AT&T looks to be one of the first American television operators to enter the online distribution race. “AT&T Entertainment,” a streaming TV and movie portal, is live.

The site’s layout resembles Hulu, the online video service that features TV shows, movies and clips from nearly 190 leading content companies. Mashable state the TV portal is more similar to Comcast’s Fancast or AOL’s new SlashControl.

AT&T Entertainment content can be browsed by title, creator, and network/studio.

So far, AT&T doesn’t appear to host any videos on its own, but is instead streaming from Hulu, CBS, MTV, etc. There don’t seem to be any ads beyond the ones included from the content hosts.

From the press release:

“We know our customers want to be able to access their favorite content anytime, anywhere,” said Dan York, executive vice president of content and programming, AT&T.

An FAQ reads:

AT&T Entertainment is an ATT.net property that offers a market-leading content experience featuring full episodes of TV shows, movies, clips, and more for FREE! In addition, AT&T U-verse subscribers can view their U-verse guide and manage their DVR recordings from within the AT&T Entertainment experience.

While you can embed and watch videos without logging in, the site encourages registration to see age-restricted content, create a queue, and share or rate videos.

Currently, only US users can watch videos on the site, due to content agreements. As we’ve mentioned on WebTVWire many times before, territorial restrictions suck and rights holders will eventually have to wake up to the borderless world of TV that is being created by the internet.

Links with Paid TV Service?

Earlier this year, AT&T was reported to be working on an authentication system which would enable subscribers to login online to watch content they pay for on their TVs.

There doesn’t appear to be any integration of this system on AT&T Entertainment, nor any mention of it on the site, which is odd, because that would have prevented AT&T Entertainment from being a Hulu clone.

Maybe this is AT&T’s long term plan.

Useful Links

• AT&T Entertainment Website

You may also be interested in:

• More about AT&T on WebTVWire
• More about watching TV online on WebTVWire
• How to Connect your PC to a HDMI TV – AT&T Entertainment works great on a TV set.

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Netflix Watch Instantly

Netflix’s business is built on delivering rented movies to people’s doors and charging them a monthly fee for doing so. And it’s a pretty damn successful business. However, Netflix knows that the days of physical media are coming to an end, with streaming music and video, as well as software and games delivered via the Internet becoming standard.

Therefore, it offers its subscribers the chance to stream video via its ‘Watch Instantly’ service. Those paying the monthly fees required to rent DVDs get access to over 12,000 movies and episodes of popular television series. Not just available on a computer, Netflix’s ‘Watch Instantly’ has been added to a number of devices, from set-top-boxes to the Xbox 360.

ABC Shows Now Available

Netflix has today announced the inclusion of several high profile ABC shows on ‘Watch Instantly’. Viewers will now be able to catch up on the first five seasons of Lost, and previous seasons of Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, and The Legend of the Seeker. This is another indication of ABC’s intentions to open up its content to online video offerings, with shows already on Hulu.

These kinds of drama serials are the perfect fodder for online video services such as Netflix’s ‘Watch Instantly’ offerings. Episodic and addictive, people can now catch up with previous seasons before getting hooked on the current ones playing on mainstream television. Everyone’s a winner, except maybe Apple where iTunes sales are concerned.

Netflix iPhone App

This comes on the back of speculation that a Netflix iPhone app could be on its way to iTunes. That is if Apple allows it, because it is bound to further harm sales of downloads. Regardless, Multichannel claims Netflix will soon be coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the Nintendo Wii games console.

There are already iPhone apps that allow Netflix customers to manage their content but the one now being developed would allow them to actually watch content on the mobile devices. AT&T wouldn’t be happy with the bandwidth requirements for this over the Internet so it will probably be restricted to local networks via Wi-Fi just like the SlingPlayer iPhone app.

Conclusions

Netflix has a very strong and aggressive strategy for its ‘Watch Instantly’ service, getting it on as many devices as possible. However, to truly reach a wider audience it needs to introduce a streaming-only subscription rather than require people to pay for the DVD deliveries. Luckily, the company has already suggested this is a possibility.

If and when that happens, Netflix could then try to break out of the U.S. and launch its service in Europe and beyond. I’d certainly be interested because I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.

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SlingPlayer On iPhone

A lot of people have been waiting a long time for the SlingPlayer Mobile app to come to the iPhone. It’s been available for BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Smartphone and Pocket PC, and Palm OS amongst others for some time but due to Apple’s vice-like grip over what makes it onto the iTunes App Store, the wait has been long and painful.

At the end of March, Sling Media announced that it had submitted SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone to the iTunes App Store. It made it on there on Wednesday (May 13) but was lumbered with a disability which makes it an altogether less attractive option.

AT&T Did What?

AT&T, the phone company which has total control of the iPhone market in the United States, decided it couldn’t allow the SlingPlayer Mobile app access to its 3G network. Instead, iPhone owners who also own a SlingBox and want to combine the two for fully-fledged mobile video will have to find a Wi-Fi hotspot before the app works.

AT&T responded to the immediate flow of criticism heading its way by releasing an official statement. It not only claims that Sling’s app “could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network,” but also that applications such as these are “prohibited under our terms of service.”

So, two excuses, one of which suggests that AT&T has very little confidence in its 3G network and the other which means AT&T considers the iPhone the same as a PC and therefore cannot allow it to redirect a television signal. Both bunkum if you ask me.

Conclusions

Interestingly, Gizmodo suggests that the real reason behind this move to cripple SlingPlayer For Mobile may be much simpler. It claims AT&T is working on its own application, currently codenamed i-Verse. This will perform a similar action to the SlingPlayer but for AT&T’s U-Verse instead of a SlingBox. If true, net neutrality clearly doesn’t exist at AT&T headquarters.

If you’re still interested in SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone then it’s available to download now from the iTunes App Store for £29.99. Throw in the price of a SlingBox, the cost of an iPhone, and that monthly contract from AT&T and you have a very expensive mobile television solution. Which will only work over Wi-Fi. Is it worth it?

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It was reported yesterday on Business Week that AT&T is considering starting to use a network filtering technology called Vobile. 

At first AT&T would use the technology to filter out content like child pornography, but be assured that its ultimate goal is to use it to filter videos and other content that allegedly infringe on major copyright holders’ copyrights. 

If you recall, AT&T announced in June that it would work with the content industry to develop a copyright filter. Public Knowledge roundly criticized that announcement, and have generally been critical of calls for ISPs to filter their networks.

Similar To YouTube Anti Piracy Tool

This new alliance with Vobile gives us no more comfort than the original announcement, and in some ways it gives us less. On a superficial level, Vobile’s VideoDNA technology is similar to that which YouTube is testing.

Copyright holders upload the content they want to protect in a reference library, and Video DNA creates an identification file to which they “match” allegedly illegal material that is uploaded to a website or server.

According to Vobile’s website, a “match” could be made in as little as one frame: “Each individual frame has its own VideoDNA segment, making it possible to identify a video clip or sub-clip of any length.” 

If there is a match, the technology will follow the copyright holder’s instructions: let it go, filter, or “monetize” it, meaning let the content be published with advertisements.

No Contesting Decisions

Unlike YouTube’s video identification tool, however, there is no indication that the uploader has any ability or right to contest the filtering.

Moreover, Vobile boasts that its technology will be identifying both uses and users: “It is possible to track not only the video that is being played, but also which part of the video is being played. 

The ability to track video usage automatically and precisely provides rights holders with valuable data regarding video content consumption.

This, in turn, opens up a potential revenue channel for targeted marketing and advertising based on viewer history trends.” Privacy advocates should shudder.

But to return to copyright, from what we can discern, Vobile’s technology suffers from the same problems as all such filters: it cannot possibly tell a “fair” or otherwise lawful use from an illegal one. 

Faultless?

The company boasts “a near-zero false positive rate,” but can VideoDNA tell the difference between a video clip used in social or cultural commentary and one that is not? If a match can be as little as one frame, what happens to the normally unregulated “de minimis” uses of copyrighted material? 

They go away, replaced by an “ask permission first” copyright regime that is completely counter to our current copyright system.

While I’d rather they not accede to the content industry at all, AT&T is wise to proceed very, very slowly on this. It is one thing to have YouTube filter its sole site. 

But for an ISP to filter all content travelling on its massive network? Putting aside (but only for now) net neutrality concerns, AT&T risks spending a lot of money on a technology that may slow down its service and anger its customers.

Gigi Sohn is a contributing author discussing matters relating to the broadband video and IPTV industry. Their work can be found on Public Knowledge. Post has Some Rights Reserved.

This argument has prevented legislation and regulation that would see telecom companies such as them be made to play fair with content providers.

Not to get too technical here, but they didn’t promise not to censor, did they? Let’s add that little crime against speech to the list of reasons why Internet Freedom/Net Neutrality is a good idea.

It seems as if AT&T was the sponsor of the Webcast of a Pearl Jam concert at Lollapalooza on Saturday night (Aug. 4). Soon after the performance ended, the band started getting word from its fans that part of a song had been cut out. 

In a statement which has chilled the blood of many U.S. IPTV operators, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has just asked the state’s Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) to require that AT&T obtain a cable TV license for its IPTV offering.

Connecticut AG Blumenthal stated “this (AT&T U-Verse IPTV) service must be licensed as cable, regulated as cable.”

In light of a July 27 ruling by Federal Judge Janet Bond Arterton that AT&T’s U-Verse IPTV service is a cable television service, the DPUC has the ability to stop AT&T’s infrastructure improvements and construction, as well as its marketing activities for enrolling new customers until it complies with the onerous licensing requirement.

AT&T is expected to appeal by next week’s deadline. A loss in the appeal process could open the door to IPTV operators being required to obtain cable TV licenses throughout the country, a move which could completely change the industry and drive smaller operators out of the market.

[Via LegalNewsline]

AT&T has announced that a further 38,000 new subscribers signed up to its U-verse service in the second quarter of 2007, bringing the total to 51,000.

U-verse offers IPTV, Internet access and will eventually offer VoIP to consumers across America, although the service is currently limited to just 23 metropolitan areas of the US including San Francisco, California and Dallas, Texas.

“AT&T has a strong foundation for growth in wireless and IP-based services, and in the second quarter we improved our trajectory in key areas,” said Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO of AT&T. “Our U-verse video service has begun to ramp aggressively.”

After claims earlier on this year that AT&T’s proprietary IPTV technology (which delivers digital TV and high-speed broadband services via a fibre-optic network stretching into residential neighbourhoods) might be “doomed”, it now looks as if U-verse is finding its feet and offering a viable alternative to rivals such as Comcast and Verizon.

[Via ipTV News]

The much hyped iPhone is supposed to revolutionize the cellular market, providing easy access to online video through YouTube and the iTunes video store. I am surprised that the iPhone did not meet analysts expectations in light of the intense marketing campaign and non-stop press coverage.

By all accounts, iPhones were selling out throughout the U.S. on the weekend of its release. I wonder how many of those sales were by people looking to make a quick buck on Ebay, similar to the release of the Sony Playstation 3. A quick look on Ebay shows iPhones being sold for over $1,000. Ouch!

One interesting side note to the Apple story is that the stock price for AT&T, Apple’s partner with the iPhone, was up for the day.

But there are already two major problems:

1. iPhone users being forced to use itunes
2. At&T possibly stopping YouTube videos due to copyright policy

Mike Volpi, the new CEO of Joost arriving from Cisco. told The New York Times that:

Joost is a piece of software and it can reside on a variety of platforms… It could be on a television set-top box. Or potentially it could be imbedded in a TV set with an Ethernet connection, or on a mobile phone, or in some alternative device that might come out in the future. The flexibility is really high.”

Possible Set Top Box Partners

But who will this STB partner be? Joost could theoretically just go out there and strike a deal with any STB manufacturer to create a Joost IPTV box that will bring Joost to the TV set.

However, I’ll put my money on the fact that they are also waiting for a deal with a popular brand with a large consumer base.

Let's look at the options: