Posts for 'Roku'

I'm pleased to present the 212th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Earlier this week, Roku CEO and founder Anthony Wood, who I interviewed at NATPE, described his long-term vision for Roku to replace pay-TV operators' set-top boxes. Anthony believes that as online video apps become more prevalent, and pay-TV operators want to seamlessly offer them, the logistics for doing so will be so complex, that alternative approaches like using Roku, will become more attractive. Colin and I debate the pros and cons of this vision.

Then Colin walks us through Comcast's stellar Q4 '13 results, announced earlier this week. Of particular note, Comcast added video subscribers in the quarter, the first time in over 6 years. Colin has crunched the numbers and concludes that Comcast will likely have more broadband subscribers than video subscribers by mid-to-late 2014, a stunning development. We explore what this means.

Listen in to learn more!

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Roku CEO Anthony Wood shared company updates and his views on the broader video market in an interview with me at NATPE in Miami Beach on Monday. 2013 was a strong year for the company with 8 million cumulative units sold to date (about 3 million in 2013). Roku delivered 1.7 billion hours of video in 2013.

Interestingly, Anthony said that sales accelerated when Chromecast was introduced. He cited the trio of Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast as now dominating the connected TV device space, each with a relatively well-defined prospective customer.

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I'm excited to be hosting a one-on-one interview with Roku's CEO and founder Anthony Wood at NATPE in Miami next Monday, Jan. 28th. Anthony is one of the true visionaries in the online video / connected TV device world.

Among the topics on my list to discuss with him are Roku TV (launched with Hisense and TCL at CES last week), how Roku owners actually use the device since there are now over 1,200 channels to choose from, the status of Roku's work with pay-TV operators and whether transactional VOD will play a bigger part in Roku's future. I'm sure we'll also discuss larger industry trends like cord-cutting, the connected TV device landscape, Smart TVs, TV Everywhere and the role of mobile devices.

That's a long list, but what do YOU think I should ask him? Send me suggestions via email or leave a comment!

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Last Thursday I wrote about how the various connected TV devices are jostling for content deals, creating headaches for content providers and confusion for buyers. Following up that post, yesterday I highlighted holiday deals on Smart TVs which themselves are competing for attention with connected TV devices.

Now, to put a capstone on the discussion, I'm pleased to share a handy infographic that the good folks at Shelby.tv have created, comparing and contrasting 4 of the hottest and most affordable connected TV devices, Apple TV ($99), Chromecast ($35), Roku 3 ($100) and Roku LT ($50). The infographic summarizes key features of each, what content is available (with a nice Venn diagram showing overlaps), capabilities to watch from mobile devices and the web, key drawbacks to each, and which might be most appropriate as a gift this season.

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As online video adoption and longer-form viewing have grown, consumers have become increasingly interested in moving the experience to their TVs. This trend has certainly helped to drive interest in connected TV devices (e.g. Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, etc.). But even as these devices have proliferated, TV manufacturers have promoted Smart TVs, which connect to the Internet and generally offer a handful of pre-integrated apps, most prominently Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, Pandora and others.

Since connected TV devices are relatively cheap (Chromecast set a new low in 2013 at $35) and are easy to install, no longer must consumers be required to buy a whole new TV simply because they want to stream Netflix, for example. No doubt, this dynamic - combined with the saturation of HDTVs and the adoption of mobile devices for viewing video - all contribute to global TV sales being down in 2013 for the second year in a row, the first time this has ever happened.

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This holiday season, connected TV devices are among the hottest items on consumers' wish lists. For content providers eager for a foothold in the "digital living room," surging demand is very good news. The bad news, however, is that due to fragmentation and proprietary approaches among devices, content providers are forced to allocate their scarce resources in a one-by-one development model.

This is highly inefficient for content providers and sharply contrasts with how the web's standards helped to drive massive scale years ago. Beyond the inefficiency for content providers, the resulting fragmentation of content availability undermines the scale required for successful video advertising and also creates confusion among consumers about which device to buy. Unlike the web where you can bring home a computer and get access to ALL content, when you get a device you only get a narrower subsection.

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Today I'm pleased to introduce the newest VideoNuze contributor, Jose Alvear, who is a research analyst specializing in the pay-TV and online video industries. Jose has authored research reports on content delivery networks, IPTV, OTT video, cloud-based TV and social TV for leading firms in the industry. Jose is currently working on a book focusing on the disruption of the TV industry.

Survey: Price Sensitivity and Connected TV Devices Cloud Picture for Smart TV Adoption

by Jose Alvear

Researcher IHS released survey results earlier this week suggesting a muted forecast for Smart TVs amid rising consumer price sensitivity and a proliferation of inexpensive connected TV devices. IHS found that 73% of U.S. consumers are not interested in buying a Smart TV in the next 12 months. IHS said that once consumers are educated about Smart TVs and learn more about their features, interest does increase. Overall awareness of Smart TVs is high, at 86%, with 30% expressing purchase intent over the next 12 months.

But how intent translates into actual purchase is always tenuous and in this case, particularly so. That's because IHS also found that price has now vaulted to the top position as a driver for TV purchases, surpassing "screen size," which had been cited by more than 50% of respondents in 2012.

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There was an eye-opening data point in VEVO's viewership report for the first half of 2013, published this week: 50% of its U.S. video views now come from mobile, tablet and connected TV devices. In fact, in an interview on Bloomberg in late August (see below), VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff said non-desktop U.S. views are now over 500 million per month, more than half of its approximately 1 billion U.S. monthly views. He also characterized non-desktop as the fastest growing part of VEVO's business.

The 50% non-desktop number is the highest I've seen disclosed by any online video content provider. Over the past year, when I've informally asked content providers about mobile/connected TV views, I've typically heard 25%-30%. By comparison, YouTube (note, VEVO is the largest partner) says on its site that mobile is 25% of its global watch time.

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Net2TV is announcing this morning that its Portico service will be available on Roku in June and that it is enabling dynamic ad insertion. Portico, which I last wrote about here, curates and packages short-form content into longer-form, TV-style programs, for viewing on connected TVs. Portico uses the ActiveVideo CloudTV platform with a thin client, which means it can be deployed and updated quickly on connected devices.

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With over 700 content partners in its channel store, Roku has built out the most extensive set of content choices of any of the over-the-top devices.

And in a recent interview at NATPE, Scott Rosenberg, Roku's VP, Business Development, Content and Services, explains that's because the company has "very deliberately operated with a pro-content provider strategy" and prides itself on being easy to work with, allowing content providers to use the same standard technologies they use on the web and offering favorable economics. Scott contrasts this with the approach other OTT devices have taken.

Watch the interview

You gotta love Roku. In the insanely competitive world of consumer devices - where the big boys like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Sony and others have enormous retail, financial and existing customer base advantages - little Roku just keeps on cranking out inexpensive, yet solid products, meaningful partnerships and scads of content deals, establishing itself as a leader in the connected TV space.

The latest evidence of Roku's momentum are two announcements at CES today; first, that it has signed up another 6 "Roku Ready" TV manufactures as partners whose models can accept the company's "Streaming Stick" device and second, that it has signed new video channel partners Blockbuster on Demand, Dailymotion, DISHWorld, Flingo, Fox Now, PBS, PBS Kids, Syfy and VEVO. All of these channels bring to 700 the number of video and audio choices in the Roku Channel Store, a breadth that easily rivals - though is clearly distinct from - today's pay-TV services.

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