You may have been following the recent news regarding the broadband monthly usage caps that providers like Comcast (Gallop Forum) and Frontier Communications (Gallop Forum) have been implementing.  This article does not debate the relative merits of these policies but simply examines ways to monitor your usage.  This way, you can avoid accidentally exceeding whatever cap you may be subject to. We’re going to take a look at how to do this, whether you only have one computer at home or several of them behind a router (the latter takes a bit of elbow grease).
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©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

In what has become a recurring theme, Tivo (Gallop Forum) announced that its customers will soon have full access to the “Watch Instantly” streaming feature from Netflix (Gallop Forum).  The move brings over 12,000 titles from Netflix’s streaming library into the homes of TiVo’s many customers.

The service will be available at no additional charge for those who already subscribe to both TiVo and Netflix services.  While there is no mention of whether HD content will be included now or in the future, Netflix has already announced an HD streaming service, so it’s a safe assumption that TiVo users will soon have this feature as well.  The TiVo hardware that will support Netflix - TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL - is all HD-capable.

Understandably, the press release focuses solely on the announcement of the partnership, but let’s take a brief look at the total footprint now served by the two companies:

• TiVo owners can access the traditional content recorded from their cable TV or other video provider, and use streaming services from Amazon (Gallop Forum) Video-on-Demand (Unbox), and now Netflix (Watch Instantly).
• Netflix customers can access the full library of over 100,000 DVD titles via the original by-mail model, and can stream a growing subset of that library by streaming to the Xbox 360, Roku set-top box, some Blu-ray players, home PC (and soon Mac), and TiVo units.

This development brings a number of benefits to consumers.  Aside from expanding the menu of choices, increased competition will drive prices down and innovations up.  For example, one factor in the development of this cooperative effort between Netflix and TiVo may be iTunes (Gallop Forum) growing customer base and wide availability of movies and TV content.

This convergence of media and products will only become more prevalent as broadband connections become as universally available as electricity and running water.  Consumers will also appreciate that they don’t need to purchase a different piece of equipment for each entertainment service that they use.

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

We’ve been talking a lot about data storage and the importance of having a comprehensive solution to protect your digital content (look at our Featured Article section for links to the excellent series by Phil Hagen). In the last article of the series, we focused on remote storage. Some of the mentioned options were JungleDisk, Carbonite, iDrive and Dropbox.

Today we’re going to focus on another alternative, box.net. Box stores your data in the cloud and makes it accessible from anywhere. It advertises network security (256 bit SSL encryption), data security and a privacy policy. In addition to the core service, Box also comes with additional features such as file sharing and collaboration, version history, and the ability to use third party services such as Zoho to edit your files directly in the browser. Since it offers an open platform for developers to use, the list of its available services is bound to grow.

The pricing and space ranges from 1GB for free to 15GB for $19.95. There is also an offering for enterprises at $15 per user with additional customization options. You can look at this page for more information on the various plans. To make it easier to access your data from anywhere, Box has a mobile specific page at m.box.net and now also offers a free native iPhone application, a huge selling point for me.

Although there were a few turn-offs about this service such as the file-size limits (25MB to 1GB depending on your plan), Box offers a simple and easy solution to your remote storage needs.

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

Cable company Cox Communications (Gallop Forum) announced today that it plans to have its own wireless network operational in 2009. Cox had previously shown interest in the market by investing more than $500 million in wireless licenses from the FCC. According to an article published by the Associated Press, the licenses that Cox purchased will allow them to provide coverage in Atlanta, New Orleans, San Diego, Omaha (Nebraska), Las Vegas, and much of Kansas and southern New Mexico. Roaming coverage would be provided outside those areas by Sprint.

With this move, Cox hopes to provide content to its customers across multiple platforms. The idea would be that you’d be able to use your cell phone to watch the TV stations that you’ve subscribed to in your cable plan, access saved content, or program your DVR remotely. Basically, it would allow you to take your content with you without the hassle of syncing your devices. You can think of it as a content cloud accessible anywhere.

Cox is well positioned to achieve this, with a strong fiber footprint in the areas it plans to service as well as previous experience with cellular technology development since it previously built an operated a cell network in Las Vegas and Southern California in the 1990s that was later sold to Sprint (Gallop Forum). We will definitely be monitoring their progress throughout this endeavour.

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

As we’ve previously discussed, Netflix (Gallop Forum) has been investing a lot of time and money into its online streaming offering.  In a further development, it announced yesterday a partnership with Samsung to include its streaming service in the electronic giant’s Blu-ray disc players.  Netflix currently has 12,000 movies and TV episodes available in its online library.  The Samsung models that will include this feature are the BD-P2500 and BD-P2550, both in the $400-$500 price range.  If you already own one, you will be eligible for a free firmware upgrade to your player.  The partners stated that they intend to expand this offering to a wider selection of Samsung products.

If our article on internet radio piqued your interest, you will be happy to know that the BP-P2550 can also play content from Pandora after you’ve upgraded the firmware.  This is in line with the trend we observed that the boundaries of content delivery products are eroding.  Your existing hardware is becoming increasingly versatile and the dollars you put into entertainment subscriptions are going farther.

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

Comcast (Gallop Forum) announced yesterday that it is rolling out two new tiers of high-speed internet that they are calling ‘wideband’ (as an upgrade to ‘broadband’).  The services will be available in the next few weeks in areas of New England, Southern New Hampshire, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnestota.  Comcast plans to expand the offering to other regions in the upcoming months.

The two new tiers are ‘Ultra,’ offering 22Mbps downstream and 5Mbps upstream for $62.95/month, and ‘Extreme 50′, with 50Mbps down / 10Mbps up for $135.95/month.  Keep in mind Comcast’s fine print on all of its Internet offerings: “Many factors affect speed.  Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed.”  Also, keep in mind that these prices require subscription to Comcast Cable service.

In addition to the two new tiers, existing Performance and Performance Plus tier customers will have their speed upgraded to 12 and 16Mbps downstream, respectively, at no additional cost.  It is unclear whether this will go into effect when wideband is rolled out in those specific regions or sometime sooner.  Upstream will remain at 2Mbps for these customers.

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

Just when you though the music industry had seen it all, web service lala.com re-launched today with a new spin on digital music. This is the third iteration of Lala, which has been around since 2006. First, it was a CD-swapping service, then a free (ad supported) web-based music streaming service. This time around, Lala has come up with a cheap, ad-free way of exploring new music with different levels of ownership.

Here is how it works: you can listen to any song on the site for free once. Then, you can buy “web songs” for 10 cents each and stream them from the website whenever you want. If you then want a downloadable DRM-free version of the song (so you can play them on your iPods), you can get it for 79 cents more. This allows you to gradually explore new music in a space that is ad-free. In the current advertisement-overloaded web, this is a refreshing and welcome approach.

Lala makes it easy for you to discover new songs by adding to the mix social networking features that let you ‘follow’ other people and see what they listen to (you can see who is following you and block them if you are uncomfortable with the idea). You can also upload the music that you currently own into the Lala cloud by downloading their ‘Music Mover’ client. As it finds music that you own on your computer, it will automatically give you ownership of the songs on the web site so that you can now play them from any browser. If some of the MP3s that you have cannot be matched on Lala’s digital library, you can just upload them.

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