While Time Warner Cable’s iPad app has been plagued with rights questions since its launch, rival Cablevision has launched its own iPad app with much more content and apparently no legal problems from content providers. What’s going on here?
Time Warner Cable presented on 15 March an app that allows customers to watch free around 30 TV channels live on their iPads, streamed over a Wi-Fi connection. The app works only at home. Six weeks later the app has already been downloaded 300,000 times. The app was a victim of its own success at first as the high demand resulted in capacity problems at TWC and the operator had to reduce the number of channels available. Then a number of rightsholders voiced their opposition to the service, and TWC was forced to scrap 12 channels from 31 March. On 1 April, TWC then added 25 new channels, taking the total to 44 (see iwantmytwcabletvapp.com). The cable operator questioned the complaints from broadcasters, saying the iPad service falls under its existing agreements with the TV channels. A possible issue is that people watching over the app cannot be detected by Nielsen, which measures audience figures. This then reduces the value of the content and the broadcasters’ ability to sell ads.
Cablevision and its Optimum Live TV app for iPad take a different approach. This offers a lot more content (300 channels, 2,000 VoD titles), but is not delivered over the open internet. It comes the normal way into the house: from the headend to the set-top box and then over Wi-Fi to the iPad. Cablevision, which is active in and around New York City, has set a number of conditions for the app (see www.optimum.net/terms/iotv): it can only be used at home, a maximum three iPads can be used per subscription and at most two at any one time, and the app cannot be combined with Apple’s Airplay, in order to watch the content on another screen. Cablevision also claims that Nielsen is working on a way to capture iPad viewers.
Broadcast rights, especially those for Hollywood and football content, are protected fiercely by their owners. At the same they do everything possible for maximum monetisation of their content. Rights can be tied to certain time slots (windows), specific geographies (such as a country, network or even subscriber with no distinction between home and away) and types of screens (TV, mobile or internet rights). Last week Sony, Time Warner, Comcast and News Corp launched a new window: six weeks after the cinema release a film can be offered as 'premium VoD' for USD 30. This is expected to appeal to families as an alternative to a night at the cinema.
The transition to a digital era is severely testing rights holders, as piracy is a difficult game to overcome. ‘Connected TV' and the iPad make it all the more difficult, as seen above. Even the Amazon Cloud Drive (see our commentary 'Amazon takes Lovefilm out of DECE, launches own cloud service') is a new test for system: Amazon claims no rights are needed for this, while the RS-DVR (remote storage, another type of storage in the ‘cloud’) was held up for years in lawsuits before Cablevision could bring it to market. (As a side note: Cablevision no longer sells traditional DVRs in markets where it offers this, which ultimately benefits the company). The question is whether the content industry on its own (united in DECE) is able to offer a solution that satisfies everyone, under the proposed Ultraviolet digital locker. While we’re still waiting for all the specifications of this, the system has the potential to meet consumers’ demands: no more physical media and paying just once to play content on any number of devices and screens.
Telecompaper is organising on 27 April the international conference Connected TV 2011 in Utrecht.
