Broadband Bytes: February 28-March 6, 2009

This week’s top stories include a white spaces fight, a clearing backlog of DTV converter coupons, and the wrapping up the The Pirate Bay’s copyright infringement trial. There’s also cool gadgetry (including some that should give studio execs heartburn) and a little bit of kissing and making up between Boxee and Hulu. All that and more in this week’s Broadband Bytes!

  • Broadcast stations aren’t very happy with the decision to open up the space between stations, “white spaces”, to allow access by unlicensed devices. In fact, they’re unhapy enough to sue the FCC over the decision claiming that such devices will interfere with their signals despite extensive testing to prevent it. It could be a while before white space devices are offering up Internet access, but, like others, I doubt the blockade will last.
  • Weeks after Congress approved more money for DTV converter box coupons, the backlog is finally starting to clear up. Everyone who was on the waiting list should get their coupon within 3 weeks. Good news for the procrastinators, presuming that boxes can still be found.
  • The defense and prosecution in The Pirate Bay’s trial have made their closing statements and wrapped up what could change the face of filesharing (and bandwidth consumption) forever. The short of it is that the prosecution says that TPB got filthy rich from pirating works and the defense says they’re in the same category as Google and didn’t even cover operating expenses. Now we have to wait until April 17 to find out what the judge thinks.
  • News sites jumped all over the announcement of a new streaming STB, then yawned and said, “oh, another ‘me too’ effort“. ZillionTV hopes to sell a dirt-cheap box with no subscription fees to stream online content and do paid VOD. Their angle? Get ISPs to give their traffic priority over competitors. Given how touchy users are over net neutrality issues, I’m betting they don’t go far with that last bit. But hey, more STB choice is a good thing for consumers, right?
  • Roku isn’t standing still either. Their $99 Netflix box now has Amazon VOD support. It’s been long-rumored that Roku is also working on adding options like Hulu to their menu of options. Cord-cutting may be a myth right now, but at $99 + $10/mo, those boxes are looking really attractive to early adopters.
  • If you’re looking for the top-end of third-party STBs, go check out the Tesly BLOBbox. It combines a OTA HD tuner with a 160GB DVR, then tosses in a bitTorrent client, RSS feeds, Last.FM support, an open SDK… basically an entire HTPC in an easy-to-use interface. The Linux-based box carries a relatively steep $490 price tag and is currently only available through an Italian reseller, but it shows how cheap technologies can help viewers watch TV on their own terms without monthly fees or a lack of extensibility.
  • Boxee and Hulu are on the mend. Kind of. Boxee released a new alpha that allows pulling in Hulu video from RSS feeds, but it’s not as slick as the old menu system that allowed you to browse all of the available content. The content providers want to get Hulu out as much as they can, but they’re also terrified of canibalizing more lucrative broadcast revenue. The disconnect between financial incentives and user desires has driven XMBC hackers to piece together new plugins to allow Hulu access without the ads and many users to go back to downloading torrents of their favorite shows.
  • President Obama picked Julius Genachowski as the new head of the FCC weeks ago, but the nominations is just now official. Genachowski is a net neutrality supporter, but that doesn’t stop the praise from both sides of that issue from flowing in. I imagine it’s because anything is an upgrade over Kevin Martin.

Broadband Bytes: January 31-February 6, 2009

It feels like the summer TV season as most of the news this week is reruns from last week. The DTV delay and broadband stimulus continue to dominate the news headlines. We also saw the launch of Lafayette’s fiber project, some new gadget news and more bad news from device manufacturers and SPs. All this and more in this week’s Broadband Bytes!

Broadband Bytes: 2008 Wrap-up Edition

Happy New Year! This Broadband Bytes covers from December 20 through the end of the year. The end of 2008 saw even more retransmission battles (in particular the 11th-hour showdown between Time Warner and Viacom), Qwest trying to unplug a rival that’s suing it for racketeering, and the pending launch of FTTH services in Lafayette, LA. I predict that 2009 will offer up explosive growth in broadband speeds and availability fueled by federal dollars, an increased flight of users from cable to online video streaming and continued greater-than-inflation rises in programming costs.