Amazon unleashes their set-top box, the Fire TV, but we get word from The Verge that Google might fire back with their own TV box, but don’t they have the Chromecast? Also HBO Go becomes HBO No, and WWE is either a hit or a failure, depending on who you ask.
CordKillers: Ep. 14 – Will Google Light a Fire?
Recorded: April 7 2014
Guest: None
Intro Video
Primary Target
- Amazon launches Fire TV, an Android-powered streaming and gaming set-top box for $99
- Here’s Amazon’s gamepad
- How Amazon Fire TV Stacks Up To Apple TV, Chromecast And Roku
- Amazon Fire TV – $99 Shipping today
– 0.7″” thin, size of a CD case. Yay another hockey puck!
– Quad-core processor and dedicated GPU, 2GB of RAM
– Dual-band, dual-antenna WiFi with Mimo
– Bluetooth remote control
– Hulu and Netflix
– “ASAP” predicts what movies and TV shows you’re going to watcha nd queues them up so they start instantly. Learns over time.
– Voice Command – speak into remote control
– works with search, wish list even searches genres across apps
– Cloud drive app can load photos from phone to TV (set album as screen saver)
– Music from Pandora I heart Radio, TuneIn and Vevo. Amazon music coming next month.
– Free Time kids time mgmt. product, Free Time Unlimited tier with PBSKids, Nick, etc.
– Gaming: Thousands of titles for next month (Disney, EA, etc..) app lets you use phone/tablet as controller but also Fire game controller is $39.99 with 1,000 Amazon coins (avg. price of games $1.85)
- Amazon just locked down exclusive rights to 24 including Live Another Day
Secondary Target
- This is Android TV
- “Android TV is an entertainment interface, not a computing platform,”
– Controller arrow keys, enter, home, back. Optional game controller.
– Voice input and notifications. Picks up where phone or TV left off.
– Recommends content on home screen.
Signal Intellegence
- WWE Smacked Down as Online Subscribers Fall Short of Estimate
- Profit in Sight: Nearly 670,000 Subscribe to WWE Network
- Sunday’s “WrestleMania 30,” which took place in New Orleans, selling out the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
– World Wrestling Entertainment reported 667,287 subscribers
– Shares of WWE sank (WWE:US) 15 percent to close at $23.90 in New York, the biggest one-day drop since July 2001.
– VARIETY: The WWE Network is close to turning a profit less than two months after launching.
– The company will next roll out the WWE Network in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Nordic countries in late 2014 and early 2015.
Gear Up
- Xbox One original TV shows will include interactive extras
- Microsoft already has six TV series lined up for Xbox and more are coming
- Ridley Scott is Master Chief of Halo ‘digital feature’
- 6 series coming to Xbox One”
Users can unlock bonus scenes, mini-games and subplots not featured in the actual show itself.
IN PRODUCTION
-“ Halo” television series, executive produced by Steven Spielberg
– A multi-film documentary series produced by Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox. The first project centers on the rise and fall of Atari
– Live event coverage of the Bonnaroo music festival in June 2014
-“Every Street United,” an unscripted series focused on the global search for soccer’s most gifted and undiscovered street footballers
-“Halo” digital feature project with 343 Industries and Scott Free Productions (EP Ridley Scott— Sergio Mimica-Gezzan directing)
– a sci-fi show about robots called Humans — based on Swedish programme “Äkta människor” - IN DEVELOPMENT
-“Fearless,” an unscripted series starring Paul de Gelder, an Australian Navy bomb clearance diver and shark attack survivor
-A sketch comedy show with comedy collective JASH – founded by Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera, Tim and Eric, and Reggie Watts
-A hybrid stop motion animation project by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (Seth Green), creators of the longest running stop-motion show on television, “Robot Chicken”
Under surveillance
- HBO Go Still Recovering From Outage During Game Of Thrones Premiere
- The First Episode Of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” Is Now On YouTube
- HBO Go crashed during the Game of Thrones’ season premiere due to “overwhelming demand.” Some speculated that HBO purposely allows its streaming platform to get overwhelmed to stop subscribers from sharing their login information with non-paying users, which HBO CEO Richard Plepler has denied. HOWEVER The first episode of Mike Judge’s “Silicon Valley” is now on YouTube.
Front Lines
- Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is seeking to produce “a hit online show with viral appeal
- AOL said Tuesday that it plans to produce its first long-form video series, “Connected,” a US-adaptation of an Israeli series.
- The Qplay app is now available to ayone who wants it, as is the $49 Qplay box that will stream your Qplay videos to a connected TV
- Hulu will add past seasons of NBC/Universal-produced shows as part of a multi-year agreement.
- AT&T’s new HBO bundle promotion provides U-basic TV with HBO and an 18 Mbps AT&T U-Verse connection for $40, good for 12 months.
- Michael Franco, creator of Star Trek Continues, most recent episode is currently in postproduction and will premiere in June at Australia’s Supanova pop-culture festival.
2014 Summer Movie Draft
- DTNS: $95,023,721
- Night Attack: $0
- The Morning Stream: $0
- GodsMoneybags: $0
- /Film: $0
- Amtrekker: $0
On Screen
- Brian: Season 2 of Regular show is on Netflix, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cosmos, Game of Thrones
- Tom: The Shield (eps. 6-7 – Amazon Prime), Agents of SHIELD (OTA), Archer (DTV – Purchasable), Rick and Morty (AdultSwim.com), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Theatre), Game of Thrones (DTV – Avail. HBO Go), Silicon Valley (YT), Night Attack (Diamondclub.tv), Cosmos (OTA)
Dispatches from the Front
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CBS said maybe they would pull out of broadcast. Tom mentioned what they might do in changing programming on over the air broadcast. But doesn’t CBS statement go counter to their primary reason for lawsuit, and that is rebroadcast fees and how big a money maker it is.
Woody
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Hope your week is going well! Not sure if you guys caught this story, but now that it’s officially public, I can talk about it.YouTube to Offer Advertisers Some Guarantees. With upfront season in full swing, Google is taking some new approaches in their agreements with advertisers. What is of particular interest is this. YouTube also plans to reserve space for advertisers that agree to buy in advance in the best performing 5% of its content across channels such as Beauty & Fashion, Comedy, Food, Music, and Sports. In the last few years, MCNs have been building up business models around selling ads around original content on YouTube. With YouTube looking take that top 5% of the best content on their platform, we may see a shift in how these companies work. There have always been questions about the profitability and sustainability to how these MCNs operated. In fact, as of late, we’ve seen major changes with companies like Machinima and Maker Studios, both of which made deals with major studios (well, Maker Studios got entirely acquired by Disney). It’ll be interesting to see how this new arrangement works out for all parties. Personally, I think we’re still in the middle of this shift in content delivery – we’ll probably continue to see these companies evolve over time. Anyways, this wasn’t meant to be an in-show email; just thought it might be a topic of interest for Cordkillers this week. Love to hear what you guys make of it.
Best,
Derrick
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