Posted on 12/25/2012 3:07:32 PM PST by delacoert
Most television will be streamed over the Internet in the coming years, said Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku, maker of the streaming TV device of the same name.
The question is how Internet-delivered content will get to your TV and who will deliver it, Wood told CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Right now, set-top devices like Roku and Apple TV and Internet-enabled Smart TVs are best positioned to take advantage of the sea change, said Wood.
"Those are the two ways that most people are going to be watching television that's distributed over the Internet," said Wood.
In the set-top battle, Roku and Apple are neck and neck right now. The two devices account for roughly 90 percent of the stream-to-television market. As of April, Roku had sold about 3 million Roku players since the company was founded in 2002. The rest of 2012 has been positive, said Wood.
"We were selling a Roku every second on Black Friday. We're having our best quarter ever this year, and the platform is doing really well," he said.
Stream-to-television devices currently have an advantage over Smart TVs, said Wood. Whereas most Smart TVs deliver a few marquee services, such as Netflix and Hulu, Roku gives customers access to nearly 700 streaming channels, according to the company.
However, the lines between Roku and its Smart TV competition could begin to blur. A number of Roku-ready televisions will debut at CES, the preeminent technology trade show, this January.
"We think there's a huge opportunity to expand our platform from streaming players, where we're a leader today, into TVs," said Wood.
While Wood believes that the future of television is on the Internet, he said it will be some time before consumers give up the bundled services offered by cable and satellite providers. But as these the incumbents face competition from streaming services, he said they may begin to offer more options and cheaper services.
The next generation, he says, is a virtual MSO, or multiple system operator. Such a system would combine on-demand services such as Netflix and Hulu with traditional subscription fee service for programmed TV — all via the Internet, rather than cable or satellite.
"That's the big question. I think that's coming, but whether it's next year or not we'll have to see," said Wood.
Now yur talkin.
Netflix and Hulu are definitely worth the monthly payments they charge but I wish Netflix would have more available streaming (most of their movies you still have to get the DVD mailed to you).
I must be missing something, because I haven’t seen anything that tells me a particular movie can only be seen if we mail it to you. I’m sure there is an explanation, no?
1. VERY fast download speeds in the 40 megabits/second range or higher for everybody.
2. Much bigger server farms to handle all the traffic.
3. Switching to IPv6 to handle all the additional DNS addressing from everybody streaming their TV programming to the home.
4. A complete and total rethink of how to deliver TV content to the home--the current cable/satellite delivery method using channels may have to be rendered obsolete.
It's a change that could take 15-20 years to complete.
And unfortunately Comcast charges about $70 per month for Internet only. Yeah, they make claims of $19 per month but that is for only new customers for 6 months. Then they jack it up.
Is it broadcase in HD? Can I still get the DirectTV channels I want?
Basically the Netflix people will mail out the DVDs to me when I put them to queue. If available streaming, they have a red button that says “PLAY” and that way I know not to put to queue but to simply put to “instant”. Then they show up on my ROKU.
Basically the Netflix people will mail out the DVDs to me when I put them to queue. If available streaming, they have a red button that says “PLAY” and that way I know not to put to queue but to simply put to “instant”. Then they show up on my ROKU.
You’re probably only looking at the Watch Instantly section. That ribbon bar at the top defaults to the one on the left (I’m talking the web browser interface now), which is just the stream. If you hit the one on the right there’s the DVDs section, most of those are not also available on the stream.
I really don’t know.. You would have to look at what is available.
I know that Netflix is in HD which you can get over a Roku box. By subscription.
A computer such as a Mac Mini like I use bring a whole lot of TV to my Big screen. I am sure there are several cheap versions of small PC that can do the same thing. I have ROKU and Apple TV and a Smart TV, they all pale in comparison to my Mini.
Yeah media PCs are doable. But it still requires more effort than cable. You’ve got to have the second PC, make sure it has the right outbound connectors, be connected to the internet, find all the stuff. And of course you have to do it all yourself. Even most of my co-workers in software don’t bother with that, too much work, cable box, cable guy, easy peasy. For all my streaming to the TV I use by blu-ray player. Yeah it’s a lot more limited than my PC, it’s also zero effort. In theory I can go from the PC to the blu-ray through DLNA, but even that’s more work than I like, if I want to go take something from the PC and see it on my TV I sneakernet it with a thumbdrive, less overhead.
We just purchased 2 ROKU devices and after bowl game season is over (one last fling with ESPN!), we are going to kick Cox Cable to the curb. I am so tired of paying a huge bill for a bunch of channels we don’t watch and don’t want.
The only thing I will miss is not being able to get all the college football games. Maybe there will be a fix for that in the future, but for now, we are willing to give something up to get rid of cable.
My husband says cable also slaps a sneaky tax on us by donating money to the public schools and other community entities. That is passed on to consumers, and the local politicians, who grant cable companies their monopolies, don’t have to be seen as having raised taxes.
That under the table graft to politicians was definitely there in the old days. Not sure that it is anymore because people have options with U-Verse and satellite so not as much value in being a “monopoly” cable franchise in a town.
Plug in HDMI cable turn computer on seems pretty simple to me. I have an HDMI switch to let me easily work through all the devices I have attached to my TV.
Like most everyone else I have cable because it costs little more to get the whole package in order to get Broadband.
I use an EyeTV to access and record TV shows. Since Cable Companies have caught on to all that and went digital you must have a cable decoder of some kind to use their streams.
There is no perfect solution yet, but since I use My big screen mostly to do web browsing it is a better solution for me.
Probably a big iPad would do as well. :)
I have my wireless keyboard and touchpad mounted on a lap board so makes it easy.
By the way you can get very long HDMI cables, I had a 30 footer hooked up for a while, but declining Vision forced me to move the TV closer.
It all depends on how you have it setup. If you’ve got a dedicated media PC then the out is easy, but the in is problematic as you’re now basically running a network since both your regular PC and your media PC need to see the internet, plus of course all your maintenance and OS updates have to happen on two machines. If you’re not going to run a dedicated media PC you need to figure out the dual monitor setup on your main PC.
And you stumbled on another problem, what if the number of devices you want to plug in outnumber your TV’s inputs? Now you’ve got to add a switch.
All of this is fine for the “technological elite”. But there’s a reason that the last word of that overused phrase is “elite”. The masses don’t know the technology well enough to handle that stuff. Out in the regular people world where folks have a hard time remember which input the DVD is hooked up to a setup like yours would just be a headache. If I tried to make a setup like yours to my mother she wouldn’t be able to use it. Heck half my friends couldn’t use it. And even those that could chose not to because it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I could, and I started to, and decided that was 5 times more work than TV is worth to me.
There actually is the perfect solution: cable. It does exactly what the masses want, it’s easy to setup, and the cable company will even set it up for you. That’s why the rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.
yet we, as consumers, have never been charged more for it. Even “unlimited” plans have limits, thanks for throttling. Non-unlimited plans make the telco’s very happy. They can charge big $$$ for something that costs them next to nothing.
Bandwidth yes, throughput? Not so much. But keep defending the telcos as they shove there hands further and further into your wallet, while returning less and less ACTUAL data for your $$$.
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