Cordkillers 163 - Anthology Suicide
More evidence cord-cutting is not imaginary, AMC’s commercial-free service, Vudu’s disc-to-digital for phones, and the essential Expanse.
CordKillers: Ep. 163 - Anthology Suicide
Recorded: March 27 2017
Guest: None
Intro Video
Primary Target
- Whoa: Almost a third of Millennials have cut the cable cord
- Surprise: There's one area where TV viewing is actually soaring
- Pivotal Research analyzed Nielsen numbers and note
- February english-language broadcast and ad-supported cable down 10.3% 18-49 and ad impressions down 7.2%
- TV usage 18-49 for connected devices is 9.9% up
from 6.2% last year and 3.6% two years ago
- This does not count non-TV devices like laptops/tablets
- Morning Consult survey
- 29% adults 18-29 have no Pay TV
- 33% cited cost, 20% cited quality of content on SVOD
- More than half of Millennials, 54 percent, say they stream more than they watch regular TV. That’s compared to 40 percent of adults 30-44.
How to Watch
- AMC Plans Ad-Free Streaming Service
- AMC Plans to launch a commercial-free online video streaming service (sources told Reuters)
- Require cable authentication
- Feature digital-only spinoff shows
- Cost $4.99 - $6.99 a month - Vudu can turn your old DVDs into HD digital copies, and all you need is a smartphone
- Walmart's Vudu video service now allows users to "convert" movies on disc to UltraViolet digital copy. Users scan a movies barcode on their smartphone, and have the ability to buy a similar quality digital copy for $2, while upgrading from standard to high definition costs $5. Over 8,000 movies are supported, with support from Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.
What to Watch
- Death Note trailer out: Comes to Netflix August 25
- Full Trailer for Handmaid's Tale which comes to Hulu April 26
- The First Trailer for the Return of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to Netflix April 14
- Technology Terrors Come Alive in First Teaser for Hulu's Scifi Series Dimension 404, coming April 4.
What We're Watching
- Brian: Justified, Legion ep 2 & part of 3, part of The Expanse
- Tom: Justified, Legion, Star Wars: Rebels, The Expanse, The Magicians
- On the Lookout: Good Girls Revolt
Front Lines
- The MLB Network is now available on PlayStation Vue
- Sony announced that MLB Network is now part of the Core tier for its Playstation Vue streaming service. The service has recently emphasize live sports, streaming both NFL and NBA games in 2016, and introducing a multi-view feature in March for the NCAA basketball tournament. - Netflix still has a huge lead in the streaming wars, but Hulu’s smaller service has loyal users
- Comscore measured video streamed over WiFI at home in the US in December. Netflix led with 40% penetration. YouTube is at 30%. While Hulu and Amazon are behind, Hulu users and Netflix users both tie at 25 hours a month. - Twitter starts letting users live stream from more than just their phones
- Twitter announced its Periscope Producer API which lets you live stream without using the Periscope phone app. Partners at launch are camera maker Livestream Mevo, Wirecast, Switchboard Cloud and Teradek. - Apple releases iTunes 12.6 with new ‘rent once, watch anywhere’ feature
-In iTunes 12.6, Apple now allows users to continue watching movie rentals on other devices. The "watch anywhere" feature requires iOS 10.3 and tvOS 10.2, which are both still in beta. Rentals are still subject to time limits on viewing. - Netflix launches support for Firefox on Linux
- In a blog post, Netflix announced that Firefox on Linux can natively play the service's video. Due to its DRM encoding, Linux users had previously been forced to use Chrome with the Encrypted Media Extension, or use a workaround.
Dispatches from the Front
Hey Tom, Brian and Bryce
I was listening to your discussion of the new ATSC 3.0 standard and Tom's concern that the spec included DRM. I wanted to let Tom know that the original ATSC spec (1.0 I guess) actually includes copy protection as well. A TV station can enable what's called a "Broadcast Flag" or rather a flag in the signal that limits how and where that video can be viewed.
I used to use Windows Media Center as my DVR and one of the local stations in Boston had that flag enabled. So I could record their content on my computer, but I could only watch it on that machine. If I tried to copy it to another computer or stream it, it would not play. Most stations, particularly local broadcasters, do not enable this flag.
So hopefully the inclusion of DRM in the new spec Won't cause any issues.
Here is an article about the "Broadcast Flag"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag
Love the show, keep the the great work.
- Chip from Boston
A sign of things to come? Canada has a sports duopoly, with almost all english sports broadcasts done by Bell or Rogers. This week they invormed bars and restotaunts that they can no longer subscribe to regular packages to show games(at largely similar costs to home users) They must pay $120 on top of regular packages to get the 2 sports channels.
As subscription revenue drops, how long till US sports channels do the same? As ESPN goes through layoffs and crisis as it loses revenue, how long till they realize bars are a captive market that is able to be gouged much more than it currently is?
- Faiz
Hello Tom and Brian,
I wanted to mention a couple of developments with Plex that I heard about recently and am looking forward to testing out. Plex is currently in the process of rolling out a DVR feature that eliminates the need for a separate recording program, and one which will hopefully solve another issue that I discuss below. The other is Plex cloud, which allows the use of a user's cloud storage program such as Dropbox or Google Drive as a media folder in the device and make it much easier to watch videos anywhere one can connect to the cloud.
If I could, I'd like to pose a question to the Cordkillers community concerning DVR functionality. The setup I have now works reasonably well, with one exception.I have never been able to find a method for enabling subtitles and/or closed captioning within any of the programs I use. While not an absolute need, having some type of on-screen text can occasionally be helpful & I wondered if anyone else has a method for enabling this feature.
Thanks again and keep putting out these great shows!
- Paul
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I just found The Expanse's "Interactive Story Guide" at http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/enterthefuture/inside.
I'm finding this pretty late into the second season, but it fun to see where everything was relative to each other. You're presented with a diagram of the solar system, and you can highlight different areas, seeing where different ships are, who's on them, and what they've been doing. Best of all, you select what episode you're currently on, so you only see information up to that point in time and avoid any unwanted spoilers. I've not read the books, but this would have helped me keep track of things in the first part of season 1.
Love the show!
- Tom
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