Blu-ray, DVD, HDTV, Video info and more at WesleyTech.com

Internet connected TVs now in 38% of households

We have previously talked about replacing cable or satellite television with internet streaming on-access video. While the majority of households aren’t ready to replace their traditional television service, new research from the Leightman Research Group has found that 38% of households are now streaming video to their TV via the internet. This is up from 24% just two years ago.

The most commonly used device for video streaming is a video game system, totaling 28% of households. (That’s how I deliver internet video to my TV.) Only 1% of households use Roku or Apple TV, while 4% use internet-capable TVs.

Netflix is far-and-away the leader in streaming video, with 35% of Netflix subscribers streaming video from the Internet weekly – totaling 16% of all adults, compared to 5% weekly use among all non-Netflix subscribers. Two year ago, only 4% of adults used Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

So is America ready to cut their cable? Not quite. Only 13% of Netflix subscribers would consider cancelling their TV provider, which is down from 21% last year.

Have you cancelled your television provider?

I have cancelled my provider. The reasons are varied, but came mainly through life changes in the form of three preschool-aged children. I don’t have time to watch very much television anymore, so it was a waste of money to continue paying for a service I don’t use. And the shows I enjoy watching the most are available on Hulu, Amazon or Netflix, so I can watch on my computer or through my PlayStation 3.

I haven’t felt like I’ve missed out on current TV programs at all. I’ve kept up with all the new episodes of the shows I love: House, White Collar, Fringe, and 30 Rock are all on Hulu. Mad Men and The Walking Dead are available on Amazon for a charge, but combined are much less than a cable subscription. Netflix provides me with past shows I’ve missed further out, and more movies than I can shake a stick at so I can’t really complain about the lack of choices. Generally, new releases are something I want to see in the theater anyway, and if they’re not I don’t need to watch them right away.

But the biggest advantage I’ve had using Netflix instead of cable is for the children. Netflix has a children’s menu that allows my kids to pick which shows they want to watch, and there are no commercials and they don’t have to tune in on the top of the hour. They’re so spoiled in this regard that when watching normal broadcast TV they get upset when a commercial breaks in, and they start asking to watch their show.

As far as live events, I’m not much of a sports guy, but I do watch the occasional football or soccer game over-the-air with rabbit ears.

I own a 46″ Sony HDTV powered by Google TV. I love having the web on my HDTV and I love being able to control my TV with my Android smartphone. Google TV is great, it has a lot of potential, but it’s just not fully polished, even after the latest major overhaul that upgraded it to a new version of Android.

My experience this past weekend is a typical example of how Google TV just doesn’t have its act quite together.

While using my smartphone, I often see an interesting video posted on Facebook or Twitter. If the video sounds interesting enough for me to watch, I’ll typically send the video link to my Google TV using the “Share with Google TV Remote” option on my Android device. This works great for “beaming” video content to the big screen in our living room.

I tried this twice this weekend, and both times, I got a big fail from Google TV.

Continue Reading »

Trouble in Amazon Prime membership-land

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you probably know all about unlimited Prime Instant videos. If not, here’s your wake-up call: you’re missing out on tons of awesome movie, television & documentary film content that’s available to you for free as part of a paid Amazon Prime membership.

When Prime Instant videos first launched, it essentially fell into my lap as I was already an Amazon Prime subscriber for the 2 day shipping benefits. More recently, I’ve found that I don’t really need Amazon Prime for the shipping benefits, as they have a warehouse here in Phoenix and I get deliveries from them very quickly, with or without Prime 2 day shipping. With that in mind, the Prime membership is really only valuable to me now for the additional benefits; unlimited Prime Instant videos, Kindle book loans and other such perks.

Continue Reading »

Walmart unveils disc-to-digital program

Retail juggernaut Walmart will soon become the leading driver of consumer awareness of the UltraViolet digital movie locker service with a new initiative. Announced this week with five of the largest Hollywood studios, in-store kiosks will allow consumers to bring in DVDs and purchase a digital version for their personal UltraViolet account.

The program is called Disc-to-Digital By Vudu, and will cost $2 for a standard definition digital copy, and $5 for a high definition digital copy. The content will be available on Vudu-enabled devices such as smartphones, set-top boxes, HDTVs, and online.

Walmart vice president John Aden said the service will be guided by a Walmart employee to provide the service with customer awareness and participation. Of course a big part of this has got to be that each DVD will be marked at the store to prevent other parties from using the same disc to make a digital purchase.

Walmart will have exclusive in-store disc-to-digital sales using UltraViolet technology. Recently, Samsung announced similar plans to add UltraViolet authentication within Blu-ray Disc players and home-theater-in-a-box systems for use with Flixster.

The availability of digital copies is still reliant on the studio’s releasing digital versions. The studios did claim that thousands of DVD titles will be available at launch on April 16. Blu-ray Disc authentication will be added in the future at some point.

While I still think UltraViolet is the most promising solution to the digital problem the studios are facing, I am beginning to see some things consumers aren’t going to be keen on. To begin with, the UltraViolet model is intended on promoting physical disc sales. Instead of diving into the digital world the way the music industry did with iTunes, they’re still insisting consumers buy a hard copy and only then receive the digital copy with it. With this program, they’re asking consumers to repurchase the content in digital form.

There’s also the matter of library accessibility. When the studios first announced UltraViolet, it seemed like users would have a singular library they could access at any time. But now it seems like different studios and services will segment your library. Warner will obviously use Flixster. Walmart is using Vudu. It would be a major pain to have to remember which service to use to find content you own, especially when they’re all supposed to be stored in the same rights locker.

Google Music is now Google Play

Last May, Google launched Google Music in beta. Since then, the cloud-based media delivery marketplace has seen a lot of competition, mainly in the forms of Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud and Spotify.

As a personal anecdote, I’m quite happy I loaded my entire music collection onto Google Music at the time. A couple months ago, my MacBook’s hard drive crashed, so my music collection was saved in the cloud.

And now, Google has added much more to the service and has taken it out of beta. It’s now called Google Play, and provides movies, music, apps, games and books all in one place – and that place is anywhere you are, because Google Play will be available on smartphones, tablets, computers, and more than likely on the newest iteration of Google TV.

And now, instead of just uploading content, Google is now providing content. Movies, Music, Games, Apps and Books.

And keeping with the trends, the content you’re consuming may be shared with friends via social media.
Continue Reading »

Convert virtually any audio file to MP3, WAV, OGG or WMA format with Media.io

I use my personal mobile phone for receiving pages text messages from work, as I’m required to be available 24 x 7 in case of issues and I also work a rotational on-call schedule with the rest of my team.

When you really need a text message to get your attention, the stock “bling”, “beep” or “boop” sound bytes used by most mobile phones to alert you of a new text message just won’t cut it. Due to this, back in my Windows Mobile phone days, I would set the WakeupAlarm.WMA file as my text message audio notification when I was on-call. This is a really obnoxious and loud alarm clock sound byte, and that gets your attention when a new text message arrives.

When I moved over to Android, first with the T-mobile G1 and then with the Motorola Droid, I kept using this sound clip by copying the WakeupAlarm.WMA file over to my phone. And why not? It was a proven, effective, paging alert sound.

Unfortunately, my Stand Operating Procedures (SOP) were thwarted once I upgraded to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Apparently Android 4.0 does not support WMA files, unlike previous versions of Android, which did so with no problems whatsoever. To continue using this sound file with Android 4.0, I had to convert it to a new format. Enter: Media.io

Media.io is an online audio file conversion service that allows anyone to convert virtually any audio file to an MP3, WAV, OGG or WMA audio file, all for free. As of this posting, the site also has zero advertisements and a very clean interface (see above for a partial image of the webpage).

I was able to quickly and easily convert my WMA file to MP3 format thanks to Media.io. There were no artifacts, distortions or any other problems found in the resulting MP3 file and I am now once again happily using the WakeupAlarm sound byte on my Android 4.0 smartphone.

I have tried using many other audio file conversion apps in the past, including some freeware found on CNet. None of the other apps that I tested were able to successfully convert a WMA file to MP3 with good quality. Many of the apps would do the conversion, but the resulting MP3 file would be static laden or contain other audio artifacts.

Huge thanks and many kudos to Media.io creator Johann Burkard for creating such a useful, effective and totally free audio file conversion service.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich: the not so tasty problems & issues

After my trusty ol’ Motorola Droid bit the dust, I selected Google’s flagship Android smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, as my new mobile computing device. This phone comes loaded with the very latest Android OS version 4.0, also known by its code name “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS).

In this post, I’ll explore some of the issues that I have encountered during my month and a half relationship with Android 4.0. But before I get into that, I’d like to preface the following segments by stating that I am very VERY pleased with the Galaxy Nexus and it is undoubtedly one of the best smartphones available on the market today. In that vein, I plan on featuring some of the more interesting (and positive) ICS features in future posts coming soon. In this post, however, I’ll be getting down to the nitty-gritty: problems & issues encountered in Android 4.0.

Android 4.0 issue: Voice Search doesn’t provide location based results for the call command

You know what’s awesome? Google Voice Actions and Google Voice Search. Before Siri captivated iPhone 4 users, Google’s Voice Search & Voice Actions were available on the Android platform, allowing users to search, text, send emails, call phones and complete many other tasks using voice commands.

Unfortunately, when I migrated from my Motorola Droid running Android 2.2 to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.2, I was sorely disappointed to find that the Google Voice Actions “Call business-name” feature no longer provides location-specific/GPS tailored results.

Continue Reading »