With Internet TV, cable wins even if it loses

Americans, little by little, are cutting the proverbial cord on cable television. But that doesn't mean they're breaking up with their cable companies.

In addition to controlling most of the paid TV market in the U.S., cable companies are also poised to dominate the broadband market. This means that even when people drop their pricey cable TV packages, they're still likely to pay the cable company for access to the Internet, which is used to deliver the video streams to their TVs. For cable operators, it's a "heads we win; tails we win" situation.

Neil Smits, president of Comcast's cable division, admitted as much during the company's third quarter conference call earlier this week.

"If over-the-top comes into being, there is more consumption of online video," Smits said. "We feel very good about our capacity. That is one of the reasons we have invested so heavily in DOCSIS 3 (the cable technology that allows operators to provide download broadband speeds up to 160Mbps). We feel that that big pipe into the house is important and we will continue to invest in speed increases like that, like DOCSIS 3. We think it's an important component and the consumers continue to consume more bandwidth."

So what does that mean for average consumers? For those of us left behind with traditional cable services, it could well mean that the cable companies increase fees in order to pay for the contracts they have with content producers like the TV networks. For those who do leave cable TV, there's a very good chance they're paying the same provider for a different service--broadband access.

"People should not think of cable companies as media companies," said Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Wall Street equities research firm Sanford C. Bernstein. "They are infrastructure companies. And they are in business to make a return on their physical infrastructure."

But instead of simply raising prices on cable broadband, Moffett said it's more likely that cable operators would move toward usage-based pricing. That way consumers who use more bandwidth to stream movies and TV shows end up paying more per month for service than people who may be getting their video from the traditional cable TV network.

Time Warner has tested usage-based billing, but the company faced a huge backlash from consumers. Still, Moffett said that broadband service providers may have no choice as bandwidth-intensive video streaming services like Netflix become more popular. Sandvine recently issued a report showing that Netflix traffic already accounts for more than 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak times on U.S. broadband networks.

Of course, the number of people today who are cutting their cable cord and watching TV from the Internet is still small. But people are cutting the cable cord. Just ask Comcast, which went on the defensive earlier this week explaining why it lost a net of about 56,000 TV subscribers during the third quarter of 2010. (Comcast announced it had lost 275,000 basic cable subscriptions during the third quarter. Meanwhile it added 219,000 digital TV subscribers. This means that it lost a net of about 56,000 video subscribers during the quarter.)

"All our exit surveys have seen almost no impact (from people switching to Internet TV)," Smits said during the conference call. "We have seen customers who are disconnecting and not going to a competitor. That small number of customers appear to be going over-the-air (using antennas to get free TV) much more than any over-the-top impact (TV from the Net)."

Even though Comcast denies these people are flocking to sites such as Netflix, they have admitted that the weak economy is driving them toward less expensive forms of entertainment. As more content deals are struck with companies such as Netflix, people looking to save a buck on TV, and who also have a broadband connection, will likely gravitate toward the Web for TV and movie viewing.

Netflix, which is just one of many over-the-top video options available to consumers, is quickly expanding its customer base. During the third quarter the company saw its subscriber base jump 52 percent compared to a year ago.

Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings said on the company's earnings call earlier this month that the streaming offer was definitely fueling subscriber growth. Netflix said 66 percent of its subscribers used its streaming content during the third quarter, up from 61 percent in the second quarter and 41 percent during the same quarter a year ago.

Broadband benefits

But regardless of whether this trend continues, Comcast and other cable companies are likely to benefit since they also control the broadband connection into the home. The phone companies' biggest weapon in the broadband fight has been their new fiber-based networks: U-verse for AT&T and Fios for Verizon. These services have competed head-to-head with cable in markets where they're available. But neither AT&T nor Verizon is covering its entire territory with these expensive network upgrades, which means that many customers without access to U-verse or Fios services have the choice of slower DSL or cable. As the numbers show, many are choosing cable.

During the second quarter of 2010, cable captured a record 90 percent of all new broadband additions, according to a report Moffett wrote.

"Cable's broadband dominance opens the door for renewed share gains in the adjacent video market."

--Craig Moffett, senior analyst, Sanford C. Bernstein.

"Cable's broadband dominance opens the door for renewed share gains in the adjacent video market," Moffett said in his report. "Cable companies could simply increase their a la carte broadband prices (since in most markets, households have no other choice for sufficiently fast broadband) and simultaneously drop their video pricing, leaving the price of the bundle unchanged, to recapture video share."

He pointed to an example of this in Albany, N.Y., where Time Warner Cable raised its broadband price by 10 percent for its Internet-only customers to a rate just $2 below its promotional bundled rate for both services. The Internet-only price increased to $54.95 from $49.95. The 12-month promotional rate for video and data was $56.95.

Even without changing its pricing, cable companies are starting to see consumers choose more expensive services with faster speeds. Smits said during the company conference call that more than 20 percent of Comcast's customers subscribe to higher speed tiers of services. He considers the "blast level" services to be 8 Mbps and above. As a result the company saw an increase in the average revenue per user of its broadband services. And with faster 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps speeds on the way, the company has a lot of leg room to up-sell broadband consumers.

Of course, Comcast and the rest of the cable industry are not giving up on their TV business. This week Comcast relaunched Xfinity TV, the company's TV-everywhere on-demand video service. It provides access to 150,000 movies, TV shows, and other premium HD content online and can be viewed on various different devices such as laptops and tablets. The service is available to digital video customers who will get an ID and access to the service at no extra charge. By the end of this year, the company expects to have the service available on Apple iPhones and iPads as well as Android tablets.

The company is also improving its user guide and constantly adding new titles to its video-on-demand service. For the time being, it does not see Netflix or any other Internet-based TV service as a threat.

"I think even Netflix on their own call felt that they were more complementary than anything else to the existing marketplace," Brian Roberts, Comcast CEO said during the conference call. "I think you are also seeing an expansion of usage as you can use more devices. We are very excited about devices like the iPad. It gives us a chance to now start from scratch with a user interface that is using Web technology, not cable box technology."

Firefox 4 release slips to 2011

Mozilla has pushed back the planned Firefox 4 release to 2011, a delay that's no surprise given the difficulties in releasing the first full-featured beta of the open-source browser--but that also gives breathing room for several competitors.

Mozilla had hoped to release Firefox 4 in 2010, but a newly updated Firefox 4 schedule shows the first release candidate arriving in early 2011.

"Development on Firefox 4 has not slowed down, and strong progress is being made daily. However, based on the delays in completing the 'feature complete' Beta 7 milestone against which our add-on developers and third-party software developers can develop, as well as considering the amount of work remaining to prepare Firefox 4 for final release, we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule," said Mike Beltzner, vice president of engineering for Firefox, in a mailing list message yesterday. "The frequent beta releases have been extremely helpful in identifying compatibility issues with existing web content, so we plan on continuing to release beta milestones through the end of December. Our estimate is now that release candidate builds will ship in early 2011, with a final release date close behind."

Six beta versions have arrived in recent weeks, but Firefox 4 beta 7 hasn't appeared, despite more than six weeks of frenzied development. One big issue holding up release has been the integration of Firefox's older Tracemonkey engine for running Web-based JavaScript programs and the new JaegerMonkey engine that draws on Google's V8 engine in Chrome.

Mozilla's arewefastyet.com site shows progress matching Safari and Chrome JavaScript execution speed, but new JavaScript engines can be tough to tune. Several JavaScript bugs are blocking Firefox 4 beta 7.

The JaegerMonkey JavaScript engine in Firefox 4, whose performance is shown here in purple, has proven competitive against the engines in Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome, as measured by the SunSpider and V8 benchmark suites. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Mozilla)

Among other changes in Firefox 4 are a revamped interface, a Bing search option, hardware-accelerated graphics, the new Jetpack foundation for add-ons to customize the browser, an HTML5 parser to interpret Web pages with the new standard for creating them, and WebGL for 3D Web graphics.

And presenting a major new front in the browser wars, Firefox 4 also works on Google's Android operating system for phones and other mobile devices. Today, the cutting edge in that market is dominated by the WebKit engine used on Android, Apple's iOS, and several other mobile operating systems.

Releasing the new version is important for Mozilla. Firefox remains the second most popular browser as measured by Net Applications usage statistics, but the browser market hasn't been as competitive as it is now in more than a decade.

Firefox and Opera kept the independent-browser fires burning during the years when Microsoft's Internet Explorer was dominant but somewhat dormant after its victory in the first browser wars of the 1990s.

In September's browser usage, IE dipped back below 60 percent share and Chrome gained 0.5 percentage points of usage.

(Credit: Net Applications)

Web technologies started picking up steam again, with Apple's Safari engineers joining the development effort begun by Opera and Firefox, and Firefox started wrenching significant share away from IE. But in the last two years, Google Chrome burst onto the scene, rising rapidly to third place and flattening Firefox's growth.

And even more recently, Microsoft began fighting back again with IE9, currently released in a first beta version. This browser was developed more in the open, letting outside developers get more of a say in its workings, and features many new modern abilities. Perhaps chief among them is ambitious hardware acceleration.

Firefox 4 has hardware acceleration, too, and unlike IE9 offers it for Mac OS X, Linux, and most important the vast number of Windows XP systems still in use.

Firefox 4 beta 1 for Android was powerful enough to run the full JavaScript-intense desktop version of Gmail, including the priority inbox. However, in this case, the Web application fell back to its more basic HTML interface.

Spotify closing in on label deals

The four major record labels are warming up to Spotify, the popular European streaming music service trying to launch in the United States.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and his staff are closer than ever to licensing agreements with the labels and launching in the U.S.

Spotify is still without signed contracts to license music from any top label and there are still numerous points to be negotiated, but the company has never been closer to finalizing deals than now, said multiple sources with knowledge of the talks.

One of the ways that Spotify has stirred the labels is by offering big money advances, the sources said. The amount could not be verified. Spokespeople for Spotify and the labels either were not immediately available for comment or declined to comment.

Spotify managers have promised to launch in the U.S. before the end of the year and up until the past week music executives were very skeptical about the company's chances of meeting that deadline. Spotify has already blown two prior launch deadlines.

Spotify's inability to reach licensing agreements with the labels can be traced to several factors. Some of the labels have lost faith in business models built on giving songs away to consumers free of charge. For some music execs, too many start-ups have attempted this and failed to continue licensing them. The list includes SpiralFrog, Ruckus, and Imeem.

There are also questions about Spotify's ability to turn users of the service's free offering into paying customers. In addition to the free service, Spotify charges for premium service. The rate the company converts free users into paying customers is in the single digits, insiders said. The labels want something closer to 15 percent.

There is little doubt among label honchos about Spotify's ability to attract a large following. The site's user experience has received glowing reviews, even from the likes of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But if the company fails at generating revenue from those users, there is a potential for Spotify to cut into sales from proven revenue producers, such as Apple and Amazon.

So, execs at the major record companies want enough upfront money to mitigate some of of the risks they believe are involved in licensing Spotify. What has impressed some at the labels is the willingness of Spotify's leadership to pay the advances and bet on its own ability to create a winner in the United States.

Test Drive Unlimited 2

If you don't like cars, I guess all these car games are quite hard to tell apart. If you do, however, you'll know that you're not dealing with a single genre so much as dozens of the things.
All the best games about cars are a little bit different: Burnout is both highly evolved and utterly, utterly depraved, while Ridge Racer is a light-streaked lucid dream where you ghost around corners and send out surprisingly gentle showers of sparks, and Forza Motorsport aims for sheer breadth of simulation options. Gran Turismo? Gran Turismo is part museum and part trip to the dentist: a clinical environment where softly-spoken experts have gathered to venerate and protect anything that comes with a camshaft.
So where does Test Drive fit in? Good question, and it's one that Unlimited 2 seeks to answer in some pretty interesting ways. The first Unlimited was a bit like an MMO and a bit like a summer holiday: a plush ramble (that's possible, right?) around an upmarket Hawaiian island where you took on challenges, launched impromptu rivalries with other players and saved up for weird new motors.
The sequel sticks to the same basic framework but elaborates on the options and player freedom. It also dials up the opulence to the point where the whole thing approaches soap opera levels. Not the grim British soaps which are all about getting your burger van impounded while someone stubs cigarettes out on your arm, mind, but one of those weird, upbeat foreign ones, obsessed with beautiful rich people hanging out on yachts and gesturing with half-filled whisky tumblers as they stand in front of picture windows. The nutty, aspirational ones.

Eden plans to evolve the game with DLC - and it will all be based on things the community is asking for.

At times, in fact, you may wonder how far the Eden Studios team plans on pushing the concept of simulation. TDU2 takes such delight in the luxurious world it's piecing together that it's happy to let you get out from behind the wheel and leave the car in the garage for long stretches of time should you wish to do so. It's fine - the garages look like mansions anyway, so your cars won't be lonely, and there's plenty of stuff for you to do on two feet as you buy houses, move your furniture about and fiddle with your avatar.
While you may not have signed up to a racing game so you could wrestle with corner sofas and flat-screen tellies, you can't fault the options available. You can tweak every aspect of your avatar's appearance, buy a range of increasingly over-the-top homes, add pictures and manage the stats of your MyLife profile, and invite your online friends over to hang out in your imaginary living room. It's a fascinating prospect, even if many people will stick to simply customising the cars (a wide range of decals and paint-jobs are available), and TDU2's social focus means you won't be mistaking it for any other driving game on the market.

Car interiors are much improved: you can see right down to the stitching, and there's a new texture effect on the leather.

There's a hint of Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball to proceedings occasionally - not in terms of creepy access to some unlikely ladies, but in the way that an aspirational lifestyle has been warped into a charming kind of parody. TDU2 really wants you to explore the world of the rich car enthusiast, and it's a strategy that percolates right down to the point of purchase. Eden doesn't want you buying cars or messing with their engines inside boring menu trees - it wants you to be able to walk into actual showrooms and garages and enjoy the browsing experience in three dimensions.
A lot of this could come off like Home - come to think of it, quite a lot of it could come off like Animal Crossing - but the car culture setting ensures that it feels like a good fit with the rest of the game. Besides, all of the social aspects are tied into the new progression system, where you can move through the narrative not just by racing but also by doing other things like building up your own status.
Avatars come in handy in the seamlessly integrated online options, as you form racing clubs with other players, deck out your clubhouse - okay, I've made it sound like a tree fort, whereas the one I was shown had parquet flooring and up-lighters - and hang around inside it with friends. More importantly, your club can polish its double-dangerous driving skills and take on rival clubs in eight-player races and other challenges.
As a sweetener to getting involved in clubs, Eden's promising treats. There are some very special cars that can only be purchased by clubs, and the whole thing has the chummy air of an MMO guild to it as you approach the 30-person club limit. It's a fitting addition for a game which already feels a bit like an RPG as you tool around an open world, taking on missions and watching your stats go up.
The other means of player progression are far more intimately involved with sitting behind a wheel. You can level up through exploring the game's huge environments and making discoveries (stumble across enough wrecks and you'll be able to bolt together entirely new vehicles), while good old car-collecting ties deeply into the game's preoccupations with luxury and consumption.
Beneath all the new distractions it's worth remembering that this is also a driving game. The good news is it's looking like an excellent one. Eight-player races promise to be punchy and hectic, damage has been included for this instalment - while it won't affect performance, it certainly looks good, ranging from paint scrapes to actual pieces of your car falling off - and car models have been overhauled with far more detailed interiors and a nice new metallic paint effect amongst other tweaks.
Most importantly, the handling has been extensively redesigned to give each car its own personality. It's astonishing the difference this makes: an Audi TT hugs the road with a polite rumbling sound, while a Ford Mustang can be fishtailed all over the shop as its V-8 engine booms. You don't need to be told that one is a classic muscle car and the other is a jumped-up graduation present for the daughters of Tory MPs: just driving them will fill you in about that.

The addition of off-road courses is based on how many players wanted to explore in original. You can still go off-off-road too, though, if you like the feel of grass and rocks against your chassis. Um.

There's definitely no shortage of tracks to drive them on. TDU2 moves the action to Ibiza, a world of palm trees and hi-spec apartment complexes, which has been purposefully riddled with hundreds of miles of roadways for you to blast around. Missions lurk every few metres by the looks of it, and creating your own courses is as easy as pulling up the map and dropping in waypoints. If you come up with a track you're particularly happy with, you can share it very easily, and place wagers on people beating your own completion time.
At 380 square kilometres - and with 930 kilometres of road - there's plenty to explore, and the game is at pains to break up the environments into distinct ecologies ranging from beaches to forests. A new day-and-night cycle is freshly in place and is already bathing the landscape in bleached morning sun one moment, cinematic moonlight the next, while a dynamic weather system means that sudden lightning showers will change the way your car handles as well as adding a bit of drama. Roads are divided between asphalt and off-road tracks, and there's a new class of off-road vehicles to get muddy in.

Would.

When you tire of Ibiza - my younger sister did several years ago - you can unlock its airport and blast back to Hawaii where the entire island of Oahu has been retooled from the first game with the new progression system in mind. It's an incredibly generous touch, and there are plenty of new missions waiting for you in the old neighbourhood, threaded alongside hundreds of miles of new roadways.
Eden's referring to its game as a "luxury lifestyle universe", and for once that's a sound bite that fits perfectly. This is something approaching lifestyle software, in the way it grants you virtual access to the kind of world that probably only otherwise exists in some of the limper Puff Daddy videos, in its options to buy not just Ferraris and Mustangs, but yachts and Bauhaus-styled mansions in which to store them.

Gran Turismo may have more cars, but only Test Drive works such a bizarre fantasy around owning them. The result is something that already feels like a true original, and while the social aspects are pleasantly bonkers, the fact that it's all tied into the cars makes it more meaningful. Besides, it's hard to complain when the core of the game has been so confidently improved upon.

Super 8 (2011)

 

(Click on image to download poster)

Super 8 (2011)

Starring: Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Gabriel Basso
Director: J.J. Abrams

U.S. Release Date: June 10, 2011

THEY SAY
1979, the U.S. Air Force closed a section of Area 51. All materials were to be transported to a secure facility in Ohio.
From executive producer Steven Spielberg and director J.J. Abrams. Next summer, it arrives . . .
WE SAY
Super 8 is the super secret project collaboration between J.J. Abrams (who directs) and Steven Spielberg (who produces).

Contrary to earlier reports it is not Cloverfield 2, instead it seems to be a creature feature in the $45 to $50 million range. Most reports have it that it involves “ordinary people encountering something decidedly extraordinary.” That could be anything from a UFO sighting to a tax refund, who knows?

Below is the trailer which has been attached to Iron Man 2 in the States. The entire thing seems to be cribbed from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it’s OK for a director to plagiarize his producer because then it’s a homage, right?

Expect more near hysteric Internet hype in the near future of the Cloverfield variety . . . (check out the official trailer below).

Galaxy Tab coming to T-Mobile first, Nov. 10

If you can't wait to get your hands on the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet, T-Mobile will officially kick off all U.S. sales on November 10, according to a Samsung-issued press release. T-Mobile will sell the 7-inch Galaxy Tab for $399 after $50 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract and monthly rate plan.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab will not carry HSPA+ speeds, as Samsung initially stated in their release. Instead, the Tab will support HSPA 7.2.
T-Mobile will load up its Galaxy Tab with the Samsung Media Hub, Qik's video chat app (to take advantage of that front-facing camera), Kindle for Android, and Slacker Radio's streaming music app.
After T-Mobile's day-one advantage, competition will be hot and heavy, with all four major U.S. carriers beginning to sell the iPad competitor within days of one other. Verizon will open its cash registers on November 11, selling the Android 2.2 hardware to subscribers for $599 without a contract. They will be followed by Sprint on November 14, which will peddle the Galaxy Tab for a third of the price, $399, with a two-year contract.
T-Mobile's announcement marks the third of the Big Four carriers releasing prices and availability. We'll let you know when we hear from AT&T.

Rolex best watch

For many, many years, Rolex has been renowned for making the worlds most exquisite, beautiful, and expensive watches. Yes, Rolex watches are very expensive, but there is certainly value for your money when you take into account they are considered valuable pieces of art, and rarely lose value.
Right now is one of the best times to find great deals on brand new, slightly used and vintage Rolex watches on eBay.
Here is a listing of our Top 10 Rolex watches. We've attached some helpful links to help you find great deals on these watches on eBay, search powered by GetItNext:

Rolex Submariner:

Rolex Explorer:

Rolex Daytona:

Rolex Sea Dweller:

Rolex Special Edition :

Rolex Datejust :

Rolex Yachtmaster:

Rolex Pearlmaster:

Rolex Lady Perpetual:

Rolex GMT Master :