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You’ve got to love the BBC

Fiona and I have just finished watching the first episode of the new BBC Sherlock Holmes series on iPlayer. Great drama and great technology – that’s worth the Licence fee right there.

Not that you have to pay it if you get your TV via iPlayer/over the Internet.

Apple will be second largest vendor of on demand movies in the US this year

The FT reports today on a Screen Digest projection that Apple is storming forward fast in the video on demand market:

Apple is on course to become the second-largest provider of paid on-demand movies in the US by the end of 2010, leapfrogging Time Warner Cable and setting itself up as viable competitor to [...]

Netflix predicts tipping point for internet TV in 2013

Netflix, the US internet DVD rental giant (and trans-Atlantic cousin of our portfolio company Lovefilm) has a good slide deck up on Slideshare which details their digital strategy and competitive threats.  The slide below is from that deck and it shows they expect their DVD by mail business to peak in 2013.

After 2013 [...]

Traditional pay TV – death by a thousand cuts

Hot on the heels of Google TV Sony has announced a deal with HBO to release shows for the PlayStation 3 and PSP.  From yesterday HBOS shows old and new, including True Blood and two of my favourites The Wire and The Sopranos were viewable on the PlayStation Network (probably only in the US).

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Google TV the beginning of the end for satellite and cable operators?

As you might have seen Google announced their new Google TV product yesterday which makes the full web available on your TV through software that will either be directly built into the TV or via a set top box (if you want it on your existing TV you will have to go the set [...]

Now TV companies are questioning the ad-funded content model

Last week I wrote about the growing unease at the major record labels with ad funded music streaming services, and now it looks like something similar is happening with Hulu.  The following is from a New York Times article dated Monday this week:

Unable to make the digital media dollars add up to their [...]

Convergence in action – Yahoo compares itself to TV

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz used her fourth quarter earnings call to say that her ‘”competition is television”.  She meant this on two levels – firstly Yahoo’s display advertising business competes with television for advertisers budgets and secondly Yahoo’s video products compete with television for audience – read more on GigaOM.

On the audience [...]

Simon Fuller showing us the future of TV

Simon Fuller, the creator of the most watched show in the US for the past eight years American Idol, will premiere his new show on Hulu.  It is then expected to air on a traditional television network several months later.

This is a departure from the traditional MO for US networks where they [...]

The slow pace of change in television

Brian Steinberg has a piece up on Adage on the Future of TV – it has some interesting stats showing how fast old TV is declining and some useful thoughts on the future.

The stats:

Total viewership across the top four networks in the US is off 42% since 1994 – note this [...]

The internet TV value chain is getting crowded

Image via CrunchBase

The news today that Hulu is looking to partner with cable companies highlights the fact that there are getting to be too many players in the internet television value chain.

Hulu’s idea is that they become a portal for cable companies’ content in a system where [...]