We first heard of XStreamHD in November of 2007. They’re working on a system to use satellites to delivery Full HD (1080p) video into homes with 7.1 sound (DTS-HD MA) in ‘Blu-ray quality’. More details appeared in December, and then in January to coincide with CES. I managed to visit their booth at CES 2008 and take some photos and gather more info. They popped up on the radar again briefly in October.

Well, it looks like they’re still out there working away, and they’ll be at CES 2009 next month. As will I, so I’ll try to check out their booth again. They issued a press release to announce a successful test of their transport system using the AMC-16 satellite. This confirms that their technology works using existing FSS (Fixed Satellite Services) capacity, which is part of their plan. They’ll use leased capacity on existing FSS satellites to distribute their content to end users.

Their technology and plans are interesting, but it remains to be seen if a new entrant can carve out a piece of the market. The last to try, Voom, didn’t succeed.

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According to an article in TVWeek, research firm Magna released a report saying 44% of US households will have a DVR by 2014. They believe this will lower viewing impressions across all dayparts by 4%, but will also increase TV viewing so in the end total viewing impressions will be up 20%. They also say that video-on-demand will increase from 40.4 to 68.8 million households and broadband from 68.3 to 86.2 million by 2014.

No, they haven’t gone pirate, WeaKnees is now offering TiVo and DVR Backup Systems. For the geeks that that means is they’re offering RAID1 drive setups for the TiVo HD and HD XL models, as well as the DirecTV HR20, HR21, HR21 Pro, and HR22 DVRs. For non-geeks, just think of it as two hard drives acting as one. Each drive is an exact mirror of the other, so if one drive dies you don’t lose anything - the other drive still has all the information. So this is a way to configure your TiVo or DirecTV DVR Plus to survive a drive failure, if that worries you. If a drive does fail you can replace just the dead drive, and the system will clone the remaining good drive and you’ll have redundancy again.

The way WeaKnees does this is by using an external RAID1 drive enclosure. This replaces the internal drive in your system.. Basically things are re-cabled to use the external enclosure as the primary storage system instead of an internally mounted drive. They’re offering the external storage configured in 2×320GB, 2×500GB, 2×750GB, or 2×1TB capacities. Note that since the drives are mirrors and store the same data, two 1TB drives gives you 1TB of storage, not 2TB. You have the same 1TB stored redundantly on two drives.

WeaKnees is selling pre-upgraded TiVo HD DVRs and pre-upgraded DirecTV DVR Plus models. As well as upgrade kits for the TiVo HD, TiVo HD XL, and DirecTV DVR Plus models.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who uses a DVR, or anyone who regularly reads this blog, as I’ve posted on this before, but DVR viewing is having a growing impact on television ratings. USA Today highlighted this in an article Monday.

According to Nielsen Media research’s numbers, these are the five most time-shifted shows for the week of September 22-28.

Those are some pretty significant increases over the number of people who watched the episodes ‘live’. 28% of homes now have DVRs, up from 20% last fall. While new DVR users are reportedly not as fanatic about recording their programs, the sheer increase in numbers is having a growing impact on network programming. And the biggest impact is from viewers in their 30s, a prime audience. While the seven day numbers look good, networks still sell advertising based on lower three day ratings numbers. The industry needs to accept that DVRs are not only hear to stay, but rapidly consuming the market, and largely in the most valuable demographics, so advertising sales will need to adapt. It is really up to the networks to collectively take a stand and force change on the ad industry.

With the growth in DVR usage and commercial skipping, marketers and advertisers have increasingly turned to alternatives to the 30-second spot, with product placement being a common option. Now Nielsen is reporting that product placement dropped a cumulative 15% in the first half of the year while showing a distinct shift - broadcast network placements were up 12%, but cable placements were down 20%.

I found the report interesting reading just from the data on the numbers of actual product placements. I was surprised by just how many placements there are. For example, in the first half of 2008 American Idol alone had 4,636 product placements, followed by Biggest Loser with 4,364. Coca-Cola was the top brand, with 2,990 placements. The market was bombarded with 204,919 product placements in just the first half of 2008. So if you thought there were a lot of products slipped into your shows, you’re right.

Not surprisingly, reality programing has the most product placements as its easier to work products in than it is in a scripted show. But with the deluge of reality shows clogging up the airwaves, there may be too many programs to go around. Audiences can only take so much, and with more shows on the air advertisers may not get as much of a concentration of viewers.

Personally I abhor most reality shows and do everything I can not to watch them. I guess I few shows I watch, like Iron Chef America, technically fall into the category though. But even avoiding the big reality shows, I’ve noticed a growing amount of product placement. One of the shows I enjoyed last season, The Big Bang Theory, had a lot of product placement worked into the program. Characters made very obvious use of Dell laptops, and one character works at The Cheesecake Factory, as is mentioned repeatedly. This season of Eureka is partly sponsored by Degree antiperspirant, which includes fairly intrusive, annoying product placement in the program itself. It is so clumsily handled that it’d be better if the characters just stopped and pitched the product for 30 seconds. It is annoying enough to make me want to never use the product.

I wonder if the increasing ‘in your face’ aspect of product placements is a symptom of the same saturation effect. It reminds me very much of web-based advertising, and how ads became increasingly aggressive with pop-ups, pop-unders, sound, animation, etc. Desperately trying to attract consumers, while in reality it was increasingly driving them away. Unfortunately I don’t expect an ad-blocker for product placements any time soon.

Spotted through Silicon Valley Insider.

NewTeeVee has an entry from Liane Cassavoy, who recently switched from a Series2 TiVo for an HD DVR from Verizon FiOS, and she calls out five areas where Verizon, and other DVRs, could take a lesson from the “trusty, user-friendly TiVo”. Of course, they could just cut to the chase and license TiVo’s software to provide their users with the best of breed DVR. I like Liane’s closing paragraph:

Of the 26 million DVRs in the U.S., only 1.7 million of them are from TiVo. I understand completely why so many people opt for a DVR from their cable company rather than purchasing one from TiVo. After all, it’s cheaper (about $15 per month, as opposed to spending $300 on an HD TiVo and $13 per month for the service) and it’s convenient. I just wish that all of those people didn’t have to settle for a DVR that can be too hard to use and simply not as good.

I won’t quibble over her pricing, there are less expensive options for TiVo hardware and subscriptions, but she’s right on about settling for a lesser product. TiVo is worth the cost because it is a better experience, that’s my opinion anyway.

Of course both Dave Zatz and myself left comments pointing out that you can use a TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD with Verizon FiOS, as they support CableCARD.

Panasonic has announced a new uber-box for the Japanese market. It is a combination 320GB DVR and Blu-ray & DVD recorder. But that’s not all, it also has a built in VHS deck. So you can dump your fuzzy VHS tapes to DVD, or Blu-ray to really capture the fuzziness in high quality. It isn’t completely clear from the translated AV Watch Japanese text, but it sounds like you can also record to VHS - though not from the tuner. You can also dump content to the hard drive, and then transfer from the drive to media. All this can be yours October 1st for the equivalent of $1,450 - only in Japan of course.

We need an HD DVD and Betamax combo deck just for the Epic Fail factor that would represent. (This system supports Digital Audio Tape, Digital Compact Cassette, and MiniDisc - it can’t fail!)

Picked up via Gizmodo.

The GateWorld blog is reporting on the ratings for the season premier of Stargate Atlantis, ‘Search and Rescue’. While Nielsen reported 1.8 million viewers, giving a 1.3 rating, that’s under their ‘Live + Same Day’ ratings. Under their ‘Live + Seven Day’ ratings, which includes delayed DVR viewings, the numbers jumped to 2.4 million viewers, which would yield a rating of 1.7. This is direct evidence of the difference DVRs make to viewership and ratings, a difference which will only increase as DVR use grows. The industry is facing a massive change in how ratings are measured and ads are sold, and the advertising industry can only resist the use of DVR-based ratings for so long. With services like TiVo’s Stop||Watch able to provide detailed statistics on ad viewing there may be all new methods of advertising sales and ratings measurement yet to come.

Western Digital already has eSATA MyDVR Expander models for Cisco/Scientific Atlanta DVRs and TiVo, and now they’ve released a USB model for Dish Network DVRs. The $149.99 500GB USB drive adds up to 60 hours of HD capacity or 300 hours of SD capacity to the Dish Network ViP Series HD DVR.

Picked up from The Gagdetress.

Dish Network just held a ‘Team Summit’ and some interesting news is making its way out. SatelliteGuys.us posted a report from the General Assembly which includes an overview of upcoming Dish Network DVRs, including what I think is the most interesting - the 722s, with built-in Slingbox!

Then Mark and Leslie introduce something that blows me away… The 722s. Its a 722 with Sling technology built in. Besides having Slingbox technology built in it also has Clip and sling which will let you send clips to friends. The 722s has a totally new interface, it has a guide with channel logos plus a totally new UHF remote, which features a touchpad and a trigger below it. This s a amazing unit. The front of the 722s also features al touch technology with no buttons and is backlit instead of using LCD’s. They are looking at having 1TB drive at launch, however 500 GB will be used by Dish and the DVR will come loaded with name HD movies preloaded on the drive. The 722s also has a built in browser (although Jackson said it will only go to certain sites and will be tightly integrated with Yahoo.)

But it is more than just a Slingbox with Clip+Sling - it is a SlingCatcher too!

Out comes Sling CEO Blake Kerkorian and he talks about the Slingbox and talks a little more about the 722s. The 722 will be able to do Clip & Sling and Slingcatcher, plus it will be able to run more applications as well.

So it is a Dish PVR, Slingbox, and SlingCatcher all in one. And from a follow-up post in that thread, it will be an HD Slingbox, like the upcoming Slingbox PRO-HD.

This isn’t really surprising in general, since EchoStar purchased Sling Media last year, but I think this is the first time we’ve heard of this as a real product and not just speculation. And being a SlingCatcher too wasn’t something I’d seen discussed before. The built in web browser is interesting, though it is a shame they have it restricted. (And I’d presume that only works for boxes connected to broadband, same with the Slingbox capability.)

That’s not all they talked about at the summit. The 700MHz spectrum Dish picked up at auction recently was mentioned, unsurprisingly, as a carrier for Dish Mobile. So you’ll be able to access Dish Network content in your car, on your boat, etc.

There are other new Dish STBs as well, the 222k and 722k lack OTA tuners, but a tuner module can be added. And apparently the module provides dual OTA tuners, instead of the single OTA tuner in today’s ViP722. And the tuner module also adds an RF modulator so you can distribute the output through the home over existing coaxial cable on channel 2 or 3. As well as some new two-way remotes, which apparently can store all of your DVR settings and resend them to a new box if you have to have your STB replaced.

Check out the thread at SatelliteGuys.us for all the details.

Disclaimer: I’m currently employed by Sling Media, which is owned by EchoStar.