We have noted before issues with both FIOS and uVerse installations. Well here we go again. –

The state Public Service Commission has found that more than half of Verizon FiOS installations inspected on Long Island violated national electric standards, raising potential safety concerns and prompting Verizon to offer customer credits.

Of 92 installations in Nassau, 64 had violations related to grounding, according to an April audit by commission staff. No Suffolk locations were audited then.

In an October 2007 audit there were 62 code violations out of 113 installations inspected in Nassau. Of 19 installations in Suffolk, 12 had similar code violations.

Fiber-optic cables, which Verizon says carry more information and provide a better signal than copper-wire phone lines, are made of glass and do not conduct electricity. The service uses a home’s power source to convert laser-generated light pulses to electrical communications signals.

Ok. The fiber optic does not carry any current. But the various components that are part of the FIOS install DO. So my question would be this one — How does Verizon get away with not having personnel that are licensed electrical contractors? If they are adding new wall outlets that would be a minimum requirement per State law.

Linky.

My grandmother once told me how Ma Belle used to bundle: a pleasant person would greet you, connect your call by name and give you the time and temperature - all gratis with your service. Of course, non-local calls were very pricey then and most people wrote letters instead. Anyway, I digress. Someone at AT&T seems to have a bundle fetish. Attractive new offerings are always advertised with pricing in “bundles”. And the bundles when bundled up amount to a bundle of cash. Now the latest is a small boost in DSL speed, and the price in ads is the price only offered as part of a bundle.

Quoting Broadband Reports: Though U-Verse users on very short loop lengths say their VDSL service is capable of great speeds, most users are distance limited, restricting their total bandwidth to 25Mbps. AT&T reserves the majority of that for video, leaving users with only 6Mbps of usable bandwidth — not particularly impressive for a “next generation” service.

More on AT&T plans a paltry DSL speed boost, Ad price only with a bundle

Well shucks. You know you move into the neighorhood, install a remote head end for all the neighbors to share. Only come to find out that the house warming you expected turns out to be a real fire. The cause of these errant weine roasts? Lith-Ion battery packs going up in flames.

After four equipment fires in two years, including a Christmas Day 2007 explosion in Wisconsin, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - message board) says it is no longer comfortable with the batteries that provide backup power to thousands of its equipment cabinets in neighborhoods all over the U.S.

“Following incidents involving batteries used in AT&T U-verse network cabinets, the company is replacing 17,000 similar batteries, all manufactured by Avestor,” writes an AT&T spokesman, in an email to Light Reading.

“Normally, we would work with a vendor to diagnose problems and develop solutions. We can’t do that in this case because Avestor filed for bankruptcy in October 2006 and closed shortly thereafter. As a result, we have decided to move forward with the removal of all Avestor batteries as quickly as possible,” the spokesman adds.

AT&T says it has no immediate guess as to how quickly it can replace all those batteries. The carrier also declined to speculate on the costs of such an endeavor.

Puts a new twist on the idea of a hot connection.

Light Reading link.
Consumerist link.

FIOS, Uverse, Direct TV all want the consumer to use a branded set top box for their ultimate viewing experience. But that dog won’t hunt and here is Exhibit #1 –

This is an open source effort called Entertainer. Entertainer, like Freevo, MythTV and LMC have functions that many set top boxes do not. Read blog feeds, watch YouTube, Watch TV, play any audio format and Video. If you can get it as a RSS feed or a channel option then these systems can display it.

Which brings me to me to the ultimate question — why? Why is Verizon, a company I own shares in, have hundreds on staff here and in India developing FIOS boxes? Most of these FOSS efforts are at most 3-5 core people and a bunch of volunteers. Yet they develop product comparable to and in many cases superior to the corporate effort. Why am I as a shareholder paying for all this? Why isn’t there an industry API for all this? [Don't comment, I know why.] Why don’t I have a fatter dividend check as a consequence?

Entertainer website.
MythTV website.
LinuxMCE website.

[Update]

This is off of HitWise.. Yahoo and the Weather Channel topped every other news source on the net. All content probably not on your std STB. Yet another reason that closed end systems will lag in the content arena.

We’re on record calling into question the viability of delivering consistent HD streams through an ADSL pipe that is also serving voice and internet service. Judging from a post at DSL reports we were on the mark:

Why? AT&T has told us the goal was to create “a consistent user experience across the board.” This user in our U-Verse forum is one of those lucky (unlucky) FTTH customers in Oklahoma who decided to give the service a spin anyway, and ultimately decided it wasn’t quite ready for prime time:

Well, that was short lived. We canceled it. Over the last few days we experienced lots of freezing on the HD channels. A reboot of the STB and/or RG fixed it for a bit, and then it would come back. Also, the HD quality was very mediocre. To add to that, it was even worse when played back form the DVR. When AT&T gets their act together in terms of reliability and features, I’ll give it a try again. No bad blood here, just disappointment. I WANTED it to work out.

Content will not be contained. Herein is another example of the content escaping from its regularly scheduled delivery slot. From Netflix –

Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, and NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution today announced an agreement through which current episodes of the network’s top-rated prime time series, “Heroes,” can be watched online by Netflix subscribers the day after their network airings.

The deal follows NBC Universal’s announcement with G4 and Mojo as the off-network cable homes for “Heroes” and makes Netflix the exclusive SVOD outlet for the series and the third arm of the studio’s syndication deal.

In addition, Netflix also offers prior season episodes of other popular NBC series including “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights” and “The Office.” For these shows, Netflix subscribers will have the option of enjoying them on DVD or watching them instantly on their PCs at Netflix.com.

Pretty cool huh? Let me tell you, I think so. If Netflix can get the other 2 network majors to cut a similar deal who the heck needs a Tivo? Tivo’s and VCR’s from the consumers perspective were used as time shifting schemes. With a Netflix account that becomes passe’.

For the content haulers (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, TimeWarner) this does not necessarily make their job harder in their managed content schema at this time. But what it does do is make it less and less necessary for the end user to stay with their managed line up and Tivo like devices. But this does something else. It takes the major networks programming divisions and turns them into movie production houses. I mean come on, some MBA type at one of the 3 is going to say, “want to really cut costs. Get rid of the on air network infrastructure. Expand the deal with Netflix for distribution. Save a couple of billion a year.” Their affiliates will scream bloody murder or course, but the networks have thought of them as pains to begin with.

But the media ecosystem keeps expanding. As the content becomes more diverse and tunneled the task of developing a managed line up becomes not only harder, but the value of doing it in the eyes of the end user diminishes as the ecosystem expands.

HT: Consumerist.

Our readers are well aware that we here at Thirdpipe are of the opinion that content will be cheap or free. With the costs of digital support tools dropping all the time the capability of creating digital content is available to anyone with the talent/desire.

Well the theme rides again. This time in the pornographic industry. The take away graph –

It doesn’t make any sense!” Hirsch tells me a month later. It’s a hazy afternoon in June, and he is sitting behind his oak-slab desk, his eyes flickering between a pair of flat-screen monitors, one tuned to Bloomberg News and the other showing a YouPorn clip featuring a gaggle of naked women and an oxygen mask. “They’re giving porn away. You can’t make money on this.”

“…You can’t make money on this.”, is a fairly significant admission. Pornography for what ill you may make of it [they are significant by the way.] literally created the home video industry. When the BetaMax/VHS tape systems came out, porn was the first content. Same with CD’s, the Internet, DVD’s, etc. If there was a medium, porn was early content for the systems. The rationale of course was there was big $$ to be made. Big $$. So porn whether we like it or not has been a bellwether technology indicator.

So now the porn industry has been hit with the impact of UGC. A couple of college kids with a camera can now upload vids on sites. Free, as in Beer. No dollars to be made here. So the porn industry is headed for the skids as well on a income basis. CD and DVD sales are down.

If the pornographic industry takes a fortuitous slide to oblivion; can other videographic production houses be far behind? MGM, Sony, Paramount, do you understand? AT&T, Verizon do you still think managed content will save you?

Remember this post - digital or die? Well I want to direct your attention to the following information post - Everything in the Music Industry is Up. The take away piece is –

Indeed, it appears that every single part of the music industry except the sale of compact discs is up.

• Concerts and merchandise: UP (+4%)
• Digital tracks: UP (+46%)
• Ringtones: UP (+86% last year, but probably just single-digit percent this year)
• Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and videogames: UP (Warner Music saw licensing grow by about $20 million over the past year)
• Even vinyl singles (think DJs): UP (more than doubled in the UK)
• And, if you include the iPod in the music industry, as I’d argue a fair-minded analysis would: UP, UP, UP! (+31% this year)

Only CDs are down (-18%). They’re around 60% of the industry not including the MP3 players, but just around 25% if you do include them.

(please note that external links above are disabled)

Well so what? Well in the broader scheme of things, when you hear the RIAA screaming to Congress how bad things are, remember that they are suing their own customers so why shouldn’t business be bad for them? But on the ThirdPipe front it is just a continuing confirmation of why pipe will be king but presentation a wanker. Over time the dollars and efforts that Comcast and Time-Warner use in developing home page frontends will be a waste. The digital home layer that Verizon and AT&T are developing will be money down the sink.

The UGC will be drilled for without a single use of any of these platforms.

It really was just a month ago that AT&T’s CEO said forced bundles were bad. Specifically, he said forced bundling “is an old mind-set. (from Techdirt)