As I’ve pointed out before, I’ve been a PC guy most of my life and have only been using Macs for the last two years. The biggest takeaway for me has been that Microsoft and Apple are really pretty even: they both pose as poster children for anti-competitive practices, generally favor proprietary code over open source, and make very questionable ethics calls.

Microsoft has been living with the reputation of a big bad corporation for over a decade now. But in the last year or so, there has been a subtle but significant shift in the public opinion, for the better. I can actually pin-point exactly when: it’s since Bill Gates has stepped down. Although Slashdot still illustrates all Microsoft news with the now famous Borg avatar of Bill, the tech media seems to have softened its perception of him. People speak of him with some nostalgia now, and he’s often portrayed as some sort of wise elder spokesman for technology. A lot of that may be due to Ballmer being very unpopular and Gates therefore shining by contrast, but I think that there is something deeper going on here. Read the rest of this entry »
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

This week in etilities: companies keep competing for dominance in the internet TV market, the case is made for and against Google Voice, and your last excuse not to back up your data is taken away.

Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix still going after Hulu

Comcast (Etilities Forum) and Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) are working on a response to the Hulu (Etilities Forum) phenomenon with the development of a ‘TV Everywhere‘ service that allows users to view content that they pay for via subscriptions on their computer. The main differentiator here with Hulu is obviously the fact that you need to be paying for a subscription. If, like me, you find yourself increasingly unable to tolerate advertisement, and if Comcast and Time Warner manage to keep the costs associated with this reasonable (this is where I’m not so hopeful), this could be the beginning of an appealing alternative to ad-supported TV.

Meanwhile, Netflix (Etilities Forum) is also looking ahead, projecting that the number of subscribers for its DVD-mailing service will slowly decline over the next ten years. Their answer? Boost the number of titles available for streaming, as well as their quality. Great idea on paper; the trick will undoubtedly be to sell the big studios on it.

The case for and against Google Voice

PC World put out a great piece this week on the five reasons to use Google Voice, and the five reasons not to. What it allows you to do is centralize the control of all of your phone numbers in a single location so that, for example, calling your cell phone number also makes your phones in your home and office ring. You can also manage your voicemails, SMS messages, and much more. According the PC World, the possible downsides mainly fall within two categories: privacy and reliability.

You can now afford to keep your data safe

Do you want a place to safely store your ripped DVDs and other large amounts of data at an affordable price? You may be in luck. Gizmodo came out this week with the review of a great new product from Western Digital: the My Book World Edition II. For $700, you can buy a 4TB networked storage book with 2TB of usable storage space (the other 2TBs back up the first 2TB). Unless you have a bigger media library than I do (yeah, right), that is more than enough space and you can sleep soundly and know that your data is safe from a hard-drive failure.

You no longer have an excuse not to back up!

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Roku, the $99 device that allows users to stream Netflix (Etilities Forum) movie content directly from the internet to your TV just announced its support for Amazon Video-On-Demand. The support will offer access to Amazon’s library of 40,000 movies and TV shows surpassing Netflix’ online arsenal. This growing competition for online content between Amazon, iTunes (Etilities Forum) and Netflix can only benefit customers like you by improving the selection and availability of content and driving costs down.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Blockbuster (Etilities Forum) today lost 77% of its stock value when reports came out that it hired the law firm Kirkland & Ellis to help the company prepare for bankruptcy.  The reports were strongly denied by a Blockbuster spokesperson.  While acknowledging the hiring of the firm as consultant for its financing strategy, the company stated that bankruptcy was not an option it was pursuing.  We’ve documented for some time some of the growth of its competitor Netflix (Etilities Forum) and the innovation around streaming that it has implemented and future plans along streaming media.  While we are in no place to comment on the strategies of Blockbuster, we do support the company’s efforts to evaluate its options for it seems that in this changing economy, the status-quo would not be an option.  True or not, this rumor has damaged the stock and possibly tarnished Blockbuster.  As an already tarnished company, can it survive this even if the reports turn out to be false?

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

According to Netflix (Etilities Forum) CEO Reed Hastings, the company will start offering streaming-only plans in 2010. This seems like a natural move for Netflix, which has been pushing its streaming service hard accross as many platforms as it can: PCs, Macs, X-Boxes, TiVos, and Blu-Ray players.

In order to make such a plan truly attractive, Netflix will need to boost the number of available titles: while there are over 70,000 in its DVD library, the online library has a mere 12,000, a relatively small number comparatively.

Boosting the size of the online library would be to everyone’s benefit, as the DVD by mail model has two main flaws, both overcome by the streaming model:

1. You have to wait for your DVDs to be mailed to you and to be mailed back.
2. It often takes a while for new releases to find their way to your home in DVD format because of the initial surge in demand (don’t you hate always seeing the ‘Very Long Wait’ next to the titles you really want in your Queue?)

Now if by 2010 Netflix can smooth out the buffering issues with its streaming offering that many are currently experiencing, this could be a very successful initiative.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

We’ve often complained that whenever Blockbuster (Etilities Forum) announces new offerings, it mostly follows in the footsteps of its competitor Netflix (Etilities Forum). This time, however, we must give credit where credit is due as Blockbuster announced today that it would add video game rentals to its “Total Access” service, something that Netflix does not offer.

Currently, Total Access sends you DVDs in the mail that you return in exchange for new DVDs. You pay a monthly subscription cost, and how many DVDs you can hold on to at once depends on how much you pay. The addition of viedo game rentals to this service will initially launch as a pilot program, and if successful, it is expected to be rolled out nationwide in the 2nd half of this year.

Without specifically naming Netflix, the press release does point out that this differentiates Blockbuster from the competition: “A combination video game and movie online offering — with in-store exchange privileges — is a tremendous value and convenience offering not available through anyone other than Blockbuster.”

Currently, the best-known online gaming rental company is Gamefly, which does not offer movie rentals. This will give Blockbuster the edge of being the only company to offer both types of media in one plan.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Blockbuster (Etilities Forum), still trying to catch up to main competitor Netflix (Etilities Forum), announced yesterday a partnership with with Sonic Solutions to bring streaming content to home and mobile devices, including “PCs, portable media players, Blu-ray Disc players, personal video recorders (PVRs), set-top boxes, mobile phones and Web-connected television sets.”  Blockbuster had already made their push into the online content world last November when it announced a partnership with 2Wire to stream movies and TV shows to the MediaPoint Media Player.

The article does not mention how many of the Blockbuster titles will be available, or at what price.  However, given Sonic’s partnership with CinemaNow, which is expected to handle the fulfillment, we can venture an educated guess based on their current offerings:

• Download-to-own $10 to $20 for movies, $2 for TV show episodes and music videos, which can be viewed on up to 3 devices
• Pay-per-view movies from $3 to $4
• Burn-to-dvd from $9 to $15

This seems pretty well in line with current offerings by already well-established offerings like iTunes (Etilities Forum), and of course that is exactly the problem: this offering introduces nothing new in the industry.  Blockbuster seems constantly stuck in a position where all it can do is catch up.  To take significant market shares from the current leaders, Blockbuster needs more than the status quo: Blockbuster desperately needs to innovate.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.