Gizmodo
fcc
Posts Tagged “
Time Warner
”
fcc
giz explains
The big bad cable industry is under assault. The internet is stealing viewers who can check out their favorite shows on Hulu while fiber and IPTV deliver speed and features they can't quite match. Yet. A new cable internet standard rolling out this year will let them catch up speedwise. To battle the dizzying array of possibilities IPTV offers, the cable industry has its own white knight: Tru2way, a new kind of CableCARD that will deliver real interactive features to cable subscribers, and kill the loathed cable box in the process.
More »
Giz Explains: CableCARD and the Future of Cable TV
The big bad cable industry is under assault. The internet is stealing viewers who can check out their favorite shows on Hulu while fiber and IPTV deliver speed and features they can't quite match. Yet. A new cable internet standard rolling out this year will let them catch up speedwise. To battle the dizzying array of possibilities IPTV offers, the cable industry has its own white knight: Tru2way, a new kind of CableCARD that will deliver real interactive features to cable subscribers, and kill the loathed cable box in the process.
More »
7:00 PM on Wed Jul 9 2008
By matt buchanan
7,780 views,
35 comments
isp backlash
ISP Backlash May Mean The End of Usenet
Ever since New York's attorney general specifically targeted newsgroups and usenet for child pornography (which is deplorable), there's been a backlash of ISPs dropping support for the network altogether. Crunchgear lists Time Warner, Verizon and Sprint either cutting off all support or limiting it to various non-binary categories, making people who access usenet for an easy way to download free movies pretty angry. Will ISPs dropping it mean the start of a slow death of usenet as a whole, or will third-party usenet access sites (which charge fees) keep it alive for a while yet? [Crunchgear]
wimax
Sprint and Clearwire Promise WiMax Will Be Totally Open, Can Replace Your ISP
In its filing to the FCC oh-so-politely asking for the okay to merge Sprint's and Clearwire's spectrum assets into the WiMax monolith New Clearwire (helpfully poked through by Ars), they make a lot of groovy promises to stoke the FCC's approval stamp into action. Like it'll be totally open: "New Clearwire will permit consumers to use any lawful device that they want so long as it is compatible" and you can "download and use any software applications, content, or services" as long they're not illegal or mucking up the network. And they're promising to cover 140 million people in the US in 30 months with claims of sustained speeds of 6Mbps downlink, 3Mbps up. Why's this cool? More »
time warner
Time Warner Monthly Data Caps Detailed
We'd heard about Time Warner Cable's test run of consumption-based billing in Beaumont, Texas, back in January, though details were scant. Now they're plentiful. The plans (for new subscribers only) start up on Thursday, but thankfully they're not as bad as we imagined—the overage fee is only $1/GB and is waived the first two months. Plans start $30 for 768Kbps downloads and a 5GB cap, and go up to $55 for a pretty sweet 15Mbps downstream and a 40GB cap. Not egregious, but we still hate it, especially since you'll probably be seeing this in lotsa places, sooner than you'd expect. More »
wimax
WiMax Joint Venture: Sprint, Clearwire, Comcast and Time Warner With $$$ from Google and Intel, Maybe Announced Tomorrow
Sprint and Clearwire are apparently set to do the almost unthinkable: Get WiMax off the ground. Fortune is reporting that Sprint and Clearwire are expected to announce as early as tomorrow the formation of a massive WiMax joint venture with Time Warner and Comcast. Intel and Google are rumored to be throwing money at the new WiMax party (more?). If you'll notice, this basically rolls up most of the past WiMax rumors into one convenient ball of fun—indicating they were spot on, or that this is just repackaged BS, so don't throw away the salt lick just yet. Godspeed, WiMax. UPDATE: Matt Richtel at the NYTimes corroborates it. More »
internet
10 Percent of Broadband Subscribers Suck Up 80 Percent of Bandwidth But P2P No Longer to Blame
The most consistent rationale for ISPs to throttle p2p applications or charge by the byte is that a small minority of users drain a vastly disproportionate amount of bandwidth, like the planet-raping aliens in Independence Day. Om Malik pulls a few of these numbers out of Arbor Networks' CTO, who develops all the traffic management tools your ISP probably uses, so while there's a conflict of interest (portents of internet doom sell more stuff) they have the data. Ten percent of subscribers consume 80 percent of bandwidth, a super-leeching 0.5 percent swallow 40 percent of bandwidth, and the rest like your mom, 80 percent, sip less than 10 percent. But p2p isn't the culprit. More »
cable
CableLabs Responds to CableCard Screwjob Allegation
The good folks at CableLabs replied to today's piece about CableCard customers getting screwed out of HD channels. To their credit, they did not ask for a correction, because we didn't print anything inaccurate (though they do claim the HD Guru may have). They just wanted us to consider some "clarifications," arguments that go far to highlight the tension (hatred bordering on violence?) that exists between Big Cable and the consumer-electronics companies. The short version: Cable content is always changing, two-way CableCard exists in theory if not at Best Buy, the dongle could work on anything with a USB port and upgradeable firmware, and, oh yeah, you'll probably be buying all-new gear before this thing blows over. Jump for a more spelled out—but still excerpted—version of CableLabs' rebuttal argument: More »
cable
Our friend Gary Merson, the HD Guru, has uncovered an issue that may soon piss you off. Cable customers who use the current CableCard to decode signal directly in their TV, a TiVo or Windows Media Center PC may soon start losing HD channels because of a change in technology. To conserve bandwidth, cable carriers are moving from a direct stream of video to "switched digital video," which use two-way digital cable boxes to see what customers need then send it to them. CableCards are only one-way, so they can't make use of any SDV coming down the pipes. What does this mean? Merson says that as of April 15, Cablevision has cut off CableCard access to 15 Voom HD channels, and Time Warner will apparently make similar cuts.
More »
CableCard Users Are Getting Screwed Out of HD Channels
Our friend Gary Merson, the HD Guru, has uncovered an issue that may soon piss you off. Cable customers who use the current CableCard to decode signal directly in their TV, a TiVo or Windows Media Center PC may soon start losing HD channels because of a change in technology. To conserve bandwidth, cable carriers are moving from a direct stream of video to "switched digital video," which use two-way digital cable boxes to see what customers need then send it to them. CableCards are only one-way, so they can't make use of any SDV coming down the pipes. What does this mean? Merson says that as of April 15, Cablevision has cut off CableCard access to 15 Voom HD channels, and Time Warner will apparently make similar cuts.
More »
industry
Is CBS Blocking Shows From Your DVR?
John Sciacca at Sound & Vision says his DVR no longer lets him record his favorite show, Survivor. Sciacca claims that despite setting his Time Warner box to record every episode of the reality show, when the time comes, it acts as if there is nothing to record. Sometimes, he says, the record light even goes on during the show, but it isn't saved to the hard drive. Apparently he's not the only one stuck without Survivor. More »
net neutrality
As the amount of bandwidth we devour has skyrocketed, so has ISPs' need to police our appetites, even as they offer more bandwidth to whet it. We talked to the biggest ISPs around to get their official positions on traffic management and content filtering to see what's in store for your pipes. Here's where you find out which ISPs may screw you, and which ones swear to Giz they won't. Update: We've got new responses from AT&T and Speakeasy.
More »
Will Your ISP F You In the A? Bandwidth Hogs Beware
As the amount of bandwidth we devour has skyrocketed, so has ISPs' need to police our appetites, even as they offer more bandwidth to whet it. We talked to the biggest ISPs around to get their official positions on traffic management and content filtering to see what's in store for your pipes. Here's where you find out which ISPs may screw you, and which ones swear to Giz they won't. Update: We've got new responses from AT&T and Speakeasy.
More »
12:45 PM on Mon Apr 14 2008
By matt buchanan
35,630 views,
70 comments
Latest by n/a: Stuff like this is why digital distribution becoming the primary media delivery means is still a long time away. more »
yahoo
Yahoo Flirting With AOL Something Fierce, Microsoft Still On Doorstep With Flowers
An unnamed source (aren't they all?) confirmed a rumor that had been floating before: that Yahoo, in order to escape being grabbed by Microsoft, would hurl itself at the second-ugliest suitor in the room, AOL. The new details say that Time Warner would pay some cash up front for a 20% stake in a joint AOL-Yahoo program. The AOL side, valued at $10 billion, would include all properties (such as our worthy competitor Engadget) but not the dial-up service that your grandma and pretty much no one else still has. Microsoft still may get its way, though: Word is that it's teaming with MySpace-owner News Corp for some kind of a three-way proposition. [Reuters]
wimax
Comcast and Time Warner To Launch WiMax Network, Asking Sprint to Run It?
Cable operators Comcast and Time Warner plan to gather up $1.5 billion to $2 billion in order to get their own WiMax network going, and it's said that they would turn to Sprint to run the show. Now, I don't know what part of this plan makes sense to anyone else, but A) WiMax as a wide-area network technology isn't looking as hot in practice as it did in theory, and B) Sprint doesn't seem to be capable of running its own operation, let alone someone else's multi-billion-dollar baby. One thing is for sure, this move by the cable titans shows, like Dish Network's recent acquisition of some 700MHz spectrum, that everybody wants a piece of the wireless pie, even if they don't know exactly what to do with it. [AP]
software
Yahoo Flees Microsoft, Runs to Time Warner's AOL?
Microsoft hating is something of a national pastime, but Yahoo's desire to avoid a Redmond takeover has apparently driven them to seek a cozy relationship with Time Warner. Yes, some geniuses out there are actually concocting "a deal that would fold Time Warner's AOL Internet unit into Yahoo." I'm sorry, but hasn't history proven that working with Time Warner on internet stuff is the business equivalent of trying to conquer Russia in the winter? The joke is, we were actually relieved to hear that the same unnamed people familiar with this deal still think Microsoft's Yahoo buyout will happen. [Reuters]
ads
This Time Warner ad taking on Verizon FiOS is so ludicrously hilarious it almost does make want to sign up with Time Warner. In the spot, Verizon is a constipated (wait for it), overly enthusiastic gay-coded dude with magic fingers shooting red lightning and flying Vs (for Verizon!), touting "THE FIBER." It's so ridiculous it almost seems fake. More »
Time Warner Says Verizon Is a Constipated Gay Man with Magic Fingers
This Time Warner ad taking on Verizon FiOS is so ludicrously hilarious it almost does make want to sign up with Time Warner. In the spot, Verizon is a constipated (wait for it), overly enthusiastic gay-coded dude with magic fingers shooting red lightning and flying Vs (for Verizon!), touting "THE FIBER." It's so ridiculous it almost seems fake. More »
hbo
HBO on Broadband: All-You-Can-Eat Movie and TV Downloads
If you had just three fewer hoops to jump through for HBO on Broadband, it'd be an amazing service. So, if you have Time Warner in Wisconsin, HBO on Demand and Roadrunner broadband (and Windows), you can download to your PC as much as you want from a catalog of 600 shows and movies they'll throw up every month, plus there's a live feed of HBO on the East Coast. Awesome, right? More »
bittorrenters beware
All-You-Can-Eat Broadband Is Dead: Time Warner to Charge by the Byte
Reason number 149 I won't move to Texas: Time Warner confirmed it'll be testing a new pricing plan in Beaumont that's based on how much bandwidth you eat up. That's right, hard caps. Totally made-up example, since they haven't released details on the package tiers: Pay $50 a month for 500 gigs, and if you consume more, get slapped with probably obscene overage fees. More »
roundup
Afternoon News: HP and Compaq Laptops May Brick, Comcast and DirecTV Have a Catfight, I Weep For My Home Town and More
• A security researcher published code that is capable of• Microsoft continues to rename everything in sight, this time folding IPTV, HD DVD, and Media Center into one group called Connected TV. [News.com]
• Comcast settled a lawsuit with DirecTV about the latter's hissy fit over an ad campaign last spring. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but from the sound of it, Comcast came out on top. However, when anything involves these two companies, does anyone really come out on top? [Ars Technica]
• THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS LOSE!!!...At a chance to show their last game to Time Warner Cable customers after TWC would not agree to binding arbitration with the NFL. Gotcha! [Consumerist]
• Finally, stepping out of the gadget world for a second, here's something that happened in my home city of Detroit. A bus driver transporting special needs students was arrested for soliciting an undercover cop for prostitution at 7 in the morning! It's funny because it's tragic! [Detroit News]
