Cordkillers 61 – In Time for VEEP

Cordkillers / March 10th, 2015

HBO coming Now to Apple, later to others and Sling TV gets better but how much better?

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CordKillers: Ep. 61 – In Time for VEEP
Recorded: March 9, 2015
Guest: Robert Krekel

Intro Video 

Primary Target

  • HBO NOW to launch in early April
  • Apple first to offer HBO’s standalone online service
    –    Richard Plepler HBO Now – EXCLUSIVE partner at launch (At launch, HBO NOW will be available on iOS devices and on PCs.)
    – All TV and movies
    – Early April $14.99 first month free if you sign up through Apple in April, in time for April 12
    – GoT trailer
    – $69 Apple TV price
    –    Apple exclusivity lasts through July.
    –No word on restrictions to logins etc.

Signal Intelligence

  • AMC, IFC and Epix go live on Sling TV
  • Dish Sling TV Service Grabs 100,000 Sign-Ups in First Month
    –– Sling TV got AMC and IFC Some 3-day replay. I had Better Call Saul and TWD available. None for IFC.
    – as well as a new “Hollywood” pack $5 a month package that gives 4 Epix channels, Sundance TV and on-demand up to 7 days.
    – ReCode sources say 100,000 signed up for SlingTV
    – Tom called and got the Roku Stick for free by pre-paying three months
    – You can now add and subtract service from the website without calling.

Gear Up

  • TiVo revenue, profit beat estimates as subscriptions rise
    -TiVo’s net subscriber additions rose to 340,000 in the fourth quarter from 319,000, a year earlier.
    – Better than expected revenue and profit
    – Customer acquisition cost fell 25%
    – The company sells its products through cable TV partners such as Virgin Media in the UK, ONO in Spain and Com Hem AB in Sweden.
    – AND TiVoo Roamio OTA don’t forget

Front Lines

  • Roku vs. Apple TV vs. Chromecast vs. Amazon Fire TV: Which streamer should you buy?
    –CNET has a great article and chart up comparing Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast and Android TV. Just a tip to check out. We’ll have the link in the show notes.
  • Millennials Find YouTube Content More Entertaining, Relatable Than TV: Study
    –According to a study from Hunter qualitative Research, People aged 13-24 spend 11.3 hours a week watching free online video compared with 8.3 hours of regular TV. They can relate to online video it makes them feel good and helps them relax more than regular TV. Keep in mind the study was made by YouTube content producer Defy media. 
  • Why No One’s Talking About ‘Cord-Forevers’
    –Meanwhile Jay Fulcher, President and CEO, Ooyala wrote an interesting guest column on ReCode pointing out we never hear of Cord-forevers because nobody is saying they will never cut the cord. A recent Nielsen report found that, from 2013 to 2014, digital video grew 53 percent among 18- to 34-year-olds, 80 percent aged 35-49, and 60 percent in 50-64 year-olds. 
  • Video news app Haystack wants to be the CNN for cord cutters
    –GigaOm profiled a an app that is sort of Pandora for news segments that works best with a Chromecast or through airplay.. Called Haystack it collects preferences from you then streams news segments from various sources which you can choose to skip by swiping. It learns from what you skip as well as from offering hashtags of topics that you can star.
  • HBO GO is finally coming to the PlayStation 4 today
    –Game Consoles are getting crippled apps! HBO Go finally came to PlayStation 4 but the tech press is less than pleased as Comcast is not supporting the login yet. And TimeWarner’s app came to the Xbox One but without any live channels, only its on demand offering. Hooray!
  • NBC wants you to pay for streams of Jimmy Fallon, SNL
    –The Wall Street Journal has SOURCES and those sources say NBC is working on a subscription comedy service. It would include full eps of SNL and the Tonight Show as well as other clips and online-exclusive programming for around $3 a month.

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

My wife and I were thrilled to see House of Cards show up in our long list of shows just like anything else would. We then sat down to watch the first episode and…. I remembered why we never use the Netflix app on our Tivo. It’s super slow to start up in general, it doesn’t even look as nice as the app on my no-longer-supported Google TV, and the last straw was that when we hit play on the episode it buffered to 25% and just stopped. We tried to play it this way five times, but gave up. I just switched over to the Chromecast and was up and running in about 30 seconds.

I absolutely love my Tivo, but they’re making it SO HARD TO LOVE THEM! 🙂

Matt

 

 

A hobby I enjoy is making the DYI antennas from the internet and the one I built this weekend is the best performance antenna to date. It can be found at http://www.instructables.com/id/Indoors-Fractal-HDTV-Antenna/ This is also one of the cheapest designs I have made. There are no 2×4’s or PVC or reflectors to make. I have yet to try this on a longer run of cable but I was able to get every local channel at nearly full signal in the basement with this one. This weekend i’m going to swap this with my attic antenna for fun and see how it performs there. The design of this one is really designed to be right next to the TV on a short run of cable. I highly encourage anyone looking for a fun project for an evening to try this one out. One complaint is I found the download of the pattern to not be scaled correctly. I had to re size it to get it to print out to proper scale. So just make sure to check the listed dimensions on the print out before you start making it.

Dan

 

I live in the DC Metro area, and I’m paying Verizon about $200 a month for a phone number I don’t want (that I’d rather move to google voice), 300+ TV channels I don’t use (mind you SD+HD count as 2 channels) only because it’s the cheapest tier that has BBCAmerica, and 75/75 internet, which isn’t terribly bad, when I get it.

Mostly the service is pretty good, the 75 down is consistent and often better. Upload isn’t even close (usually more like 15). I try getting fewer channels from time to time, or ditching the phone altogether, but in the end neither really saves me money. Last time I tried, I instead got all of the major pay channels for free for a year (SHO, HBO, STARZ, Cinemax, etc.)

I do have a question that I haven’t heard addressed. The Beeb geofences the iPlayer so only those paying the license fee (more or less) have access. I understand the reasoning here.

Why do they not have an option for those of us not required to pay the fee to sign up for a paid account, thus allowing us to pay the fee. I’m pretty sure I pay more trying to get time-delayed BBC content via BBCAmerica (and even more delayed via PBS) than the license would cost me. That might cut down on the “piracy” even Jeremy Clarkson mentioned in this season’s Top Gear premiere.

Rob

 

I was curious if anyone on the show knew anything about what has happened to Hitbliss? When they started I was more than happy to use their service as an alternative to torrenting and was quite confused when they stated on their blog that they were shutting down the beta to focus on bringing the service back in a few months. I think that this was about a year ago. They gave no mention to any opposition. However, I have never seen a service stop their beta if it was successful unless it had opposition.

Mike

 

 

Hello Tom and Bryan,

I want to know your thoughts on the future of internet since people are cutting the cord. Will this force the cable/internet providers to up their speeds to remain competitive (especially with 4k becoming a future standard), with or without the new FFC law?

Thank you,
John

Links

patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

It’s Spoilerin’ Time Episode 60 – Hacking the System, Birdman, Better Call Saul (Ep. 4), House of Cards (Ep. 1-3), The Shield (413)

Cordkillers / March 4th, 2015

Our thoughts on Season of HtS, Why Birdman disappoined us all differently and yet we all loved it, ’Sall Good Man, How smart is Frank, really? and the perfect ending to The Shield Season 4.

02:20 – Hacking The System

05:40 – Birdman

20:55 – Better Call Saul

27:50 – House of Cards

38:13 – The Shield

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Cordkillers 60 – Crying Over Buffering

Cordkillers / March 3rd, 2015

How the housing market is bad news for cable and Hungary shows why cable could boost YouTube viewership.

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CordKillers: Ep. 60 – Crying Over Buffering
Recorded: March 2, 2015
Guest: Alex Hanna

Intro Video

Primary Target

Signal Intelligence

Gear Up

  • Surprise: Cable viewers really like YouTube on their set-tops
    –    Cloud Virtualization provider ActiveVideo used UPC Hungary as a case study for adding YouTube to a cable TV set-top box
    – 200K of 910K subs got it forst. 320K got it in following months
    – 68% tried it.
    – 83% of tryers became repeat users
    – 1 million minutes a day avg. session 45 minutes
    -(UPC boxes stream video only. Cloud handles all YouTube video through ActiveVideo)

Front Lines

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

Dear Brian & Tom

Just thought I’d share how much I pay here in the UK & talk a bit more about the TV license;

TV License is £145 annually ($223) – but it’s quite nice that all of the BBC channels (TV and Radio) are advert-free. The iPlayer is superb. It’s almost worth it for the kids TV channels alone.. the quality of those programs is really high, and you know the kids are actually learning something most of the time (and aren’t getting bombarded with ads).

BT for fibre broadband; £23 a month (38 Mbps down, 10 up, unlimited data), with an additional £17 a month line rental that includes the phone line.

Freeview HD OTA.. no monthly fee. I use a Humax Freeview HD DVR box I bought years ago.

Total = £52 a month ($80) for TV and unlimited fibre broadband.

Keep up the good work on the show,

Mat
Leeds, UK.

 

I know Brian uses At&t for his internet connection, but I wonder if he was aware of all the “free” stuff bundled in to the Standard (we’ll spy on you) package that make the difference between the plans $66 if you have both TV and Internet or $44 if you only have Internet.

John 

Hey Tom and Brian!

Listening to Spoilerin’ Time 59 while Brain’s talking about how hard it is to see The Walking Dead.

I have a Quick Tip: I don’t have a cable package JUST Time Warner Cable for Internet. I can still use my TWC account to log into AMC.com to watch the live stream of their channel, even though I don’t pay for the channel. It appears their authorization system doesn’t differentiate between cable packages. So I can watch Better Call Saul and Walking Dead live with no trouble at all.

Mike

 

 

Brian,

I think that Better Call Saul is set later than what you thought (late 80’s -early 90’s). In the first episode when he is ordering flowers for his potential clients (right before he runs into the kid on the skateboard), he is reading off his credit card and he says that the expiration is 11/04. So, I would estimate that the show is set sometime between 2000-2004.

Your boss,
Alex

 

 

Hi, Tom and Brian. In the last few episodes you’ve been asking people how much they pay for internet, and I thought I’d chime in. I’ve been a cord-cutter for 2 years UNTIL about two weeks ago!

Previously: 50mbps for $67 including taxes and fees.
Now: $70 for 105Mbps PLUS cable

I originally contacted Comcast (via support chat) to see how I can get my bill lowered. I have NO other broadband options for my apartment. You know the game. They told me they couldn’t give me a better price unless I was a new customer, so I went to the fabled customer retention. THEY said if I bundle, they could save me money. Great! “What are your bundles?” “Oh, we don’t have one for 50mbps anymore. But for $3 extra we can give you 105Mbps but only if you bundle cable.” What?! While I’m ideologically opposed to that crappy practice, why would I not double my internet speed for $3? I asked them to not bother sending me the cable box and they waived the setup and shipping fees, and tried to send me the box anyway. I told them, “Seriously, I don’t want it. Count me as a metric if you want but I don’t care about cable at all.” They offered to waive the monthly box rental fee if I just took box anyway. Fine. I guess it shows how desperate they are to retain/add cable subscribers in certain markets. Of course, I kept the transcript of the whole thing so there’s no funny business. ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, now it’s much easier to watch National Geographic’s Hacking the System. You should watch it sometime…

Your very pleased boss <>,
Cory

 

 

Hey guys, love the show. I was pondering on the nature of youtube and convenience. As in introduction: I am a 25 year old, second generation cord-neverer. My parents cut the cord before I was born and I grew up on broadcast and P2P file sharing. I use (in descending order) Netflix, Pluto.TV, Amazon Prime, and Hulu(free).

The fact is, I never really mastered YouTube when I was younger. As such, I do not use at as a media consumption platform. I use it pretty much only for tutorials or archived videos. Now that I am so stuck in the routine of hands off viewing YouTube, frankly, seems as antiquated to me as DVR, brodcast, DVD, or torrents.

So, Brian, Tom, riddle me this, am I crazy in thinking we are a few years away from a world where pirated media, ripped and uploaded to youtube, would be so inconvenient to seek out and watch that you would be as likely to choose to watch it as you would daytime broadcast TV? That content available on YouTube might as well be sitting in a Blockbuster? I promise you this, if SnapChat made a TV and I missed it, I sure as heck wouldn’t go try to find it on YouTube.

Thanks guys,
Anthony in San Antonio

 

 

Hey Tom and Brian just wanted to pass along another assignment as one of your bosses and let you know you should give the BBC show Broadchurch a chance. While I say you should do it before the Fox version comes out, they BOTH have David Tennent as lead so makes it interesting enough to watch both. My opinion is it has been a great murder mystery show with perfect character development.

Keep up the great work,
Nick from Austin and cord free for almost 15 years.

 

 

 

Links
patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

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