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or Internet-based TV to be a competitive option, it either needs to be cheaper than cable and satellite or it needs to provide the content that subscribers want in a better way.

For the companies still working on Web TV, it would mean charging less than traditional competitors for a service while paying more than traditional competitors to offer it.

for a Web TV offering to be truly Web TV, it would need to offer all the channels consumers want alongside the "over-the-top" video capabilities like Netflix and Hulu that they associate with Internet viewing.

Apple TV is reportedly developing ad-skipping technology so owners of a set-top box can watch shows commercial-free. The propsed deal with cable companies would reimburse programmers for skipped ads.

Google is really just hoping to beat Apple to the punch, despite the fact that the company already has its Apple TV streaming product on the market, according to The New York Times "Apple’s thinking… is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup."

Adoption from the major networks is "very unlikely to support any service with their linear feed that allows for commercial messages to be skipped even if they get some form of compensation," Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for WPP's GroupM, told AdAge. "This is not a viable economic model and subscribers to the system would not pay an adequate premium to compensate for it." 

Some of the key features of this new medium include:Explosion of user participation through social networkingMore screens, increased portability and interfacesGreater aggregation, discovery and availability of mediaTwo-way streaming that allows users to contribute and become broadcastersScheduling and media assembly moving into the homeBetter understanding of user engagement and greater measurement of behaviour

“Don’t silo your thinking about content in terms of where it will be seen or how it will be delivered — think about all touchpoints, devices and mediums in a cohesive way,” he says.

Soon media will be more about the users than the media creators or the content created

The number of smart TVs, meanwhile, is expected to triple between year-end (124.4 million) and 2020 (346.3 million) and be the primary connected device, at 36% share of the total.

About 84% of cord-cutters are “at least somewhat happy with their decision,” while 37% said they’re so happy that they have no plans to ever return to a traditional pay-TV service,

17% of U.S. broadband subscribers surveyed say they once took a pay-TV service but have since left their provider, while 10% say they have never subscribed to pay-TV (the so-called “cord-nevers”), and 74% said they currently take a pay-TV service.

The median time spent each week by pay-TV subs using the service is 12.98 hours. Next is Internet subscription VOD (4.89 hours), free over-the-air TV (4.72 hours), free Internet video (3.49 hours), and owned digital movies and TV shows (3.12 hours).

Investors should keep tabs on Verizon's negotiations with Intel to see if Verizon acquires the OnCue Internet-based TV services. If the deal goes through, investors should pay attention to how Verizon plans to use the OnCue services. Bundling OnCue services with Redbox Instant would incentivize subscribers to use Redbox services as a complete TV and movie entertainment package. Outerwall would greatly benefit from such a bundle because more Redbox users translates into expanding revenue. Also, additional offerings under the Redbox name will improve the company brand.

OnCue would be a good addition to Verizon because the company is already in the content business with Redbox Instant and FiOS TV. The question is whether Verizon can negotiate a good deal with Intel. The OnCue service would work well bundled with FiOS and Redbox Instant, or left as a stand-alone product.

The features of this service resemble those of a DVR, but the main difference is every show is recorded and available at any time. The OnCue hardware and services are currently being beta-tested by Intel employees and select users.

traditional scheduled TV is limited by what he called the "tyranny of the grid," or the 21 hours of prime-time programming that get the most viewers. Anything that doesn't fit into that grid gets thrown out

In contrast, internet TV allows audiences to aggregate over time and space, and can afford to curate content that has smaller audiences at any one time.

Netflix originals don't need to be 48 minutes long to fit into a prime-time schedule, and don't need to force cliffhangers that keep viewers in suspense for the next episode, because viewers can "binge" into the next episode right away.

TV remains first screen. “In breaking news situations, users turn to television as their primary and first device (42%), with the majority (66%) then turning to the internet to investigate stories further.

25-34 year-old professionals are the biggest “news enthusiasts.” But that enthusiasm is still TV-first, other screens second

Some 43% of tablet owners say that they watch more TV now than they did five years ago. 83% say they use tablets alongside TV.

“TV and video content providers such as cable companies have a great opportunity to target heavy users with social TV in order to reduce potential churn,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner. “The time to take advantage of this opportunity is right now as social TV services have not yet been dominated by a single solution and the market is far from saturated.”

Connected TV will open up access to a much wider range of content via the Internet, opening the possibility of worldwide video sharing.

ideo influences consumers the most when considering a purchase – up more than 20 percent – banner and search advertising continue to decline. Less than 50 percent now find paid search influential when making a decision, down from about 60 percent during the past three years.

Significantly, 14% of consumers used their tablets to search for content and engage in social media directly related to the television program they were watching. 

The findings present an opportunity for broadcast and cable networks to interact with consumers much more readily and immediately than they have in the past,

Among devices, the PC/laptop is still the top device used for these “over-the-top” (OTT) services with 65% of respondents using them to watch video content (up from 59% last year). About a third (31%) said they did the same on a mobile phone (up from 24%), while 22% said they used a tablet (up from 14%). Tablets and PCs are the preferred devices to watch longer-form video (such as movies or TV shows), according to the survey. 

or all the video people watch on the web, it is still a tiny fraction of how much they watch on TV in terms of time spent. In a report put out yesterday on the State of the Media summarizing 2011 data, Nielsen estimates Americans spend an average of 32 hours and 47 minutes a week watching traditional TV. They only spend an average of 3 hours and 58 minutes a week on the Internet, and only 27 minutes a week watching video online. All those billions of videos watched online still only represent 1.4 percent of the time spent watching traditional TV.

Even on the web, there is a huge difference between the video sites which attract the biggest audiences and those which are the most engaging. The top 5 video sites by unique visitors are YouTube, Vevo, Yahoo, Facebook, and MSN. But the top 5 video sites by time spent are Netflix, YouTube, Tudou, Hulu, and Megavideo.

Tumblr stat is likely music to the ears of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer—who paid $1.1 billion for the social site to help her 19-year-old Internet company "get young." An emerging industry narrative involves teens and twentysomethings migrating in droves from Facebook to Tumblr

Twitter disputed Union Metrics' numbers, claiming to have had 3 million users who tweeted about the VMAs on Sunday

Still, you might say a revolution is brewing in the living room — and this one will be televised. It portends not only a change in the TV viewing experience but also poses a threat to cable and satellite TV distributors. Even network executives' notions about scheduling — how positioning a new show adjacent to a popular program in the evening lineup to drive ratings — look anachronistic at a time when Nielsen estimates that 47% of all American households have DVRs and can watch recorded shows whenever they choose, and 55% of broadband homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet, according to market researcher the Diffusion Group.

Concerns about how to reach this group known as the "never connecteds" and count their viewing in a show's ratings adds to a list of headaches that include slumping prime-time broadcast TV ratings and the flight of advertisers to cable.

these smart TVs may look dated compared with what Silicon Valley giant Intel has in store for later this year, not to mention whatever Apple Inc. is planning with its mysterious but hotly anticipated flat-screen TV.

The owner of the nation’s largest cable operator has begun preliminary discussions with both film and TV studios and other leading Internet service providers about employing technology, according to sources, that would provide offending users with transactional opportunities to access legal versions of copyright-infringing videos as they’re being downloaded.

The new approach would be an alternative to the Copyright Alert System, a voluntary initiative many leading programmers and distributors like Comcast have been utilizing since February. Other CAS participants include AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, as well as all studios affiliated with MPAA.

Using pirated content as a platform to drive legal transactions reflects an alternate philosophy regarding copyright infringement, one that sees the illegal activity less as a crime that requires punishment and more as lead generation to a consumer whose behavior is borne out of inadequate legitimate digital content options.

Twitter could be much better than Facebook in certain businesses, and it might be able to make a huge amount of money in that business.

TV is still the most important player in the advertising industry. The format has an important cultural importance, and it still brings in far more money than Internet video. That is not going to change any time soon according to research, and that will negatively effect Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) as it tries to move into video ads. Twitter has a way around the trend, however.

TV changes Twitter, Twitter changes TV When a really popular show is on television, the buzz is palpable on the social network. Twitter has noticed and it has begun to push some of its advertising in that direction. The company is planning on launching a TV recommendation service in the months ahead that will add to the perceived relationship between the social network and television in the mind of consumers.

The vast majority of Americans – 95 percent – still watch television using traditional cable or satellite options, according to Nielsen. But the number of households that choose to opt out of cable or satellite TV is on the rise, from 2 million in 2007 to 5 million in 2013, Nielsen’s data show.

“This scares the bejesus out of the cable and satellite people,” said Jim Barry, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Va. “I think it’s going to change the business model.”

A main driver behind the high cost of cable and satellite in recent years is the expensive license fees networks pay sports leagues to broadcast their games. The cost gets passed on to consumers to pay for the “bundles” of channels they get with their cable satellite subscriptions, whether they plan to watch sports or not.

or the first time ever, the organization has partnered with a social network to share, in its own terms, "some of the most valuable content in the entertainment business."

video clips will include near-instant replays from Thursday night games, Sunday post-game highlights, analysis, news, and fantasy football advice. Videos will be appended with pre-roll, 5- to 8-second advertisements from Verizon and another unnamed sponsor. Twitter and the NFL will share advertising, though the exact terms of the arrangement are unknown.

A mélange of TV resource apps are getting together to help each other, and their users. Dijit, Thuuz, Tomorrowish, IVA and Simple.TV are partnering to integrate their products and services. The theory seems to be that they are stronger working together, rather than alone. Given the non-competitive positioning of each, this could be a boon for TV viewers. First a quick summary of what each of the companies does. Dijit’s NextGuide helps TV viewers discover new TV shows and remember to watch them. Thuuz provides real-time sports updates helping fans tune to the most interesting game on TV at any given time. Tomorrowish let’s viewers watching a show or event on-demand replay the social media buzz from the first broadcast. Internet Video Archive (IVA) specializes in providing show and movie trailers. Simple.TV provides live TV and network DVR services.