Digital streaming

What happens to local content in the new era of digital media?

Posted on by manitobaninja

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Thirty years after this taken photos once again look like this. But will the kind of local content these kids grew up with return as well?

This past winter I was visiting my parents. One evening we were all sitting around the dining room table, having coffee and tea, each of us tuned into our own digital devices. I had my MacBook out and was working on some Swift code. My mom had her tablet out and was busy texting and scoffing at the days Facebook drama. And my dad had a small laptop out and was busy watching a stream of the local evening news.

That moment really stuck with me, for a few reasons. To start with my parents are not cord cutters or techno-nerds. I still remember the years of resistance my dad put up before he finally replaced our BetaMax video cassette player with a VHS one (which was by then only a few years before DVD’s would hit the market). It is not that they are luddites, but they have always, even when they were younger, had a resistance to new technologies. They would never adopt it until it was absolutely necessary. That they had seemingly overnight begun to drop a lot of their traditional television viewing for time in front of their tablets and laptops was a clear sign the true mainstreaming of digital distribution was beginning. Read More

The curious case of Podcasting: Why it hasn’t ever taken off, and why there is nothing wrong with that.

Posted on by manitobaninja

I love podcasts. If you combine movies, television shows, and podcasts into one group then podcasts account for at least 75% of my total media viewing/listening time, and when Formula 1 is on winter break it is even higher. For myself it is the expressive nature of the medium that really attracts me to it. The long form format gives a chance for conversations to happen naturally between hosts and guests. For shows, such as Spontaneanation and Pistol Shrimps Radio, two that I cannot recommend enough, the relatively low cost of simply recording audio and hosting a podcast means that gonzo improv can have a place to live (and hopefully thrive). Read More

Sidebar: 2015. Year 0 of the streaming revolution

Posted on by manitobaninja

For many years now there has been an endless parade of articles talking about the end of cable and the “inevitable” shift to content delivery via the internet and streaming. Often people lauded their own cord cutting experiences as they dropped Shaw or Comcast or Rogers in favor of Netflix and Hulu. Every time a major television content provider hinted at a possible change towards streaming it was held up high as further proof.

But, with the possible exception of HBO actually offering a pure digital subscription option, this has not played out as people expected. Sure there are lots of apps now for CBS and NBC or other channels that let you stream their content on your computer or over your TV. But they still require a cable subscription. So it is value added, but hardly a radical change by any means. The well entrenched cable and television producers, and distributors, have by and large balked at making this transition and spent their time trying to protect the status quo instead of moving forward.

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tvOS: Is this is a good choice for beginners?

Posted on by manitobaninja

After my last post on tvOS I started thinking about it from a beginners perspective and decided to write a few words about it. Up until a few months someone learning Swift would have most likely been doing so in order to get into iOS development, with a small number of those people interested in OSX development. Now, there is another reason someone might have the desire and will to learn Swift! While tvOS is, in a manner of speaking, an extension of iOS, and though they do share many similarities, there are enough differences between the two that even for someone who is already experienced in Swift for iOS there will be a learning curve to it.

There is a short answer to the question of whether this is a good choice for beginners, and it is no. But, you could still very well make tvOS your starting point. If you are willing to accept that, relative to learning iOS, you will have additional obstacles along the way  then there is nothing stopping you. So if you are genuinely interested in developing for tvOS, or just curious about what some of those challenges might be then by all means keep reading and I will tell you.

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tvOS: Never stop thinking about the couch

Posted on by manitobaninja

Last night, after my brain had given up on coding for the day, I decided to spend the rest of the night brainstorming apps ideas for tvOS. This was in large part brought on by having been in Toronto earlier this week for Apple’s tvOS Tech Talks. With the various discussions I heard still very much on my mind I let my imagination take over and see what it could come up with.

I won’t bore you with all the ideas I came up with and the resulting thinking around them and instead go straight to the end result; I came up with no good ideas. I didn’t even come up with okay ideas. Every idea hit a roadblock, be it technical or experience related.

At this point you might be thinking “Yeah great story. You told us nothing and the end result was fauilure. Thanks buddy”. Well just hang in there because it leads to a key point that I want to make about designing an app for tvOS.

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