Television networks think people should watch their content in one of three ways: either sitting in front of a television, sitting behind a computer or holding your mobile device in front of your face. The implementation varies, but you usually have to pay for web-only access (Hulu+), be a subscriber to a pay channel (HBO) or have to endure commercials (ABC, Comedy Center…and Hulu+) to get at the content. Networks have been loathe to allow access to the real media device that everyone owns: your television. It’s a somewhat arbitrary limitation (you could always go the Mac Mini media server route) that reflects only the generally bad decisions inspired by the legacy network-advertiser-cable/satellite provider business model.
Case in point: HBO. On my TV, I can use my DVR and my channel guide to record any of the same six movies they run in a 2 week span across their dozen or so stations, or I can browse through their excellent HBO Go app on my iPad and watch any movie they currently offer and every series episode when I want on demand. I can’t have the HBO Go experience on my TV, however, because that would cut into the HBO On Demand service’s revenue. These alligator arms aren’t limited to pay cable stations: Google got to experience first-hand what happens when you try to move networks’ web-based content to the big screen – about a millisecond after introducing the GoogleTV, the networks blocked the device from accessing it.
Enter Apple’s latest iOS, which has the ability to mirror anything you’re doing on your iPad. Unlike the current incarnation of AirPlay, which is an in-app function (which seldom works outside of Apple’s apps), mirroring is turned on system-wide. So whether you’re doing an iOS demo, watching episodes of Deadwood on HBO Go or enjoying that .avi movie you torrented and were too lazy to re-rip of your daughter’s 3rd birthday in VLC, what you see on the iPad is what you see on your plasma. Tasty. For now.
Rest assured the networks, who still haven’t gotten their heads fully around an Internet business model, have assembled a room full of people trying to figure out a way to block AirPlay Mirroring as you read this. The potential of 200 million iOS devices streaming the ABC Player app to their televisions – while their cable boxes gather dust – is enough to keep network executives awake at night. They haven’t had their “music label moment” yet, but as companies like Apple continue to offer awesome features like mirroring, only to have the asinine networks neuter them, you can bet that moment’s approaching even faster than it was before the introduction of iOS 5.
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I wouldn’t say that networks don’t know how people watch their content ( or want to). Honestly I bet they know more than you do about people’s viewing habits and the mediums they use. The problem they face is their Advertisers and their existing cable agreements. They also want to know how they can continue to make money and assure their survival. Unlike record companies who were heavily invested in a freely-copyable CD medium, the Video giants have things like DRM to back their play in court. They also had time to take a lesson from the recording industry before increased bandwidth threatened their business model. Bottom line: they aren’t stupid; they want to make money and continue producing content.
I’m sure there’s a considerable distance between how consumers want to take in content and the networks’ ability to monetize those ways. The music labels took their sweet time too. The longer they “strategize” about how they’re going to get their pound of flesh, the more people will be headed to the torrent sites. The networks aren’t desperate yet, but for every year people continue to face restrictions on viewing, they move closer to being where the record labels were pre-iTunes.
I was wondering about this… First, it was still unclear to me whether this system-wide Airplay capability was truly system-wide, or still controlled (or potentially blocked) in-app. On the Apple dev site:
“Introduced in iOS 4.2, AirPlay streams video, audio and photos to Apple TV. With iOS 5, it’s now possible to wirelessly mirror everything on your iPad 2 to an HDTV via Apple TV. Your apps are mirrored automatically. With additional APIs your app can display different content on each of the HDTV and the iPad 2 screens. In iOS 5, apps built with AV Foundation can now stream video and audio content through AirPlay, and AirPlay now supports encrypted streams delivered via HTTP Live Streaming.”
I know, it seems contradictory… They are mirrored automatically, but then it goes on to say that apps built with AV Foundation can stream video and audio… Strange. Does this mean that any app that has anything to do with video and audio by definition uses the AV Foundation?
I believe any app that streams AV content via Airplay uses the AV Foundation framework. It is confusing because every video I’ve seen of Airplay mirroring in action depicts all apps successfully streaming to HDTVs (audio included). What I have not seen are any videos showing HBO Go or Hulu Plus demoed, nor have I seen the question answered definitively. If precedent signals future intent, the fact that services like HBO Go currently block attempts to use either Airplay or the Apple HDMI adapter doesn’t bode well for being able to use these apps via mirroring.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought… Maybe, for apps, it will be more of an “opt-out” type of functionality rather than “opt-in”. So by default, app developers won’t have to do anything to leverage mirroring… But they also have the ability to turn off that functionality with a simple flag set.
If networks do decide to block their apps, another work-around would be to use an app like Splashtop or LogMeIn Ignition to access content through a connected Mac’s browser. Almost like having a Mac Mini attached directly to your HDTV.
First off if you have HBO Go you’re paying for it through your cable service provider. HBO On Demand is lackluster because the content is limited. Why shouldn’t I be able to watch HBO Go on my TV? I’m paying for it so it should be accessible. So can someone say for sure whether or not HBO Go will air play with an IPad 2 and an Apple TV 3 running IOS 5.1?
The bad news is that HBO isn’t available for the AppleTV now. The good news is that it will be available for the shitty XBox (disclosure: I own and curse at 12 year olds on it), so it’s only a matter of time before it migrates. Unless HBO is totally retarded.