems may be present. And 3D technology could help identify these problems.

Well now, that sounds great, right?

On the conference's home page, a session regarding "special issues related to 3D and children" was held mid-day on the 7th. Included in this session was a presentation by Dr. Maureen Powers of the Gemstone Foundation, a research institute in California. You can read through it for yourself here. In it, she described several issues related to viewing 3D images. To save you time, the conclusion is that a large number of school-aged children have binocular vision problems and a relatively large number have binocular dysfunction.

What This Means

What this means, says Dr. Powers, is that while most children will be fine viewing 3D, but some children will not be comfortable - in fact, the group experiencing discomfort may be as high as 25%. Some of the children will complain, some will not and some will be so uncomfortable that they will not watch 3D video images at all or play games. The best guess at this time is that latter group will be about 5% to 10% of school-age children.

This early research has clearly resulted in the "recommendations" to warn against 3D viewing by small children by the hardware manufacturers like Toshiba, we would guess, as it's believed that these types of problems fade as children age. (Dr. Powers notes that it's expected that children will "differ from adults" in terms of discomfort and related issues).

At the end of the day, what this really means is that tech enthusiast or not, it may be unwise to plop your smallest children in front of 3D movies like Avatar or Toy Story, for example, and it may be unwise for you to do the same. There's actually very little research in the effects of long-term 3D viewing on children and adults.

Until now, 3D video viewing has been a somewhat isolated experience - a movie here and there, where you wear silly shades for a couple of hours. But with the advancements in the technology, there's an industry-wide push to 3D-enable all your screens, before the research on what happens by doing so is even complete.

And for that reason, manufacturers are prescribing caution, at least for children. What 3D-related warning labels will crop up in the future for the rest of us is still unknown.

Image credits: plant - Callipygian, phone - PocketLint, TV - Toshiba

Could it be true? A real, broadcaster-led, freemium mobile TV service is launching next year?

The markets MCV has announced are New York,  Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Tampa, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Orlando, Portland, Cincinnati, Greenville, West Palm Beach, Birmingham and Knoxville.

About MCV

You may remember hearing something about a new mobile TV initiative earlier this year from a group calling itself Pearl (Pearl Mobile DTV Company, LLC). That's actually the same group of broadcasters, it has just changed its name.

In April, MCV, then called Pearl, announced its plans to re-use broadcast spectrum for mobile digital TV services to provide live and on-demand video, sports and entertainment programming and local and national news. The broadcast partners are providing the spectrum, marketing resources and capital to the venture.

As technology blog GigaOm described it at the time, the decision to re-use spectrum was due to a "use it or lose it" push from the FCC, which was attempting to reclaim 120 MHz of spectrum for mobile broadband services. The broadcasters decided instead to keep the spectrum and launch the mobile TV venture, saying that it would lead to additional revenue streams and would help alleviate the strain on carriers' mobile networks, already clogged by delivering mobile video.

The Burden of Mobile Video

Mobile video usage has grown substantially over recent months, contributing heavily to the mobile data traffic surge. In February of this year, for example, Cisco pegged mobile data traffic at 40 exabytes for 2010 (one exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes), much of it due to mobile video. In fact, Cisco said that by 2014, 66% of all mobile data traffic would be video.

This morning, new data from video site MeFeedia again confirmed this trend, showing an increase in video traffic in 2010 - up 60% this year, it's saying. iPhone, Android and iPad devices have contributed to this growth, with traffic up 22% since April on iPhone, up 200% on Android and up 325% on iPad.

Is MCV Really Happening?

Consumers may wonder whether or not this announcement means a whole lot at this point. Burned by previous attempts at mobile TV efforts (see, for example, Qualcomm's now closing FLO TV service), there's a bit of "I'll believe it when I see it" sentiment out there these days regarding mobile TV ventures.

For what it's worth, the analysts at iSuppli are somewhat bullish on the possibilities for MCV, citing three main aspects to the service that provide it with a better chance than prior efforts. First, the technology it uses (ATSC M/H) is cheaper than others (DVB-H or MediaFLO, the latter which was used by Qualcomm) because it leverages existing infrastructure. Second, the venture is broadcaster-led, meaning it will have a good content portfolio and will be better designed to match up with consumers' viewing habits and exceptions. And third, the technology (ASTC M/H) is backed by handset makers LG and Samsung, which will help bring devices to market.

iSuppli also notes that MCV is likely to go for a business model involving both free and paid-for content to help push consumer adoption.

That being said, there are also several challenges MCV must overcome. It needs to get operator commitment to integrate with cellular networks, and it needs to be able to offer handset subsidies, mobile billing and produce nationwide marketing campaigns. In fact, mobile operator support for MCV is key, without it, the initiative will probably not survive. So for now, cautious excitement only - but when you hear MCV announcing operator partners, you then have our permission to shout "hooray for mobile TV!"