Continue reading Paul McCartney: ‘You can keep free streaming for the birds and bees, now give me money’

Paul McCartney: ‘You can keep free streaming for the birds and bees, now give me money’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve all been there: fire up a clip from YouTube or a movie on Netflix and things start out great. But, then, after just a few moments, that LTE connection starts to give up the ghost and suddenly you’re faced with unbearable stutturing or a video that just dies mid stream. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications are looking to solve that conundrum with DASH, or Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. The idea is actually surprisingly simple — files of different sizes and qualities will be available depending on signal strength and network load, and the stream will be able to seamlessly switch between them as these variables change. While this sounds like a win for both consumer and carriers, we’re sure there are a few of you out there who just want the highest quality possible, even if that means waiting forever for that HD clip of the all accordion cover of Take On Me to buffer. Full PR is after the break.

Continue reading DASH promises stutter free streaming video over LTE, hopes you don’t care about quality

DASH promises stutter free streaming video over LTE, hopes you don’t care about quality originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Rhapsody music streaming lands on Android tablets with ‘magazine-style’ app

Rhapsody music streaming lands on Android tablets with ‘magazine-style’ app originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix had 21.76 million subscribers at the end of Q4, which is 220,000 more than in the previous quarter. Internationally, it now has 1.86 million subscribers. The number of DVD subscribers shrunk to 11.17 million, down from 13.93 million in Q3. That means that for the first time ever, streaming plans outperform DVD rentals by a ratio of close to 2:1.

The good news for Netflix is that even with its steep decline in DVD rentals, the overall number of customers is growing again. Netflix lost 810,000 U.S. subscribers in Q3 as a result of its unsuccessful attempts to spin off the DVD business into a separate company, as well as a price hike earlier in 2011. In Q4, that combined  subscriber number once again grew by 610,000.

Netflix executives have long said that they see the company primarily as a streaming video provider, with DVDs being part of a legacy business that will decline over time. However, the accelerated rate of decline could spell trouble for Netflix’s bottom line: The company has been using the shrinking but very profitable DVD rentals to finance its international expansion, which it put on hold until international profitability returns after launching in the U.K. and Ireland in January. With DVD customers canceling by the millions, that could now be further away than previously estimated.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote in a letter to shareholders (PDF) that he expects DVD subscription cancelations to level off this year, with an expected 1.5 million customers saying good-bye to the iconic red envelopes in Q1 of 2012. From the letter:

“While contribution profit from domestic streaming will grow sequentially, it will not be sufficient to offset the sequential decline in DVD profits (~ million), and the sequential increase in our international losses (~ million), as well as cover our global G&A and Technology & Development costs. As a result, we expect modest quarterly losses, as well as losses for the calendar year.”

In other words: Netflix won’t enter any other territories in 2012, and might have to work on making more money with streaming if it wants to keep expanding in the future. Because DVDs may not be around for much longer.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Western Digital is making sure its hardware can keep pace in the media streamer arms race, matching recent additions by Microsoft and Roku by issuing updates of its own. New services added to the WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub boxes are Vudu (with HDX 1080p support, unlike the Xbox 360), SnagFilms, XOS College Sports, SEC Digital, Comedy Time and Watch Mojo. To help users navigate through all the extra content, it also recently rolled out its own official iOS remote app, although like Roku, there have already been a few unofficial options available as well. The WD TV remote is a free app and offers direct access to any of the services on your WD TV box and even multiplayer gaming provided all devices are on the same network. An Android version is said to be in the works, for now owners can check out all the details in the press release after the break or hit iTunes to download the app.

Continue reading WD TV Live, Live Hub get an official iOS remote app, Vudu streaming and more

WD TV Live, Live Hub get an official iOS remote app, Vudu streaming and more originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As it prepares for Netflix’s 2012 UK invasion Lovefilm appears to be taking a page out of its competitor’s strategy, and it’s all because of the studios. When streaming to Windows PCs and Macs it will only support Silverlight as of the first week in January (we should mention it’s coincidentally timed alongside a particular electronics show), ditching Flash encodes for its video. Like Watch Instantly, that will mean a lockout for non-Intel Macs and Linux users who don’t have a player that supports the necessary DRM, but it’s just those three letters that are behind this. Streaming Project Manager Paul Thompson writes on the company blog that Silverlight beat out Flash and new challenger HTML5 in order to meet studio’s anti-piracy requirements, as well as take advantage of its Smooth Streaming adaptive bandwidth adjustments. Everything will stay the same on other streaming devices, while Netflix has been able to support Chromebooks via plugin and is rumored to be working on a Netflix solution, we’ll have to wait and see if Lovefilm can do the same.

Lovefilm’s movie streaming will switch from Flash to Silverlight on PCs in 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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