Apple Music vs. Amazon Music

I have written about the "slide of Apple" a few times over the past 18 months (search issues, Siri bugs, etc). But I never thought I would see my once coveted Beats music service fall by the way side.

I wasn't looking for a new music service. In fact, while I have been incredibly disappointed in Apple's management of what used to be a great music service, I was hopeful it would improve. Sure the Sonos debacle upset me, but it more or less did what I needed even if the curated play lists seemed to be unattended. 

 

But then three events occurred in my life at about the same time:

• Amazon launched an introductory (and cheap) Unlimited Music service for Alexa at $4.99 per month. While I could use Blu-tooth to play my Apple Music to Alexa, it was easier to ask for music directly by Alexa. It was fun playing with her ability to call up songs "that go like...", and calling up a "Top Christmas Music" playlist was intuitive. But I still jogged, travelled and drove with my Apple Music, relegating Amazon music to one device in my kitchen. 
• Then the Echo Dot 2nd generation came out and suddenly I had one in every room in the house. Not a great speaker, but easier to play music with voice commands vs. Apple Music with Blu-tooth. So I upgraded to the full $8.99 version. 
• And then I upgraded my iPhone. And Apple's slide put the final nail into their own coffin -- because our family of four has more than 10 Apple devices and (in their infinite wisdom) you are not allowed to delete a device from that list except from the device itself -- which is long gone to Gazelle by the time you find this out -- I was suddenly stuck without a working music service. Faced with a long flight to London and terrible / expensive data service there while traveling, I was forced to try Amazon music as a replacement and quickly learn how to master the subtle differences.

And it was better. Much, much better. 

Playlists that you follow are actually updated often. 

Playlist names are intuitive. 

Lyrics are available while you listen. 

You can directly control which songs download and at what quality. 

Search actually works. 

And suddenly I was happy again with my music service. 

So having started my journey with Apple on an iPod more than a decade ago because of music, Apple Music was suddenly and unceremoniously replaced in my life by Amazon Music. 

And the long slide continues...

My 4K living room update (10 months later)

In December of last year (2012) I finally wrote up my 4K experience and the result wasn't pretty.

During that time, content was only available from either the Samsung hard drive that came with the TV, or Netflix, Amazon and MGO apps on the Samsung TV.  Netflix would constantly crash, Amazon would constantly buffer (despite bandwidth being available) and the MGO app let me download the content but would never let me play it back.  Even if/when it worked at all, it meant my sound was going thru the TV speakers, not my 7.1 surround sound system.  I concluded then that it could not take off with consumers until some OTT box maker created a 4K decode chipset so a consumer could route through their home entertainment reeiver and have a higher quality app experience (the apps built for TV chasis get the least amount of development effort and have always had subpar performance on all TV platform...in my experience).

Well 10 days ago I finally received my new Amazon FireTV with 4K capabilities. 

While I surprised that Apple did NOT come out with the capability, I was not surprised at its very sharp picture and continued leverage of a content oriented UI (vs. Apple's "app centric" approach -- even with universal search).

I unboxed it 10 days ago right before a long trip to London, but found a problem immediately with the 4K playback tied up in the way HDCP 2.2 was handshaking between the FireTV, my Onkyo NR-636 Receiver, and the Samsung UH9000 series TV.  So I did a little reading last night in the Uber on the way back from LAX and Crutchfield of all sites gave me all of the information I needed.  It turns out that even though ALL of the manufacturers here have been smart and are providing update-able firmware to prepare for what is now HDCP 2.2 (prevents in-stream copying of 4K content), their user manuals were incredibly poor at describing the simple fact that of the 4 or 7 HDMI 2.0 ports they had only one (1) was HDCP 2.2 compliant.  Samsung (below) was forward thinking in their approach to the UHD television generation and created this single "smart" input device for the UHD range which is not only updatable via the internet automatically, it is a replaceable device (in the event a hardware update is required for something in the near future) in a way that does not require a new TV.  But, they are terse in their description of that they call "MHP" on their HDMI 4 port, which is turns out is the ONLY HDMI connection that will pass through HDCP 2.2.

Onkyo is a bit more straight forward in their documentation, but again only have a single port in (under HDMI port 3 for some reason) and an HDCP 2.2 compliant "out" HDMI port.   However, they are good enough to clearly document that even on the back of the receiver itself (and in all of their documentation on their own site and at Crutchfields).

So, making all of this work (after a bit of reading) requires:

• Amazon FireTV (or other 4K device supporting Netflix UHD and Amazon UHD).
• An Onkyo TX-NR636 receiver (or better -- the NR636 is roughly $499 now).  I did update the firmeware for this, which gave me Dolby ATMOS and supposedly improved the HDCP 2.2 handshake.  The FireTV needs to be connected to HMDI 3 (STB/DVR).
• The Samsung UH9000 series TV (the 8000 will do 4K only at 30 Hz).  The Samsung TV needs to have one end of the HDMI cable in HDMI port 4 (MHP) and the other in the Onkyo out (no other choice really).

From start to finish I probably had 30 minutes invested in the reading, 30 minutes invested in pulling cables in and out of ports, 30 minutes in updating the Onkyo firmware (via USB), and 30 minutes re-programming my Harmony Ultimate Home remote system (previously everything had been through HDMI port 1 on the TV, not 4, because I had no idea what the MHP reference from Samsung was on that port until I read the Crutchfield guide).

The downside for the industry here is rather obvious.  This just eliminated a huge chunk of consumers (too much effort required) and has eliminated my capability to get another 4K device (Blu-Ray, AppleTV, Roku, cable/telco provider or otherwise) since there is ONLY ONE PORT on the Onkyo and on the Samsung.  In fact, I could not find a model in the current Onkyo line-up that supports 2 inputs to the receiver that are HDCP 2.2 compliant (perhaps a physical way to prevent stream copies)--and Onkyo is definitely leading the industry in video switching.  This will definitely slow down 4K as consumers will be forced to choose their local cable/telco (assuming they ever get their crap together) vs. their favorite OTT solution.

Streaming 4K - is it ready?

I find it fascinating that the first 2 "network" options I have for watching 4K content are from Netflix and Amazon. DirecTV has announced a 4K channel in the future,

Netflix announced their capability sometime ago and even though I bought a 4K TV a few months ago, it was only a few weeks ago that I tried out the capability. 

I have to admit I spent some period of time trying to figure it out. I could not get the 4K option work on my XBox One or FireTV, etc, and then finally read up and realized I had to use the Netflix app in the   Samsung TV itself to see the content options. 

Netflix looks gorgeous in 4K. There is a dedicated "row" of content options for 4K. However, despite the fact that I have 45 Mbps of bandwidth, it does buffer and crash the app...a lot. 

Amazon, which announced their option only 2 days ago, is a much bigger challenge for content discovery.  I cannot find a 4K area on the UI, but was able to search for content on my phone. Ironically, looking up a CNET article was the best source for finding available content. There was a lot of rebuffering, though unlike Amazon, it did not crash the app.

I did a bunch of comparisons to 2K content on the Xbox and was hoping the 4K upscale would be nearly as good, but it wasn't. 

So I am glad the shift to higher quality content has started, but we are a long ways from this being a viable, main stream content option. 

Driving digital video ownership

I had the opportunity yesterday to share the stage with rockstar analysts Tom Adams (of IHS Screen Digest), Anne Arroyo of the NPD Group, and Larry Taman of GfK to discuss an industry outlook for home enterainment at the Forecast:Hollywood 2013 event presented by Variety and MESA today in LA.  Some interesting data points shared during the presentations:

• UltraViolet now has 6m user accounts
• an estimated 30% of U.S. households have tried an OTT streaming service
• 31% of consumer households view their video entertainment on both physical and digital formats
• a substantial number of subscription streaming households (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) also purchase and rent content on eiher Amazon or iTunes 

The real question in front of content creators in the home entertainment space today is how to maintain profitability.  Video consumption has never been higher in the U.S. household, but it is the mix of consumption that is hurting Hollywood studios.  

Revisiting Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass Platform

Last week I had the opportunity to moderate a second screen panel and attend several other panels and presentations at the Variety Entertainment App Summit in LA.  While I greatly enjoyed the panel on second screen monetization with YuMe, Magic Ruby, Cinram/1K and MTV, I thought the most eye-opening session was the presentation of Microsoft Xbox SmartGlass by Mark Turner.  While I had seen Ron Pessner present something similar back at a 2nd Screen Society in NY last June and I had been playing with the platform at home for the past 2 weeks (and even wrote about it last week), somehow the epiphany of just how big this could be for the entire second screen ecosystem had escaped me.  Let me talk you through the key points they get me excited and explain why I spent this weekend re-exploring the platform at home.

UltraViolet marches onward, but can it succeed?

While the last official news from the UltraViolet website is from August 15th of this year, there was an interesting panel last week and some interesting support statements from the BBC, Fox and Barnes and Noble the previous week.  The title count is supposed to be above 7,000 now, available to more than 5 million consumer accounts through Wal-mart/Vudu and Flixster (as well as the studios' own title websites), with promises to be available soon on the Nook and M-GO.

But is this enough for success?

How available (really) are top TV shows in the digital video world?

As the UltraViolet academy in London approaches to wake us out of our summer slumber and send us on to IBC, I sat discussing the onward march of digital video in today's Top 20 ratings-driven world with some neighbors around the end of summer BBQs.  There was a general view that most TV shows were available (in the US) on either HuluPlus or Netflix.  While there was some discussion about network specific sites like ABC.com, HBO-GO and TV.com (CBS' site) and some general understanding that there was content missing from HuluPlus and Netflix, most people felt like anything they were missing was probably available to purchase as a catch-up one-off show from iTunes or Vudu.

As I pondered this seemingly simple challenge, I though back to the end of May when I wrote a blog about the current state of digital title availability in the various service offerings (rental, sell-thru, subscription) and retailers (iTunes, Vudu, Netflix) and compared them to each other and to their physical counterparts.  So, with the help of some colleagues, I set out to get to the bottom of the details.

The "Seamless" sourcing of video content from multiple aggregation services

10 years ago, life was simple in your living room.  You really had 3 libraries of content to worry about:

1. the 500 channels of content you were receiving from your Cable, Telco, or Satellite provider, 
2. the collection of DVD's on your shelf, and
3. the available plethora of DVDs to rent at your local Blockbuster.  

But even simpler then was the fact that there were only a few rights windows, and as a consumer, you understood them pretty well:

• Movies came out at the theater first, and then a few months later were available to rent (eg Blockbuster) or purchase (many locations) on the same day.
• A few months after this, they started appearing in your premium TV networks (eg HBO, Showtime).
• A few months after this, they came out on the standard, non-premium broadcast networks.

Video entertainment was easy, despite the poor available search methods of channel surfing your EPG and browsing your shelf or local store's shelves.

In 2012, you are perplexed by a long list of growing of (sometimes exclusive) digital sources of content with different restrictions and availability dates.  Some titles are available for sale but not for rent (eg iTunes, Vudu, Amazon).  Some titles are available for rent, but not in your subscription service (eg Netflix Streaming, Amazon Prime).  Sometimes the digital version is available the same day as the DVD/Blu-ray is available in stores for sale, but even the physical DVD rental has different availability dates in the few remaining Blockbuster stores and the Netflix mail service than it does at the RedBox kiosks in your local grocery store.  Throw in TV catch-up services where the DVD is often available after it is available for free or subscription online and you are thoroughly confused.  Or at least should be.

Building critical title mass for digital video services

In the on demand video world, title availability can either help or hinder consumer adoption.  Finally ready to try a new digital video service but can't find your favorite more or a new release?  This experience just pushes you back to the physical world (Amazon.com and Netflix disc rental).  As the content industry is a few years into an effort designed to increase digital sell-thru (vs. digital rental and subscription services) in an attempt to improve their overall margin structure as physical sell-thru continues to decline, they have developed UltraViolet as a way to encourage consumers to build a digital catalog at home, across multiple services, DRMs, and devices, to gain the freedom they experience with physical DVD or Blu-ray.  The most obvious way to do this today is thru Walmart's Disc to Digital program on their Vudu digital video service.

Returning to Wal-mart to try the Disc to Digital conversion to Vudu again

Since I visited Walmart previously on the day they first opened their service, I thought I would give them a few weeks to work out the kinks and try again.  I also thought I would test my own theory that I put forward in several blogs (What is holding back digital sell-thru?, Converting your physical disc library to a digital locker).  The short summary of that discussion was that if I had the supposed average 80+ titles in my library as the average consumer, I would find that only 75% would be available on Netflix (reducing the need to purchase) and of the remaining 25%, half would not be available for conversion on Walmart / Vudu.

Why is Discovery so hard to implement for video services?

Last week, Google said it was trying to tackle one of the hardest problems on the internet -- video Discovery.

Looking at consumer video services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and even GoogleTV) and their second screen counterparts (Matcha, Fanhattan, BuddyTV, etc), the admission of the challenge is painfully evident in the user interface the consumer faces and the result of the Discovery process.

But let's back up a bit first. What is Discovery? How does it relate to Search and Recommendation? I think we will find wide agreement that the concept of Search is one where you know what you are looking for and are trying to find it. Now this can be more complex than "Where can I find a legal version of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol that I can watch in my living room right now?" (which itself can be challenging in today's service offerings).  It is not usually as complex as the problem Shazam solves in the music industry ("what is the name of that song that sounds like..."), but can be difficult (I know the actor who was in the movie or what it was about). Search is decidedly a "lean forward" experience, and as most of us have found out over the last 5 years, it incredibly difficult to implement on a 10-foot remote experience, with various virtual keyboards or fancy remotes trying to help us solve this problem.