Cordkillers Ep. 11 – Breki-ing the law

Cordkillers / March 18th, 2014

Veronica Mars proves piracy still beats following the rules for now, and Popcorn Time makes it easy.

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CordKillers: Ep. 11 – Breki-ing the law
Recorded: March 17 2014
Guest: Breki Tomasson

Intro Video: 

Primary Target

Secondary Target

Signal Intelligence

  • Here’s why Amazon Prime can afford to raise prices
  • Amazon Prime US raised price from $79 a year to $99. Amazon was barely breaking even, or even losing money, on shipping costs for customers who ordered 20 packages year. That’s not counting the $40 per person it costs Amazon to license streaming media that Prime accounts get for free.

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Dispatches from the Front

  • There’s no clear consistency here in the UK about when broadcasters show US shows. Back in ye olden days, programmes like ER and Friends would be held back until January so that the UK broadcasters would get a clear run of 20-26 weekly episodes without having to take a break. However these days with torrents and spoilers and hype crossing borders, broadcasters don’t really know what to do – do they follow the US schedule (Fox show The Walking Dead in the UK the day after the US broadcast) or do they hold back (More4 are only a few episodes into the latest season of The Good Wife). Or do they go for a half-hearted mixture (Channel 4 started showing Agents of SHIELD in the same week as the US, but it’s only just returned from it’s Christmas break)? My question is this – will there ever come a time when the money gained from advertisers isn’t enough to dictate the schedules for the US broadcasters, and they gain more from subscriptions, overseas sales and re-selling to services like Netflix, and therefore the US broadcasters drop their ridiculous scheduling of showing a 20 week season in drips?

    John

 

 

  • Hi guys, love the show, just became a Patreon tonight. My wife and I (and two four year old twin girls) cut the cord a few weeks ago (cut the phone landline and cable tv, leaving only internet).
    I bought the Leaf for HD broadcast local channels, do you have any recommendations on a PVR to plug it into? My Tivo is old and doesn’t do DTV. Or is there a better way to get streaming broadcast show’s (like Big Bang Theory)… in Canada?

    Thanks, keep up the good work

    Lee.

 

 

  • I have been watching the various incarnations of this show for a very long time, and one of the recurring themes was how Netflix releases shows all at once, for a la carte binge viewing. The two of you have even argued the merits of binge vs. weekly releases. Imagine my surprise, when I got an email from Netflix announcing their new show, “”From Dusk Till Dawn””, and that they were releasing one episode per week! If this is not cord killing news, I don’t know what is!

     

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers

www.doghousesystems.com

Cordkillers Ep. 8 – Comcast-Netflix explained with pie

Cordkillers / February 25th, 2014

We take some time to debunk a few things about the Comcast-Netflix deal, and raise a few real concerns about it, and use a pie metaphor that leaves everybody hungry. Plus Aereo suffers a loss, but the makers of the Mohu antenna have an interesting way to integrate live TV with Netflix, Hulu and pretty much everything on the Web.

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CordKillers: Ep. 8 – Comcast-Netflix explained with pie
Recorded: February 24 2014
Guest: Iyaz Akhtar

Intro Video: 

Primary Target

Secondary Target

  • Aereo loses copyright fight, gets banned in 6 states

  • Aereo launching in Austin

  • US District Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Aereo’s retransmission of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs “is indistinguishable a cable company and falls squarely within the language of the Transmit Clause.” He didn’t buy Aereo’s argument that its system of renting a tiny antenna to each customer allows it to avoid the “Transmit Clause” of the 1976 Copyright Act, which determines what kind of “transmissions” of copyrighted material must pay licensing fees. The Supreme Court argument over Aereo is scheduled for April 22. A decision will likely come by June.

Signal Intellegence

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On Our Radar

Thought you guys might like some info on the WWE Network since in launched today.
Sign up issues but that was expected. The archive of content is great but the action doesn’t look that good. It looks like you are watching on the “internet”. You generally don’t get that feel when watching movies or TV shows on Netflix or Hulu. Live sports just doesnt look right….
720p on a 65 inch TV just doesn’t look good.. 

On Screen

Dispatches from the Front

  • So, I’m new to your show, and actually new to podcasts in general. When I saw the title of your show listed in my current podcast app of choice (Pocket Cast for Android) I knew that I had to have you in my ear for the morning commute.
    I am a long-time cord-cutter; I streamed on a Roku 1– back in the day, son– when Roku had Netflix, Revision3, and that’s it . Today I favor my Chromecast. Any way:

    I currently work as an installer for a major national ISP/Cable//telephone company. (Let’s not get started on the subject of inner turmoil.) Y’all’s show plays over my Bluetooth ear-buds as I reluctantly wire up Americans to the sub-par internet infrastructure that I have to offer.

    So, on to my gripe.

    I would like to make your show an important part of my lineup. Except: .. ARE YOU GOING TO RUIN MY SHOWS FOR ME?!!

 

  • Guys, I’m so psyched and impressed by how quickly you stood up this show, and I’m proud to be a patron!

    The WiPNET that a listener wrote in about last week is a MoCA connector. These are great for slinging network signals over Coax to otherwise hard-to-reach places in your home—whether you’re a cordkiller or not. They’re WAY more reliable than powerline network carriers. MoCA never gained wide adoption but is baked into a surprising number of devices, including things like DVRs and even many service provider’s routers.

    I have Verizon FiOS, and my router already supports MoCA, so that means I can piggy-back network over the CoAX. That worked really well in the home I bought last year, which was completely devoid of Ethernet cable. If your router supports MoCA, you don’t really need a pair of these, just one as an endpoint to connect a computer or switch to your Coax. I get great throughput on my network, using my MoCA bridges on my work and home computers for everything—browsing, large file transfers, HD video streaming services, hangouts, and Skype. I even use it for my main podcasting connection for audio and video. Officially, I think it has a throughput of about 250 Mbps.

    Worth noting I’m also still using my Coax for cable service (don’t hate me). My point is that this doesn’t seem to in any way impede its ability to also carry network traffic.

    Richard

 

  • Can you talk a little about “dual” cord killers? I dropped cable and internet. For example, can you use plex without internet? Can you use areo without internet. Can you use simple.vt without internet. It seems my only option is: outdoor ota antenna ($150) with simple.tv ($250) with roku 3 ($100). It will take me awhile to break even with the upfront cost of $500.

    Thanx… Love the show.

    John

 

  • I have been faithfully listening to, and watching both the old, and new show over the past couple of years, and love where you guys are coming from. I wonder, after all this time, why I have never heard any discussion about any of the myriad of Android mini pc’s on the market. I have an MK808 which turns my TV into a 42 inch tablet. All apps from the Play Store are available. If you can watch it on a tablet, you can watch it on your TV. The size is small, and the price is cheap. No walled garden like the Roku, or Apple TV. If you want to play around, it is rooted. It runs Netflix beautifully, and I can only assume that Hulu, and Amazon, would run the same. If you want to go deeper then you can run XBMC. This device seems to me to be as close to being a perfect streaming device as is available right now. As tech savvy as you are I’m sure you must be aware of these devices, and yet you never bring them up. Why?

    Chris

Links

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G+ Doghouse system Cordkillers Box

Cordkillers Ep. 7 – Who Throttles the Throttlers?

Cordkillers / February 18th, 2014

Why Comcast’s merger with Time Warner Cable might not be a bad thing. And then right into what’s slowing down Netflix, which shows why consolidation surely isn’t helping. Also all ‘y’all have connected TVs these days. 

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CordKillers: Ep. 7 – Who Throttles the Throttlers?
Recorded: February 17 2014
Guest:  Deric A. Hughes

Intro Video: 

Primary Target

Secondary Target

  • Netflix performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for months
  • Netflix Says Verizon Isn’t Slowing Down Its Streams
  • Netflix slow on Verizon or Comcast? A VPN might speed up that video
  • Comcast and Verizon’s Netflix speed dropped 4 straight months. Charter dropped too.
    -Cox, Cablesvision and Google Fiber improved
    – Netflix demands go up, do Comcast and Verizon add peering interconnects?
    – VZ and Comcast not part of “Open Connect” where Netflix houses servers in ISP to improve service.
    –  Ars Technica: “Verizon’s broadband Internet access services deliver a pristine user experience to our customers at any time of day on every day of the week.
    – J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth, who says he has been talking to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells, and they told him they don’t think cable and telco companies are hampering the company’s video streams.
    – Using VPN or third-party DNS may improve Netflix service
    – Sand vine Cofounder Don Bowman. If a VPN consistently behaves better, it’s proof that there is something along the path that doesn’t have enough capacity.”

Signals Intelligence

Gear Up

  • 3 out of 5 broadband households now have a connected TV
  • Americans Are Hungry for Digital Content
  • 63 percent of all U.S. broadband households now have a TV connected to the internet, according to a new report from the Diffusion Group (SmartTV or TV with a Roku-type device) (last year 53%)
    – Nielsen – now own four digital devices, on average, and spend roughly 60 hours per week consuming content across multiple screens.
    – HDTVs, the most popular digital devices, are now present in 83 percent of American households, up from 67 percent in 2011. In addition, 80 percent of homes have a PC with Internet and 65 percent have at least one smartphone, up from 79 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
    – A near-majority of U.S. households also now own digital video recorders (49 percent) and gaming consoles (46 percent).

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Dispatches from the Front

  •  I found this while working on another project today and thought it would be an interesting tool for all of the cord killers out there. It lets you use your existing coax for all sorts of other things. I think MSRP is about 60 bux, but you need a pair of them to get started.

    http://wi3inc.com/Products/WiPNET.aspx 

 

 

  • Hi guys! Love your show! Glad you found a way to continue onward! Now to an omission that’s been bugging me for some time. You guys have discussed the wonders of streaming via Chromecast and Airplay as separate choices for the chord cutter, however I found a way to do both on one piece of hardware. I have a Vizio Co-Star running an app called “AirTight”. The Co-Star has recently been updated to support Chromecast-like streaming (casting?) and AirTight provides old-style AirPlay connectivity (no mirroring). So for under $100 you can have both without having to switch inputs! Plus, the Co-Star has lots of other capabilities (Netflix, MGO, VUDU, and WEB SURFING!) Anyhow, I love my Co-Star and thought I should at least mention it as an alternative.

    Alex K.

 

  • Monster post. feel free to pick the most relevant bits and let me know if there’s a forum or something i should post to or follow up on. this is fun and exhausting to think about alone!

    Got any advice for Baratunde?

 

Baratunde Thurston

 

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers