If you thought Coinstar was through making industry rattling announcements today, you were wrong. After taking the wraps off its joint venture with Verizon, now the company has announced it’ll be taking over NCR’s entertainment division for 0 million. That includes DVD kiosks, retailer contracts and an inventory of discs for stocking the machines. That’s big news not only cause it expands Redbox’s already sizable self-serve rental empire, but because it may be doing so at the expense of the floundering Blockbuster since NCR has been responsible for distributing and running the blue and yellow rental kiosks. How exactly this will impact existing Blockbuster Express installations is unclear, but we can’t imagine the news is good. For a few more details about the deal check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading Redbox snatches up NCR’s entertainment division, future of Blockbuster kiosks unclear

Redbox snatches up NCR’s entertainment division, future of Blockbuster kiosks unclear originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Details around the deal are limited, but here is what we know.

1. Verizon will own 65 percent of the joint venture while Coinstar, Redbox’s parent company, will own 35 percent.
2. The service will offer something Netflix currently doesn’t — a download option, which makes it more competitive with Amazon’s video offerings.
3. The offering will be available nationwide, not merely to Verizon customers.
4. Using Redbox helps the joint venture get access to new releases as content companies are trying to add more “windows” to the movie release process. Windowing is what content companies use to spread out the time between a movie released in theaters, when it hits rentals stores and when it makes its way to other services such as premium TV channels. The general thinking is this increases profits for each movie, but opinion is divided on that, and consumers hate it.
5. Verizon is counting on its existing relationship as a pay TV provider to get more content to the joint venture.
6. Whatever the end product looks like, it will launch in the second half of this year.

Given these facts, as scant as they are, it’s easy to see the threat to Netflix, as people could view the two offerings as fairly interchangeable as long as the pricing is competitive and the content is relatively equal. But without knowing about pricing or the content, the deal still has the potential to be a win for Verizon, given video is huge bandwidth suck on wireline and wireless networks. Netflix traffic was estimated to take up 20 percent of U.S. broadband traffic during peak hours according to Sandvine in the fall of 2010.

For Verizon, a streaming joint venture has three benefits. One, if it makes money from the service, that’s an additional revenue stream as well as a way to capture some value from its customers who cut the cord. Two, if the service can really deliver a video product that consumers love and will use, it will help drive traffic across Verizon’s networks. Customers in the FiOS areas will have a reason to sign up for the service if they haven’t already, while the joint venture will help drive traffic to mobile devices and other areas of the country. Verizon has a business selling bandwidth on 100 gigabit per second backbone pipes as well as leasing its fiber to cell phone providers to use as mobile backhaul.

Finally the joint venture gives Verizon a seat at the table with content companies as the industry tries to find new economic models based on the reality of an IP infrastructure that can deliver any content to anyone, anywhere. Sure, content companies are fighting the future with windowing and complicated rights agreements, while ISPs are trying to protect their business with broadband caps, but the future is coming, and Verizon is trying to get in on the ground floor rather than watch it pass it by.

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Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we? If the LG Spectrum looks familiar, you’re not imagining things. It may have been a highlight at the company’s CES press event last month, but the handset bears more than a passing resemblance to its older, more excitingly-named sibling, the LG Nitro HD — and, by extension, the globe-trotting Optimus LTE. Beneath their 4.5-inch IPS displays, you’ll find virtually identical guts, including a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1,830mAh battery and 4GB of internal storage, coupled with a 16GB microSD. There are some important distinctions here, of course — namely, changes to the phone’s shell and, of course, a shift from AT&T to Verizon. So, how does world-weary Optimus fare from its jump to Big Red? Find the answer past the break.

Continue reading LG Spectrum review

LG Spectrum review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Karaoke has a new best friend, and its name is LTE. At CES, TouchTunes and Verizon Wireless unveiled its new digital jukebox with a networked Karaoke feature, allowing bar and restaurant patrons to not only pull their favorite songs out of the airwaves but sing along to them as well. No DJ necessary – you reserve your performance slots and pick your songs on a smartphone app, adding another mobile element to the mix. Verizon is not responsible for the heckling you receive when you miss the high notes (or the low and middle ones, for that matter).

Verizon had a few new LTE smartphones to show off at CES, but at the show it seemed absolutely determined to inset its new network’s tendrils into as many non-phone devices as possible. We already know about the connected car, but here are a few of the more interesting examples:

• Diebold showed off a concept ATM, which uses 4G connectivity not only to authorize transactions, but send detailed diagnostic and trouble reports to the companies that maintain the cash machines. The enhanced connection even allows those companies to fix non-mechanical problems remotely. The ATM could be stuck anywhere, requiring only a power source to operate and it could even call security if a suspicious character starts fiddling with it. Now if only Verizon could figure out a way to send the actual cash over the airwaves…
• In addition to the Karaoke jukebox, TouchTunes showed off its forthcoming LTE-connected photo booth, which not only allows you to capture your evening of drunken debauchery in still images, but also instantly share those images on Facebook and Twitter before the inevitable feelings of shame kick in.
• Alcatel-Lucent’s ng Connect and VisionMax demoed an LTE-connected shopping kiosk that will use near-field communications to pull up a 3D avatar loaded into your phone. You can then dress that avatar up in the different outfits and accessories available at that store. Assuming the avatar is a reasonable facsimile of your body type – sorry, no centaurs – you could get a general idea of what you would look like in the store’s clothes without actually trying them on. You can even use Vidyo’s HD video conferencing technology to connect to on-call fashion consultant who will praise you on your impeccable fashion sense.
• Verizon even embedded LTE into a VGo robots, allowing its booth workers to talk up CES attendees remotely using VGo’s remote telepresence capabilities. Many of the robotic assistants available today link to the network through Wi-Fi, which works great if you happen to be in range of an access point. Verizon is betting that these remote physical avatars will want a broader range. Maybe they won’t go to lunch with the boss, but they can at least make it to the water cooler for office chit chat.

Microphone image courtesy of Flickr user LifeSupercharger
Avatar image courtesy of Flickr user Winter Jefferson

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Verizon originally framed the convenience fee as a way to cover costs for single payments. It was supposed to go into effect on Jan. 15. But many, including my colleague Kevin Fitchard, saw the fee as a way to direct people to pay bills through their preferred channels including AutoPay, which is one of a number of payment methods that would not require a fee.

“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.

Verizon may have been motivated by news that the Federal Communications Commission was also looking into the fee. “On behalf of American consumers, we’re concerned about Verizon’s actions and are looking into the matter,” the FCC said just hours before Verizon reversed course.

Verizon already has to deal with questions about recent LTE outages. And the fact that it was introducing a new fee that seemed to penalize its own customers did not go over well with consumers, some of whom brought up comparisons to Bank of America’s failed debit card fee.

It’s nice to see that Verizon was listening to consumers and reacted quickly to its overreach. But it should have known that a fee like this wouldn’t have gone over well. Score another one for the Internet.

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Happy The Engadget Podcast New Year’s, everybody! You know what to do. Don’t forget to date your checks right.

Host: Brian Heater
Guests: Richard Lawler, Terrence O’Brien
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: We Found Love

04:47 – Verizon experiencing nationwide data outage? (update: Verizon confirms)
09:00 – Verizon confirms latest LTE outage restored, again claims 3G operated normally
12:28 – Toshiba Thrive 7″ review
21:10 – Tech’s biggest misfires of 2011

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Engadget Podcast 270 – 12.30.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Haberman said that LTE is still a brand new wireless technology and Verizon was the first global operator to launch it on a large scale. That means Verizon will be the first operator to encounter the bugs and glitches hiding within any new technology. “Being the pioneers, we’re going to experience some growing pains,” Haberman said. “These issues we’ve been experiencing are certainly regrettable but they were unforeseeable.”

All three outages were caused by problems in Verizon’s service delivery core — in telecom-speak called the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) — which replaces the old signaling architectures used in 2G and 3G networks, Haberman said. While IMS has been around for some time, Verizon’s is the first implementation in an LTE network and it has continued to be a problem spot ever since April, when a software bug originating deep within the IMS core led to a complete failure, kicking LTE customers off both Verizon’s 3G and 4G networks nationwide.

Verizon fixed that software bug, but new IMS glitches have reared their heads – none as big as the April’s outage, but all taken seriously by Verizon nonetheless, Haberman said. The first outage on Dec. 7 was caused by the failure of a back-up communications database. The second, last week, was the result of an IMS element not responding properly, while Wednesday’s outage was caused by two IMS elements not communicating properly, Haberman said.

So while the LTE radio network was working just fine, customers weren’t able to connect to it since the IMS network simply wasn’t able to recognize to them. Verizon was able to force phones to stop trying to access 4G and fall back on its 3G CDMA network after it identified an IMS failure. But before the switch-over took effect some customers were left without 3G, as their phones kept trying to log into the 4G network.

Haberman said once each problem was fixed, it never recurred. Every subsequent outage is a result of a new bug, and it just so happens that December was the month many of these bugs chose to reveal themselves, Haberman said. Veizon’s IMS systems are a complex network of databases, servers, routers, gateways and policy managers supplied by multiple vendors. Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, Acme Packet and Tekelec all provide different parts, but Haberman declined to identify which particular elements or which particular vendors were responsible for the problems. In fact, Haberman defended Verizon’s vendors saying that they were experiencing the same LTE growing pains as Verizon.

While Verizon won’t promise that no more outages will occur, Haberman said it has taken measures to ensure that they’re minimized when they do happen in the future. He said he’s begun geographically segmenting the LTE network, so if a software bug does break out it can be isolated to a particular region or market instead of spreading nationwide. Verizon is also upgrading all of its software and cutting down on the signaling clutter running over its IMS grid.

“Our goal is to ensure that our 4G networks meets the same high standard that our 3G network does,” Haberman said. “We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.”

As I’ve said before Verizon needs to be cut a little slack. LTE isn’t some upgrade like HSPA. It’s a fundamental rethinking of every aspect of the wireless network: moving from hardware to software driven base stations, evolving network service delivery systems from old hierarchical voice-centric chains of gateways to new flat IP architectures, and replacing old copper backhaul links with fiber Ethernet to the tower. And as the first to launch LTE, Verizon will be the first operator to encounter its faults. I’m surprised we hadn’t seen a string of outages before December.

But Verizon does have to uphold its claims as having the country’s “most reliable network.” Many customers pay a big premium to use Verizon’s service versus its competitors’ precisely because of its network performance and coverage. Three outages – even if they were intermittent – during the biggest month of the year for phone sales and activations will hardly help that reputation. Verizon must have had hundreds of thousands of activations in the last week due to Christmas gift giving. Many of those customers probably turned on their phones to discover they had no 4G service.

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Non-gaming apps on Android generated 91.5 million downloads in November compared to 33.4 million for games. Meanwhile on the iPhone, games in November generated 71.6 million downloads while other apps received 25.6 million downloads.

Android was actually even more tilted in favor of apps in 2010, with 116 of the top 150 apps being non-games. The iPhone used to be more balanced with 79 of the top apps being games compared to 71 percent for non-gaming apps.

Now, all but one of the top downloaded publishers on iPhone are gamemakers except for Instagram maker Burbn. On Android, the top 25 developers on Android were a mix of gaming and non-gaming publishers with Google at the head of the class. Google only had two apps on Android Market in 2010, Google Maps and Google Sky, but now the company has many more available on Android.

Here’s the list of the top 25 downloaded publishers on Android in 2011 according to Xyologic:
Google, Facebook, Rovio, Adobe, DroidHen Casual, Outfit7, Magma Mobile, Glu Mobile, Go Dev Team, Kittehface Software,Skype, Notes, Nikolay Ananiev, Swiss Codemonkeys, NHN Corporation, Yahoo, Handcent, Pandora, Al Factory Limited,Kaufcom Games Apps Widgets, Verizon Wireless, Runnergames, Backflip Studios, Polarbit.

And here’s the list of the top 25 downloaded publishers on the iPhone in 2011:

Glu Mobile, Gameloft, Big Fish Games, Rovio, Capcom, Chilingo, Storm8/(TeamLava), Outfit7, Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts BV, Gamevil, Halfbrick Studios, DeNa/(Backflip Studios/Ngmoco), Zynga/Newtoy, NaturalMotion, Pocket Gem/(Streetview Labs), Tencent, NimbleBit, PopCap, Playforge, Clickgamer, Com2uS, Burbn, Orangenose Studios.

This might not be news to some developers, who are aware of the relative strengths of each platform. But it’s interesting to again see how each platform differs, where the trends are going and where the opportunities lie. The iPhone is really becoming a powerful gaming device but Android is more of a broad provider of utilities and services.

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Continue reading Cricket LTE goes live in Tucson, introduces the Huawei Boltz

Cricket LTE goes live in Tucson, introduces the Huawei Boltz originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon Galaxy Nexus spills its guts, gets Ice Cream Sandwich all over the floor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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