Netflix almost doubles price in September

Netflix, Inc., (NASDAQ: NFLX) is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming video in the United States and Canada,[5] and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States.[6] The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It started its subscription service in 1999[7] and by 2009 it was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD, surpassing 10 million subscribers.[7] On February 25, 2007, Netflix announced the billionth DVD delivery.[8] In April 2011, Netflix announced 23.6 million subscribers.[9] In summer 2011, Netflix announced they will expand into the European market, starting in Spain by 2012.[10] (Wikipedia.org)

Netflix is going to increase the price for their service by 50%.

I have right now the cheapest plan for streaming and DVD delivering to my house. It is $9.99 which included one DVD at the time send to my house and unlimited video streaming and I use both a lot.





Starting in September I have to make the choice to stream only or to get DVDs only delivered to keep same price or even to be cheaper.

Just streaming does not help me because there a videos we like which are not available for streaming, mostly the new blockbusters or some exotic international videos.

Getting only DVD delivered is not the answer for us neither, because for the $10 I can have only 1 DVD at any given time. Which allows me to watch max 8 videos a month. It takes two days for Netflix to receive the video and two more days till I get a new video to my house.

Not that I am totally upset, the service is still much cheaper than Apple iTunes and has more selections than hulu or Amazon, but I might consider to sign up for amazon prime (which is needed to get unlimited free video streaming).
Prime costs only $79 a year and gives much more than unlimited movies streaming.



The only problem is that neither my AppleTV nor my xbox 360 can play amazon videos. Of course if I would have a PC (which I don't have, I have only Apple computers) then I could install the amazon unbox player on my PC and then connect the xbox to my PC.

The beauty on Netflix is that it works with all my devices. The AppleTV has Netflix, the xbox has it, i installed the Netflix apps on my iPhone and iPad and of course Netflix works on my Apple computer as well.

It was expected that Netflix will get more expensive, the costs for the rights are getting higher for Netflix in September, when the new contracts with the movie companies come in place. On the the other hand the long tail idea does not work as expected. Usually the idea behind long tail is that Netflix attracts customers with expensive blockbusters but then the consumer will watch most of the videos which are loyalty free or have very low fees for Netflix.

At the end of the first quarter of 2011 Netflix had 21,675,500 subscribers. This is a 59% increase over the first quarter of 2010.



But one of the big problems that the Netflix bears point out is that the average revenue per user has been declining. In the first quarter of 2006 the average revenue per user was $17.06. At the end of the first quarter of 2011 this number fell to $11.94.


At the same time the costs per customer did grow but 20%.
But the good mews is that the acquisition costs did fall extremely. The average costs per new customer is just a little more than the revenue per customer per month.



Above statistics are from seeking alpha.

Streaming is much cheaper for Netflix than sending DVDs. Of course streaming a lot of data is expensive but having distribution centers is neither cheap and less scalable. But do you know what the postage costs are for Netflix? $0.56 per DVD. In my case I have in average 6 DVD a month, this already $3.36 out of my $9.99 a month plus all other costs the margins are very low for Netflix (in my case).

Netflix will release in the next few weeks their annual numbers, we will see how healthy they are.

I am certain that Netflix wants to get more users to streaming only and eventual move totally from DVDs away.

But two things should happen. First of all Netflix needs to have all their movies as streaming available and second they have to come to a method that we can stream the specials to DVDs as well. The beauty of DVDs is the extra stuff on it, directors cut, interview etc. Apple is partly offering such extras. I bought as download Star Trek and got a bonus to it with interviews etc.

Having all videos as streaming might be very difficult, because international movies might have different streaming rights than sending a DVD. We will see.

I will wait till last second, if I stay with Netflix and choose just one service or if I move to other services. As an example my dish provider is offering more and more videos on demand and many series I watched at Netflix I get free at hulu.

An image from amazon about compatible devices - brands



- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

What is the value of Facebook?

The Wall Street Journal reported the social-networking giant is on track to make $2 billion this year in profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Using published estimates from market-research firm eMarketer, the paper said Facebook is likely to rack up $4.05 billion in ad revenue this year, more than double 2010's take of $1.86 billion.

The $4.05 billion in revenue does not tell us yet how much the value of Facebook is and how much more they can grow in terms of revenue.

Let us look into some other figures. Facebook has currently 3,000 employees. This would be $1.35 million per employee.
Apple made last year $57 billion in revenue and has about 35,000 employees which will set the revenue per employee to around $1.5 million. Therefore in terms of revenue per employee, Facebook could be compared with Apple. And Apple Valuation price-to-EBITDA is factor 10. Which would put the value of FB to $20 billion.

Another important number is the market share Facebook has today. According to comScore, Facebook has a market share of 31.2% in display ads.
Facebook served up nearly a third of the 1.11 trillion display ads delivered to US Internet users in the first three months of this year, industry tracker comScore said on Wednesday. Yahoo! websites ranked second with 112 billion impressions, followed by Microsoft, AOL, and Google in that order.


If I can count correct, Facebook would make $3.38 per CPM.
The question is how much more market share can Facebook achieve? Let us assume they can get up to 50% then their annual revenue (if ads are the only income) would be around $7.5 billion. $3.38 is already on the high side. The average for online ads was $2 in 2010.
There is not much revenue growth to expect if the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) price does not go up. I used CPM measurement because it is the easiest way even if Facebook is using CTR (Click through rate)

Second income source for Facebook are virtual goods and other things bought through Facebook credits. FB gets 30% of all FB credits used.
Some vendors estimate that U.S. revenue grew from a negligible base in 2008 to US$1.2 billion in 2009, with projections to at least double in 2010. (The worldwide market, led by Asia, is estimated at about $6 billion.)

Let us assume that 30% of virtual goods revenue will be generated by Facebook and we reach in 2011 a overall revenue of $9 billion. This would mean Facebook would get another $1 billion in revenue from virtual goods / Facebook credits.

Overall FB could make $8.5 billion in 2011 in gross revenue which would be around $4 billion EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization).
Which could get FB for IPO (initial public offering) a value of $40 billion if we use factor 10.

Is factor 10 too low, right on spot or too high?

Tim Mullaney did the work and looked into 6 companies to compare with Facebook.


Company: Open Table
What it does: Online restaurant reservations
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 53.7
Facebook's value at that multiple: $107.4 billion

Company: Google
What it does: Search engine
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 9
Facebook's value at that multiple: $18 billion

Company: Priceline
What it does: Online travel
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 22
Facebook's value at that multiple: $36 billion

Company: Netflix
What it does: Movie subscriptions
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 27
Facebook's value at that multiple: $54 billion

Company: Apple
What it does: Computers, smartphones
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 10
Facebook's value at that multiple: $20 billion

Company: Salesforce.com
What it does: Cloud computing
Valuation price-to-EBITDA*: 52
Facebook's value at that multiple: $104 billion

Of all them, Google is the most similar company to Facebook but does not require login. However Google is the biggest Internet search engine which reaches 72% market share in 2011. Valuation price-to-EBITDA would be around 9 and FB value with this multiple would be $18 billion.
Forbes:
While we anticipate Google’s search market share will expand from 68% in 2010 to ~72% by the end of our forecast period, Trefis members predict a share of 75%, implying a modest upside of 3% for our estimate of Google’s stock.

Only Apple and Google are really in the ad business or in same size of revenue per employee like FB. Apple does not do a significant revenue yet in their ad sales, but they have a micro payment system similar to FB credits (Apple app store and iTunes, both take 30% of revenue). On the other hand Google is still dominated in the lucrative market for texts ads posted with search results.

The other companies which have a higher multiple are either much smaller (less market penetration) or a B2B model. Open table is reaching less than 1% of potential customers. There is still a lot of growth possible. Netflix has 20 million users and can still ten fold in the US. If they go international even 40 fold.
Priceline has as well a lot of space to grow. FB with already 600 million users can grow, if everybody in the world uses FB, max. 10 fold. And there is not much more ad placements possible on the pages without annoying the users. The most growth FB can get is in FB credits.
Salesforce is a B2B business which has high potential. With a consumer portal, the risk is high that the users switch from one portal to another within a day especially if they don't lose money, because the service is free. A good example is myspace. 4 years ago they have been bigger than Facebook. Today myspace is not playing a significant role anymore. But salesforce is binding their clients for 3 years and switching an CRM is not easy for an enterprise company. And companies are hiring always sales people. Each new sales person gives SFDC $1,200 more a year, therefore SFDC has much higher multiple.

Not being a financial expert, I would say that FB value would be something between $18 billion and $35 billion, even if FB is traded in the second market with $70 billion. Everything higher than $35 billion estimated value for the IPO would be not recommended.
Here is a chart from Silicon Alley Insider which puts FB to $50 billion in January, which I think is too high. It is based on investments into FB to received shares, Goldman and Sachs invested into FB this year $1.5 billion based on a $50 billion value. These guys should know better than me the real value of FB which means I am much too low with my valuation.




- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:E Sheridan Rd,Salt Lake City,United States

Cloud not perfect yet - Amazon's cloud world stopped for hours

Thursday night I switched my Apple TV on to watch Monk through Netflix. But instead of watching Monk I got a message that Netflix is not available at the moment. The reason for this was that the Amazon could was down.
Therefore my world broke down.


The problems, which began early Thursday morning and had not been completely repaired by the end of the day, affected sites including Quora.com, Reddit.com, GroupMe.com and Scvngr.com and Netflix.com which all posted messages to their visitors about the issue. Most of the sites were inaccessible for hours, and others were only partly operational.

The Web companies use Amazon’s cloud-based service to serve their Web sites, applications and files. Amazon’s customers include start-ups like the social networking site Foursquare but also big companies like Pfizer and Nasdaq.

Amazon, which is a leader in this business, lets these companies rent space on its servers and take advantage of its big data centers and computing power. But that gives the companies little control if the servers fail.

Everybody is talking to go into the cloud, but the Amazon failure is a clear example that cloud is not ready yet. In understand that many companies are in one time down, but the difference with cloud is, that if the cloud is down then hundreds of companies are down. Do we want to trust our business to be in the cloud? Imagine you use a CRM and your server our network goes down. Your team will try everything to get it running again. If your CRM is in the cloud and the cloud goes down, then you have to rely on the cloud owner to get it back running. You can imagine if your own system is down many employees would call the IT department to complain, which does slow the process down just because of the mental stress.
Imagine something like Amazon goes down, how many people will call and put stress on amazon? The engineers will feel it and make it harder for them to get it running. Granted they have more engineers working on such issue than your company might have, but they report to Amazon and not you.

I am friend of the cloud but when we go in the cloud, we should always think twice how critical a meltdown would be for company. And for really important applications we should have a distributed cloud cluster. Using Amazon and Microsoft Azure as an example as a fallback. When one is down the other can take over. It is a little more complex to set up and think through the architecture but helps to stay online.

Unfortunately this makes the cloud more expensive which is already not cheap.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Why the iPad is not yet a laptop replacement

We have in our house two iPads and the last few days I tried to use one of them as a notebook replacement.
As we know you can get over 60,000 applications for the iPad. But I did limit myself to only the most important application to fulfill my task. I tried to imagine how it is to have only an iPad and no other device. Which I did a similar attempt last year, but back in time the iPad was not so good and less apps available. I decided to try it again.

Therefore I reseted my mother in law iPad, to start from stretch.

The first step failed, I had to connect the iPad to a computer with iTunes to activate. To pretend having no computer, I went to the Apple store. These guys were really nice. They offered me (free) to activate my iPad, however I had to have am appointment with the genius bar. I scheduled the appointment directly at the store using one of their computers. 2 hours later I had my appointment. They activated the iPad and gave me some important tips how to use the iPad and even did set up my exchange to use my office email and calendar.
Next step, I went back to the office and tried to install software I thought I might need.
Pages, Numbers, keynote, photoshop express and dropbox. Less than $20 in total. Good price to have a complete office version on the ipad (contacts, calendar and email come free with ipad). Unfortunately I was not able to install any of the production apps. They are all between 51 and 69MB. Our company wifi is not open, so I could only use 3G but over 3G you can't install apps over 10MB, at least with ATT.
I had to go to the nearby Starbucks to use their Wifi. Was not to bad, at least I got a good non fat latte.
All apps installed easy and I was ready to use my iPad for work. Back at work I got an email with a link to a document in our intranet which is SharePoint 2010 based.

I clicked on the link and the document opened in my iPad. Awesome. I even could open it in pages. I made my changes in the document and went back to our intranet. I am amazed how well SharePoint works with Safari. SP 2007 did only work with IE.
But here came the problem I could not upload my document. The choose file button was disabled.





I had to email the document to somebody in the office to do the upload for me.
Next somebody asked me to help with CRM. We use Dynamics and unfortunately it does not work with Safari and we don't have the mobile version activated. This is not really and iPad problem but a Microsoft issue. Not a big problem, I had as well at Starbucks some more apps downloaded like instant messenger, Skype and LogMeIn and blogspot.

I chose to start LogMeIn ($29.99) to connect directly to the CRM server to run the browser there to help with the user issue.

LogMeIn is expensive but powerful and necessary. There are other RDP programs and even cheaper, but we use LogMeIn in the company as our tool for user support and I knew it will work as long I am in our wifi domain or over VPN.

Reading email worked fine, but handling meetings is a pain. I could not see when I created a meeting, if the attendees are available at my proposed time or if one of our conference rooms are free.



Maybe I don't know the ipad calendar good enough. But it seems the calendar is not usable for company use. I ended up using our outlook web access for calendar and notes. I had as well to use the outlook web access to switch my out of office assistant on. It is a work around but it worked.

I had to do a presentation at my meeting and used a PowerPoint presentation I got from somebody. But before the meeting i made some changes on it. Keynote did open the presentation, but because keynote is not PowerPoint some fonts were off and missing and the transitions did not work well. I basically had to rebuild the whole presentation but I can tell, keynote results are looking so much nicer.

I have to admit, pages, numbers and keynote are very limited on the iPad it is not comparable with the full apple version. Keynote is missing as example all 3D effects.



Presenting the presentation and even switch between programs and browser worked pretty good using the video cable and adapter to our projector. The complete iPad is mirrored.

Overall using the iPad at work does seem to be possible with some hurdles. It is not possible to use the company shared drives, but I could use dropbox or mobile me to share documents with others.

I guess companies which are not so heavy on in-house systems and are using a lot of browser based apps might have it easier to integrate the iPad.

The next tasks came at home. Still pretending not to have any other computer, I started my process like every day. I ate with my family, played with my son and after he went to bed I started to write my blog. I had to do research for a blog entry. The website page, which would have the answer I was looking for,was done in flash. I was screwed. From home I am not able to use LogMeIn because the VPN does just not work. It says i am connected but our firewall at the office does think different, otherwise I could remote to one of our windows server.
However this would be anyway not good hence my research is private. I decided to buy cloud browse. Which is basically the same as RDP but only within a browser to another remote browser.


I could now see the flash page. In the meantime I opened the present my wife had for me. A new DVD, the A-Team. Awesome, but stop. How do I get it into my media library? I use of course iTunes on my iPad. But I don't see a DVD drive I can connect to my iPad to rip the DVD and to put it into my media library.

I guess, when we have iPads we don't buy DVDs anymore. Ok this is cool.I just need to rethink. I opened iTunes on the iPad and was able to rent or buy a movie.





It downloads the movie directly into your iPad.





Now my iPad is only 64GB (biggest you can get). An HD movie is around 3.5GB, in best case if only use the iPad for movies, I would get 16 movies on my iPad.

Movies to buy are between $4.99 and $19.99. The tourist was $19.99 in HD. Below are movies for $4.99



But what is when the hard drive is full? When you buy movies you don't want to delete them. Apps bought from the app store can be downloaded all the time, but the movie I downloaded, if I lose the movie, I have to buy it again. There is a flaw in the system. I can on the computer (at least) claim in iTunes I lost the movie and download again, but only once. And you need to have a computer to get the iTunes extra.




It is possible to have only the iPad and no other computer but it is no fun.
As long the iPad is so strong connected to iTunes and iTunes the only way is to get your data off the iPad to store, as long you need to have a second computer.

I could move all in the cloud, using flickr mobile.me, for my photos and dropbox for my files and Netflix to stream movies. Plus a cloud backup. And this might be the future. But if you have no wifi router at home or a bad wifi connection like me than it is no fun. And it it gets expensive most of these service cost money. A 320GB hard drive cost $80. Mobile.me is $99 per year and backups in the cloud cost another $120 a year. I get for this two hard drives with more GB.

I think as soon iTunes goes into the cloud and the movies and backups are getting cheaper then the chance is good that the iPad could be the only computer in a household.

For work it is even a longer way to use the iPad as the only computer. It does not fit well in a Microsoft and on premise software environment. But most American companies are in this environment.
I can see the iPad in some cases as the only computer, like for airplane inspection or in hospitals, schools and kindergarten or other niche markets where standard software and document sharing might not be important.

For these cases the iPad can be a good replacement, which we already see.
NJ bought for one kindergarten for all students iPads. Mercedes Benz bought for their sales team iPads (MB built their own app for this).

But otherwise IT would need to build a whole infrastructure and software around the iPad to integrate it better into company infrastructure and this is right now almost not possible and very expensive.

I think we still need 15 months till we see the replacement seriously starting.

BTW I did not talk about printing, because I almost never print. The iPad has the print function but works only with a few printers. Non of them I or my company has.


- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

AirPlay for everyone - the Apple TV might be history

Bloomberg reported that Apple is going to license AirPlay for video streaming.
Airplay can right now stream audio to AirPlay enabled devices or can stream from your iPhone video to your Apple TV.



In the future it might be possible to stream video to other than Apple devices.

Airplay is very cool. I watched on my iPhone a movie, but the image was too small so I streamed to my iPad. I walked with my iPad into the living room and decided to watch it on my big TV. I just used AirPlay and the video did run on my TV.

Many times I listen to music in my office, and when I go in the backyard I use AirPlay to switch the music to our porch or even run it in the office and porch at the same time.

If Apple is licensing AirPlay for video streaming will then the Apple TV go away? Yes.

The example I had was cool, but had one big disadvantage. I did not charge my iPad a while and during watching the movie the battery went empty. And when watching movie over AirPlay you can't switch the app otherwise the movie stops. And as we all know, we like to multitask. We like to watch TV and read emails at the same time. All these might be reasons why Apple TV will not go away. We still want to use the Apple TV to stream Netflix and not our phone and then stream it to TV.

But there is a bigger problem for the Apple TV if combined with AirPlay. 50% of recent sold TVs are internet ready and many of them have apps to watch Netflix and hulu. For music they have pandora.

The main reason I have an Apple TV is that I can Netflix, watch my iTunes movies and present my Photos on a big screen.

Internet ready TVs take the need for Netflix and AirPlay would take the need for Apple TV.

The main point for Apple TV 2 was to get consumers more reason to buy iPhones or other Apple products. An Apple product booster which came a few years too late. I did not read or hear any big numbers of the new Apple TV sold, even that the Apple TV is so far the best TV box.
Last news i read was 1million devices sold, but this was in December 2010. If the numbers were much higher now, Apple would have announced them.
The price is so low ($99), you can not do anything wrong (Google TV $300). And it is surly not a device to make money. The manufacturing costs are $64.

Apple might see that licensing $4 per TV would produce more revenue than selling the Apple TV and will reach more consumers, which means more consumers might buy an iPhone or iPad because their TV has AirPlay.

Do I think the Apple TV will go away? yes. If my next TV has Internet and AirPlay, I would retire my Apple TV 2 for sure.



- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

TV - A shift has begun

A few months ago I felt that TV is dead. But this is not true, it is a shift. The biggest win against TV had Netflix this week by securing "house of cards" (starting 2012) the first show only aired at Netflix which makes Netflix a serious competition to HBO.
Facebook is now number 4 in video streaming and is offering some movies for streaming. Apple is growing with their video offer and hulu is now number 2 behind Netflix.

However I believe TV will survive if the the TV channels will rethink their concepts. Companies like Apple actually helping TV channels to survive by offering light mobile tablets.

The reality is that still most of the shows and news are first on TV before you can see it I'm the Internet. The truth is that most of us are lazy and clicking through channels is easier than going through websites.

But the big winner for TV channels could be the ability to offer shows and materials on multiple devices. Especially in America, consumers are not really good in concentrating on one thing.

I can see a big growth in watching TV when at the same time some content is available through an app on the iPad. Imagine watching football on the big screen and see at the same time extra info on the iPad for the same game.

A really good example was the Oscar event, we could watch it live on TV and at the same time we could get some background info through the iPad.

20 years ago we all thought that TV will be interactive, see products, click on them and then order them through TV. This really never came, because we don't like to miss the show and don't like big remotes with thousands of buttons like a computer.

But with big screen mobile devices everything changes. We could watch "24 hours" on the TV and at the same time run the 24 hours app on the iPad. As soon commercials are coming we can use the iPad to order items we saw in the show. Or even during the episode we use or mobile device to tweet about the show, buy a purse etc without the need to leave the show because it still runs on the big screen.

I believe the combining of TV and mobile devices will be the future of TV channels. The TV might be at the end like radio. It runs for the sake of sound but we might do at the same time something else on our mobile device, but as soon the sound on TV seems very interesting, we put our mobile device away and watch TV.

The channels who understand this concept will win.
The easiest transition to this is for sport channels like ESPN. Instead of showing static statistics on the big Screen and covering half of the game, the statistic could be dynamic on the mobile device and everybody could decide which statistics to see or which scene should be a replay on the mobile device. During commercial break the mobile device could have a buy now button to allow the consumer to buy the just featured product or to see more info to the aired product.

Combing TV, mobile app, QR code and augmented reality with a touch of social will be the killer solution for TV channels.

The companies need to understand that we right now live in a multiple device word. And consumers like to multitasking, which is easier if it is distributed through multiple devices than just one screen.

Watch out, TV will experience will extremely change in the next 2 years.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

ipad 2, who should buy?

iPad 2 is since 3/11 on sale and was sold over the weekend 1 Million times, twice as much as estimated.
However, the big question is who should buy the ipad 2.
It is a no brainer for everybody who does not has an iPad yet. For sure the iPad 2is the fastest, best looking and best battery power of all tablets and there are over 65,000 applications available for the iPad. Androids tablets can right now not over more than 50 apps in best case.

But interesting is that 60% of the iPad 2 buyers are owners of the first iPad, this is a significant number which i cant really understand. The iPad 2 is twice as fast as iPad 1, 33% thinner and has two cameras (first version had no camera). But is this enough to replace the existing iPad? Not for everybody, especially that the iPad 1 resale price did fall under 50% of original price. this is a lost between $250 and $400 within less than a year.

If you have already an iPad, you should consider to wait for the October release of iPad 4G. Especially if you a traveller like me. My biggest problem today (with the ipad) is not solved with iPad 2. I like to watch movies through Netflix, but hotel Wifi is mostly slow and expensive. Hilton hotels are charging per day per device $10. And the Wifi connection is very bad, much too slow to stream movies. I am not a big first person shooter gamer, and i am right now happy with facetime over my iPhone.
Netflix movies streaming with 3G is not an option neither, it is just too slow.

Another consideration for buying an iPad 2, is to buy it with 3G or Wifi only. Normally i would say Wifi only if you have an iPhone and use tethering over the iphone, it costs the same as the monthly 3G fees on the ipad ($20), however it saves you $130 for your ipad. The big disadvantage is that you won't have assisted GPS with the Wifi only device. GPS apps will partly work on the the Wifi only version, but will use cell phone towers for positioning. This is much more inaccurate than satellites and not allows available depending where you are. As long you are in big cities Cell Tower GPS works fine. You just need to make sure your wifi is on (more battery usage). It does not matter if you are connected to a wifi channel as long it is running.
The 3G option is most desired if you want to use your iPAd as a supersized navigation device. I can see a lot of usage for it, especially with Route 66 navigation software which uses AR to show you exaclty where you are with real street image.

It is a smart marketing move from Apple to have the GPS on the communication board for 3G.

If you are an owner of iPad 1 and you want to sell it, then the best bet is to sell it over eBay in countries where even the original iPad is hard to get like Poland, Japan or India etc.

Otherwise i would recommend to wait till end of year the 4G version is coming out.

Amazon offers live streaming

Amazon is now offering free live movie streaming for their prime members. Amazon has right now over 5,000 movies for streaming, with a better selection than netflix for movies.

Prime members pay $79 per year, the cheapest Netflix account (for streaming only) is $96 a year.
But Amazon does not offer free rent, the average rent is $2.99. However Prime offers free shipping and some extra bonuses. Ifyou are buying at least once a month at amazon, then prime is a very good selection alone for the free shipping.

Amazon known as the big competition for eBay takes now on Netflix. Many internet connected TVs or set up boxes are working with Amazon streaming, unfortunatelly not yet the Apple TV, but rumors are talking about a September release. Amazon with one of the biggest cloud service has a faster streaming than Netflix which is nice.

People can stream these movies and shows on PCs and Macs, or through about 200 different Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.




Netflix's service also can be streaming through many of the same devices as well as the top-selling video game consoles, mobile phones and Apple Inc.'s popular iPad tablet computer.



Most of the movies and TV shows that Prime members can stream for free are at least several years old. Amazon has a broader catalog of about 90,000 movies and television shows that people can either rent or buy, often on the same day they become available for sale on DVD. That means Amazon customers who want to watch more recent movies and TV shows will have to pay extra to rent or buy those titles.



Netflix's streaming library also leans heavily on older material, although the company has been spending more to obtain the right to show some more movies closer to their DVD release dates. Netflix's DVD library offers more than 100,000 titles, including recently released movie
Amazon plans to add to the collection of movies and shows Prime members can watch for free, Janes said. He declined to be more specific.

This week Amazon as well announzed an Android app strore and is waiving the $99 developer member fee.
With all these changes, we should monitor Amazon more, they are certainly a key player not only Apple and Google.  It is interesting how Google and Apple are fighting in public and Amazon slowly increases their service.

The big advantage of amazon is their cloud service and their deep knowledge in eCommerce and payments.

Do you have a HDCP problem with Apple TV and Netflix?

Yesterday night i decided to watch Monk through Netflix and my Apple TV. But instead of getting Monk to run i got an error message about HDCP.

Did you ever run into the problem that you start your Apple TV and from one day to another you can't watch any of your Netflix movies, because of this or similar message:

"This content requires HDCP for playback.
Your device does not support HDCP."






First we need to explain the meaning of HDCP: HDCP is a horrible plague visited on paying customers by movie and television studios that consider us all criminals out to steal their content. They think it stops piracy but — irony of ironies — real pirates know how to get around all types of copy protection and it’s usually only real customers who suffer from schemes like HDCP.
Basically it enforces a secure HDMI connection from content box (example: Apple TV) through intermediaries (like a receiver) to output (TV). Every link along the chain has to be secured with HDCP in order for your video to play.
This is why your Apple TV (or other video equipment) might occasionally barf up a “not HDCP compliant” warning and refuse to play the Netflix you subscribe to.

HDCP definition in Wikipedia:
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation [1] to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across DisplayPort, Digital Visual Interface (DVI), High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Gigabit Video Interface (GVIF), or Unified Display Interface (UDI) connections.

HDCP does not allow copying permitted by fair use laws. The system is meant to stop HDCP-encrypted content from being played on devices that do not support HDCP or which have been modified to copy HDCP content.[2][3] Before sending data, a transmitting device checks that the receiver is authorized to receive it. If so, the transmitter encrypts the data to prevent eavesdropping as it flows to the receiver.[4]

Manufacturers who want to make a device that supports HDCP must obtain a license from Intel subsidiary Digital Content Protection, pay an annual fee, and submit to various conditions.[5][6][7] For example, devices cannot be designed to copy content; devices must "frustrate attempts to defeat the content protection requirements";[7] high-definition digital video sources must not transmit protected content to non-HDCP receivers; and DVD-Audio content can only be played at CD-audio quality[7] by non-HDCP digital audio outputs (analog audio outputs have no quality limits).

Cryptanalysis researchers demonstrated flaws in HDCP as early as 2001, well before HDCP was deployed in any commercial product. In September 2010, an HDCP master key that can neutralize the key revocation feature of HDCP was released to the public.[8][9] Intel has confirmed that the crack is real,[10] and believes the master key was reverse engineered rather than leaked.[11] In practical terms, the impact of the crack has been described as "the digital equivalent of pointing a video camera at the TV", and of limited importance for pirates because the encryption of high-definition discs has been attacked directly, without the loss of interactive features like menus.[12] Intel threatened to sue anyone producing an unlicensed device.[11]



There are some tricks you can try to do to work around it in general, in order of severity and annoyance.

Check your HDMI cables and make sure they’re securely plugged into your Apple TV, receiver if you have one, and TV.

Turn everything off and turn it back on. Start with your Apple TV but if that’s not enough, try your TV and receiver as well if you have to.
- this helps me a all the time.

Unplug everything, wait 20 seconds, plug it back in. Again, start with the Apple TV but try TV, receiver, etc. as well if you have to.

Restore your Apple TV to factory settings. It’s amazing how many problems a clean re-install can solve.

Swap HDMI cables. You could have a bad connection between the Apple TV and the TV. Try a different cable. (Don’t get expensive big box cables, it’s digital, it works or it doesn’t work. Try MonoPrice.com for reasonable cables, you pay a tenth of best buy prices).

You’ll still have the option of taking your Apple TV to an Apple Store and maybe even swapping it out for a non-inflicted unit but start with the above.

I found all these tips at TipB, the number 1 iPhone and iPod blog.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

New Apple TV coming soon

More and more rumors are pointing to a new Apple TV sooner than I expected. In the mean time Apple is talking with TV companies to get a better deal on shows. Rather than a consumer is buying an episode for $1.99 to $2.99, Apple wants to have the price around $0.99 to rent an episode.
The new Apple TV is rumored to have iOS. Hopefully we can upgrade the older Apple TVs.
We have in our household two Apple TVs, but we seldom use them. Main reason is that we don't watch so much TV.
Another reason is the pricing model and that we have a DVR with our Dish Network. If i watch TV it is either a documentary or a serial like True Blood or Warehouse 13.
I record them with my DVR to avoid advertising. I use my Apple mostly to watch DVDs i had moved into iTunes.
Netflix is right now my favorite, i get the movie I want within 2 days and can stream some movies even instantly through my Wii.
Painful at Netflix are shows which have per DVD only 3 or 4 episodes. With my netflix account I can have only one DVD at time, it takes weeks till I have all episodes through netflix.
And i think this the reason Apple is trying to get shows cheaper into iTunes. With movies it is hard for Apple to compete with Netflix, they have much more movies available but shows might work.
Steve Jobs called once the Apple TV a hobby, and he is right, as long TV producers don't change their model, no set up box can compete with TV. I have right now 250 channels and a DVR, i can basically watch anything i want any time.
On the other hand Internet and set up boxes are putting pressure on the TV, as soon people can get almost the same amount of information and shows through set up boxes like Apple TV, then they might switch instead of paying a $100 something bill each month.
Advertising will and need to change for TV. It will be much more product placements than commercials. New technology allows to render any product via computer into movie or show.
Producers will get smarter in shooting shows to allow to change a product placement on the flow to be more time sensitive. I actually see a big market for start ups in this sector.
In a few years from now, we might not have classic commercials anymore, but commercials as a part of the show, totally integrated. When an user sees an item they like, they can click on it (with mouse or remote control). The TV goes then into split screen, the show stops and user can read more about the product or see a complete 60 second commercial with the ability to buy instantly the product. TV will not anymore just stream, the user can send information back, it gets much more interactive. Basically TV will be the internet of tomorrow. The only difference is that this Internet will be motions rather than flat text. The Internet will be a big movie. The speed will be there and the need is already here.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:George J Bean Outbnd Pkwy,Tampa,United States