Samsung launches $5,000 Tizen-powered TVs in South Korea

Nielsen to Add Data for Mobile TV Viewing

Nielsen has long been a kingmaker in the TV industry. Its ratings data, which tracks viewership of shows, determines how advertisers shell out some $66 billion annually. But the company has been slow to adapt to new technologies and expand its reach to other media services, industry critics say. Now Nielsen is making some significant moves.

Next week Nielsen will announce plans to augment its TV ratings data with information on viewing on tablets and smartphones, meeting a major demand of media companies that say they aren't getting credit in the current system for viewing on mobile devices. The change won't take effect until next fall's TV season, however.

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The Latest From Chrome and Android at Google Launch Event

Google will show off the latest in its Chrome and Android lines this morning.

It's no secret that there should be a new Nexus 7 - in fact, Best Buy already has the tablet on sale in 16 gigabyte and 32GB configurations.

Android itself is due for a modest update, as well, going to version 4.3 with improvements in Bluetooth and tweaks other areas.

We're also expecting something called "Chromecast" from Chrome, which will offer another way to get content from a mobile device on to a TV.

Earlier:
9:06 am: Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps, takes the stage.

"At Google I/O, we talked about the fact that we are living at a pivotal moment in computing," he says. "Laptops, tablets, phones, televisions - it's a multiscreen world.

"Our goal is to deliver an experience that is seamless."

Pichai says, "Between Android and Chrome, we have a solution for all the computing devices that users have in their lives."

Two things coming today: A new Android device, a new Chrome device.

By the end of 2013, consumers are going to buy more tablets per year than personal computers. How is Android doing? More than 70 million activated so far.

Almost one in two tablets sold worldwide is based on Android.

A year ago, 20 billion applications downloaded on Google Play. Today, 50 billion. And, revenue per user is up 2.5x in a year. In that year, Google Play has gone from half a billion apps to 1 billion apps.

Pichai: We've worked closely with Asus - the CEO, Jonney Shih is here. The Nexus 7 accounts for more than 10 percent of tablets sold. In Japan, it was the single highest-selling tablet in the holiday season, accounting for 45 percent of sales.

Android exec Hugo Barra hops on stage. We can see he has a tablet in his back pocket.

It's tiny and thin. Barra: It's 2 millimeters thinner, with the same display size but reduced side bezels of 3 mm on either side. And it's 50 grams lighter. "It's a much more comfortable grip, and of course, it fits easily into your purse or jacket." It has the same soft touch with added gloss.

It has higher resolution - from 216 pixels per inch to 323 per inch - the highest of any in the market.

It can show a 30 percent wider range of colors, and has stereo speakers, with Fraunhofer virtual surround sound.

Even more specs: 1.2 MP front camera, 5 MP rear camera. 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro, 1.8x CPU, 4x GPU, doubled system memory to 2 GB. Dual band Wi-Fi, BLuetooth 4.0, 4G LTE for any U.S. network. HDMI, NFC, wireless charging. Some extra power compared to the original - 9 hours of HD video and 10 hours of Web browsing.

And it's shipping with Android 4.3, the new version of Jelly Bean.

It has multi-user support with restricted profiles that give control over content and apps at a user level (for example, for parents).

Now Barra is showing off a jigsaw puzzle app on his tablet ... scintillating demo material.

The app hides all the purchasing functionality and only exposes content to the restricted profile that has been approved.

And supporting OpenLG ES 3.0 to support graphics in games.

Here's Ina Fried's dedicated post on the Nexus 7.

Barra says they're going to show car racing with "jaw-dropping visuals." These demos are always a little strange because we're watching them projected on a huge screen, not the tiny tablet.

As a lady shoots people while riding a motorcycle amid lens flares, Barra says it's all rendered in real-time in native 1080p resolution.

Plus, there are new DRM APIs to restrict content access, which Barra says he's "thrilled" about. Really? Oh no, he's actually "thrilled" that Netflix has designed for it. Their new app supporting Android 4.3 is already available.

So when is Android 4.3 coming? They're pushing an update over the air today.

Barra switches over to talk about native Google Apps to show how they look on a tablet. They've redesigned Google Docs, with support for offline spreadsheet editing, etc. Chrome now has "print-quality" text and 15 percent more screen space. It also includes automatic translation.

The new Google Maps includes an "Explore" feature. Barra is gushing about how the layout is "awesome" especially at such a high resolution. And lastly, Google Hangouts - it also includes screensharing so people who are video-chatting can watch each other edit docs on their tablets.

Google Play product manager Ellie Powers shows how tablet apps are featured, and says hundreds of games have added the Google Play game services shown off at Google I/O. She demos some games and leaderboards. For instance, a game that looks like Mario Kart on jet skis now features responsive splashes on the windshield, and a game with a guy jumping across rooftops, parkour-style, has the shadows on the buildings change as you shift perspective.

Google Play will have a textbook section starting in early August, she says, with books from all five major textbook publishers. It'll include purchases as well as rentals for up to an 80 percent discount.

The prices are $229 for 16GB, $269 for 32GB and $349 for unlocked LTE. The first two will be on sale on July 30 at Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, etc. The 4G model will be available "in the coming weeks," as will international launches in countries like the U.K. and Germany.

After a kind of odd Nexus 7 commercial about a kid with braces giving a speech in front of his class and then Googling "how do I ask a girl out," Pichai is back. He's talking TV. He says every single month more than 200 billion videos are watched in the world. And Netflix and YouTube combined have 49.4 percent share of all peak downstream Internet traffic in America. And lots of that is happening on non-TV devices.

A product dude whose name I didn't catch says Google's goals for TV are: "Make it fast and easy to set up, with nothing new to learn, and it works across platforms and devices."

He holds up what looks like a little USB stick, and says it's called Chromecast. It's running a simplified version of Chrome OS. It plugs into the HDMI port on a TV.

Let's say you want to watch YouTube on your TV, he says - you'll go to that site on your phone/table/PC and see a "Cast" button on the screen. When you do that, it's pulled from the cloud and played directly on the TV. Your device doesn't push the content, it comes direct from YouTube.

For the demo, Rishi Chandra comes onstage. In the past, he's the guy who demoed Google TV.

Interestingly, this TV effort is built around Chrome OS, where the previous Google TV was built on Android.

Here's Ina's pullout story on Chromecast.

Oops, and I missed her Android story. She's a busy lady.

"If you know how to use YouTube on your phone, you know how to use YouTube on your TV," Chandra says.

He adds, "Even in sleep mode, the videos continue to play. We don't drain your battery."

But, he says, "we recognize that not everyone has an Android phone. And we need a solution that works for everyone. Let's pretend my wife has an iPhone (heh)." It works the same.

The Cast button can also be used to bring a video back to the phone - if you click it, you can switch to your phone screen and the video will keep playing from the place you left it.

This also works for Netflix. This is the third Netflix callout of the presentation - unusually strong support for a single partner.

Chandra plays the "House of Cards" credits, which are in my opinion possibly awesomer than the show. This demo is to show that you can direct the content from any device that's connected to the Chromecast on the TV.

In this game of dueling remote controls, you can control content between an iPhone, a Nexus 7 and a TV. It's not exactly clear to me how this is coordinated - perhaps it's just the fact that they're on the same Netflix account.

This can also be used for Google Play Music and Pandora, Chandra says. The "Cast" button - which is a little rectangle with arcs in the corner - shows up there, too.

And lastly, a beta feature: You can project any Chrome tab from the browser to the TV.

"We'll project what's on your local device right onto the television - not the entire desktop or the URL bar, but what you want to look at." Chandra keeps emphasizing that the TV is the best screen in the house with the best speakers in the house, so it's ideal for content.

This will work with most Windows and Mac laptops as well as Chromebooks.

Developers won't need to build a new app to work with the Google Cast SDK, which is out in developer preview today.

Actually, the Pandora integration is still under development.

It will retail for $35 and can be ordered today from Amazon, Best Buy and Google Play.

And it will include three months free of Netflix (another Netflix plug/tie-up!) if you buy now.

That concludes the presentation. Bye for now!

Mad Catz's M.O.J.O. Microconsole Costs $250, Opens for Preorders

The M.O.J.O., an Android-based but TV-connected microconsole developed by gaming-peripherals manufacturer Mad Catz, will cost $250 when it goes on sale in December, the company announced today. That puts it near the high end of competing Android gaming devices, closer to the portable $300 Nvidia Shield than the TV-connected $80 GameStick or $100 Ouya. The M.O.J.O.'s website is now accepting preorders ahead of its Dec. 10 launch date, although the company said in a press release that the microconsole will only be available "in limited quantities" at that time.

Netflix Performance on FiOS Dropped Another 17 Percent in June

Verizon Internet customers who want to watch Netflix at high quality and without interruption just can't catch a break. While Comcast subscribers saw near-immediate speed improvements after Netflix paid for a direct connection to the Comcast network, Netflix performance on Verizon remains poor-and it's getting worse. Netflix's latest ISP speed rankings, released today, show that the average prime time streaming speed on Verizon FiOS dropped from 1.9Mbps in May to 1.58Mbps in June, a decline of 17 percent. Verizon DSL dropped from 1.05Mbps to 0.91Mbps, a decrease of 13 percent. Verizon FiOS previously dropped from 1.99Mbps in April to 1.9Mbps in May, while Verizon DSL had dropped from 1.08Mbps in April to 1.05Mbps in May.

Read the full story at Ars Technica.

Sony's First TV Ad for the PlayStation 4 Is Basically "Testosterone, the Musical!"

Who is going to buy the PlayStation 4 when it launches on Nov. 15? Sony's first TV ad for the next-gen gaming console, which aired tonight during "Monday Night Football," makes the safe bet that it's young dudes:

Maybe not all the young dudes can sing Lou Reed this well, but let's have some suspension of disbelief.

"Perfect Day" is couched in three mock-multiplayer games: A sword-fighting game, a car racer and a war/sci-fi shooter. The commercial doesn't say exactly which games these are supposed to be, but some rough analogues in the PS4's launch catalog for the latter two are DriveClub and Killzone Shadow Fall. Hat tip to commenter GavinLacouette for noticing Imperial City from the Elder Scrolls series in the background of the first game.

Focusing on the games in this first ad, which was produced by BBH New York, is right in line with Sony's larger marketing around the console. They're catering to the hard-core gamers (again, traditionally, young dudes) who are willing to shell out $60 for a deep and "pure" gaming experience. As before, it's distinct from Microsoft's broader strategy with the Xbox One, which got its TV debut last month in a football-centric ad that didn't mention games at all.

The PS4 will cost $399 in the U.S. at launch, versus $499 for the Xbox One, which launches a week later, on Nov. 22.

Amazon Says It Passed Hulu, is Now the Third Largest Video Site

Amazon's been trying to turn Instant Video into a major player in the streaming space, and it looks like its dedication is starting to pay off: Amazon says that Prime video streams have nearly tripled year over year, and it cites video-delivery firm Qwilt to say that Instant Video is now the third largest video site overall, behind Netflix and YouTube. If correct, that would mean that Amazon has jumped ahead of Apple and Hulu to take the number three spot. Amazon likely only controls a small percent or so of the market even so, with Netflix retaining its position as one of the largest sources of internet traffic - not just video streams. With the launch of Fire TV last week, Amazon is certainly hoping that figure will continue to rise now that even more people will have a simple way to browse, rent, and buy movies and TV shows on Amazon.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Charter CEO "Surprised" by Numbers of Broadband-Only Customers

Charter Communications Chief Executive Tom Rutledge said he has been "surprised" by the number of customers opting to take Internet broadband service only, which amounts to more evidence of online video gaining on traditional TV.

Mr. Rutledge hinted at that issue in his comments, made on an analyst conference call for Charter's third-quarter results, when he attributed the growth in "broadband-only customers" in part to changing consumer tastes. He said, however, that the trend was largely due to the inferiority of Charter's television service, which had suffered in recent years in part because the company underinvested in its services while going through a bankruptcy reorganization.

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Twitter's TV Guide Experiment Gets a Little Closer to Prime Time

Twitter often describes itself as a digital town square. But that's not the only metaphor it likes: Twitter is also intent on becoming a TV Guide.

Dick Costolo and company talked a lot about the Twitter + TV concept in the runup to their IPO, but the idea is still a work in progress. You can get a hint of Twitter's ambitions in its latest mobile app overhaul.

You'll have to look hard, though:

• Get the newest version of Twitter's iOS and Android apps.
• Click on the "Discover" tab.
• Click on the "Trending" button.
• Scroll down.
• Keep scrolling.
• Keep scrolling ...

Got it? Tucked away in the corner of its app, Twitter is now promoting TV shows to its users, supposedly based on the amount of chatter they are generating on the service (click images to enlarge).

A handful of Twitter users saw these banners this summer, when Twitter tried a test run. Now all of you can see them.

The Twitter TV promotions aren't formal ads, though you could easily imagine a way Twitter might charge for them, directly or indirectly. More important to Twitter is the idea that it can drive traffic to TV shows (which it is also trying to do with Comcast and the cable company's "Seeit" buttons).

Twitter also likes the notion that TV shows are something that appeal to lots of mainstream users - the kind it would very much like to recruit and keep on the service.

So what will all of that mean? Not much, yet: If Twitter was really serious about this stuff, it would move it out of a subfolder in a section of the app normal people don't ever visit. So it's safe to assume this is still in the experimental phase.

On the other hand, the fact that Twitter is now experimenting where everyone can see its work, instead of a tiny subset of its users, means ... something. The trick is figuring out how to surface this stuff in a way that doesn't dismay its current users, and, more importantly, in a way that makes sense to new users, who Twitter really needs.

My hunch: Twitter eventually marries TV recommendations with the mechanics of Magic Recs and Event Parrot, two other Twitter experiments that deliver information - interesting users, or interesting news - to users who have asked for it.

Report: Apple’s TV Service Would Let You Skip Ads and Still Pay Media Companies

Apple has a new trick up its sleeve as it tries to launch a long-awaited television service: technology that allows viewers to skip commercials and that pays media companies for the skipped views. For more than a year, Apple has been seeking rights from cable companies and television networks for a service that would allow users to watch live and on-demand television over an Apple set-top box or TV. Talks have been slow and proceeding in fits and starts, but things seem to be heating up. In recent discussions, Apple told media executives it wants to offer a "premium" version of the service that would allow users to skip ads and would compensate television networks for the lost revenue, according to people briefed on the conversations. Consumers, of course, are already accustomed to fast-forwarding through commercials on their DVRs, and how Apple's technology differs is unclear.

Read the full story at JessicaLessin.com.

Report: Google is Working on a Streaming TV Service

Google has approached media companies about licensing their content for an Internet TV service that would stream traditional TV programming, people familiar with the matter say. If the Web giant goes ahead with the idea, it would join several other companies planning to offer such "over-the-top" services, delivering cable TV-style packages of channels over broadband connections. Chip company Intel and Sony are both working on similar offerings, while Apple has pitched various TV licensing ideas to media companies in the past couple of years. If launched, the Internet TV services could have major implications for the traditional TV ecosystem, creating new competition for pay TV operators that are already struggling to retain video subscribers. Existing online video players like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon offer on-demand TV, but the latest efforts are aimed at offering conventional channels, allowing consumers to flip through channels just as they would on cable.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal.

Reports: Apple Close to Adding Live Time Warner Cable Service to Apple TV

As we've heard for the past month, Apple and Time Warner Cable are close to inking a deal that would bring a TWC app to the Apple TV's homescreen - for the first time bringing live TV broadcasts to the device. But some recent reports are bringing things into sharper focus, giving us some more insight into what the future of Apple's service is going to look like. Earlier this week, the New York Times wrote that the app would allow "some of the company's 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box." Friday, Bloomberg adds that "while the deal would add a Time Warner app, that just means viewers won't have to switch from Apple TV back to their cable box: They'd still need to subscribe to Time Warner Cable and wait around for a technician to install it." The TWC app would likely be based on its existing iPhone and iPad software.

Read the full story at The Verge.

MWC 13: LG Shows 4K ‘Ultra HD’ Streaming From Phone to TV

LG is demonstrating its wireless Ultra HD transmission technology this week at Mobile World Congress. At the company’s booth I got a chance to walk through a gaming demo on an Android device that was displaying at 1080p on the phone, upscaling to 4K on the TV. The technology works by connecting over Wi-Fi and using the Miracast peer-to-peer wireless screencast standard, allowing you to simply stream what you’re seeing on the phone to a TV. The streaming was fairly smooth, but panning did cause some frame rate drops occasionally. I noticed that LG is keeping the phone brightness low on its own Android devices for this demo to ensure they don’t overheat, so it’s clear this is an early demo. Nevertheless, if LG and others can bring this technology to the masses in 1080p Android phones, then we’re looking at a future where a phone or tablet could truly be an all round gaming device that connects up to your TV.

Read the full story at The Verge.