Blog articles from 11/2010

Cox Communications has created a technical support service for high speed Internet customers. Cox is offering its Cox Tech Solutions (CTS) to customers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. CTS is a team of experienced technicians providing remote and in-home Cox technical support for home networking and peripheral equipment like computers, software, and other electronic devices. Customers can choose from different types of Cox technical support services via phone, remote log-in,...

Parks Associates reports three million U.S. broadband households plan to purchase an Internet-connected TV during the 2010 holiday shopping season, further eroding consumer need for brick-and-mortar video sources. Nearly 25% of U.S. broadband households already own at least one connected TV device, and one-fourth of these households have watched a paid movie-on-demand at least once in the past month, according to Parks Associates' Connected CE Tracker, part of the firm's landmark...

At least 11 Bulgarian cable operators and ISPs have merged to form a single company named Bulgarian Telecom and Television (BTT). According to Dnevnik, the companies currently have a presence in 40 cities and 110 smaller locations, covering nearly one million households and claiming over 150,000 subscribers. The deal is the largest merger so far in Bulgaria’s telco sector in terms of the number of companies involved and BTT aims to become a national player, introducing new...

Parks Associates is supporting Future TV Advertising Forum from December 2-3 in London. The Future TV Advertising conference will bring together broadcast and advertising to analyze and debate the evolution of TV advertising. Television is inexorably losing ground to online that is gradually offering greater accountability. The conference will address how the advertising community can work with broadcast so that this threat, embodied by new technologies and user behavior,...

What's your take on Google TV? It asks a lot from the end-user in terms of the ways in which we are supposed to interact with our TVs. I’m just not convinced that Google searches are the way in which most of us want to experience television, choosing instead 1) search features that rely still on simple “up/down/left/right” commands with a remote controller; and 2) more “push” recommendations about programming, video, and entertainment instead of an active keyboard-like...

From Broadband TV News , Sony Europe has announced the European launch of Video On Demand powered by Qriocity in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. The pay-per-view movie streaming service works with Sony 2010 network-enabled Bravia TVs, Blu-ray disc players, or Blu-ray disc home theater systems Contracts are in place with major studios including Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures...

From Videonet , DISH is charging $4 per month for a ‘DVR Integration Fee’. That effectively pays for the pairing protocol that enables a Google TV search that simultaneously covers content on the satellite DVR, DISH Network VOD and the Internet. Consumers can also schedule recordings and buy on-demand movies directly from the search bar. Any DISH Network customer buying a Logitech Revue (effectively a Google TV set-top box) or Sony Internet TV powered by Google TV from retail...

Netflix Inc. launched its first Internet-only subscription plan in the U.S. and raised prices for DVD-by-mail plans, continuing its shift from a DVD rental business to an online video service. On Wednesday's earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company is testing a streaming-only option for its U.S. subscription service, talked about international expansion, and said he doesn't see any evidence that his nearly 17 million customers are choosing Netflix instead of...