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Television

NBC Threatens To Black Out Apps on Roku in Dispute Over Peacock (bloomberg.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
NBCUniversal plans to black out more than 11 channels on Roku's streaming platform Saturday morning, escalating a standoff with the company over its refusal to carry a new video app, Peacock. From a report: NBC's Peacock and AT&T's HBO Max have been unable to secure spots on Roku and Amazon.com's Fire TV since launching their streaming services earlier this year. Roku is demanding, among other things, a cut of the advertising inventory on those apps to sell on its own. Comcast's NBC and WarnerMedia, the AT&T division that runs HBO Max, are rejecting that push because they want to make money from ads on their streaming services. In a statement Friday, NBC said Roku's "unreasonable demands ultimately hurt both their consumers and their consumer equipment partners to whom they've promised access to all apps in the marketplace." Roku used similar wording in a statement. "Comcast is removingâthe channels in order to try to force Roku to distribute its new Peacock service on unreasonable terms,," a spokesperson said.
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NBC Threatens To Black Out Apps on Roku in Dispute Over Peacock More

NBC Threatens To Black Out Apps on Roku in Dispute Over Peacock

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  • Torrents (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Still free!

    • Re:Torrents (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:21PM (#60519252)

      And still standardized, too! No need for someone else's proprietary "app" to play it. I can't count how many different torrent clients there are out there, nor how many different video players. And they all Just Work. Mix and match your favorites, and your TV's quality and convenience is absolutely unbeatable (at least subjectively, since we're talking about your favorites).

      Not that torrents are the only good standard. Plain old send-a-Matroska-file-over-HTTP is just fine, too.

      If you're not using standards, you're a joke. And if you're buying things that don't use standards, the joke is on you.

      If Roku did include NBC's mysterious who-knows-what-it-really-does app, would anyone really want to use it? Just play the stream. I don't have a Roku, but I know it already has whatever code is needed to stream a video. Anything NBC wants to add to that, isn't going to be for the user.

  • Cable TV All Over Again (Score:3)

    by tgetzoya ( 827201 ) on Friday September 18, 2020 @11:16AM (#60518984)
    Meet the same system, same as the old system.

    • Seems like everybody in the closed hardware business is trying to make money on content providers, yet again...

      • No, it's just modern business executives having no ideas except trying to position themselves to seek rents.

        Maybe this was Roku's model all along, give away their streaming client software to anyone who wanted it with the idea that eventually they would earn it back by being so ubiquitous they could start demanding rents from streaming services.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Well, yeah. Companies that find a way to get rents survive and thrive, while ones that do not end up not being able to compete. "Modern" executives are not stupid, they all what their company to do well, and know that if they do not do certain things their competitors will and thus eventually have the resources to push them out.

          • I don't expect companies to organically not engage in rent seeking because it is obviously very lucrative. But so is insider trading, fraud, extortion, etc.

            What I do expect is the government to enforce laws against rent seeking as they do for insider trading, fraud and other criminal business behavior.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by spun ( 1352 )

              That would require a government by and for all the people, rather than a government by and for the wealthiest.

              The one thing both parties agree on is who they really work for. And it ain't we, the people.

        • You don't have to give the platform away to demand rents - see Apple App Store terms - 30% cut of all sales or you can't run on Apple devices. I don't think anyone would accuse Apple of giving away their iPhones. You can demand rents any time you get a platform in the hands of large groups of consumers - no different than publications with large number of regular subscribers in the past.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          Its worse than that... Roku clients are Not free: consumers paid for the hardware that was sold under the supposed guise of a general purpose streaming device... that should be able to work with every service right?

          NOT. Because of Roku's lame attitude regarding 3rd party apps and the imposition of terms that cause apps for some major services to leave or never become available in the first place.
          Already got burned by Roku over the Youtube channel, even if they have added it back since then... I alre

      • Not really, they have to make money somehow and a cut of the fees from advertising doesn't seem so onerous (depends on the % cut however)

        Google does it, youtube does it, apple does it etc.

        Even broadcast TV channels do it - the cable and even airwave transmitters need to be maintained somehow, and they do it by charging broadcast channels fees to be on their "platform".

        Now they do it by charging fixed fees rather than % cuts of advetrtising, which generally means only the bigger players can buy the channel s

        • Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Friday September 18, 2020 @01:11PM (#60519480)

          Not really, they have to make money somehow and a cut of the fees from advertising doesn't seem so onerous (depends on the % cut however)

          They are a fucking hardware manufacturer! They make money by selling god damn streaming boxes! Sony/Sharp/RCA don't get a cut of advertising revenue just because you watch them on their TVs. Toyota/GM/Audi don't get a cut of your Uber fee because you use their cars.

          • Re:Hardware (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Friday September 18, 2020 @01:45PM (#60519648)

            They are a fucking hardware manufacturer! They make money by selling god damn streaming boxes!

            That's...tricky to state unequivocally at this point. Element14 (of Raspberry Pi fame) is a hardware company and makes money off their hardware. Yes, they have their own Linux distro, but it's possible to buy their hardware and not use their software.

            You can't do that with a Roku. Their boxes run their software. They have a payment portal and you can buy apps and subscriptions from them, or you can simply play media off a USB flash drive. Either way, you can't wipe them and run Ubuntu if you want, and conversely, you can't run their OS on a Pi if you want.

            This puts Roku in this grey area due to the symbiosis between their hardware and software. I'm not the biggest fan of constantly-updating software, but I can at least appreciate that Roku needs to keep their DRM stuff up to date so that they can carry Peacock and Disney+ and Netflix at all. I disagree with it, sure, but I can be pragmatic enough to say that vanilla-Kodi boxes aren't going to compete well with Roku on the basis of 'freedom' when that freedom doesn't include 'the ability to use a D+ subscription'. If Roku is going to keep that as part of what they sell, they can't just treat their gear like cable box firmware and write it once and ignore it for the next decade.

            I'm not a fan of the business model or rent seeking, either. At the same time, I'd rather the streaming services pay to have Roku continue to keep their software working, than for it to be a cost directly covered by the end user. Let D+ chase DRM all the live long day, and if The Mouse wants to pay for it, it can.

            • At some point, Roku is spending money to make the Peacock app work. It doens't just plug in and go, they have special needs, more Hollywood friendly DRM and codecs, stuff like that. So

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Doubtful. I'm sure they just say, "Implement your own DRM within your app in whatever way you want." And I doubt they will add support for new codecs beyond whatever they get for free from whatever Linux libraries they're using to do the work unless there's significant consumer demand.

                • Except their platform is a byte-code interpreted type thing, you can't just use raw C or assembly.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                    What does the fact that apps get compiled down to bytecode have to do with whether you can implement DRM algorithms? They expose various OpenSSL APIs.

                    • I haven't worked in this videofield, but I assumed that optimization is key if you're streaming data and delays are unacceptable. Optimizing at a high level byte code level isn't going to be good enough, you're going to at least want a plugin or library in native code. An SSL library is great if it does what you want, but if you want something new it won't help except to generate your keys.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                      Delays are always acceptable for general-purpose playback. You almost certainly would be decrypt the video chunks as you get them, and you're pre-buffering far enough ahead to handle delays in the networking anyway. It's not like they're decrypting continuously. An extra few milliseconds (or even an extra couple of *seconds*) is unlikely to matter except in terms of how long it takes to start playing the first chunk of video.

                      And nobody sane rolls their own crypto. They might pick different algorithms o

          • Roku has always had plans to make money on advertising, going back to the very first boxes. That they are demanding a cut of the revenue from an app that's using advertising it's surprising.

            The simple solution is to provide the content as a subscription, which Roku won't block.

            Video advertising is a plague, if Roku helps drive a nail through it by demanding a cut then I'll cheer them on the whole way.

    • I think this is a general trend towards many companies going towards vertical integration.

      Made famous with Henry Ford buying Rubber tree farms, so he can make his own tires for his cars.

      If you Vertically Integrate you business you may be able to offer serious profits. As you are not paying for profits to a bunch of other companies going down the line.
      However for it to work, you need to have a business that buys such products at a scale, that the expense of ramping up production to be efficient is justified

      • I don't think NBC is going to get enough customers with Peacock. It's like CBS all access: trash. It will take far too long, but I think they'll eventually have to sell via some better established channel.

      • > Man is just a waste along the line. Sometimes they are, other times, they are not.

        Indeed. If nothing else, they generally provide it at rhe time, place, and quantity you want. I could make a fruit salad by going to Florida to get an orange, going to Guatamala for a banana, etc. Sure is easier (and cheaper) to use a middle man, the supermarket.

        I can't really think of any middle man that is "just a waste". The extra service they offer might not be a service that I want to buy right now, I might prefer

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Retired ICS ( 6159680 )

          Roku is not a middleman. Roku is a manufacturer of cheap and crappy hardware that permits YOU to go to Florida and get an Orange or to Bangladesh to get Buttered Chicken. They are in the same position as an airplane manufacturer, a car manufacturer, or a computer manufacturer.

          The provide ZERO additional value. You still have to "go to the where the product is produced" to get it.

          This is in contrast with a supermarket where THEY GO TO FLORIDA OR BANGLADESH for you, so that you only need to go the the supe

          • > They are in the same position as an airplane manufacturer, a car manufacturer, or a computer manufacturer.
            > The provide ZERO additional value.

            Hmm. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Everything thinks the Middle Man is just a waste along the line. Sometimes they are, other times, they are not. Because they are able to offer a service and make profit for a lot less than it would take for you to do it yourself. Especially if you are not large enough to have an economy of scale work for your benefit.

        The problem is, the middleman is almost always a waste, but only if the seller knows the true value of the product. If not, you get companies like CBS and NBC that think their back catalog plus the new content that they used to send to Netflix is worth 91% of what we're paying Netflix for shows from dozens of sources. I guarantee you that nobody was getting 90% of their Netflix value from CBS or NBC, and most people can't watch more TV just because there are more shows available, so the net effect is that

      • These old media companies still think like it's the 1970's or something.

        NBC is probably only going to target the U.S.A.

        Hulu is only available in the U.S.A. and Japan.

        Disney+ is available the U.S.A., Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, India and the United Kingdom.

        Netflix and Apple TV+ are available in too many countries to list.

        At this point in the game it's way too late to go at it alone. NBC should be looking to partne

        • You're making a silly point. NBC is an American broadcaster. They don't produce content in any language but english.

          Why would they target outside markets directly when they already have contracts in place with regional broadcasters that do the translation for the local market?

          Legacy broadcasters live in a minefield of copyrights and distribution agreements. NBC might actually be contractually unable to offer services in other countries.

          • You're making a silly point. NBC is an American broadcaster. They don't produce content in any language but english.

            Really? [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Technology can disrupt, but ultimately if the economic pressures do not change, neither do the outcomes.

  • Beside some occasional sportsball, why wouldn't I just use an antenna to watch PeeCock, umm I mean NBC content?

    Probably less commercials, and if I had a bandwidth cap, I'd be very, very unhappy about commercials.

      Is there actually anything on NBC people watch?

    • Peacock is NBC's streaming and extras service... you don't get on-demand from an antenna.

    • Broadcast TV in the US has the highest commercial content of ANYWHERE in the world. There are 10 minutes of advertising for every 20 minutes of content. That 50% commercial ratio is the highest in the world.

      So no, broadcast NBC doesn't have fewer commercials. It has the maximum number available.

  • I hate that I paid money for a Roku Ultra, so I could get a minimalist remote control that still has four hard-coded buttons on it that are Roku's advertising space for streaming services. I can't reassign these buttons to do anything useful (there aren't any publicized hacks to do so), and they exist purely to consume real estate on my remote and accidentally jump from whatever I was watching to some other service I don't even use if they get pushed.

    At the same time, they are the best non-DIY set-top box I

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bob4u2c ( 73467 )

      accidentally jump from whatever I was watching to some other service I don't even use if they get pushed.

      Open the remote and put a piece of clear tape over the circuit board for these buttons. Accidental presses gone (been doing that to various remotes for years).

    • Have you tried the Nvidia Shield? I switched from Roku to Shield and have been very happy.

      • Oh, they seem to have updated the Shield considerably since when I made the switch to Roku. The new remote is impressive (although still has a dedicated Netflix button... of course). Ticks off a lot of the boxes I'm looking for. I'm going to have to investigate further... thanks for the tip!

  • This is example #nnn for "why net neutrality really was a real yowrry and how companies are taking advantage of not having to abide by it".

  • Why would anybody pay for a streaming service that includes ads? I don't want to see them and I certainly won't pay for them. I stopped watching broadcast/cable television because of ads and I'll do the same with streaming services.

    • Here Here.

      If it's not ad-free I'm not watching it. I don't care if I need a monthly fee. If the fee is too high I simply won't bother.

      Broadcasters in the US are so far in bed with advertisers they've forgotten everything else.

  • Amazon Firestick doesn't have Peacock as well. Are they trying to bully Roku alone because they are afraid of Amazon?

    • Roku has about 2,5x bigger market share.

  • ... the more things remain the same.
  • I always wondered how Roku sold those devices for ~$25. It always seemed impossibly cheap. Turns out they want a cut from the streaming services.

    Learn something every day.

    • I hate this model. I want to buy a device at a fair price that allows the device maker to earn a decent profit. Anyone who wants to develop something for said device should be able to do so (assuming they pay a fair cost to have their application reviewed and made available on that device's App Store - if one exists). These device makers who sell their users to content creators are nothing but rent seekers. I'm pretty sure appliance makers are already hard at work figuring out how to build refrigerators

  • This is no different than Epic and Apple haggling over money. These parties will either find a compromise that each can live with, or they will walk away. Just the same as all the other business decisions that occur everyday.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by asylumx ( 881307 )
      Ya, not really sure how this is news for nerds, and definitely is not stuff that matters.

  • Ever since Roku merged with an advertising firm they've become real assholes. As a long time Roku customer my next purchase won't be another Roku product. Roku is writing themselves into history as a company that failed. Fuck you Roku!

  • It was a device that did it's job well: easy to use, seemngly a neutral an open playing field for streaming apps, and cheaper than cable boxes that you could only rent, never own. Too bad they've become a leech - trying to squeeze a recurring revenue stream out even though they provide no meaningful ongoing service to justify it.

    • trying to squeeze a recurring revenue stream out even though they provide no meaningful ongoing service to justify it.
      Flag as Inappropriate

      How do you feel about the fees charged by the Apple app store and Google Play?

  • It's the 1980s/1990s. NBC is having some
    sort of dispute with JVC. Therefore, you
    can't record NBC programming on a JVC
    deck or watch NBC programming on a JVC television set until the dispute is resolved.

    See how absurd this is? Why should it matter which box I am viewing content on? The boxes themselves should be totally agnostic in regards to what is being streamed to them. It would be different if NBC was having a beef with say, Hulu, and I had to download/install NBC's own streaming app and subscribe to the

    • Roku is as much a software platform as it is hardware.

      You may not realize this but Roku updates their software (the box OS) about every few days, I've never seen it be longer than a week between updates.

  • Deal has been made. Be interesting how much $$$ is involved. I have a Roku but haven't used it in a while. Firestick took over but now I can stream whatever I want from internet sites directly.

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