AUTHORS

Disruptomatic
Angela Natividad
Angela Natividad is a freelance copywriter, journalist and strategist based in Paris. She co-founded AdVerveBlog.com, a blog and podcast about ads and design, and writes MarketingProfs' “Get to the Point!: Social Media” newsletters. She likes people and animals, but not as much as books.
Tweet her @luckthelady.
James Martin
James Martin is the community manager of music & TV tradeshows midem & MIPTV/MIPCOM. He edits their respective industry news & trends blogs (blog.midem.com & mipblog.com) and also covers video games and technology for French cultural weekly A Nous Paris
Tweet him at @jamesmart_in
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He writes about digital music for Music Ally, and about apps and mobile for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Appside, as well as his own Apps Playground site.
Tweet him @stuartdredge

Sky Sports iPad app gets second-screen features

Here’s something to think about if you’re a Zeebox, a GetGlue or any of their (many) social-TV second-screen startup rivals. British satellite broadcaster Sky just gave its Sky Sports for iPad app a second-screen update.

What’s that? Well, until now, the app was mainly a way for Sky subscribers to watch Sky’s sport channels on their tablet – when away from home, for example, or unable to wrestle control of the living-room TV from non-sport-loving family members.

Now it’s also a second-screen aid to watching, say, live Premier League football on that bigger box. Users will get a Football Match Centre section with stats galore on players and teams, as well as a “curated Twitter feed with aggregated football fan commentary”.

Just the sort of thing the social TV startups are looking to do, in other words.

And while there’s still an argument for people using one app to get second-screen and social features for all the shows they watch, the fact that broadcasters like Sky are looking to own this second-screen relationship with viewers is undeniably a challenge to the likes of Zeebox.

Oh, which as you may remember, took investment from BSkyB earlier this year…

Sky disrupts itself with Now TV

“Cutting the cable”. It’s all the rage in America. It means ending your cable subscription (which can cost $100/month) and opting for Netflix or similar instead (which costs a maximum of $15). Thing is, channels like HBO are so chained to cable operators that they won’t offer Game of Thrones and co. to anyone who doesn’t have cable. Hence rampant piracy.

Not so in the UK, where BSkyB, the country’s largest cable/satellite TV provider, potentially undercut itself yesterday by launching Now TV, which offers all-you-can eat on demand films, via streaming, for £15 (€20). Standard Sky subscription not necessary. Considering the cheapest of these is £34, that’s quite a bargain.

Well, not compared with Netflix (£6/month) or Amazon’s Lovefilm streaming-only offer (£5); but Now TV has the distinct advantage of offering the most recent films of the three, as it has the first “pay TV window”, i.e. it gets first dibs on movies, given the size of its standard subscriber base & owner BSkyB’s massive clout. Netflix may be stronger on the TV front (Now TV has yet to offer TV shows) and Lovefilm may well be the cheapest; but neither offer recent films.

Perhaps the most surprising in all this is that all three services only offer SD quality for now. Could HD be a bandwidth problem? Still, very much early doors — Gizmodo’s handy comparison piece suggests Brits should try out all three services for now — but the option now exists for Uk cords to be cut left, right and centre.

And to that, we say: hurrah!

Just one minor snag: at time of writing, www.nowtv.com points towards the service’s press release, not its website. The @nowtv Twitter account has been informed of this. Launch delayed, p’raps?

Pic lifted from The Guardian