Apple’s plans to enter the consumer media market have been know for long, and now more confirmed deals are public. The deal with Steven Spielberg on the resurrection of the Amazing Stories anthology has already been announced, now Apple has signed the right for 2 seasons of TV based on the Brian Stelter’s book ‘Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV “ and will star Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.
Tag: TV
Who will pay for the cost of the new Hi-Def Video Codecs?
Dan Rayburn (of Frost & Sulivan) has just written an interesting blog entry on Streaming Media about the impacts of Apple supporting H265 from High Sierra and the Google V9 codec market adaptation (and coming high end Codecs). He makes a theoretical calculation (heavily argued over in the comment section) on the costs for the Steamers of upgrading their front ends to handle the increased processing needs for these and future codecs. The suggested conclusion of a worst case cost increase of 50.0000% seems excessive (and is argued over) but as a user of x265 I can vouch for the impacts on the clients, my CPU loads are rarely under 90% across all cores when playing high end x265 files. It is a worthwhile thing to think about, in particular when 4K + resolutions are becoming more common. It is also worth contemplating that the cost will (one way or another) come back to the consumer. What we gain in less bandwidth we will most likely pay for in the cost of more processing from the streamers and providers.
Star Trek: Discovery is not far away….
I am an unashamed Treckie, and have (like most) been looking forward to a new TV series to add to the films. Discovery has been in the making for quite a while, including a 9 month delayed launch for “quality reasons”. According to a Fox News report the launch date has been confirmed as Sept. 24 on CBS. A Sunday schedule will follow for a total of 15 announced episodes. Be still my beating heart!
Discovery Communications merges with Scripps
Discovery Communications is merging with Scripps to create the worlds largest TV show network. An overview of the deal is conducted by Mac Insider, with details of the 14.6 Bil USD deal. This adds a number of interesting channels to the Discovery stable, highlights are : HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel, Great American Country, Poland’s TVN, BBC joint venture UKTV, Asian Food Channel, and lifestyle channel Fine Living Network. Discovery Channel contributions include TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Science and Turbo/Velocity, OWN, Discovery Kids in Latin America, and Eurosport.
This opens up for more concerted mini or “skinny bundles” offerings, also directly to cable-cutters. The future looks even bleaker for the agregators out there.
“168 million will watch connected TV in the US this year”
eMakerter analyst Paul Verna has had a look at this years trends and volumes in the connected TV space in the US. He highlights the impact of a higher than expected sales figures, and also looks at the current HW clients and their prospects. Apple TV in particular is given a dim future, again highlighting the price combined with very little exclusive content being offered by Apple.