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!

Sundar Pichai on the Difference Between Chromecast and Google TV (Interview)

Sundar Pichai

Google has two operating systems: Chrome and Android. And now it has two living-room devices: Chromecast and Google TV.

There's a good reason for that, argued Sundar Pichai, Google's SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps, in an interview after the event.

In fact, Pichai took over control of the Google TV project in March of this year. It had previously been the domain of YouTube head Salar Kamangar, but it was internally seen as better aligned with Android and Android partner relationships, sources said.

(Pichai, who has a reputation for being good at managing partnerships, gained a bunch of power at Google at that time, adding all of Andy Rubin's Android on top of his previous domain of Chrome and Apps.)

So why two different devices? The new Chromecast dongle will be a sort of lightweight way to stream video on a television. Google TV, you probably already know about - though you probably don't own as it's not super popular. Soon, "it will be a full-fledged Android for television," Pichai said, noting that he expects to announce many more partners at CES early next year.

The Chromecast costs $35 and has just 256k 512 megabytes of memory. But that doesn't mean it streams low-quality video; the default resolution is the industry-standard 1080p.

The new Google Chromecast

Where Google TV can provide "an immersive experience" that's appropriate for gaming, Chromecast will have too much latency for gaming, Pichai explained.

So why make a new device that doesn't do as much? To try to popularize the activity of watching Internet TV on a real living-room TV, said Pichai.

"It is shocking how much video is consumed on phones, tablets and laptops, but the TV usage just breaks off," he said. (During prepared remarks, Pichai cited Sandvine data showing that YouTube and Netflix account for an estimated 49.4 percent share of all peak downstream Internet traffic in the U.S.)

"Whereas TV is the most-used device at home, by far. People watch 4.5 hours of television per household in the U.S. So there is this gap, and you have to figure out a way to converge it." But simplicity is key, he said. "We should never set up expensive boxes and call someone to say how do I connect all this?"

Google's "Cast" protocol, which adds streaming options to apps while they are running on devices using the same Wi-Fi network as a Chromecast dongle, allows for playing video with no installation needed.

A Vizio Co-Star, one of the devices integrated with Google TV

"Effectively, the Chromecast is a Web media player," Pichai said. "Once you say, 'Play this YouTube video or Netflix video,' it is actually pinging YouTube or Netflix over Wi-Fi, going through the Internet backbone, and they are just sending it like they would send it to a browser."

Internally, Pichai said, his team calls this process "flinging" content. Flinging is intended for video and music apps, and outside developers are welcome to build in support for it.

Chromecast will also support a second behavior: "Mirroring" Web pages, though that will be in beta for the next few months. With mirroring, whatever you do on your phone, tablet or computer is synced up with the display on your TV. That way you can pull content from any website, not just supported apps - though you'll draw down the battery on the device that's being mirrored. My colleague Peter Kafka suspects that some TV companies will not be pleased.

These features aren't limited to the Chromecast device, Pichai said. Google TV will also support Google Cast, Pichai said today.

Google's two-pronged approach actually parallels competitors like Roku, which offers both boxes and streaming sticks for certain TVs. However, where Google might have an advantage on the works-like-a-browser front, Roku is ahead on the content deals. In addition to Netflix and YouTube, it has Amazon, Hulu, HBO Go and other channels. Chromecast doesn't yet.

"I fully expect more partners to join us, because it makes a lot of sense for their content to be seen on the television," Pichai said.

Correction, July 29: This article incorrectly reported the amount of memory that the Chromecast has; the correct number is 512MB.

Google Ends Netflix Chromecast Promotion

A day after announcing a promotion that gave Chromecast buyers three free months of Netflix, Google has pulled the plug on the offer. Google told the Los Angeles Times that it quashed the giveaway "due to overwhelming demand for Chromecast devices," which move video from the Internet to the TV, and which retail for $35.

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.

Google's Answer to the Great Chromecast/Netflix Giveaway Mystery: There's No Mystery -- We Sold Out

Why did Google kill its Chromecast/Netflix promotion a day after it launched?

It didn't, exactly. And neither did Netflix.

Here's a new statement from Google on the end of the deal, which gave Chromecast buyers three months of free Netflix: "Due to overwhelming demand for Chromecast devices since launch, the 3-month Netflix promotion (which was available in limited quantities) is no longer available."

And here's a tiny bit of clarity about what that means, as far as I can tell after speaking to people at both companies: Google bought a fixed amount of Netflix subscriptions to bundle with its $35 Web TV gadget, and it sold out.

Feel free to wonder whether Google dramatically underestimated demand for Chromecast, or if it is very happy to have sold out in a day (right now, Gabe Rivera and his robots think this is the most compelling story in tech).

Also feel free to wonder whether the end of the promotion will do anything to dampen enthusiasm for the Chromecast.

My hunch: At an effective price of $11, it was basically free, and thus a very attractive impulse buy. And, at its list price of $35, it is still very, very cheap for a piece of consumer electronics. And it's probably going to continue to sell well.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Humannet)

Yet Another Way to Get a Super-Cheap Web TV Box

What's that? You say you're intrigued by the notion of a Web TV box, but $35 for a Google Chromecast is too rich for your blood?

Here you go - if you live in the U.K.: Satellite TV service BSkyB has rolled out a Web TV box for 9.99.

That works out to about $15, and what that gets you is essentially a rebranded Roku HD box - BSkyB invested in Roku last year, and once again this spring - tailored to support BSkyB's Now TV streaming subscription service. That also means that the box won't support BSkyB rivals Netflix and Amazon/Lovefilm.

You can see more specs and details here, but the big picture is that this shows yet another approach to distributing Web-to-TV hardware: Rather than have consumers buy the gadgets directly from the manufacturer, a programmer/distributor sells the box and subsidizes the cost.

Expect to see more of this in the future. For starters, note that Roku's other investors include 21st Century Fox, Dish Network and Hearst, which owns both TV stations and stakes in TV networks including ESPN.

Meanwhile, Apple is in talks with Time Warner Cable about an Apple TV tie-up; for now, that deal doesn't call for the cable operator to sell Apple's boxes, but you could certainly imagine a pact where it does.

And remember that Amazon, which tried to buy Roku last year, has its own TV box in the works, which will be optimized for Amazon's own video offerings.

Google Suggests Web-TV Thingies You Can Buy Instead of Google's Sold-Out Chromecast

Google has not only sold out of Netflix giveaways to bundle with its Chromecast device, but it doesn't have any Chromecasts to sell right now, period. If you place an order on Google's site, you'll be told there is a two- to three-week wait before one will ship.

As a helpful AllThingsD reader points out, as of this morning, you could still buy a Chromecast from Best Buy's website. That's no longer the case, either.

But if you do end up looking for a Chromecast on BestBuy.com, you will find a list of other ways you can watch Web video on your TV.

The list is provided by Google, via its AdSense ad units, which means that, even if Google can't sell you a gadget, it might still make money by getting you to click on a link.

The list will change over time, and will vary depending on your browsing history. Here's one I just saw:

If you're in the market for a Chromecast, you might very well have heard of Roku, which offers gadgets that do similar things, but at a higher price point.

It's interesting to note that Google's auction/algorithm thinks you might also want to check out devices from Western Digital, which has had a hard time getting attention for its streaming boxes. It's also interesting to see that Aereo, a subscription service that can't show up on your TV without help from Apple TV, Roku (or, theoretically, Chromecast), is on the list, too.

The Digital TV Endgame: 10-Year Transition to All Things IP

While Internet TV is already technically feasible, commercial challenges are keeping it from becoming a mass-market reality. Services like Hulu, YouTube and Netflix are helping turn online video into a viable substitute for broadcast television, but the Internet still has a long way to go. Industry insiders often talk about being four years into a 10-year transition, so what will the next six years look like as online distribution increasingly eats away at the broadcast TV market? Who will be the winners and losers in this new world? What technology needs to be invented, what deals need to be struck, and what existing commercial relationships need to be upended?

Then and Now

Everyone remembers how Napster sparked a collision between the music industry and the Internet that forever changed how people consume music. Buying a physical CD in-store quickly became a thing of the past, and today we stream music on-demand, over the air, from digital services like Spotify or Songza. A similar transition is happening in television. Platforms like Hulu and Roku are melding video with online distribution, disrupting traditional cable/broadcast consumption and making it faster and more convenient than ever before for viewers to watch their favorite shows. Most importantly, consumers are increasingly taking advantage of these new platforms. In the last 12 months, 1.8 million Americans have cut the cord and unsubscribed from cable TV, according to a recent study by research firm SNL Kagan. This represents a 3.1 percent drop in cable subscribers, and the trend continues to gain momentum despite the limited availability of premium sports or prime-time entertainment shows on digital platforms. As more of this content becomes available online, expect to see cable subscriber losses accelerate as consumers enjoy the benefits of a digital user experience combined with full access to their favorite shows and sports.

But it's not just a question of content availability. Online distribution actually represents a superior product from a user-experience standpoint. With content parity, there seems little doubt users would migrate to digital TV even faster. Traditionally, television has been a broadcast (one-to-many) medium. A station broadcasts a single show, at a specific time, with all viewers seeing the same content and ads simultaneously. By contrast, online video is a one-to-one medium. Each user connects individually; pulling in the specific content they want, where they want, when they want. Digital platforms enjoy far richer user interfaces, robust search, on-demand content accessibility and multi-device on-the-go access. As well as personalizing content, advertisers are also embracing this one-to-one relationship with viewers. This new, individualized experience enables ads to be delivered based on user preferences, search history and interests, enabling advertisers to reach consumers in a far more targeted (and hence relevant/effective) way. Eventually, this may even reduce the numbers of ads viewers are subjected to, as advertisers get more efficient at targeting only the most relevant audiences for their products. All this was impossible in the old broadcast world.

With so many benefits to Internet delivery, one would wonder why all TV isn't delivered this way. The challenge has far less to do with technology, and far more to do with existing business relationships and commercial interests. Existing broadcasters, cable companies and content producers enjoy the status quo ... the TV business is good, why rock the boat? Affiliate fees (the revenue share on viewer subscriptions paid by cable companies to the content owners) are a $32 billion income source, and are the primary revenue stream that funds TV content development. Thanks to bundling, content owners like Disney and Viacom are able to make more money than if consumers cherry-picked individual channels or shows. The TV industry, at all costs, wants to avoid a repeat of the iTunes model - one in which consumers can purchase individual songs a la carte, eliminating the need to purchase the full album.

Additionally, because of the scale of these relationships, it's almost impossible for new companies to enter the market with competing services. Each year, DirecTV pays the NFL $1 billion for exclusive rights needed for its NFL Sunday Ticket package. But, with more than 20 million subscribers and $30 billion of annual revenue, it's a price DirecTV can afford to keep its subscribers loyal. The fact that it also erects a substantial barrier to entry for any new digital-MSO competitor is a much-appreciated secondary consequence. Even if a startup could create a more intuitive, on-demand IP-based service, would subscribers migrate if the content they wanted were not available? A handful of digital-native companies have the deep pockets needed to take the plunge and buy the content rights needed, but they will face many years of substantial losses on content as they build their subscriber bases.

What Now?

The prize will be substantial for the company that can overcome these challenges and launch a successful IP television business. By combining the world's best content with an intuitive digital user experience, companies will bring television into the 21st century. In the last month alone, we've seen more than a dozen major steps taken by large media companies to fulfill this vision:

• Time Warner Cable just announced that over the next year it would be eliminating the need for its 15 million deployed set-top-boxes to move toward a software solution that can be licensed to third-party devices like Roku and Xbox.
• ESPN president John Skipper was quoted as being open to deals with IP video services - so long as they bought/paid for packages comparable to those offered by traditional MSOs.
• Companies like Intel, Apple and Google are actively working on connected-TV offerings, in addition to their current robust set-top boxes. These companies not only have the best resources to produce these smart devices, but also have the user base and, most importantly, the money to make exclusive partnerships happen.
• Dish recently announced Dish Digital, an IP-only subscription package, similar to Aereo, Netflix and Hulu, that essentially competes against its core business. A bold/risky yet perhaps insightful move in understanding how real this shift to digital consumption truly is.

Each week, there appears to be a new story hitting the press about the ways in which the Internet is reshaping the future of television; making it one of the most exciting, but potentially challenging, periods in the history of the TV industry. Unlike music and newspapers before it, the television industry has been able to benefit from the lessons learned by those who faced the Internet challenge. While those lessons from history may ease the transition, they don't lessen the deep impact that IP distribution is having. TV networks are faced with the challenge of adapting to new ways of distributing content to their consumers and building new, more direct relationships with their viewers; all without destroying strategic business relationships that provide the essential revenue they need to operate and invest in new content development. While this challenge is no doubt fraught with risk and complexity, the outcome at this point seems inevitable. Consumers want the benefit of access to content on demand anytime and anywhere, advertisers value the precision targeting and measurement of digital, and even MSOs are beginning to see the benefit of delivering more interactive, engaging experiences to their subscribers. The digital endgame has taken a long time to arrive, but it's now closer to a reality than ever before.

Mark Trefgarne is chief executive officer and co-founder of LiveRail.

Netflix Flirts With a New Idea: “Big” Movies at Your House, the Same Day They’re in Theaters

Netflix made a splash this year by creating its own TV shows and delivering them over the Web. Now it's toying with the same idea for movies.

This summer, the company announced that it in addition to TV shows like "Orange Is the New Black," it would start spending money on modest movies - documentaries and stand-up comedy specials - which would debut on the service.

Now Netflix is floating the idea that it will foot the bill for a "big" movie, which would appear in theaters and on Netflix at the same time.

During the company's earnings call last week, content boss Ted Sarandos said the company was interested in breaking into movies, and that investors should "keep [their] mind wide open to what those films would be and what they would look like."

This weekend, Sarandos got more explicit. In a speech hosted by Film Independent, the nonprofit behind the indie film Spirit Awards, Sarandos said Netflix could start delivering new movies to its subscribers by doing the same thing it has done with its original TV shows, and becoming a first-run distributor.

"What we're trying to do for TV, the model should extend pretty nicely to movies. Meaning, why not premiere movies on Netflix, the same day they're opening in theaters? And not little movies - there's a lot of ways, and lot of people to do that [already]. Why not big movies? Why not follow the consumers' desire to watch things when they want?"

Good logic. And hard to imagine how that will work.

But presumably that's Sarandos's point - Netflix wants to show that it can do it, at least once, and put pressure on the rest of Hollywood to change.

And there's some nice symbolism here, too: Netflix started out delivering movies via DVD, which it could do without Hollywood's permission. It eventually moved into a digital TV show service, at least in part because it couldn't get the studios to let it distribute their movies over the Web. Wouldn't it be cool if Netflix could start to end run the system and deliver movies that way, too?

As Sarandos notes, it's already possible to see some art house movies at home, via distributors like Apple or Time Warner Cable, at the same time they're in theaters. (Sometimes even before they're in theaters).

But almost all major Hollywood movies follow a rigid "windowing" system, where they show up in theaters first, then on DVD and "on demand" services, then on pay TV (and sometimes Netflix), etc.

Films studios themselves have expressed interest in tweaking those windows, so movies could migrate more quickly from theaters to other venues, but theater owners, who play a big role in movie marketing, have been fiercely opposed to any changes. (See: "Tower Heist" or "Alice in Wonderland.")

And I can't see Sarandos convincing any studio with a traditional blockbuster that needs conventional theaters to change course anytime soon. If you want to see "Thor: The Dark World" on November 8, you're still going to have to visit the box office.

So perhaps Sarandos has a different definition of a "big" movie in mind. Or maybe some other clever end run around the system.

Feel free to watch his speech below (don't be scared off the by 44-minute counter on the YouTube clip; his prepared speech only goes 22 minutes, and if you need to go fast you can speed up to the 19-minute mark) and reach your own conclusions. For now, Netflix reps aren't offering any additional comment.

Reed Hastings Has a Long Memory, Sharp Wit

Oh well. No one is right all the time.

- Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, on Facebook, linking to a 2005 MarketWatch story in which analyst Michael Pachter put a $3 price target on Netflix and said the company "continues to underestimate Blockbuster's market position."

All of These Google Chromecast Ads Are Awesome

Lots of smart people I know are very, very excited about Chromecast, Google's new TV-streaming gadget.

I think it's pretty cool, too. But only as an iterative step: Maybe I'm not smart enough to figure out The Big Picture, but to me this seems like a cheaper version of Apple TV and Roku's boxes, both of which do very similar things.

But Apple TV and Roku were pretty cheap to begin with, and now Chromecast is just about free. Google is selling it for $35, but it's giving you three free months of Netflix (even if you're already a Netflix subscriber), which brings the net cost down to $11. If you smoke cigarettes and you live in New York City, you will pay more for a pack of Marlboro Lights.* [UPDATE: That was fast: A day after announcing the Netflix deal, Google has pulled the plug. So now it's back to $35 -- or the price of four movie tickets (not in New York, though).]

So if Chromecast's main contribution is that it makes this kind of Web-to-TV box something that literally everyone can afford, then that's still pretty important, because it makes Web-to-TV that much more commonplace. As long as it works.**

And if Chromecast is going to become the device that lots of people buy, it will be in part because of Google's super-smart ad campaign, which does a brilliant job of quickly explaining the Web-to-TV concept, and making it look like something normal people would love to do.

I've already raved about the main Chromecast ad, but Google has a whole set of these up and running, and they're all awesome examples of great story telling. In 15 seconds, no less.

* Don't smoke cigarettes!

** It's worth noting that Roku also has its own "streaming stick," which looks just like Chromecast (minus some features). But it doesn't push that device - instead it is focused on the Roku 3, which has a bigger footprint. I wonder why that is. (Ah! Thanks to Zach Seward and Steve Kovach for the quick answer: Roku's stick won't work with most TVs.)

It’s our own fault the Xbox One is so media heavy!

I’ve complained, many peeps have complained, journalists have complained – the Xbox One event was way too centered on the media aspect of the console versus the gaming side. Not even a handful of games were presented last week but boy did Microsoft go crazy on the TV watching, the NFL happening and the sports playing. Sure we’re angry but we really have only ourselves to blame.

It’s a pretty simple thing, Microsoft is only giving us more of what we’ve been doing. I have a relatively small friends list (I’m pretty anti-social) and do you know what I see 70% of the time? People watching Netflix! Not playing Halo 4 or Skyrim but watching movies on the Netflix app. Watching videos on the dashboard, booting up Xbox video.

When you add up all the people who willingly, myself included, have spent any amount of time using the Xbox 360 for anything other than gaming then it really is no wonder why MS went full tilt on bringing more media options to the table. Major Nelson always has a list ready of the weekly top Live games played but I wonder what it would look like if they tabulated everything used on the 360. I have a feeling Netflix would reign supreme.

More…

If you want Microsoft to start banking on the games, start playing them more than watching Warehouse 13 on your Xbox. Get some buddies together and go looting in Borderlands 2. Just play some damn games and refocus the console to a gaming machine. Just my 2 .

Netflix Launches the ‘Flixies’, Award Results Coming March 11

Just two days after the 84th Academy Awards came to its conclusion in Los Angeles, Netflix has announced a brand new awards initiative of its own - the Flixies. As you'd expect, the Flixies will honour all the top movies and TV shows on the streaming service, with both Netflix members and non-members able to cast their votes. Voting is open now, and will run all the way through to Sunday March 10 (5pm PST), with categories including Best Tantrum Tamer (aimed at parents of troublesome young 'uns), Best Hangover Cure, Best Bromance and Best Marathon TV Show. So yeah, not your typical entertainment categories you'll no doubt agree. Netflix says that the awards are designed to celebrate "the new viewing habits of today's entertainment watchers," in other words those who like to sit at home and stream hours of TV shows and movies.

Read the full story at The Next Web.

"Arrested Development" Comes to Dive Into Media: Make Room for Will Arnett, Mitch Hurwitz and Brian Grazer

So perhaps you’ve heard: Last week, Netflix made its first big foray into original content, when it debuted “House of Cards,” the Kevin Spacey/David Fincher political drama.

The video-streaming company will be doing four more of these in the next year or so, but its next very big splash will come in May.

That’s when it brings “Arrested Development,” the much-loved, much-mourned Fox comedy, back for a fourth season, using the same controversial release plan as “House of Cards.” That is — it’s going to release all 14 episodes at once, so you can watch as many as you want, as fast as you want.

And that’s why we’re very excited to bring some of the show’s key on- and offscreen players to our Dive Into Media conference next week: We’re going to have Will Arnett, Mitch Hurwitz and Brian Grazer joining us onstage alongside Netflix content czar Ted Sarandos.

These are the folks we were talking about, but couldn’t name, awhile back. (Hollywood!) And you should know all of them, but in case you need a refresher:

Will Arnett has a long list of TV and movie credits, but he may be best known for the three seasons he played GOB Bluth on “Arrested Development.” If you want to see him before May, you can check out his work on NBC’s “Up All Night.” Or the stuff his DumbDumb multimedia ad shop has produced.

Mitch Hurwitz created “Arrested Development,” and is back for the new season, which he’s writing, directing and producing. His TV career stretches all the way back to “The Golden Girls,” and his work on “Arrested Development” has netted him three Emmys.

Brian Grazer has been making TV shows and movies for 25 years. Running total for that output: 43 Oscars, 149 Emmys, $13.7 billion in movie revenue, and a lot of happy television viewers. His Imagine Entertainment got “Arrested Development” on the air back in 2003, and he’s back for this round as well.

Fun lineup, right? And informative: These are three guys with a whole lot of options — so why are they working on a Web video series? And do they think this is a one-off, or is it the shape of things to come?

Those are the kind of questions we’ll be asking all of our guests, from Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen to Facebook content boss Dan Rose to music mogul Jimmy Iovine, at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Monday and Tuesday. You can see the full lineup here. If you want to join us yourself, we have a few tickets left.

Amazon Makes Murmurs About Its Video Business

Netflix added a bunch of streaming video subscribers in the last quarter. How did rival Amazon do?

Who knows? Amazon is fiercely dedicated to the notion that it won’t say squat about its business, and things stayed true to form during yesterday’s earnings call.

But the question did come up a few times during the call. Which makes sense, because Jeff Bezos is pumping a bunch of money into video — by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’s account, perhaps a billion dollars a year.

So Amazon CFO Thomas Szkutak did make a point of telling Wall Street that things are moving up and to the right — both in terms of usage and investment dollars. A collection of his video-related quotes, via Seeking Alpha:

• “The percentage of Prime customers who were watching free content through Prime Instant Videos has gone up dramatically year-over-year.”
• “We have also increased Prime membership dramatically, year-over-year. They are also purchasing a paid content. Those customers that are using this, they watch free but they are also paying for new content which is great.”
• “I can’t give you specific for attach rates but the business is making good progress on the video content side. Again it’s still very early.”
• “We will continue to expand our selection, both in terms of Amazon Instant Video as well Prime Instant Video and we will do that in a number of different ways. We think we have a very interesting selection right now and you should expect that will be spending more on content as it relates to Prime over time. We will continue to add selection on the Instant Video. Beyond that, you have to stay tuned.”

In other words: Yes, we’re spending a bunch of money. And yes, based on outsiders’ guesstimates, we’re way, way, way behind Netflix in terms of overall video streaming usage. But we think our “spend now, earn later” strategy is going to pay off here, too.