Brian’s almost to the end. What has him despairing? What has him intrigued? What can’t Tom say to make him feel better about the show? Two out of three of these questions answered!

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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: 

• Shattering the Shatterproof

Primary Target

• Comcast and Netflix

• Netflix is paying Comcast for direct connection to network

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

• Amazon increases price of Prime in U.K. and Germany as it rolls in Lovefilm streaming video

Gear Up

• TV antenna maker Mohu targets cord cutters with new Channels device

• Mohu kickstarter

Under surveillance

• Crowdfunded Veronica Mars movie will hit theaters and your living room simultaneously

Front Lines

• Amazon to launch an Android console or set-top box in March

• Watch the hilarious new teaser for HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’

• House of Cards’ threatens to bail on Maryland unless it gets millions in tax credits

• Marvel releases first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trailer

• Google Fiber chooses nine metro areas for possible expansion

• Find and Watch TV Shows on YouTube with CouchTube.net – Sébastien de Larquier made it as part of a workshop and then got hired at Netflix.

On Our Radar

• WWE launches its streaming wrestling network in the US
• Andrew Zarian reports in —

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.. 

• Hacking the System airs Feb 27 2014 at 9:30pm ET on NatGeo

On Screen

• Brian: House of Cards, on episode 10

• Tom: Downton Abbey, The Walking Dead, House of Cards, (Finished whole series) 

• Iyaz: Frasier, Deadly Women, & WWE Network

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

www.patreon.com/cordkillers
G+ Doghouse system Cordkillers Box