I am under the weather today. Not feeling too well. So instead of posting, I am embedding. I watched this video yesterday and thought it was a really good discussion of where TV is headed. Avner has had a front row seat in his role as founder and CEO of our portfolio company Boxee and his views on the broader TV industry are interesting and very insightful.
The Gotham Gal and I have been watching House Of Cards on Netflix. I haven't enjoyed a TV show so much since The Sopranos.
It all starts with Kevin Spacey. He is terrific in general and particularly in this show. But that's not the only thing we like about the show. It's about power and intrique in the nation's capital which makes for entertaining plotlines. The characters are strong, the writing is good, the direction is inspired, and the acting is great.
The other thing that is great about the show is you can watch all thirteen episodes one after another. We got through two episodes in our first spin. We got through two more a week later. We got through three when we were in Utah and then two more last night. We've seen nine of the thirteen episodes in less than a month. We will probably finish the first season this weekend or next weekend.
This is how many of us consume TV these days, but we have to hack the system to do it this way. We have to wait for a season to be over and then watch it on demand. Netflix has taken the "hack" out of the system and just gives viewers the flexibility to watch the series when and how they want. I think that's a big improvement to the delivery model and I am loving it.
If you like quality TV entertainment and are looking for something new to watch, check out House Of Cards.
Yesterday as I was getting off a plane, I saw this tweet on my phone and replied to it:
@jwklemanski yessssss @sai_tools @stevekovach
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) February 12, 2013
Jason probably tweeted that news at me because of the HBO No Go post from last August in which I expressed my exasperation that I could not airplay the HBO Go content from my iPad to my TV via AppleTV. So that nuttiness has been addressed by HBO. Nicely done HBO.
But there's more to ask of them. It would be nice if the HBO Go app came pre-installed on connected devices like AppleTV, Roku, Boxee. It would also be nice if HBO Go supported AllShare so Samsung users could have the same thing that Apple users have.
HBO’s Eric Kessler said yesterday at an AllThingsD event that "Our long-term goal for Go is to be on all devices and all platforms." That is exactly right. That's what Netflix has done for years now and that is what HBO needs to do.
Slowly but surely HBO is evolving to being more like Netflix and that's a good thing for its subscribers. Now if we could only subscribe without having to go through a cable company. But we've already talked about that this month and I don't expect that to happen so quickly for all the reasons we discussed in the comments to that post.
At the top of this blog, in the nav header, you will see "TV". This is new. When you click on it, you will go to fredwilson.tv. This is also new.
fredwilson.tv is a linear feed of videos that are pulled from AVC, fredwilson.vc, and my twitter feed and shown in reverse chronological order (from when I posted them). You can click on the play button and start watching/listening. They will keep playing until you've had enough. You can click on the arrows on the far left and far right to fast forward or rewind. If you move the mouse, the controls will come up from the bottom and you will get info on what is playing, where it came from, and what is next.
fredwilson.tv is powered by shelby.tv. At the bottom of the shelby homepage, it says "create your own TV network". If you want something like this for your .tv page, shelby can power yours too.
I would like to thank Reece, Dan, and the entire shelby team for building this. I've been mentoring the shelby team since they landed in techstars a couple years ago. I've hung out with them, the Gotham Gal and I have had dinner with them, and in general I've tried to help them when and how I can. They are an awesome group of people and I am proud to be hosting fredwilson.tv on their platform.
In a lot of ways, fredwilson.tv is continuing the tradition of fredwilson.fm (you get to that from the Radio link on the nav bar). fredwilson.fm was launched four or five years ago on the streampad technology built by Dan Kantor and sold to AOL. Sadly fredwilson.fm is borked and has been for the past week. I am trying to find a good replacement for streampad which seems broken and I can't get any response from AOL when I email them for help. If anyone has any good ideas for fredwilson.fm, I am all ears.
Business model matters.
The quote of the week for me was this one from Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer:
The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.
Netflix will have to produce shows that are worth watching. HBO has proven it can do that over and over again for years. Netflix has not.
But Netflix allows you to have a direct relationship with them and use your account on almost every connected device I can think of. HBO requires you to have an account with a cable company and then even if you do, it is hit or miss whether you can use their service on the device you want to.
That's what I mean by business model matters.
HBO is experimenting with the Netflix business model outside of the US. They have a streaming service in four markets in Scandinavia that looks a lot like Netfix. But they don't seem eager to bring that to the US.
HBO isn't going to adopt the Netfix business model in the US without a strong reason to do so. If Netflix is successful with their model and proves that it works, maybe that will be the strong reason to do so.
So, if you want an HBO that looks like Netflix, support Netflix' efforts to look like HBO.
Due to the fact that we are homeless in NYC on account of Sandy, the Gotham Gal decided to take her Thanksgiving on the road this year, out to our beach house on the east end of long island. It was a great idea and starting on wednesday afternoon, our entire family and some friends made the pilgrimage out east to celebrate Thanksgiving at the beach.
But when we arrived wednesday evening we found at that Sandy had an impact on our beach house too, specifically the DirecTV satellite dish was out of whack. I guess I should have thought about that but I didn't. Of course, getting a DirecTV technician out to our beach house on Thanksgiving day was not going to happen. But Thanksgiving without football? That is downright unamerican!
So I went for plan B. Time to hack the NFL. Here's how I did it with the help of Boxee's new Boxee TV product.
I have a Boxee TV in my USV office which gets all the broadcast channels in NYC in HD. Via the Boxee TV's cloud service, I can get all of those channels on my laptop anywhere I am. So I was able to get the three football games yesterday on my laptop.
We also happen to have an AppleTV in our beach house. So with airplay mirroring from my laptop to the AppleTV, I was able to get the games from my laptop to the big screen in our family room at the beach.
Here's how it looked from the warmth and comfort of the family room couch yesterday afternoon as the Gotham Gal and her sister Susan were cooking up a storm in the kitchen:
This all worked out great until the Jets played the Patriots last night. That was awful to watch. I turned it off at halftime. I am embarassed to be a Jet fan this morning.
It's pretty common practice these days to pull out a tablet or phone during big live events and watch on two screens. The industry has taken to calling this the second screen experience. Or social TV. It's an area our firm has a few bets in, most notably Twitter and GetGlue.
But last night during the debate, I found myself in need of more screens. I could have used something like this:
I had the #debates feed on my personal Nexus 7. I had John Heilemann's twitter feed on my phone. I had Tumblr going on my laptop. And I had CNN on the family room Nexus 7. And I was actually watching the debate first and foremost.
The big surprise was how active Tumblr was. The memes were coming fast and furious during the debate. The binders full of women meme was active within minutes of that line emerging from Mitt's mouth. The debate tag was also a great one to follow on Tumblr last night.
Based on the tweets I was seeing flying by on Twitter last night, I am certain that I'm not the only one who watched the debates this way. Actually I am pretty certain that this is becoming more normal by the day.
It all makes me wonder if the current crop of social TV apps are missing a big aggregation opportunity. I suspect lots of good stuff was going on elsewhere last night (Facebook, Pinterest, Canvas, etc), but I just didn't have enough screens in my family room to be everywhere at the same time. Maybe we need an app for that.
Our portfolio company Boxee announced their next generation device today called Boxee TV.
Boxee has always been about making it as easy as possible to watch TV over the Internet and Boxee TV represents years of listening to customers wants, needs, and desires. The result is a trifecta of Internet TV goodness:
1) Free Broadcast Channels in HD
2) No Limits DVR – record as much as you want and watch wherever you want
3) Internet apps like Netflix, Vudu, YouTube & Vimeo
Avner's post on Boxee TV has more details.
Boxee TV will cost $99 and will be available in early November. Sign up to get an email when it launches.
I put the awesome HBO GO app on the family's iPad yesterday and tried to Airplay into our family room TV. I got audio on the TV but not video. I thought I was doing something wrong. So I rebooted everything and tried again. Same thing.
So I did a web search on the topic to see what was going on. Turns out HBO GO has disabled the video on Airplay but not the audio. That's right. They disabled the video but include an Airplay button in the app.
What kind of decision is that? If you don't want folks Airplaying the video from the iPad to the TV, don't put an Airplay button in your app. I can't imagine who would want to airplay the audio but not the video. That's messed up.
In truth, the whole thing is messed up. HBO GO requires a cable account to use the service. I have a cable set top box connected to the TV I tried to Airplay to. I just prefer the navigation on the HBO GO app and its way easier to use than the set top box. Allowing me to Airplay HBO GO from my iPad to my TV isn't going to make me cancel my cable subscription because I can't get HBO GO without one.
So they break the product instead. It's nuts. But I see big media doing this kind of thing all the time. And I just don't get it.
I have been working with a high end audio video installer for over a decade. They have helped me put entertainment systems into a few homes and offices over the years. They have taught me a lot and I have taught them some stuff too.
A few years ago, when iPad came out, they started pushing the idea that you could use a tablet to control your entertainment system instead of expensive and proprietary controllers. So we started using iPads and iPod Touches to control our audio and video in our home and office.
It works well and you don't have four remotes on every coffee and conference table. One tablet does the trick.
Recently, we did an overhaul of our beach house and it was time to get a couple controllers. I had just gotten my Nexus 7 and the idea that I was going to go out and purchase a couple $399 iPads bugged me. I asked them if I could use a Nexus 7 instead. We did some research and indeed all the apps we needed for our various equipment were on Android. So we went with the Nexus 7 instead.
Yesterday I saw one of the partners in the audio/video company and he had my Nexus 7 in his hand. I said, "how does it feel?" he replied "it's fantastic, the form factor is perfect". The iPad works as a controller but it is a bit bulky for that use case. And a phone is a bit small for many remotes. A 7" tablet can be held comfortably in one hand and the screen size is really perfect for remote applications.
I am not going to swap out all the iPads we have for Nexus 7s because the larger tablet works well enough, but for all future situations like this I am most certainly going with a 7" tablet. It's yet another example of where the 7" form factor is better than the large and small mobile form factors we've been dealing with for the past few years.
