Recasting My TV

I’ve recast my TV situation with a new Amazon Recast.

I cut the cord on regular cable about six years ago, and in that six years my TiVo Premiere box and an RCA indoor digital antenne did a fine job of providing me plenty of free content to watch.

Only it wasn’t free, because I was paying $15.99/month to TiVo every month for the past six years.

So now I’ve cut yet another cord with my purchase of an Amazon Recast.

What is that, you ask?  It’s like a TiVo, only I don’t pay $15.99 a month. Once I bought the Recast box, the OTA content is as it should be, free.

Recast is basically an OTA DVR, but it’s beauty is it’s also tied into the Amazon ecosystem, so I’m able to control the programming both with an Amazon Fire Stick and an Amazon Tap speaker.

It also didn’t require anything to hook up to my older (2014 model) Samsung Smart TV, as everything works through the Fire Stick and the Recast via wifi (as long as they’re both on the same network).

In terms of the interface, it’s not unlike a TiVo (or any other programming guide), and the synergy with the Amazon Echo ecosystem is pretty seamless so far (although I’m still figuring out all the different commands).

I’ll know more in another week or two.

Speaking of tying up ecosystems, Walmart has announced that it will let customers order groceries by voice through Google’s smart-home assistant, “an attempt to counter Amazon.com Inc.’s growing clout in e-commerce, reports Bloomberg.

Beginning this month, Walmart shoppers can add items directly to their online shopping carts by saying “Hey Google, talk to Walmart.” Information from prior purchases will help identify the correct brand and size — like whether you drink 1 percent or skim milk without having to specify, according to Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior vice president of digital operations. In a blog post Tuesday, he said customers can tweak their orders at home or from their smartphone while on the go.

As a loyal Walmart customer, I guess I’ll starve for now when it comes to ordering with my Amazon Tap.

But at least I can make my TV go!

Comey’s Ratings

So who watched that Jim Comey interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last evening?

Closed to 10 million people, apparently.

I won’t even come close to wading into the politics, but from a media perspective, the Hollywood Reporter made some interesting observations about the ratings and the matchups.

From my perspective, it was a bold move for ABC to put this interview in a time slot that was competing against the Academy of Country Music Awards show. Then again, there might be some Red State, Blue State (Deep State?) method to that madness.

The hour-long interview (well, hour-long, save for what seemed like 25 minutes of commercials) averaged 9.8 million viewers with a 2.4 rating in the news demo for adults 25-54 for the network.

But the ACMA still won the night, averaging 12.1 million viewers.

And let’s not forget Stephanopoulos and Comey were also competing with AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and Showtimes “Billions.” It was a rough night all around!

Anderson Cooper’s “60 Minutes” interview with Stormy Daniels on March 25th way outpaced the Comey Q&A 2:1, pulling in 22 million viewers (according to Nielsen).

To put all those numbers in some perspective, this year’s Super Bowl, which reached a seven-year low in terms of ratings, had viewership of 111.3 million and a 37.1 rating.

As for Comey’s book, it goes on sale tomorrow and currently sits atop the Amazon Kindle list of the Top 100 Paid books list.

The Bigger Picture

I was laid up most of this past weekend with allergies and a related head cold, so I didn’t make it out to the golf course or even to the Austin green belt for some mountain biking.

But I did spend a lot of time watching sports on TV, starting with the Cotton Bowl on Friday night, some English Premier League games on Saturday morning, some NFL wild card games on Saturday afternoon, some FA cup games Sunday morning, and then more NFL games yesterday.

It was a footballers weekend, and because of the rains and winds acting up in Hawaii, I missed most of the first PGA event of the year (but I have that one on DVR!)

To top it all off, I watched “Jurassic Park” again for the first time since when it first came out in 1993 (Loved those DOS prompts on the computer screens for the park’s security systems!)

All this TV watching got me to thinking about the coming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Seems like everyone I know is asking me if I’ll be there. For the millionth time, no.

I’ve never been to CES, have no compelling business reason TO go, and nobody’s given me any free tickets, so I shan’t be going anytime soon.  But if you are going, have a nice time and enjoy the multitudes. I see all those crowds, it gives me flashbacks to Comdex.  If you’ve never heard of Comdex, well, sorry, I can’t help you.

Most of what I want to learn from CES I can get from the blogs and media coverage, in any event.

Starting with this piece from The New York Times, suggesting that TV makers had better kick it into high gear and move on to the new new thing when it comes to TV watching.

The net of it is is that 3D had its day and there wasn’t enough content to keep people paying a premium for 3D sets, and now “Ultra HD” is the big thing (although the premium demanded for Ultra HD sets will likely keep that a marginal segment of the market for some time).

That leaves the Internet-enablement of TV sets as a logical next push, which, while on its face seems logical, has eluded some pretty smart folks for some time (including the folks at Google).

Me, I’m not so sure I want my TV to become anymore Internet-enabled than it already is. I’ve tried Roku, Apple TV (both gens), and now have a Sony BlueRay player that includes some Internet enablement, and I’m about as enabled as I want to be.

For me, TV is still a relaxing, kick-back experience, save for the few times when I pull out the Wii for some quick tours of “Call of Duty.” My active screen experience is reserved mostly for my computer and/or smartphones.

The TV is the “dumb” box. I’m not sure I want it to get much smarter.

But even if it were to get smarter, the first thing I’d want it to do is find more content, AND the kind of content that I like to watch.

Thus far, even with Netflix, that seems too genius for the propeller heads to have properly figured out.

So, before the TV manufacturing whizzes go off and start to build bigger, bolder, wider, and more “interactive,” don’t forget presenting the basics of filmed entertainment.

We’ll see, and soon enough.

As for CES, if you don’t know much about it and want to know more, Gizmodo provides this useful page giving us a little background. I find that they, CNET, and Engadget have pretty good rundowns of the goings on there.

The event starts tomorrow and runs through this Friday.

Sewing Up The London Olympic Games

The new Ralph Lauren-designed uniforms for U.S. Olympics athletes at the coming London Olympics games may look spiffy, but a number of U.S. politicians have come out recently to complain they were manufactured in China. Let the games begin!

Well, it seems that the London Olympic Games are only a couple of short weeks away now.

As we get closer and closer to the lighting of the London 2012 Olympic torch, we will also start to see lines get drawn in the digital and social sand, as this will likely be the most “social” Olympic Games ever.

There will be lots to juxtapose in this year’s games in London with those of Beijing in 2008.

Most notably, the fact that we won’t have a 12 hour delay by the broadcast networks. Instead, NBC has already indicated that they will show many of the events live.  American GDP could swoon to a new low in these London Olympic summer games!

If you’re looking for a place to follow the games, there will be no shortage of television and digital opportunities. Just this week, Facebook and NBC announced a collaboration for “transmedia” coverage of the London Olympic Games.

In that deal, data from Facebook will inform TV coverage on NBC and other channels that will carry portions of the Summer Games starting on July 27, according to The New York Times. The specific uses will vary, says the Times, but there will be a “Facebook Talk Meter”  occasionally shown on TV to reflect what is being said online.

Conversely, on Facebook the NBC Olympics page will get frequent updates with what the companies call “exclusive content” for fans only. Fans will then be able to share what videos and articles they’re perusing on the network’s Olympics website.

It’s hard to believe that in only 4 short years, Facebook has grown from 100 million users, the number they were at during the Beijing Olympic Games, to over 900 million.  There’s no question this will be a much more social Olympics, but let’s also not forget the projected TV audience is 4 billion (In Beijing, the global TV audience was estimated at 4.4 billion.)

Speaking of China, U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) castigated the U.S. Olympic Committee for its decision to have the U.S. Olympics team dressed in Ralph Lauren-designed berets, blazers and pants that were manufactured in China even as the U.S. textile industry struggles to keep U.S. workers at their sewing machines.

Maybe they should introduce sewing into the Olympics as an official sport and we can have ourselves a “sew-off?”

I recently did some Olympic scouting of my own, looking for Websites and mobile apps to help make sure I keep up with the Virtual Joneses during the London sports festouche.  Here’s a few of them I unearthed:

• The official London Olympics Web site — http://www.london2012.com
• Olympic Movement Website — http://www.olympic.org
• BBC Olympics — http://www.bbc.co.uk/2012/
• U.S. Coverage, NBC: http://www.nbcolympics.com

I also found an interesting app for the iPad, the “Ultimate Olympic Guide,” which cost me a whopping $.99 and provided some nice background and overviews of each of the Olympic sports.

Feel free to add any other useful London Olympics resources in the comments section below.