Cordkillers 59 – Critically Acclaimed

Cordkillers / February 23rd, 2015

Amazon green lights all our favorite pilots, why we don’t need a universal remote, and how cable can actually be for Cordkillers.

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CordKillers: Ep. 59 – Critically Acclaimed
Recorded: February, 23 2015
Guest: None

Intro Video 

Primary Target

  • Amazon green-lights The Man in the High Castle TV series, also Mad Dogs
    –    Amazon Green Lights 5 out of 13 pilots
    – Later this year and in 2016
    -Man in the High Castle (Most watched so far)
    -Mad Dogs
    -The New Yorker Presents
    -Young adult shows
    -Just Add Magic (based on book by Cindy Callaghan)
    -The Stinky & Dirty Show (Based on I Stink series by Jate & Jim McMullan)
    -Woody Allen produced show not in pilot slate
    -Alpha House and Trasnparent returning for new series.

Signal Intelligence

  • Google launches YouTube Kids on Android and iOS
    – Family-friendly version of YouTube for iOS and Android 9coming soon to Kurio and nabi)
    – Simpler bigger brighter interface
    – Curated to select videos “appropriate for the whole family”
    – 4 categories: Shows, Music, Learning and Explore
    – Supports voice search

    Parental Controls:
    – A Timer
    – Sound settings (turn off bg music and sfx)
    – Turn off search
    -Feedback section for parental opinions

Gear Up

  • Touchscreen Remote Control Ray Aims to Change Your TV Experience
    –    Ray Enterprises – new universal remote called “Ray Super Remote”
    – Showed at Code/Media summit last week
    – Controlled via apps. Not every devices has an app. Deal with Dish but not all cablecos. (Can still work standalone)
    – $199
    – 4.8-inch touchscreen
    – Mute, volume, sleep physical buttons. All else touchscreen
    – Works w/ Bluetooth, WiFi, ZigBee
    – Switches inputs when app for device is tapped
    – Get to know what shows you like and suggest them
    – 10 hours on a charge w/cradle

Front Lines

  • Hulu Replaces Its Queue With “Watchlist,” A Smarter, More Personalized View Of Your Favorite Shows
    –Hulu has a couple notes to tell you about. A new feature called Watchlist replaces the Queue, favorites, and shows you watch sections. Now when you click the plus button on a show (or add to watchlist) it gets added to the watchlist. Shows are ordered based on viewing behavior. Also Hulu got exclusive streaming rights to all 15 seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. If you’re into that.
  • DirecTV Subscribers Edge Up in 2014, but Growth Rate Slows
    –For 2014 DirecTV ended with 20.35 million subscribers up 5% from 2013. That’s an addition of 99,000 subscribers which is smaller than the 169,000 the company added in 2013. However Q4 saw an increase of 149,000 subs up from 93,000 in Q4 2013. And just in time to take an advantage away from SlingTV. DirecTV announced its customers now have access to Disney streaming apps, including Watch ESPN, WatchDisney and Watch ABC. 
  • Comcast’s live TV app has doubled its channel count in a year
    –Comcast also announced it has doubled the number of channels available on the Xfinity Go app since it launched last year. It now has 70 channels. Some of those channels allow for on demand viewing of shows and even downloading for offline viewing.
  • Nearly A Third Of Canadian Netflix Users Pretend To Be American
    –A study from Media Technology Monitor found that 29% of respondents admitted to using a US IP address to access Netflix. 40 percent said they were spoofing their IP to access other, non-Netflix U.S. media content online. 

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

Hey Brian and Tom,
Thanks for splitting up the show into two feeds. I picked the Cordkillers only Audio Feed. as you guys spoil shows I haven’t seen yet.

anyway,

Thanks for doing that.

Tim, Minneapolis, MN Patreon member.

 

 

As a Cordkillers fan from day zero (Frame Rate days), I always find it interesting that Brian sometimes feels guilty for having cable, even for the duration of his Hacking the System show. I have no intention of getting rid of my cable at this time or in the near future. In fact, I’ve just upgraded my FiOS bundle with a 2 year contract. I’ve gotten so used to the combination of having so many channels at my fingertips to adapt to my variable viewing tastes throughout the year and the time-shifting convenience of the DVR service. Then there’s not having to worry about what service has the show I want. There’s no shame in paying for what you want, albeit on only some of the devices you want (no Amazon Fire TV FiOS app just yet).

Here are the details of my service:
I have FiOS TV Quantum service, which has a new cable box with 1TB of storage and records 6 shows at once (no more DVR conflicts on those heavy primetime evenings). The service includes the highest tier of TV packages (Ultimate HD). It’s particularly useful because it includes the sports channels like (beIN, Universal Sports, etc.). They’ve also given me a 3 year price guarantee (no price hikes) and 2 years of all premium channels free.
The bundle includes the FiOS 75/75 Internet service, which almost always gives me the total bandwidth whenever I need it. I can even downgrade that back to the 50/50, if needed, to save another $5/mo without breaking the bundle.

My bill comes out to about $158 after taxes and government fees, which is about as much as I was paying before the upgrade, and that price is guaranteed (minus the free programming expiring) for 3 years, even after my contract expires.

Hope that wasn’t too long-winded for you, but I thought I’d share my service info in response to the email you guys read on episode 58.

One of your many bosses,
Curtis from MD

 

 

Man guys,
It sounds to me like you guys spend a ton of dough on TV/Entertainment. This is my set up, I’m using a knockoff leaf antenna I got on Amazon for $39. That gets me all the broadcast networks. I have TWC internet access 50mps down that I get for $29.99 plus tax (I recently got them to get me another 12 months promotional rate by calling them up and telling them I wanted to cancel my service. I told them Earthlink was gonna get me 30mps for $29.99 then the TWC rep was all like well we can get you 50mps for $29.99.) Anyways then I pay $7.99 a month for Hulu, I basically use Hulu as my catch up service. Instead of paying the cable company $10 to record a bunch of stuff, I can watch whatever I want and don’t have to worry about setting up a recording. I watch The Walking Dead for $1.99 an episode on Vudu though that expense is going to be getting wrapped into one of my new favorite services. Finally I now pay $20 a month for Sling TV and every few months I sub to Netflix when House of Cards comes back and now Marco Polo. So anyways all in all I spend about $60 a month to watch exactly want I wanna watch when I wanna watch it. I feel like I’m doing pretty good after hearing you guys are spending hundreds of bucks a month.
One of your 2000 bosses,
Ken

 

 

First: thank you for making a Cordkillers only feed.

Secondly: we don’t pay anything for TV, apart from the mandatory £12.12 per month ($18.61 aprox.) for the TV License as I watch live TV *

For Internet/Phone calls, our bills come to about £30 ($46.06 aprox.) but I did a little chicken challenge a couple of times with Virgin Media, and have managed to get a £10 discount and a secondary £5 discount, so we are actually only paying about £15 per month ($23.03 aprox.) at the moment for UP TO 50Mpbs down** and a standard landline with free weekend calls.

So in total, we pay about £27.12 / $41.65 per month for decent quality internet and the chance to watch live TV.

Anonymous

 

 

Thought I would share what I pay for Internet and TV.

I live in Northwest Indiana 20 miles away from Chicago. I pay 29.99 a month for 25mbps down 5mbps up from Comcast. Have an OTA antenna with a channel master + dvr. I also have Prime and Netflix. If there is a cable show that I want, I get a season pass on Amazon.

Basically less than $50 a month for TV and Internet.

Jeff

Links

patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

Cordkillers 56 – The Vue Looks Good from Here

Cordkillers / February 3rd, 2015

Playstation Vue is from Mars and Sling TV is from Venus. Plus how much is 1 billion Chromecast Sessions really?

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CordKillers: Ep. 56 – The Vue Looks Good from Here
Recorded: February 2. 2015
Guest: Roberto Villegas

Intro Video 

Breaking News

Primary Target

  • A sneak peek at Sony’s PlayStation Vue internet TV service
    – WAY more channels, CBS, Turner, Scripps, NBC, Fox, Discovery, Viacom
    – Looks like they’re missing ABC/Disney
    – Gallery view as seen at CES but also Guide view on side (like new TiVO default)
    – 3-day catchup, record to cloud DVR for 28 days
    – Add any show to ‘my shows’
    – No price yet!
  • CHANNELS: “Spike, CBS, NBC, Fox, My9, Telemundo, American Heroes, Animal Planet, BET, BET Gospel, Big Ten network, Bravo, CBS Plus, Centric, Chiller, Cloo, CMT Pure Country, CNBC, CNBC World, Comedy Central, Cooking Channel, Cozi TV, Destination America, Discovery Channel, Discovery Family, Discovery Life, DIY, E!, Esquire, Exits, Food Network, Fox College Sports (3), Fox Sports 1,2,3, FX, FXM, FXX, Golf Channel, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, LOGO, Movies TV, MSNBC, MTV (Hits, Jam, 2, U), Nat Geo, all the Nickelodeons, OWN, Oxygen, Palladia, Science, Sprout, SYFY, Teen Nick, Travel, TV Land, Universal, USA, Velocity, VH1, Vh1 Classic, Soul, YES Network.

Signal Intelligence

Gear Up

  • Google’s Chromecast has been used for more than one billion casts 
    – Google’s Chief Business officer Omid Kordestani updated investors on one metric during the company’s Q4 call Thursday
    – One billion cast sessions on Chromecast
    – In October said 650 Million
    – In July 400 million
    – Google defines a “cast session” as a user pressing the cast button within an Android, iOS or web app. In other words: Streaming multiple YouTube videos to your TV one after another counts as just one session.

Front Lines

  • Netflix Prices $1.5 Billion in Debt to Fund Content, Other Initiatives
    –Netflix will raise $1 billion in debt for content acquisition and other purposes. Mostly they’re doing it because the interest rates are so low so they want to have low interest debt to cover the next few years of cash needs. However the company says they expect to launch 320 hours of original content in 2015 three times the amount of 2014.
  • NBC’s Super Bowl Live Stream Was Hugely Popular. It Was Also Terrible.
    –NBC live streamed 11 hours of Super Bowl and Super Bowl-related content online yesterday in the US. Apparently it reached a peak of 1.3 million simultaneous streams. Maybe that explains the lag. Also different commercials in the live stream which means the usual online repetition. Verizon mobile didn’t have as many complaints about its stream.
  • Sling TV strikes deal with Univision for its online TV service
    –SlingTV struck an agreement to carry Univision networks on the SlkingTV service. That includes Univision, UniMás, Univision Deportes, Galavisión, El Rey Network, Bandamax, De Película, De Película Clásico, Telehit, Tlnovelas and FOROtv. My guess? Spanish Language package available soon!
  • Adam Sandler’s first Netflix-exclusive movie has its cast
    –Ridiculous 6 will be one of Adam Sandler’s Netflix productions. Sandler will star as a man who was adopted as an orphan by a Native American tribe. Twilight’s Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider and Terry Crews will play his adoptive siblings, while Nick Nolte has been cast as Sandler’s father. Rounding out the ensemble is Whitney Cummings, Jon Lovitz, Danny Trejo and Chris Parnell.
  • ESPN Takes Another Step Outside the Bundle, Starts Selling Streaming Cricket World Cup Subscriptions
    –ESPN will sell live and on-demand access to the 6-week Cricket World Cup for $100. The play starts Feb. 13. U.S. cricket fans can sign up Feb. 3 for a subscription at ESPNcricket2015.com, and then access streams on the Web; ESPN says it will have iOS and Android apps available by Feb. 11. Dish and Time Warner will also sell the package as PPV. 
  • Singtel, Sony And Warner’s New Video Streaming Service Beats Netflix To Asia
    –Asian Telecom company Singtel is partnering with Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers to launch a streaming video service in Asia. HOOQ will have Hollywood movies and US TV shows along with content from India, China, Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia, Korea and Japan. It will go online by end of March in Indonesia, Philippines, India and Thailand And then expand from there. 

Under Surveillance

2014 Winter Movie Draft
draft.diamondclub.tv

  1. Brett: $656,368,044
  2. Scott: $448,300,000
  3. Brian: $447,548,781
  4. Tom: $373,548,333
  5. Justin: $299,216,240
  6. John: $248,624,089

Dispatches from the Front

Hi Tom & Brian,

From this fans perspective I would say split the feed.

Thanks keep up the good work

Sean

 

 

I’m firmly in the doesn’t matter to me camp so long as you let us know about it. I use BeyondPod for my podcatcher and have a smart playlist that I can control what order things play in so I always get them in aired order.

Amber

 

 

I vote to split the spoilerin’ time episodes to their own podcast. In addition to the reasons Brian mentioned on the show, the main podcast is much more time sensitive, so need to keep those in my stream. I can always go back and listen to spoilerin’ time when I finally watch the shows you are spoiling.

Love the show, cutting the cord as soon as my Sling TV invite arrives!

Matt, Atlanta, GA (aka future site of Google Fiber! )

P.s. finally became your boss today, just signed up on Patreon

 

 

Hey guys as always thanks for the great weekly entertainment, was just listening to this weeks episode and Brian was doing his thing ranting about lack of bandwidth when in the sky and wondering why he can’t do any form of streaming video.

I am kind of an authority on this as I worked for Northwest Airlines subsequently Delta Airlines for 8 years and one of my job functions was to work with the aircraft engineers to install/maintain the In Flight Entertainment systems. I now work for a Major retailer and help consult on GoGo installs for the fleet of aircraft they operate.

The TV service is in fact satellite tv provided by Dish Network. That is how you are getting live tv.

The inflight wifi on the other change is provided by Aircell (Parent company to GoGo). Aircell was originally developed to provide in flight phone calls, remember the phones on the back of the head rests that you swiped a credit card to make in flight phone calls? Yea that is Aircell. When that didn’t take off (pun intended) they re-branded and changed their name and services to GoGo inflight wifi.

GoGo is an Air to Ground connection. GoGo has their own CDMA 3G towers that covers coast to coast of the lower 48 and parts of southern Canada. These towers and antennas are pointed to the sky which provides the wireless data connectivity to the aircrafts.

Each tower has very limited bandwidth, most of them are fed by a single T1, some maybe 3 T1’s. Then on top of that the actual bandwidth provided to each aircraft is also limited, at most 3mbps to a single aircraft.

3mbps that is then shared between all the users on the plane, so say you have 50 users all on a plane trying to use the inflight wifi, and sharing that single 3mpbs pipe so then you’ll start to understand why they proxy the connection and prevent steaming services.

Right now GoGo is in the process of upgrading their infrastructure to support CDMA EVDO Rev B and provide dual modems as a retrofit to aircraft, this could then provide up to 9mbps to an aircraft however you are still limited by the limited/shared backbone infrastructure that GoGo has to each tower.

So what I’m trying to say to Brian is that yes you’d think we’d be able to have 100mbps or even a gigabit connection while in the sky (wishful thinking) GoGo isn’t artificially keeping it slow and preventing users from doing youtube and Netflix while using the inflight wifi. How would you feel if you paid to use the service and one user was hogging all the available bandwidth because he was streaming a movie and you couldn’t even get a web page to load?

Anyways thought I could share some inside details about how inflight wifi works.

Josh S

 

 

Hey team!

Freakin’ love this show, and I’m proud to be a Patron! Thanks for all your hard work.

Thought I’d throw out a hiccup I’ve discovered with my FireTV Stick. When I plug in into my television, I lose all of my OTA signal. When I unplug the stick from the TV, the signal comes back. My antenna is mounted outside the house and connected using the home’s existing cable.

Could be wi-fi interference. Could be the age of my TV (2008). Just curious if anyone else had this issue, or just posting as a possible solution for other cordkillers.

My AppleTV (2nd gen) hasn’t given me any issues.

Mitch
 

 

Hello Tom & Brian.
On the previous episode you guys talking a bit about Plex. Listen, Plex is fantastic, not just great but excellent. Tom brought a good point and it was that his DRM purchased content wouldn’t play.
The reason Plex is so popular is in part yes because you can have all your ripped own content (home videos, DVD/BR ripped movies/tvshows, etc,). The other reason Plex is so popular is because it provides an easy and convenient way to stream and access all your *pirated* content.
I know you guys do not support piracy, but let’s not close our eyes to it. Obviously the reason Plex is so widely loved is because a large portion of its users pirate content and use Plex as their media server. I’m not saying that’s all they do, they probably have home movies, ripped content, etc., but let’s also not pretend that the reason Plex has become so popular is any other than the massive love of its piracy-loving users.

Keep up the great show.

Franklin.

 

Links

patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

Cordkillers 55 – People Say Things

Cordkillers / January 27th, 2015

We get a review of Sling TV from an early user, Tom reviews Vessel’s private beta and Netflix conquers the world.

 

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CordKillers: Ep. 55 – People Say Things
Recorded: January 26, 2015
Guests: Luke Bouma, Andrew Zarian

Intro Video 

Primary Target

Signal Intelligence

Gear Up

Front Lines

Under Surveillance

2014 Winter Movie Draft
draft.diamondclub.tv

  1. Brett: $596,361,413
  2. Brian: $445,112,651
  3. Scott: $442,944,952
  4. Tom: $371,798,900
  5. Justin: $270,293,833
  6. John: $245,165,632

Dispatches from the Front

Hi Tom and Brian,

As a daily watcher of two ESPN shows (Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption), I’d like to chime in with my impression of Sling TV as a cord cutting alternative, given that it’s the first time I’ve been able to consider killing that cord!

I’ve tried my hardest to get excited about Sling TV, but I just can’t do it! The main problem is that if I want to watch my ESPN shows, I have no choice but to watch them live and with commercials. Sling TV has no DVR functions, and only certain channels even let you pause live TV (and ESPN isn’t included). When I saw that Sling TV would also grant access to the WatchESPN app, I briefly hoped that I’d be able to watch my shows after the fact. Not so! Apparently ESPN doesn’t put ATN or PTI on WatchESPN.

If I went over the air and signed up for Sling TV, I’d be going from $55/month for my current TV service to $20, but adding a ton of complexity, removing all convenience, and I couldn’t watch my shows (having a 5 month old in the house makes it impossible to guarantee time in front of the TV every day at exactly 5pm). I’d also have to cobble together a bunch of sources for the other cable channels I couldn’t get from Sling like Comedy Central, adding even more complexity.

Matt 
Sterling, VA

 

 

Brian,

I was laughing after the last episode of Cord Killers because my Draft grades for your league were just about spot on – give or take a few million between you and Scott. https://magic.piktochart.com/output/3398775-winter-movie-draft-report-card 😛 . Also, thanks to you guys I got sucked into “The Man in the High Castle” and am mad that I have to wait for episode (rest of season)

Side question? Where can I find the rules that you guys are going by? Mainly, How long does a movie stay in the theaters before you stop counting it’s revenue?

Thanks Guys, love the show!

Mulango

p.s – you totally got my name right by the way! lol – Congrats

 

 

Hi Brian and Tom,

A couple of things have changed for me in a period of 72 hours. I’ve been a cord killer for over 14 months. Brian asked all fans of CordKillers to re-subscribe to cable to watch “Hacking the System” on NatGeo. This Friday m ISP Charter called me and offered cable for an additional $26.00 a month with my 30mbps internet. I said yes and agreed to have it installed February 5.

But then this last Saturday, I talked to my neighbors who are also with Charter and are paying for all the channels offered in their triple bundle for $200.00 a month. While they declined to cord shave on my advice,they gave me their email and password to use their subscription to view HBO and Showtime and basically every cable channel available on Roku as I have a Roku 3.

My question as I was able with their login information watch “Hacking the System”, do I still re-subscribe to cable and view the same channels with my login info? Or do I enjoy the content with my neighbors login info that they willingly gave me as a gift and cancel the install? I realize not everyone has a nice neighbor who gives out their login info, but I’m really thinking of canceling my install and use their login info for authentication.

I’d appreciate a reply from either of you on or off the show.

David from Fond Du Lac,WI asking

 

 

I have to disagree with your assessment of Marco Polo. I’ve been getting caught up (thru ep5) to watch along with you and I’m really enjoying it. The political intrigue is great. Kublai Khan and his family are fascinating and well-acted. The cinematography is beautiful. All-in-all I’m really enjoying it and looking forward to finishing the series.

One question: who’s the white guy?

Thanks for a great show! Keep it up!

Bob.

 

 

Hi Guys

As one of the many great bosses you have I think you should take a look at the DOKO .

Think Brian could find a few uses 🙂

Keep up the great work.

Gregg 

 

 

Hi guys,

Just wanted to know if you guys have ever discussed two separate podcast streams for cordkillers.

One for the show and another one for Spoilerin’ Time. The reason is, I use the podcast app Stitcher and it automatically loads the latest version of the podcast. So sometimes I haven’t heard the episode and Spoiler’ Time is already in its place. So then I have to dig into the options to look for the actual episode (all while driving my car *danger* *danger!*). Also for me I only listen to Spoilerin’ Time if I’ve watched what you guys are about to Spoiler (example Game of Thones, Breaking Bad, ETC). I don’t’ listen to the “slow season” of Spoilers (Amazon Pilots, The Shield, etc). It would be nice if I can subscribe to two separate podcasts.

Let me know what you guys think and remember this is the boss talking 🙂

Keep up the great work as always.

Mike

 

 

The place I work in Alabama took an informal poll today on how our employees watch most of their TV. 46.3% said Live. 34.6 said DVR and 19.1 said online service like Netflix or Hulu. There 5190 responses. Not sure what it means, if anything, but found it interesting.

Stephen

Links

patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box