If you’re an HBO subscriber, and your provider will authenticate you to access HBO GO online at hbogo.com, you can now watch HBO GO through PlayOn. This may help alleviate some of the concern some cable customers have had accessing HBO GO on the big screen, since many connected TVs, boxes, and game consoles support PlayOn or DLNA in one form or another. MediaMall, the makers of PlayOn, state that HBO GO is available for free to PlayOn Lite users for a “limited time,” suggesting that continued use will eventually require a paid subscription to PlayOn Premium.

Another interesting update is PlayOn’s My Media feature, which lets you stream content from your own local or network folders through PlayOn. This feature has been in beta for quite some time now, and it gives users a way of viewing their own videos on devices that otherwise don’t natively support DLNA, like Roku boxes.

Source: Media Mall Press Release

If we look at the current media landscape, we see a lot of growing pains.  Things are changing and mostly for the better.  People can now access content not only on their TVs but on phones, tablets and PCs.  Companies like Netflix, Roku and Amazon are pushing this trend forward and will hopefully continue to do so.

What we also see are MSOs trying to push into the streaming space.  They’re in a good position to do so if they can get content providers to come along for the ride.  Each and everyone of them wants to keep control of the content as well.  Over time this is going to become more difficult as more competition pushes in.

Why then, we have to ask, would Netflix want to be tied to MSOs?  If we look at HBO, we see that while they’re now streaming their content using their HBOGo service, you can’t just subscribe to HBOGo.  You’re required to subscribe to the channel through your cable or satellite company and only then, if the right deals are in place, can you get access to HBO content on your phone or Roku device.

I’m willing to bet that this would be the company’s only way in.  Give up their independence and tie themselves directly to cable and satellite providers.  Growth, sure, but at what cost?  I can’t see cable companies allowing Netflix to continue to operate the way they do now.  More than likely, they’ve want exclusivity.  Subscribers would have to have a cable subscription in order to access the service.

A Better Way?

I think a better way to get Netflix to cable and satellite subscribers is for the MSOs themselves to want the service.  I have yet to consider Netflix a competitor to video service.  Yes, some of the same content is there but 1) it’s delivered in a different way and 2) each service provides content that the other doesn’t.

I see a service like Netflix as a value-add for MSOs.  Most digital STBs now have cable modems built directly into them.  These modems are only used for OOB data at this point but with the ability there to be a full speed device, there’s no reason why a cable company couldn’t approach a company like Netflix or Amazon VoD and make that content available through currently deployed STBs.

It seems like this is the same proposal that Hastings is suggesting.  Yes and no.  It gets Netflix onto MSO devices but as a separate service, not a “channel”.  Perhaps by cutting MSOs in on the monthlies in some small fashion, Netflix could maintain their independence and yet still move even further into the living room.  Customers don’t need extra equipment, MSOs keep their customer base and Netflix grows.  As well, Netflix has content that cable channels don’t currently offer therefore you’re not overlapping in a huge way.

This type of deal could also allow a company like Netflix to maintain their independence.  You CAN get the service on your MSO STB, you’re not required to have a cable subscription to access said service however.  Roku and other devices would still work outside of the cable or satellite network.

Maintaining this independence will be hard for Netflix or any other company to do.  Traditionally, MSOs want to control how things work and at some point they’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that the control they’ve enjoyed for decades is slowly eroding.  How they handle it will determine the future of their industry.  They can go the way of the music companies, now held at Apple’s beck and call, or they can write good deals that benefit not only themselves but customers as well.

The streaming vs. traditional video war is no where near over at this point.  I feel that as many subscribers as Netflix and other services have, there are still a lot of people who subscribe to traditional video services.  That’s not going to change overnight but time is running out for MSOs to get a strategy together and make it work both for themselves and the customers they serve.

The benefit and convenience of digital content is undeniable. We carry dozens of photos of loved ones in our pocket and a library of reading in our bag. We can catch up on movies and TV while traveling. The limits of 24 or 36 images imposed by chemically-processed film are a thing of the past—we now take hundreds of pictures on vacation and view them on our televisions.

This is all incredibly convenient, right? Absolutely. But digital technology also introduces new problems. Problems with persistence, curation, transfer, and legacy. Remember that shoebox of photos you found in your grandparents’ attic or the collection of vinyl records your older brother gave you? Too young for that? OK, how about the university textbook you occasionally still use as a reference or the DVDs on your shelf?

Physical items often have a life of decades—even centuries. Hundred-year-old photographs help us better understand the lives of our ancestors. Libraries of books and music get passed down in families. Digital items? Not so much. Files get lost or corrupted, file formats become obsolete, digital licenses are often non-transferable, and all of this is exacerbated by the abundance of content resulting from our lack of curation. We always figure we’ll identify our favorite pics from that trip sometime later. But before you know it, we’re just taking more pictures.

This is a problem that many people have been thinking about, but there isn’t a good solution yet. Online services help, but what’s to guarantee that they’ll stick around? History would show that most don’t. File formats change or go away over time, and conversion isn’t easy. Think about how many different digital photo formats, including model-specific RAW formats, have come and gone in the past decade or so.

The fleeting convenience of digital content presents problems not only at the personal level, but perhaps also at a sociological level. In addition to preserving memories for our own and our family’s future enjoyment, how will we enable our descendants to learn about life in the early years of digital content?

At SXSW (South by Southwest) this year, data issues were front and center, and a discussion facilitated by musician and photographer Jesse Chan-Norris addressed this issue of legacy head-on. Jesse suggests that there’s no easy answer yet, but that this is something we should be talking about and aware of. This doesn’t mean we become luddites; it just means that we should be thinking about content preservation as we enjoy the conveniences of digital.

Jesse was kind enough to speak with me after his talk at SXSW, and the audio of that interview is included in this post.

Yet, in 2012, digital media management in the home is still in its infancy.  True, DVRs have now become commonplace thanks to leased boxes by cable companies, but they are by and large still not much more than fancy VCRs in terms of flexibility and functionality.  Beyond these cable-company leased DVR boxes, cable-ready DVRs are still slim pickings — there’s really just TiVo and Windows Media Center.  Both offer enhanced media management and streaming options, but go about solving the problem in vastly different ways.  Due in part to up-front costs and setup complexity, neither are close to mainstream when compared to cable-company DVR units.

Then there are the emerging and increasingly popular non-DVR set-top boxes, including AppleTV, Boxee, Roku, Google TV, and even Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation.   These types of digital media add-ons are compelling for manufactuerer because they exist exclusively in the “internet media” space and therefore can avoid the complex, cumbersome and regulated CableCard certification and implementation process required to support digital cable content. (How cumbersome, you ask?  Consider that the federal government needed to get involved to help make things easier for the consumer.)  The relative simplicity of purpose of these add-on devices drives costs down to the point where they can become compelling mainstream products.  And their sealed box approach ensures security for high-value content (i.e., Netflix, Hulu, etc.), while eschewing the complexities of integrating with regional, regulated technologies like digital cable and satellite services.

Even with all of these options, there are serious gaps in addressing mainstream consumer needs:  DVR devices only tip-toe into the internet media/digital streaming space, and internet media add-on boxes generally ignore traditional, cable-based and satellite TV content.  For those who desire the best of both worlds—traditional cable and internet media in one, simple, unified experience—there are very few elegant, all-in-one solutions. (Note: I do recognize that Windows Media Center’s flexibility can get you quite close to having the best of both worlds, but getting there requires serious commitment and technical mojo that is simply out of the mainstream consumers’ grasp and/or interest.)

Which brings us to 2012. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show seemed to be ushering in the first generation of viable “Smart TVs” — based on technologies ranging from proprietary platforms like Samsung’s to more standards-based environments powered by Android.  If digital streaming technology successfully lodges itself inside the television set itself, it will significantly reduce a barrier to entry for the mainstream consumer.  Consumers notoriously don’t like set-top boxes, but they are already used to having them in their homes to enable digital cable or satellite TV feeds.  In other words, if all existing boxes stay as-is, yet the TV gets smarter in the process, then the average consumer will likely stick with their cable-based DVR box for traditional content, and look to their TVs alone to gain access to the growing volume of quality content available online.

Even Microsoft is sensing the trend.  All of the rumors and prognostications lead to Microsoft looking at their own set-top box, the Xbox 360, to be the new digital media master of the consumer’s family room.  While I am skeptical that the consumer’s existing mental model will actually enable them look at their Xbox’s as anything more than their game console, it’s quite feasible that the next generation Xbox will finally live up to its namesake and be the “box that does X,” where “X” is anything you want it to do — from gaming, to media, to communications, to education & training.  No matter how it plays out, the point is that the Xbox (as well as other gaming consoles, like Sony’s PS3) is an existing device that people have accepted in their homes, similar to the cable company’s set-top box.  Meaning, there is an opportunity for Microsoft and other console makers to leverage this “accepted box” and alter it’s purpose in the emerging smart family room.

A new wildcard entering the race for your TV is Google.  Google has proven that when it really wants to, it can dominate an industry (examples: internet search and smartphone OS’s).  Google’s own GoogleTV has so far been quite a flop, proving that a “launch in beta” culture might not be well-suited for the digital family room market.  But it looks like Google is not giving up so quickly — nor should they; after all, Google is in essence an advertising placement company, and to miss out on the TV consumer experience would be a strategic fail for such a company.

One of the most anticipated movers in this space is Apple, who seem to be planning to move beyond the “hobby” stage of AppleTV.  Apple will most likely raise the bar for the whole industry (as they are wont to do), bringing entirely new interaction models and content consumption features that have thus far evaded creative minds in the industry.

For power users (like me), all this “mainstreaming” gives me some worry warts, as I prefer to be on the bleeding edge, with technology power and flexibility (and, frankly, some hack-ability) to do virtually anything I want to meet my discerning digital desires.  Can the more esoteric and high-end solutions like Windows Media Center (and Ceton’s future “Q” product) exist in this increasingly mainstream future?  I’d argue, yes.  Any market that has a broadening appeal is good for all segments within that market.  In other words, a rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s been over a decade since the first DVR was launched, and almost a decade since the first Media Center software was introduced.  Digital media in the family room has experienced a relatively slow evolution, but I think 2012 may be remembered as a turning point — just like 2007 is now thought of as a turning point in smartphones.

As a result, unlike Apple with iTunes and Amazon with their music and video services, Microsoft is simply not thought of as being a media company. Of course, that’s not for a lack of trying. MSNBC, after all, was a partnership between Microsoft and NBC (which has since dissolved on the cable news side).

Which leads us to Microsoft’s Zune service. Zune is a solid and proprietary media distribution and e-retail service that evolved from a failed portal media device strategy. The service was fairly innovative when it was initially designed and launched, but so much has changed in the past few years, it is questionable if Zune can practically compete in the rapidly evolving digital media landscape. Which begs the question: should it compete? Should Microsoft maintain a closed content distribution and e-retail system based primarily on the similarly-closed iTunes model?

Today’s Zune service shares features with a few of the major competing service out there—including music streaming (Zune Pass) and music/video content purchasing (Zune Marketplace). Despite this unique combination of content streaming and purchasing, Zune still does not provide a transparently compelling value proposition that itself would drive the adoption of Zune-enabled clients. For instance, what percent of consumers do you think buy a Windows Phone or an Xbox 360 due to Zune service integration? By comparison, Amazon (and, increasingly, Google) provide client applications across multiple platforms to encourage as many people as possible to access their content, while also selling devices themselves that provide seamless consumption of their content. This approach is “open” as compared to Zune and iTunes. And it’s working.

Due to the lack of market success of Zune portable media players, combined with the lackluster sales and market penetration of Zune-enabled devices like Windows Phone, the Zune service itself feels a bit out of sync with the current media distribution landscape. It might be a different story if Windows Phone devices had huge market share, which drove the mass adoption of Zune, which would therein drive demand and new innovation. But that’s just not the case as things stand today.

When discussing media distribution systems, it’s hard to avoid talking about digital rights management (DRM). There was a time not long ago when Microsoft felt that they had an obligation (to their position as industry standard-bearers and to the industry at large) to roll out the universal standard for DRM. Remember PlayForSure? Zune represented a full-fledged retreat from this “solution for all” position to a walled garden, safe-house model—mimicking Apple’s iTunes model. There’s an argument to make that Microsoft serves itself best when going with their unique strengths vs. emulating Apple’s approach, but it is also understandable that Microsoft felt they had to respond to a failing model of PlayForSure and the roaring success of iTunes. However, with emerging players like UltraViolet looking to make headway in video DRM, while audio DRM has all but disappeared from the scene, it truly puts Zune’s walled garden approach into question.

When considering the evolving dynamics of DRM, the newer, more socially-aware audio streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, and combine this with the continued growth of video services like Amazon, Hulu and even YouTube—it is becoming increasingly challenging to see where Zune fits. And, strategically, it makes one wonder if Microsoft would better serve itself if it were a software innovator that focused on media aggregation and delivery vs. being a media distributor and e-retailer.

Sure, Zune is Microsoft’s proprietary walled garden that ensures a simple content acquisition experience for compatible devices, including Windows PCs, XBoxes, and Windows Phones (and, disappointingly, not Windows Media Center). But is that going to be satisfying enough if the options outside the walled garden start looking more appealing than what’s going on inside the safe-house?

Apple is streaming a concert special to iTunes users and Apple TV owners tonight, February 9, at 10:00  p.m. EST, 7:00 p.m. PST. The live content will appear on Apple TV under the brand iTunes Live in the Internet menu—an option that didn’t even exist on Apple TV just 24 hours ago. While some are questioning using Paul McCartney to premier such a feature, the choice aligns with Apple’s (an formerly Jobs’) affinity for all things Beatles.

Perhaps more importantly, this event demonstrates that Apple has the ability to deliver live video content and even introduce new programming options to the Apple TV on the fly, without a software update. Oh, the possibilities….

This weekend the world was introduced to the “Hulubritory” where Will Arnette is conceiving new ways of liquefying the public’s brains for easy consumption. One of those new tools for brain liquefication is Hulu’s most recent attempt at original content creation called Paul the Male MatchMaker. This comedy from Warner Bros. Studio 2.0 pans on the public’s love for the adult dating genre.

This mockumentary-style sitcom showcases Paul, a neurotic socialite who decides to take a stab at running his inherited matchmaking service. Hilarity ensues when his direct, brutally honest approach is not well received by his clients and guest stars, including Janeane Garofalo (The Larry Sanders Show), Lisa Edelstein (House M.D.), Tony Hale (Arrested Development), David Eigenberg (Sex and the City), Jean Louisa Kelly (Yes, Dear), and Sam Trammell (True Blood).

Hulu is not the only streaming service bringing its own self-generated programming to the web. Today, Netflix released its first eight episodes of Lilyhammer for streaming users only. The series stars Steven Van Zandt (Sopranos) as a former New York City mobster restarting his life in Norway. Netflix was not the first though. You may recall Hulu attempted this last March with the drama The Confession staring Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt.

Starting Monday, Feb 13, Liz Tuccillo (He’s Just Not That Into You, Sex and the City) and Paul Bartholomew (Mad Men) will bring 10 episodes to Hulu as the sole delivery of content. The new show will only be available to paying subscribers of Hulu PLUS. Check out Paul the Male MatchMaker next Monday, and let us know what you thought in the comments section below.

This week the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) released a regulatory filing to the FCC detailing the deployment of CableCARD to consumer devices from the top five cable companies. Details were included from Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable, although the report provided summary data of the top 10 companies. According to the report “over 554,000 CableCARDs deployed for use in retail devices by the ten largest incumbent cable operators.” Of course the NCTA, who has fought against the CableCARD rules from their initial drafting, was very quick to point out that since the CableCARD rules have gone into effect those same ten companies have “deployed more than 32,000,000 operator-supplied set-top boxes with CableCARDs.”

Fortunately, not everything written in the document’s 13 pages was pure rhetoric. There was also a lot of interesting data about how many CableCARDs have been deployed, how many of them were installed by technicians vs. the customers doing self installs, and how many truck rolls (service calls resulting in a technician being sent to the customer’s house) were required in the first 30 days to get a CableCARD deployment operational.

Comcast is the largest cable company in the country, so it makes sense that they would have the most consumer CableCARD systems deployed. Of the companies that reported the self install rate, Comcast fits right in the middle. The number they reported, 29%, is about what I would have expected. It’s not a tiny number, but it’s sufficiently large given that a consumer who did enough research to decide to buy/build their own set-top-box or home theater PC, is probably also reasonably comfortable installing their own gadgets too. The number of truck rolls required also points out some interesting data. Cablevision customers and technicians appear to be doing the best job of getting things working on the first effort where Charter obviously has some work to do! The other interesting piece of data here is Cablevision’s self install percentage. Did 57% of their CableCARD customers really do their own installations? If so, then our respect goes out to those 22,000 customers who, not only installed on their own, where pretty successful at getting it all working.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in this chart is that it’s supposed to show data per quarter, but it only has data for quarters two and four. Unfortunately, the NCTA isn’t very consistent with their FCC filings. In fact, Q4 isn’t even technically accurate as the data actually covers September through December of 2011. Putting all that aside, the numbers themselves are interesting. In four of the top five companies CableCARD subscribers grew. In two cases, Cablevision and Cox, the growth was even at a pretty significant percentage. Comcast, on the other hand, dropped more than 36,000 CableCARD subscribers. We don’t have Comcast’s fourth quarter subscriber numbers yet, because they aren’t releasing those details until February 15th. Since we don’t know if Comcast lost video customers for the quarter, the only other assumption that we could make is that many of these CableCARD customers switched to Comcast’s newer Xfinity DVRs.

The last chart just shows the number of CableCARDs deployed as a percentage of the company’s total subscribers. Even given the large percent of Comcast customers who switched from using CableCARD in a consumer device, they are still out in front. If Cablevision continues the rate of growth from Q4 into 2012 they will very quickly overtake Comcast.

So despite the cable industry’s ongoing assault against CableCARD, in favor of their own locked-down boxes, I think it’s safe to say that CableCARD is doing well. While we know that home-built home theater PCs don’t make up the majority of these CableCARD installs, we certainly hope to see more people building Windows 7 Media Center boxes equipped with any one of the many CableCARD tuners currently available. We’re also excited to see Ceton going up against Tivo directly with their Q Entertainment Platform.

Souce: NCTA

From looking at the UltraViolet flyer it sounds great: I can watch my movie any time on computers, tablets, and even smartphone, because it is on select devices. I guess you can also share your collection with up to 6 family members. I am not sure that works because can’t you just give your username and password to everyone? (we will find out). From the flyer it is also apparently extremely easy with only three steps. 1 – go to a website (http://www.sonypictures.com/uv/drive) …Also the worst URL ever. 2 – Enter code. 3 – Create some accounts and watch my movie! If that is it then I am surprised, and that sounds like it should take about two minutes, so let’s find out.

Step 1 – “From your computer, go to www.sonypictures.com/uv/drive

This seems really simple, so I opened up Chrome and boom all I have to do is enter my code? But Ryan seems skeptical.

Step 2 – “Enter the Redemption Code below”

Alright I think I can handle this.

So I enter it and simply hit “REDEEM”…uh oh LIES! I can not simply go to step 3! I have to tell Sony where I bought the Blu-ray. This also seems easy so I input the only place you should buy Blu-rays, Amazon.com.

Step 3 – “Follow the steps to create or log in to your free UltraViolet and Sony Pictures movie accounts to start enjoying your movie”

Alright so that one wasn’t on the flyer, but this one was. I now have to create some accounts. According to the flyer I have to create two accounts which seems very odd, but let’s roll with it.

So after filling in:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Birth Day
• Zip Code
• Email Address
• If I have an UltraViolet Account??? (Aren’t I signing up for one?)
• Then I have to sign up for a Sony Pictures account… and an UltraViolet account.
• ….WAIT???!?!? HUH??? alright I am in
• Also I need to agree to about five different privacy policies and terms of use.

Alright so I have all this jazz filled out so now I can watch my movie right? Nope, I need to agree to another terms of use:

Alright I agree without reading it just like everyone else, so now I can watch it right? According to the next page I can, so says Ryan Gosling:

To my surprise I get a nice Silverlight video player with my movie. It even has chapter support:

So overall that didn’t seem too complicated to get it going, but the real question now is do I need both of these accounts to watch this online? Also what about mobile devices? Well according to this big purple bar on top of the page my account is not activated at UltraViolet, so let’s do this now. There is a direct link so that should be simple. The link does nothing more than take me to www.uvvu.com where I need to sign in. Enter my credentials and I am in, but only after I fill in a second secret question. I am not sure why Sony didn’t ask me to fill it out, but that seems alright. They send me an email and I have to go validate it. So I open up my Gmail where in fact an email had been sent and my account is now activated.

It appears as though any movie I redeem will be accessible over at uvvu.com, however if I actually want to stream Drive then I have to go to the Sony website.  The odd thing here is that it does NOT ask for my UltraViolet account. It actually asks for my email and password for my Sony account. Once I log back in now I can watch Drive once again. While this doesn’t seem like a huge issue, there are a lot of different movie distributers out there and if you have to have a separate account for each that is just going to be a pain in the butt.

Alright back to mobile phones though. I head back over to uvvu.com to see what I can play this content on. I click on the big “Our Apps and Devices” button in hopes my brand new Galaxy Nexus can play this content back. NOPE! Apparently there are NO devices that UltraViolet works on. This is actually a let down and basically a lie according to the flyer.

While there is no list, I remember someone saying that Flixster had UltraViolet. After digging through their website I found www.flixster.com/ultraviolet with a nice video. So I better sign up for an account so I can stream it to my Android Flixster app. After quickly signing up on Flixster.com I think I am good to go.  I press on the redeem option and it is time to link my UV account with Flixster. I also apparently need to give Warner Bros. the rights to access my UV account. These seems fine, so let’s do this. After linking my account I have to enter the UltraViolet code once more:

However apparently my code is now invalid

Do not fear though, apparently since I already activated it with Sony it is now just in my “Flixster” collection. So it is on uvvu.com, sony.com, and flixster.com. That is not confusing at all. The interesting thing is if I just simply press play on flixster.com it does NOT redirect to sony.com, but instead it just starts playing. This seems great. However just like everything else in this process it is not that easy. When I was streaming Drive at Sony.com I was able to get SD and HD streams, however on Flixster.com I only receive SD, and it is also Flash.

So now it is time to see if it starts streaming on my Android phone, which is the only reason I signed up for the Flixster account. After downloading the official flixster application on the Android Marketplace and signing in and checking my collection I have the option to stream or to download.

So this was a journey into UltraViolet. At the end of the day, UltraViolet does seem to work. It is not uniform, requires multiple accounts, and seems to not have enough information, but after a while you can stream a movie. It just seems like too much work for the avid consumer, which I believe is the real problem. How was your UltraViolet experience? We want to know! Leave comments below.

Update 1: I have also tested the Flixster app on the Kindle Fire and it streamed Drive just fine.

Additionally Drive is now available on Blu-ray:

UltraViolet à la Paramount

Let’s start with Paramount’s UltraViolet offering, in general. You may want to seriously consider those iTunes and Windows Media options, because Paramount’s flavor of UltraViolet doesn’t seem fully baked yet. You need to sign up for yet another account (just like at UVVU, Flixster, Sony, and Universal), so we’re up to five accounts now with only four of the majors in the pool. Once you’ve registered, linked, and logged in, you can redeem, view, and download your Paramount titles.

Paramount's proprietary download manager doubles as the only playback mechanism for their UltraViolet titles

You’ll need to install yet another retailer-specific program to download and play Paramount’s UltraViolet titles offline on your PC or Mac. That’s about where the similarities end.

Like the other studios, Paramount’s site is designed to show you not just their titles, but all of the titles in your UltraViolet locker. At release time and as of this writing, this feature doesn’t work properly. We reported the issue to Paramount’s UltraViolet help desk and promptly received a message from Zukor LLC explaining that “you will only be able to see your Paramount Ultra Violet digital copies.” Actually…not true. The page is there—it’s intended to show the other titles; Paramount’s FAQs clearly state that “you will be able to see your entire UltraViolet library;” oh…and UltraViolet is one word.

Your UltraViolet library on Paramount's site may appear slightly broken

Unlike with every other UltraViolet retailer, the only option for viewing UltraViolet titles on iOS devices is by streaming, over WiFi, from paramountmovies.com. You can’t watch them in Flixster, so you can’t watch them offline on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. To clarify, they’ll show up in your collection in Flixster, but you can’t play or download them there. That also means you can’t watch them on your Google TV and you can’t watch them on your Android phone or tablet. In one test, we couldn’t even stream a title on a 4-month old Windows 7 PC with no explanation as to why.

Paramount’s Digital Store

Paramount is the first retailer to offer direct sales of UltraViolet digital titles. No discs—just the digital copy. They’ve rolled out an initial offering of about sixty titles, ranging from catalog titles Chinatown and the Beverly Hills Cop series to newer releases like Super 8 and the Paranormal Activity trilogy [please let this end as a trilogy]. Purchasing a title couldn’t be easier—select a title to buy, provide your credit card or PayPal account information, and the movie appears in your UltraViolet library. No shopping carts, no redemptions codes. It’s simple.

That’s about the end of the good news. First, let’s talk pricing. While we all might like to think that digital copies should be priced notably less than their packaged equivalents, we know from services like Amazon, iTunes, and VUDU that this is not usually the case. Most digital movies from these retailers cost between 7 and 15 dollars, or 15 to 20 dollars for HD. On iTunes, many of these digital movies do come with extras, like those included with packaged discs.

Paramount’s UltraViolet pricing is higher. Much higher. All catalog titles—whether two years old or fifty years old—are $12.99 in standard definition and $19.99 in HD. Newer titles are $16.99 in standard definition and $22.99 in HD. Many [why not all?] titles are also available to rent by streaming with the usual 30 day/48 hour limitations.

To put this pricing model in perspective, the guys on Seen in HD used this week’s Paranormal Activity 3 release as an example. For the UltraViolet movie in HD (with no extras), Paramount is charging $22.99. On Amazon, you can buy the Blu-ray combo pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and standard definition iTunes, Windows Media, and UltraViolet digital copies for $21.99.

For catalog titles, it’s even worse. Paramount is selling a standard definition UltraViolet copy of Airplane—a thirty year old film—for $12.99. A digital copy of the same movie costs $9.99 on iTunes or $6.49 on Amazon Instant Video. Or you can get a Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams Double Feature DVD including Airplane at Amazon for $9.99.

So there’s that. Then there’s the issue of playback. We already established that you can’t play Paramount’s UltraViolet titles on any disconnected device except for computers running their proprietary player. And since there aren’t any connected TVs or Blu-ray players available yet that support UltraViolet (and even those recently announced depend on Flixster), you probably can’t play these digital purchases on your TV. You can, of course, if you have a home theater PC, but even then you have to play them using Paramount’s custom desktop software, so forget about using your remote control.

HD playback is even more limited. To play Paramount’s HD UltraViolet videos, you must have an HDCP-compliant PC. Forget the Mac—it’s not supported. Your only hope of enjoying HD-quality video is on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 laptop or HTPC connected to an HDCP-compliant monitor with a DisplayPort, DVI-D or HDMI cable. Get all that?

And finally, while the other retailers download UltraViolet movies to your Videos folder as MP4 videos so they’re easily identifiable and transportable, Paramount instead plops thousands of tiny data files on your computer. The video we used for testing comprised 6,630 separate files with clever names like 00a4db57-7774-4907-b155-f054bc12981c. And now all of the other video programs that depend on your Videos folder get to parse through all of that crap.

Paramount clutters your Videos folder with thousands of data files

High Hopes Dashed

It’s widely recognized that UltraViolet has had a rocky start, and we’ve certainly hedged on recommending this technology, but we had high expectations for Paramount. These are the folks with some of the best movie franchises in their catalog, including, The Godfather, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek. Surely they’d want to make a big, successful splash at launch, right?

Instead, this launch is a big mess. It’s buggy, it’s extremely limited, and their digital titles are ridiculously expensive. Perhaps the only redeeming quality here is that Paramount is giving us an out as they continue to include iTunes and Windows Media digital copies in their combo packs. Our recommendation here should be obvious: save your money.

Meanwhile, Fox, a member of the consortium behind UltraViolet, revealed at CES that they do not expect to release titles with UltraViolet until late 2012. According to a report by the Las Angeles Times, Fox executives want to see more retail outlets, more compatible devices, and a common downloadable format.

Accounts of UltraViolet’s success are varied, with representatives from the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the consortium of vendors behind UltraViolet, lauding it’s success to date and downplaying consumers’ initial frustrations. The president of Warner Home Video, Ron Sanders, states that “consumers are excited about the prospects for streaming and mobile device use with [UltraViolet]” while the press continues to report consumers’ complaints. Meanwhile, Warner’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2—the most successful movie of the year—continues to receive nearly as many one-star ratings as five at Amazon.com…largely in response to UltraViolet.

Updated 1/23 to reflect information received from Netflix.

Amidst news of management shuffling and pending financial results, there seems to be a lot of customer-facing changes going on at Netflix these days.

First off, Warner Brothers announced last week at CES that since they’ve seen “very positive results” [Warner Home Video's exact words] from the previous 28-day window, they’re going to start holding new releases back from Netflix even longer—now for eight weeks.

Then just this past week, we started getting messages from readers about Netflix no longer supporting HD or 5.1 audio and subtitles. With a little digging, we found that, indeed, titles previously available in HD with 5.1 audio and subtitles (on supported platforms, like Xbox and PS3), no longer sported such features. We were able to find HD titles and even titles with Dolby 5.1 audio, but mostly TV episodes. There’s clearly been a change in the availability of these audio and video features, but Netflix hasn’t announced anything about it. We have a message in to Netflix PR to see if they’ll explain the changes.

Where'd the HD and 5.1 audio go?

Netflix responded to our query to let us know that there was an issue with metadata that has since been resolved. In fact, our tests show that Limitless and many other titles that didn’t appear badged as HD a few days ago now properly reflect their HD video quality and 5.1 Dolby Digital audio.

Meanwhile, get ready for some changes we do know about: fewer premium titles. Netflix’ content agreement with Starz ends in February, so you’ll soon see fewer of the premium titles available for streaming, including large catalogs of content from Disney and Sony. The Starz agreement ends on February 28.

1.) Resident Evil Revelations 3DS Demo

This is the second RE game that will be released on the 3DS, and while Mercenaries was a bit of a let down to some, it had a tiny demo of the potential that Revelations could be. Nintendo and Capcom today put up a full blown demo of Resident Evil Revelations on the 3DS eShop. You get to play it 30 times before it magically disappears from your system which is bad. This also marks the beginning of demos on the eShop which is great! So if you have a 3DS go head over to the eShop and download it now.

2.) Resident Evil Retribution Trailer

Milla J is back for an all new Resident Evil movie once again in 3D. Don’t be scared by the first 30 seconds which seem to be a big Sony ad:

3.) Resident Evil 6 Trailer

After watching this trailer all I can say is WOW! I am blown away. Leon is back and it is going to be amazing.

We stopped by Dish’s booth and asked for a demonstration and explanation of this tuner wizardry. The answer is rather ingenious: you can set up your Hopper DVR to automatically record the four major networks’ prime time lineup—every night. The Hopper pulls all four networks through one transponder, leaving you with two tuners during prime time hours to record anything else. At any other time of day, all three tuners are available for use.

This feature, called PrimeTime Anytime, keeps eight days’ worth of programming on a separate drive partition, so it doesn’t impact the available space for your own recorded shows. If you can’t watch one of the PrimeTime shows within the eight days, you can save it to your Recorded TV. And if you choose not to enable PrimeTime Anytime, you can use all three tuners at any time of day.

PrimeTime Anytime will be available on Hopper boxes at no additional cost.

Watch the PrimeTime Anytime walkthrough below or on our YouTube channel.

Be sure to check all of our CES coverage at The Digital Media Zone.

One of the higher profile products to be announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show has been the Simple.TV. It’s a device that works as a DVR for people who don’t want to pay for cable. For $150 you’ll get a device that will allow you to watch and record free over-the-air (or ClearQAM) content. Sounds great, right? Well, maybe not after you dig into all of the details. For starters, the device doesn’t have an HDMI port. In fact, it doesn’t have any sort of audio/video output port at all. Instead you attach the device to your home network via wired Ethernet. That’s right, there isn’t any built-in WiFi here either. Once on your network you can then view the live or recorded television shows on other streaming devices that you might own. When it launches in the spring they say that it will support Roku, Google TV, Boxee, and iPad. So how much storage does it have? None. Yep, a DVR that doesn’t even include a hard drive. You’ll have to supply your own and attach it via USB. Have you seen the cost of hard drives lately? If not, don’t go looking, you might have a heart attack at how much the prices have jumped up. Even just a nice 500 GB external drive is going to cost you about $85. Ok, so maybe you’ve got a spare hard drive laying around, and may you already have a Roku or Boxee box, at least you won’t have to pay a monthly fee, right? Nope! Well, technically, you don’t have to, but if you want to actually have an electronic program guide and the ability to schedule recordings, you’ll need to pay $4.99/month. Have we mentioned yet that it only has one tuner? So you can only record one show at a time, unless you want to buy two of these (and two hard drives). All of a sudden, this simple, cheap, DVR isn’t looking so simple or cheap!

So let’s recap the total costs on the Simple.TV DVR.

Let us offer up another idea. If this is something that interests you, do you already have a computer? You can buy TV tuner devices for that PC for far less money and use something like Windows Media Center for free. You won’t even need to pay for the guide data. It comes for free in Media Center. If the computer is standard desktop PC, you could get something like the Avermedia Duet. It’s an internal PCI Express card with two tuners, for $65. If you can’t go the internal card route, you could pick up a USB tuner, like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q. It’s a single tuner USB device for about $68. Or, even better, grab the SiliconDust HDHomeRun. It offers two tuners, and attaches to your network via Ethernet. It’s $99 and would allow you to watch and record TV on any PC in your house simply using your existing network! If the PC isn’t directly connected to your television that won’t be an issue either if you already own an Xbox 360. Microsoft’s gaming console naively works as a Windows Media Center Extender, giving you full access to all of your media, plus live and recorded TV if you connect (through your network) to a Windows PC.

At the end of the day, all of these options require a little bit of work on your part. While we hate to recommend, the simplest DVR is definitely the one that your cable company will give you for $10/month. If you’re not willing to pay for cable though, you’re going to need to spend some cash upfront, and put in a little work to get the same sort of features.

Be sure to check all of our CES coverage at The Digital Media Zone.

Source: Simple.TV