Streaming to the Max

Details are emerging on HBO Max, HBO’s new live streaming service.

It’s $15/month (U.S.), which is what existing HBO costs…but AT&T is planning to bundle free subscriptions for some customers of its other services.

Compare that to Apple’s $5/month and Disney’s $7/month (Netflix comes in between $9 and $16/month, depending on what flavor you get).

On the subject of money, Sony announced a Q2 operating profit of $2.56B, jumping 16% on its 102.8M total unit sales of the PlayStation 4 (now larger than the original PlayStation).

Funding Rounds: Duality, which makes privacy-preserving data analysis tools w/ homomorphic encryption, raised $16M in a Series A led by Intel Capital. And Quill raised a $2M seed and $12.5M Series A for its messaging product and Slack competitor.

At today’s TensorFlow World conference in Santa Cruz, Google launched TensorFlow Enterprise, an “optimized” version of its open source machine learning framework for large businesses.

Tonight: It’s the Houston Astros vs. the Washington Nationals in a winner-take-all game 7. On the mound, Zack Greinke for Houston & Max Scherzer for Washington. It’s hard to believe it came down to a game 7, but that’s late October for ya!

Play ball!

Droid Hole

Breathe easy, it’s Friday.

The U.S. Job numbers are out and the country added 136K jobs last month, and the jobless rate fell to 3.5%…despite evidence of a broader economic slowdown.

The Dow is on the rise as it attempts to recover from the turbulence earlier in the week.

Speaking of turbulence, the WSJ just reported that Disney is banning advertising from Netflix across its entertainment TV networks. The streaming wars are going full bore.

And the cyberwars continue. Ars Technica is reporting a 0-day vulnerability that gives attackers full control of Android phones. Lots of ‘em, including Pixel 4 models.

A member of Google’s Android team indicated the vulnerability would be patched in the October Android security update.

Funding rounds: Scooter firm Bird raised a $275M Series D led by CDPQ and Sequoia. That makes for a $2.5B valuation. I look forward to dodging more Birds while biking around LadyBird Lake here in Austin.

And Indian hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo raised $45M from Google, Lightbox Ventures, and others, a Series D, valuing the company at $200M.
Dunzo delivers across several categories, including groceries, dinner, and even medicines, and will pick up and deliver anything within a city (within reason).

Flashbacks to NYC’s Kozmo, circa 1999!

Disney’s Latest Ride

I remember the first time I ever rode that scary haunted house ride at Disneyworld, the ones where the ghosts sit in the chair besides you. I must’ve been six, and I’m still in therapy.

Well, M-I-C-K-E-Y and all the other loving rodents are soon to laugh all the way to the bank. Again.

Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on the company’s 3Q earnings call that when its Disney+ streaming service launches on November 12th, its customers will be able to get a bundle of streaming joy costing $12.99/month.

That will include the brand new Disney+ at $6.99, Hulu at $5.99 (with an ad-supported plan), and ESPN+ ($4.99) — all for the introductory price of $12.99 — well within striking distance of Netlfix et al (depending on your Netflix flavor).

But just for Disney+, the $6.99 is well under Netflix’s $12.99, which indicates that Iger, Mickey, Minnie, Cinderella and the rest are barnstorming Reid Hasting’s gates, trying to annex and build an 8th: Netflixland (get with me…Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, etc.)

Will enough kids (and their parents) go along for the ride?

Two Cool Cats

Apple replaced a lot of batteries in iPhones last year. Some 11M of them, according to Daring Fireball and Jean-Louis Gassee.  That’s up from 1-2M.

Yet even if you some basic math, at $29 per replacement, that doesn’t add up to a $500M revenue miss, which is what Apple cited in its earnings announcement. Never mind the fact that the Apple XR and XS models weren’t even available for most of that time.

Simple financial deconstruction, and more to come, I’m sure.

Speaking of more to come, Netflix is raising their rates.

The AP is reporting that Netflix is raising its U.S. prices by 13 to 18 percent, its “biggest increase since the company launched its video streaming service 12 years ago.”

The company’s most popular plan will jump from $11 to $13 per month, an option that offers high-definition streaming on up to two different internet-connected devices simultaneously. 

The AP points out that, though, that even at the higher price, the $13/month plan is cheaper than HBO (whose streaming services charge $15).

That is true, although I must say say, I’m so deep into the Netflix library that much of what I’ve watched of late has subtitles.

I guess those $2 more per month can help produce more original content that don’t require subtitles?

But enough about Netflix.  You want to talk inflation? How about those two cats that live alone in a $1,500 studio apartment out in San Jose???

Does Uber Eats deliver cat food??!

Holiday Shopping And Streaming

Santa brought Turbo a new (used) set of vintage 1988 Ben Hogan “Redline” blade golf clubs…whether or not they’ll do anything to help lower his handicap remains to be seen!

Well, I hope you and yours are having a happy holiday season, wherever in the world you may be.

I just returned from a wonderful visit to see my parents and some extended family up in my hometown of Denton, Texas, where we were treated to our first white Christmas in three years, the snow billowing down starting around mid-day Christmas Day, and plunging the Dallas/Ft. Worth roads into a virtual ice skating rink.

As for the Christmas holiday shopping season, Sarah Perez with TechCrunch just reported that Amazon.com once again came out on top, in terms of online satisfaction.

No big surprise there.  I conducted a large portion of my own holiday shopping via Amazon, and received everything I ordered within a few days. I also treated myself to a set of Ben Hogan 1988 “redline” blade golf clubs, which I discovered on eBay for a very agreeable price. Unfortunately, the weather in Texas has kept me off the golf course (now back in Austin, I hope for that to change in the next few days!).

Of course, if you were trying to watch movies on Netflix on Monday, you might have found yourself watching a blank screen. Due to an Amazon Web Services outage, Netflix viewers were treated to bags full of coal starting around 3:30 PM on Monday, AWS’s third major outage this year.

Myself, I went on a “Redbox” binge over the holiday, discovering some recent titles for $1.20 a pop (including the latest Spiderman!), only to discover they’ll be bringing some competition to the streaming realm with the introduction of “Redbox Instant,” expected to go into private beta sometime soon. Redbox Instant is expected to match Netflix’s monthly streaming subscription price of $8 U.S.

Whatever your preference, it certainly looks like more and more Americans will be viewing filmed entertainment on devices other than their TVs. Another TechCrunch story reports that one in four Americans now owns a tablet computing device, with such devices now even having overtaken the number of e-reading devices like the Kindle (again, I did my fair share here over the holidays, giving out two Kindle Fire HDs as family gifts. Now I can only cross my fingers my family will use them!)

Regardless of your preference, the story goes on to say that one in three people in the U.S. now owns some kind of tablet or e-reading device, and this data before the full gamut of holiday shopping data has hit analysts’ spreadsheets.

One such analyst, Strategy Analytics, has Apple’s iPad still leading the pack, with Amazon and Samsung quickly narrowing that lead.

So what did Santa bring YOU for Christmas, and better yet, what did Santa YOU give others???

The Netflix Identity Crisis

I got the most extraordinary email earlier today, from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix.

The email is also posted on The Netflix Blog, if you want to go and read it in its entirety.

Upon the heels of Netflix’s announced price increases, which went over with many Netflix customers like a ton of bricks, Hastings is now announcing that Netflix is going to become the “Sybil” of video delivery services, online and off.

That is to say, Netflix as we know it shall be no more.  The Netflix you used to know — you know, the one that delivered DVDs for years and helped close a few thousand Blockbuster stores — well, they’re now going to be called “Qwikster.”

I know, they clearly don’t have a corporate naming department over there at Netflix…err, Qwikster.

From here on out, Hastings explained, Qwikster will do the DVD deliveries.

Netflix, which used to do DVD deliveries, is no longer going to do deliveries, because they’re going to be the streaming part of the former Netflix.

The new Netflix is the same as the old Netflix, minus that key part of DVD deliveries, which apparently is no longer key.

Ya got all that?

Now, let me just say this: I’m a HUGE fan of Netflix and/or Qwikster.  I’m more a fan of the new Netflix than I am the old, meaning I prefer the online streaming delivery model to the USPS model.

However, there’s one big issue with this move: The better content library seems to be in the Qwikster part of the business, which is exactly the opposite of the way it should be.

The streaming delivery model should be the core of the Netflix model, but everytime I go to Netflix online, I struggle to find new and/or interesting titles that have at least a three star rating (I’ve found that’s the minimal threshold for watching movies on Netflix).

In fact, I’ve been watching mostly foreign films (which I have no problem watching whatsoever) lately, because the Netflix library is much deeper with foreign distributors than American ones (read: Hollywood ones).

And therein lies the real problem. Hollywood is still scared to death of being “Napsterized.”  They want control of their content, come hell or highwater.  And the early deals they stuck with Netflix were made when streaming was still a novelty.

Well, those days are over.  Streaming has grown up: It’s convenient, it’s immediate, and it’s a huge business opportunity, for the Hollywood studios as well as filmmakers around the globe.

There’s no stopping it, not even with Netflix’s latest branding identity crisis.  The big question that remains is, who of the big movie industry players is going to step up and make a deal.  A BIG deal, one that offers a deep and wide movie library that benefits consumers, but identifies a business model that can work for the studios and the Netflix/Qwiksters.

Because if THEY don’t, someone is going to.  Or not.  And then the so-called “Napsterization” of Hollywood will make what happened to the music industry seem like “The Bad News Bears” meets “Moneyball.”

Ultimately, avid movie fans like myself want just a handful of small things, none of which seem too much to ask: a robust library of movie choices at reasonable prices delivered the way we prefer.  Again, let me mention that we’re willing to pay for it!

Increasingly, that channel is going to be via streaming, and no amount of putting-head-under-the-sand by Hollywood studios is going to alter that direction.

Despite all the consumer hysteria about this change that’s already bubbling up across the Blogosphere, I have to say, that probably is the best and most valuable lesson from this whole endeavor: The fact that Hastings made his announcement in a letter he sent out to customers via email and posted on the Netflix blog.

His customers, according to the comments section, are mostly not in favor of this move.  But what’s different is: Hastings and his team are given his customers a direct vehicle response to the message he delivered to them.

Only time will tell whether or not Hastings and team heard them.