Today, the dynamic between low-budget producer and content-hungry distributor has flipped. Netflix doesn’t just stream films—it wills them into existence. The composition of contemporary B movies is dictated by middlemen like Netflix and Redbox, international direct-to-DVD distributors, and cable networks like Syfy, all of which pad their offerings with Asylum originals tailored to their needs.

The nimble creative process is “cashing in on this shifting moment in film consumption between the demise of the video store and the rise of streaming,” says Davis.

Filtering in low-budget films with the high-budget versions “fuels this perception that there’s a wealth of new content.”

But negative comments about the feature continued. A more recent factor was the highly publicized revelations about surveillance activities by the National Security Agency. “What pushed me over the hump was the whole NSA sort of thing,” Huggers says. “I don’t want to go there.”

Not that Intel doesn’t plan to offer plenty of ways to personalize the TV-watching experience. For example, the company cites a Personal Profiles feature that helps switch between individuals using the device, so they have access to relevant content and recommendations. Another option lets users add favorites so they have access to recently watched shows, with the ability to instantly pick up in the program where they left off.

Still another feature, called Spotlight, integrates recommendations based on what’s trending in social media as well as curating content based on a user’s age, interest and time of watching, the company says.

With an Intel-designed set-top box, people won't have to own DVRs or even plan to record programs.

Negotiations with media companies for content rights could delay new services and limit some features, though Intel vows to enter some markets by the end of the year.

"I've never seen as much innovation in television as there is right now," says Ulf Ewaldsson, chief technology officer at Swedish telecom-equipment giant Ericsson, which plans to step up its own TV efforts

Facebook has given Trendrr preliminary access to previously unanalyzed Facebook user engagement data on chatter relating to television content.

Our analysis reveals that there is a large amount of TV-related social activity on Facebook — in numbers approximately 5 times as large as that of all other social networks combined as measured by Trendrr.

Trendrr’s analysis of second-screen Facebook activity during one week in May** found that the volume of Facebook user engagement relating to television programming was 5 times as large as all other social networks combined. Activity related to broadcast television was 7 times as large, while activity linked to cable-television programming was 4.5 times as large as all other social networks combined. Second-screen activity levels on Facebook were particularly high among viewers of dramas and comedies.

Chromecast lets your stream online content to your TV and control it via your new Nexus 7 (also introduced today, along with Android 4.3) or any Android device running version 2.3 or later

Unlike Apple's AirPlay, which can stream content directly from mobile devices to Apple TV, Chromecast pulls content from the cloud. The benefit: If the person initiating the Chromecast leaves the house, someone else can continue controlling the viewing experience with a different Cast-enabled device. It also won't drain the battery of your device.

Like most Google TV devices, it comes with a separate and overly complex remote control. The remote control for Chromecast will be your favorite mobile device (yes, it even beats your iPhone). It's very un-remote like: No special interface or buttons. Since Chromecast revolves around apps, the app remains the interface. If you know Netflix, you know how to work Chromecast.

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." 

The Talking Social TV study revealed that infrequent viewers are mainly influenced by off-line word-of-mouth, which can be five to ten times as effective as social media in reaching these potential viewers. Conversely, TV show promos were found potentially to be a distraction for regular viewers, repeaters in the nomenclature.

Fundamentally the CRE believed that demographics play a more important role than programme genre in explaining the role of social media on TV viewing. By genre, social media was found to play a stronger role for genres such as reality, sports and talk shows.

The survey also showed that for repeaters, the first encounters with offline word-of-mouth, or a one-to-one electronic communication such as an email or text, or a social-media communication, are related to higher viewing, while subsequent communications can have diminishing returns

In The Future of TV – A View from 2013, TDG asserts that in a shifting quantum media landscape video viewing will shift away from legacy pay-TV environments such as the living room television, and toward broadband and non-TV video platforms and app-enabled secondary screens such as tablets, which will in essence serve as second TVs.

the use of second screens like smartphones and tablets will pave the way to what it calls a full app-based ecosystem which will train users how to visit an app store, search and locate content, and download their own selection of third-party applications onto their devices.

pace of change it believes will be hindered by industry inertia, device replacement cycles, and resistance to change by the legacy TV viewing audience.

TV Guide rolled out an app to see what’s playing, watch whatever’s on, and also tweet, post, and blog about it. And that Apple is rumored to be releasing a mini-TV tablet to enable an iOS-style second-screen experience.

SimulTV’s solution is to combine both screens, right on the web. So your football game, Twitter conversations, Facebook messages, online search, and text and voice chat with others on SimulTV who are watching the same thing as you.

by this summer, SimulTV promises to have more than 100 channels, including ”top channels” from Latin America, China, Japan and Europe, plus 5,000 video-on-demand titles. The service is HD-quality, with picture-in-picture for the truly ADHD social TV aficionados, and according to the company, takes only half the bandwidth of typically required.

SportStream, which is backed by Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazer owner Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, aggregates social chatter about currently in-progress games with stats, scores, and rich data on what’s actually happening. The goal is a simple streaming second-screen experience: watch the game on the big screen, get involved in the dialog on the little screen.