The messy deals behind unwatchable streaming apps
Q. My new Roku TV can't run the WatchESPN app that works fine on my Roku 3 box. What's the problem here?
A. After a round of inquiries among the companies behind this and other cases of a TV channel app not working where it should, I can summarize the bulk of these responses as "because reasons."
We know it's not an app-compatibility issue: The TCL and Hisense Roku TVs that began arriving last year run the same software as the Saratoga, Calif., company's standalone players.
Instead, this resulted from a decision by ESPN and its corporate parent Disney (the WatchDisney app doesn't work on Roku TVs either) to control the potential audience for their online streaming -- essentially, saying that Internet viewing is only okay if it requires pressing or clicking enough buttons first.
"They do not participate in the Smart TV market at this time, so those channels are not available on Smart TV platforms," wrote Roku spokesman Todd Witkemper. "We're working with them and hope that we will be able to offer those streaming channels in the near future."
He said those two channels were the only name-brand absences from Roku TVs' content lineup.
ESPN was not exactly a font of information on the subject. Spokeswoman Kristie Chong said the sports network had an agreement with Roku to provide apps for its players but not its TV and added: "We're always talking to our platform partners but have nothing new to announce at this time."
Other TV subscribers have seen this movie before. After HBO launched its HBO Go online service for existing subscribers in 2010 and then brought it to Roku's players a year later, Comcast and DirecTV customers were unamused to learn they could not watch programming they'd paid for on those boxes.
DirecTV's HBO Go holdout lasted until last February, while Comcast's didn't end until December.
DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said the most common obstacle to getting an app online for its subscribers is negotiating streaming rights, which itself can depend on the timing and renewal of overall programming deals. After that, there's extra work to ensure customer logins work properly.
Those two factors, for example, have kept DirecTV customers from logging into WatchESPN and Fox Sports Go apps. Mercer said that should be fixed "in the first half of this year."
Comcast, meanwhile, continues to limit its customers' choices of HBO Go devices. Unlike such other TV services as DirecTV, Dish Network, and Comcast's hoped-for acquisition Time Warner Cable, the nation's largest TV provider has yet to bring HBO Go playback to Amazon's Fire TV and Sony's PlayStation 3.
Comcast didn't explain the delays at this end or when they might end. We can only hope that will be soon.
In the meantime, this kind of micromanagement undermines the value proposition of the pay-TV industry's "TV Everywhere" pitch: that paying for your service will bring ever-greater access to your favorite shows. And it tempts subscribers to route around the problem by acting like "cord cutters" and borrowing somebody else's cable- or satellite-TV password.
Tip: YouTube switch means one less reason to keep Flash around
The site that launched a million cat videos will no longer be launching Adobe's Flash player. Google's YouTube announced Tuesday that on modern browsers, it will no longer employ that browser plug-in and will instead rely on the "HTML5" video playback built into current versions of Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Apple's Safari, plus beta versions of Firefox.
That shouldn't make much difference in your daily viewing, since YouTube has offered HTML5 video as an alternative to Flash for the past several years. But it ought to provide yet another hint to sites that still lean on Flash (for example, Facebook's desktop site continues to demand it for video playback, while HBO's home page is eaten up by one giant Flash widget) that it's time to move on.
Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.