Showtime hurried its streaming service to market without enough networking bandwidth to support the number of subscribers who paid to watch Saturday night's Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match, said Portland, Oregon, resident Zack Bartel in a lawsuit (in Pacer) filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Portland. The Oregon Unlawful Trade Practices Act suit, in docket 17-1331, seeks class-action status for everyone who paid $99.99 to stream the fight live on the Showtime PPV app only to be unable to watch the fight due to grainy video, error screens and buffer events. Showtime didn't comment.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a lower court's 2016 preliminary injunction against online streaming service VidAngel (see 1708240017) was unsurprising, but the unequivocal decision should be welcomed by many copyright owners, Copyright Alliance Vice President-Legal Policy Terry Hart blogged Monday. The 9th Circuit ruling might not be the end of the litigation, since VidAngel retained "high-powered" attorney David Quinto and has been active on Capitol Hill, Hart said. He said VidAngel likely will file for en banc review by the 9th Circuit and then petition the Supreme Court unless it reaches a settlement agreement with studios. VidAngel didn't comment.
Viacom will launch its Paramount+ subscription VOD service, offering Paramount movie and Viacom TV content, Oct. 1, it announced Friday. It said Paramount+ will be part of the user interface for a variety of pay-TV services in Denmark, Sweden and Norway and available for premium subscribers. The company didn't comment on a time frame for North American availability.
Facebook has a good opportunity to catch up with YouTube through its Watch video tab, nScreenMedia's Lloyd Dixon blogged Thursday. People watch seven times as many hours on YouTube as Facebook, the average YouTube video has a 75 percent completion rate, vs. 13 percent for Facebook, and 85 percent of Facebook video views are with the audio off, he said. Facebook's Watch tab -- and accompanying push for original content -- will make viewing more accessible to Facebook users, the analyst said: Facebook's 2 billion users, vs. YouTube's 1.3 billion, also are a strength.
Apple, with its deep pockets, has the opportunity "to do something new and unique" in premium TV with its reported plans to spend $1 billion on original video content next year, The Diffusion Group's (TDG) Joel Espelien blogged Wednesday. TDG said licensing content would give it zero differentiation from existing MVPDs, but its own content would give Apple "something interesting on which to spend its already-committed marketing dollars, without benefiting other content owners." Pointing to the BBC putting out a small number of Sherlock episodes yearly, TDG said Apple likely will follow a similar model of a small number of high-quality shows that generate buzz on release and have a decent tail of shelf life. Rather than movies or sports programming, Apple might find more fertile programming ground in science-related reality programming, TDG said.
Roku extended its lead in the streaming media player market, to 37 percent of U.S. homes in Q1, up from a third in the year-ago quarter, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report. Cost is a top factor for Roku’s lead, with its devices found at Walmart for as low as $29.99, said analyst Glenn Hower. Amazon’s Fire TV had a market share increase for the period, too, jumping from 16 percent to 24 percent, pushing past Google’s Chromecast (18 percent) for second place in streaming media player adoption, said Hower. Apple’s share fell to 15 percent with Apple TV. One-third of U.S. broadband households own a streaming media device, said Parks.
Smart TV and streaming media player sales growth shows streaming video has become mainstream, but it's unlikely smart TVs will surpass SMPs as the preferred route for online streaming anytime soon, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Monday. Smart TVs trail other devices on viewing hours, with game consoles used 4.4 hours a day on average, though game play likely dominates that usage, while SMPs average 3.6 hours of use a day, and enabled smart TVs are used for 2.3 hours, Dixon said. SMPs enjoy a price advantage over a new smart TV, and the two product lines also have vastly different upgrade cycles, he said, saying a 2-year-old smart TV may have difficulty running newer apps.
A Vizio update issued Monday via the internet allows owners of SmartCast E-Series Ultra HD TVs to access content from apps directly on the home screen with the 2017 remote control. With Vizio’s Discover section, users can browse TV shows, movies and music -- including streaming titles categorized by Ultra HD and HDR – and launch the content from the remote or from a mobile device using the SmartCast Mobile app, the company said. The Discover section aggregates popular and trending content from multiple sources in one place, allowing viewers to browse selections without having to access multiple apps, Vizio said. SmartCast streaming apps include Amazon Video, Crackle, Hulu, iHeartRadio, Netflix, Pluto TV, Vudu and Xumo. SmartCast TV owners who previously bought eligible displays may require the new SmartCast XRT136 remote with the V-button to have one-button access to the SmartCast user interface, the company said. Owners of eligible models can receive the new remote “either for free or for a nominal fee” by submitting their TV serial number at the Vizio website, the company said. Vizio SmartCast displays also have Chromecast built in, allowing users to browse Chromecast-enabled apps on their mobile devices, Vizio said. And by tapping the Cast button in Chromecast-enabled apps, consumers can stream TV shows and movies to a big screen. In “quick start” mode, they can automatically turn on their TVs by launching a Chromecast-enabled app and tapping the Cast button, it said.
Google's YouTube TV virtual MVPD service is now available in 29 markets, with the addition of Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Columbus, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Seattle, Tampa and West Palm Beach, it tweeted Thursday. The service launched it April (see 1704050049).
The Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco is producing live feeds Monday of the solar eclipse that will be available to the public via Android and iOS apps. Content will include telescope feeds from Casper, Wyoming, and Madras, Oregon; a live performance by the Kronos Quartet, “eclipse sonification” from San Francisco; and educational programs with scientific explanations of the eclipse by Exploratorium and NASA scientists. For sonification, live video is converted into raw data that’s converted into computer-generated sound that will provide the audio track for the San Francisco feed, said the museum. The apps are available from Google Play and the App Store.