For the cord-cutters and cable-company haters out there eagerly awaiting the next era of television, in which you no longer have to pay your provider for a bundled package of junk you never watch, YouTube officially launched 14 of its rumored pay-to-subscribe channels on Friday. It's not top-shelf, but it's a start. Just ask Washington.
Just when we were getting excited about a standalone streaming service from HBO — like HBO Go, except without paying for a cable subscription — HBO now says it was just kidding and won't cut that cord... ever.
In May, Netflix will lose streaming rights to a whopping 1,794 titles because of expiring deals with Warner Bros., MGM, Universal, and Viacom. A big chunk of them will expire at midnight on May 1 — and by the end of the month, Netflix Instant will have lost the whole lot.
Rumor has it that Amazon will release a streaming TV box, which will take Amazon's streaming video offerings and funnel them through a television — something a bunch of other streaming TV boxes already do.
By adding more than 2 million U.S. subscribers this quarter and another 1 million elsewhere in the world, Netflix has nearly earned back its entire $100 million investment in House of Cards — in under three months, according to our calculations based on Monday's earnings report.
All that anecdotal password sharing we've been hearing about is more than just a few media savvy friends passing around their logins: One analyst estimates that something like 10 million people watch Netflix Instant, gratis.
Dish is willing to pay $25.5 billion for Sprint because it thinks the wireless high-speed Internet Sprint can offer is the future of streaming TV.
Netflix has finally announced a Memorial Day release for 15 episodes of Arrested Development, a beloved sitcom with a devoted audience that the streaming service uncancelled for exactly that purpose: a long weekend of obsessive binge-watching that is now a proven money maker. Here's why appointment television just got a lot more addictive.
Because Harvard is paying for a service called Tivli, the Ivy Leaguers can burn through HBO's Girls, Game of Thrones, and a bunch of other cable TV content for free. Unfortunately, the ultimate student streaming model doesn't sound like it's built for the rest of us.
In what would be the most exciting single development for cord-cutters and their quality television since Hulu launched six years ago, the head of HBO hinted Thursday at the development of viable, legitimate standalone streaming service for people who don't pay for cable TV — any cable TV, not just premium. It might even be pretty cheap.
Instead of paying cable-TV providers for a bundle of channels that nobody watches, Verizon wants to reward content owners for the viewers who tune in to each individual station, a plan that should lower costs — yay! — but that the Time Warners and Viacoms of the market aren't likely to adopt.
Don't be confused: Cablevision's anti-trust suit decrying the evils of "anti-consumer" bundling by Viacom, which have pushed cable-bills up oh-so-high, has nothing to do with the frustrations consumers have with cable bundling.
The chip-maker has said its Silicon Valley star-studded Intel Media group will build a potentially game-changing set-top box — one that might just end up slashing your cable bill.
For years cable and satellite companies have maintained they're not afraid of people canceling their service and watching video over the Internet (i.e. cutting the cord), but the cord nevers — the young people who never sign up for pay-TV service in the first place — are a totally different story.
Unlike its movie studio and publishing arm, Time Warner's television business is booming, bringing in $3.7 billion for the media giant, a 5 percent increase from the year before, all because you're paying more for cable.
With Netflix's foray into original, high quality programming today, the streaming TV network wants to turn into the HBO of Internet TV, but can Netflix afford it?
So, Apple's big plan to talk cable companies into making the iPod of the television industry thus far involves getting Time Warner to let it put HBO Go on its box (if you buy a cable subscription!), something other similar boxes already do. How very unexciting.
The chip maker's much rumored CES announcement — the set-top box that was supposed to revolutionize the cable industry via subscribe-by-channel deals — is not a box at all, and it will not, in fact, change the way you pay for television.
So, about that revolutionary streaming TV device that Intel is supposedly creating in secret and will reveal at next week's Consumer Electronics Show: don't believe the rumors, at least not right now.
After another year of big ups, a few downs, and the same old viral hits, YouTube is still the undisputed king of Internet video. Can Google keep you surfing long enough to transform YouTube without breaking it?
The Wall Street Journal now has sources saying Apple is testing set designs with Samsung — but that this "isn't a formal project yet." To that, the tech world says: duh.
A big, juicy new deal with Disney means that Netflix will be the first and only place to show its new releases — a privilege generally reserved for places like HBO, Starz, and Showtime.
YouTube will cancel at least 60 percent of its current programming for next season, which means 96 of the 160 channels it created over the last year will no longer get funding from the site.
Compared to this time last year, when Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers following a price hike, the streaming service looks like a success story, adding 1.16 million new users this quarter. But that's not how Wall Street feels, which has the company's stock down almost 17 percent following its earnings report.
While many predicted that the future (and the demise) of the television industry would come in the form of dropped cable subscriptions, aka, cord cutting, it's not turning out that way. Rather, it looks like we will have two camps of TV-watching humans: Cord clingers and cord nevers, neither of whom are enthusiastic about the state of things.
How much would you pay for a standalone streaming service from Dish Network that offers channels like Comedy Central, MTV, and The Food Network? It's worth thinking about since Dish Network is in talks with Viacom to offer a our dream of a standalone streaming television service, sources tell Bloomberg News's Edmund Lee, Alex Sherman and Mark Milian.
To bring us that next-level television, hopefully cord-cutting gadget we all want, Apple needs to woo the cable companies to make some deals, which it is apparently having trouble doing, sources "familiar with the company's plans" tell Bloomberg's Adam Satariano and Alex Sherman.
A poster child for cord cutting has given up on the cause, moving into an abode with a "tricked-out TV set up." That man is Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, who has gone without paying for cable for 13 years.
HBO, the content provider that has said many times that it has no interest in offering HBO Go as a standalone service, will now offer its content through a standalone streaming service. Don't get too excited: This isn't happening here in the good ole U.S.A but rather in Norway, Finland and Denmark.
There's this idea that young people, who have grown up in a streaming Internet world, aren't getting cable and they never will. We call these people cord nevers and wanted to put some statistics behind the theory.
Time Warner will never offer HBO Go as a standalone streaming service because it's not what the people want, says CEO Jeff Bewkes, asking us to look at the data, which he claims proves there aren't that many cord-cutters.
Along with the announcement of its high speed Internet service, Google introduced Google Fiber TV, its own television service, which works a lot like an old-school television provider.
Turns out we're not the only one who enjoys sitting around all day Netflixing in our pajamas. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said people watched over 1 billion hours of content on the streaming site during the month of June alone.
Televisions might not feel that smart, but we are in the midst of the smart TV era.
This afternoon we get a mysteriously sourced report that Apple is in talks with three major movie studios to stream their offerings on a future device (Apple TV, right?).
Like all digital content problems before it, until consumers get what they really want in the television department -- raw streaming Internet television sans cable subscription -- new technologies, like the latest from Nimble TV aren't going to appease the masses.
Apple's big TV plans maybe might include Siri integration, but a recent survey suggests that bot-controlled television is not something people would want or use.
One of the traditions of the day after a Mad Men season premiere is the realization after endless hype is that few people watch the show -- last night's episode drew a paltry 3.5 million viewers -- but the way the show survives as a business is a good lesson in the changing entertainment landscape.
Intel has been pitching media companies its "virtual cable operator" plans, sources "familiar with the effort" told The Wall Street Journal's Sam Schechner and Don Clark, but from what we know of the plan there is a lot that could go wrong.
Internet companies look to old television formulas as they create original content for the Web.
A report from Reuters that Netflix is in talks with an unnamed cable company has us worried since Netflix turning into cable is the last thing we want.
Netflix doesn't have to sweat losing its big Starz Play movie library because viewers come to the Internet for their television fixes and Netflix has built up a pretty valuable store of TV selections in the last few months.
Don't get too, too sad about Netflix losing Starz Play after tomorrow.
As more and more consumers move to cut the cord, Comcast is the latest major media company to announce its entrance into the streaming video business.
As Comcast's earnings report proves, the cable companies and broadcast networks who fear the Internet taking away precious cable subscribers have a lot to gain from the streaming viewing trend. Namely: A new place to profit off of content licensing.
Contrary to expectations, Google's entertainment system project will have nothing to do with streaming TV shows, and instead will focus on music.
NBC's livestream of this year's Super Bowl shows exactly how important the actual television is in sports watching culture and why it's not going away anytime soon.
Unlike other networks, which are fearful to put stuff on the Internets, NBC's not worried about losing money on its free stream of this year's Super Bowl.
Expensive sports channels are pushing cable bills to levels that make Internet-only subscriptions seem ever-more appealing.
Even after reporting an increase in high-speed data customers alongside a decrease in video subscribers, Time Warner still doesn't think that the Internet is replacing the traditional pay TV model.
News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch's reaction to a Google TV presentations is the best explanation yet of why we won't be seeing truly integrated Internet TV any time soon.
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