If size matters in the TV set-top box market, the new Skini by semiconductor company Sigma Designs wins by losing.

The Skini -- a combination of pay-TV receiver, Internet TV terminal and home automation hub -- is about the size of a couple of packs of playing cards, and it hangs off a wall outlet like a night light. It uses advanced powerline networking technology to connect to a home network, and Z-Wave wireless networking to receive commands from a remote control and send them to compatible light fixtures, thermostats and other devices.

The company unveiled a reference design for the box Monday. Michael Weissman, the company's vice president of corporate marketing, said he expects to see products based on Skini by Christmas or early next year, including digital media receivers and pay-TV set-tops. Those should sell for less than $100, he said.

That's the right price, and you've got to love the mini Skini's ability to hide behind the TV -- its remote's radio-frequency signals can pass through objects, unlike the infrared signals used by most controllers. Its capabilities are impressive too, at least on paper.

What would truly be compelling is if Skini-based products enabled consumers to combine basic pay-TV services with low-cost Internet video subscriptions, such as Netflix and Hulu, into more affordable video packages. But just because the reference design is capable of doing so, that doesn't mean pay-TV operators will interested in providing those features in their set-top boxes. Any company selling premium tiers and on-demand movies would have little or no incentive to help customers subscribe to Netflix instead.

A coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers, retailers and Internet companies has been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to circumvent that problem by adopting a new standard for set-top interoperability. Called AllVid, it would enable device makers to create gateways that bring multiple sources of audio and video to the TV screen, including pay-TV services, Internet feeds and files stored on home computers.

Not surprisingly, cable operators hate AllVid, arguing that the market, not government, should determine which technologies prevail. They also note that Internet-ready TVs are proliferating, an increasing number of which can receive cable TV service without requiring a set-top box. That's because those sets adhere to the cable industry's unique protocols, which would be useless to set buyers who switch to any other form of pay TV. But cable operators are also starting to deliver programming to devices whose interfaces they don't control, such as the iPad.

The open, multi-function environment envisioned by AllVid is tailor-made for the Skini. A federal mandate for the AllVid interface, Weissman of Sigma Designs said,  "only accelerates the opportunity for this type of technology."

The FCC hasn't ruled yet on AllVid. According to Ryan Lawler of GigaOm, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski offered attendees at last week's cable industry trade show a typically opaque update on the proceeding, saying the commission would “take steps to spur innovation in and around the TV platform.”

RELATED:

DirecTV considering Netflix-like online service

Bamboom takes over-the-top TV over the top

Two-way battle over: cable wins

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Credit: Sigma Designs

Nielsen Co., the longstanding arbiter of popularity in the television industry, calculates ratings by observing the TV-viewing habits of a cross section of the American public. SocialGuide.com, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based start-up, is taking a different approach: It analyzes what's being said about TV on Twitter and Facebook. That's about 90 million comments made by 13 million people about 4,500 shows on 160 networks.

The result is the Social 100, a weekly listing of the shows drawing the most attention from the wired generation. And the results aren't what you might expect. Last week, for example,  the five hottest TV series in the world of social media were NBC's "The Voice," Nick's "SpongeBob SquarePants," VH1's "Basketball Wives," the syndicated show "Maury" and MTV's "Teen Wolf."

Who knew?

Better yet, why does that matter? Sean Casey, founder of SocialGuide.com, said in a recent interview that the data can give producers important insights about their audience -- what they like, what they don't and what generates a response. Building a community of viewers on those social networks is a good way to boost viewership generally, Casey asserted.

And it's not as easy to gather that data as it might seem.

The major Hollywood studios persuaded the Federal Communications Commission last year to allow them to offer movies through pay-TV services several weeks earlier, before they're released on disc. They didn't start testing the service until mid-April, however, and have made it available only through DirecTV.

On Tuesday, San Diego-based Verimatrix announced a watermarking technology that studios could use to help combat piracy on streamed movies, potentially encouraging them to offer more early-release films. The watermarks won't make the offer more appealing to consumers or the studios' other distribution partners, though, and those hurdles are at least as big for the early releases as the technological limitations.

BitTorrent Inc. released a new version of its client software Thursday, offering a simpler way for people to find, download and share files -- including, for the first time, a way to share them with a select group of friends. It's a potential boon to consumers looking to send high-definition home movies or slide shows to far-flung family members. The gains are more limited, however, for Hollywood studios and other copyright holders.

The BitTorrent protocol speeds up the transmission of files by enabling users to download them from multiple other users simultaneously. That's made it the protocol of choice for file-sharers, particularly for bootlegged movies and song collections. It's a neutral technology, though, and the Hollywood studios made their peace years ago with BitTorrent Inc., which invented the protocol. The company also claims to make the most popular client software for using its protocol; according to Shahi Ghanem, its executive vice president and chief strategist, more than 1 billion copies of those clients have been downloaded, and more than 100 million people use them at least once a month.

On Thursday the company released a beta version of its new client, dubbed Project Chrysalis, designed to make BitTorrent easier to use for consumers and content creators. It's still a work in progress on both fronts, but it's a step forward in several ways.

Premium movie channel Epix announced Wednesday that it would chase new viewers online by offering them ... trailers. Insert disappointed emoticon here.

If you're a cable TV subscriber in Los Angeles, you probably have no idea what Epix is, because it's not offered by Time Warner Cable. Or Comcast, DirecTV or AT&T. All told, the would-be competitor to HBO, Showtime and Starz is available to 30 million pay-TV subscribers, or about 1 in 4 TV households in the U.S.

Epix (a joint venture of Viacom, Paramount Pictures, MGM and Lionsgate) released applications Wednesday for "over 100 consumer electronic and mobile devices" that will enable its subscribers to watch Epix programming on those devices. The list includes Android-powered tablet computers, Samsung Internet-connected TVs and Roku set-top boxes, which bring video from the Internet to a television set. The tablet-computer app has appeal, but why would Epix subscribers (who get the channel and its on-demand counterpart on their pay-TV service) want to stream versions of the same movies to their TV sets?

The company's new TV and set-top-box apps would make a lot more sense if Epix allowed people who don't (or can't) get its pay-TV channel to buy subscriptions to the online feed. HBO and Showtime won't do that for fear of undermining the pay-TV operators who provide the vast bulk of their revenue. Unfortunately for Epix, it doesn't have nearly as much to worry about on that front. It hasn't persuaded the country's largest cable and satellite operators to carry it.

Nevertheless, Epix is eschewing the growing market of cable-cutters. Evidently trying to build a groundswell of demand for its pay-TV channel, Epix is enabling nonsubscribers to use the apps to watch the service's "robust offering of movie trailers, interviews and short form video content." Now there's a unique consumer value proposition!

It's also promising "limited free trials" of long-form content for nonsubscribers. Maybe that will persuade more of the people who do have access to the pay-TV version of Epix to subscribe, and maybe that's the true low-hanging fruit. But how large is that number compared with those who don't have access to Epix's cable channel?

Related:

Bamboom takes over-the-air TV over the top

Showyou brings a new vision of TV to the iPad

Roku has a sixth sense about video

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Bamboom Labs wants to help people cut their cable cords by putting local TV broadcasts online with all the digital trimmings -- that is, the ability to watch live or recorded shows in high definition on any device with a browser, anywhere a broadband connection is available. It's technologically ingenious, but I can't decide whether it's a service the market has been waiting for or a lawsuit waiting to happen. Or maybe it's a solution to a problem not many people are eager to solve.

The New York-based startup is the brainchild of Chaitanya "Chet" Kanojia, former chief executive of Navic Networks, whose technology in set-top boxes enabled cable and broadcast networks to measure audience demographics and match advertisements to them in real time. His time at Navic taught him that at any given moment, about half of pay TV viewers were tuned in to local broadcast channels. That observation led him to believe that if he could get live broadcast signals to people reliably, with the ability to time-shift shows and watch them on any device, and with the social features of the Internet, they'd be more willing to abandon cable and satellite TV.

Other companies have taken on parts of this challenge. For example, Sling Media makes set-top boxes that let people tune in remotely to the TV service they have at home. And Monsoon Multimedia makes set-tops that combine remote viewing with TiVo-like digital video recording. But those devices build off of the programming that pay TV delivers to homes. Kanojia wanted to let people watch local broadcasts  through the Net without the help of pay TV.

Here's where things get complicated.

While Time Warner Cable and Cablevision deliver conventional television programming to their customers' iPads, other companies are trying to use the tablet to redefine what TV might be. A good example is the San Francisco-based Remixation, the company behind Vodpod, which unveils an intriguing online video application for the iPad Wednesday.

The free app, Showyou, enables people to create and watch personalized streams of online video. Instead of relying on the talents of TV studios and network programming executives, it draws from user-generated content sites (YouTube, Vimeo and TED at the moment) and social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Vodpod). And it takes advantage of the touch screen on the iPad (or iPhone or iPod Touch) to make it easier to navigate through the grid of shows, rather than the up-down and left-right buttons of a TV remote.

The short-term goal is to be "the best app on your phone or your tablet for finding video and sharing it with your friends," Chief Executive Mark Hall said. But "the more provocative long-term vision" is to become a prime-time TV alternative.

Let's get something straight right up front: Online music lockers are inherently lame.

This point was established years ago, when a bunch of companies (MyPlay, MP3.com, Musicbank) tried and failed to make online music lockers appealing to the masses. Amazon's entry into the field strikes me as no more appealing than its forebears, although it has a few advantages that may improve its prospects.

The basic problem with locker services is that they don't entertain. They merely provide access to one's music collection remotely, kind of the way an MP3 player does but with a less satisfying user interface. (For example, it takes three clicks to play any song stored in Cloud Drive. Ugh.) And unless the service buys licenses from the rights holders to make copies of tracks for their customers, users have to upload their songs into their lockers manually. So if you have a sizable music collection, filling your locker can be painfully laborious and time-consuming.

Amazon's Cloud Drive service boasts three potentially useful features that the failed locker services of yore didn't have:

• It's tied to Amazon's MP3 store, and the company automatically puts a copy of your purchases into your locker.
• It has an Android app, so it works on Android-powered smartphones and tablets. Those devices have less storage than the typical PC, so it makes sense to use them with an online locker.
• It can store other types of files too, including pictures and videos. Those files tend to be large, though, and Amazon provides only 5 GB of locker online free. Go above that limit and the service gets pricey in a hurry, charging $1 per year for each gigabyte. (Files bought through Amazon don't count against the storage limit.)

The biggest shortcoming of the service is probably the inability to automate uploads. Users have to browse through the computers to find the files they want to put in their lockers, and there's no way to have the locker automatically copy newly acquired MP3s -- unless they're bought from Amazon. That doesn't compare well with Rdio's ability to scan your music collection and fill a locker for you (a feature that Rdio includes in its $5-a-month music-streaming service, and that it has to pay the music industry extra royalties for).

I doubt that Amazon launched the service to sell online lockers. Instead, it appears to be an attempt to add value to Amazon's MP3 store. For now, at least, Amazon is the only place to buy music that's automatically available wherever you go on your (Android) smartphone or tablet, or on any computer you use. But then, Lala offered that and more, letting people fill their lockers with streaming-only songs that cost only 10 cents each. And by the time Apple bought Lala in December 2009, it had yet to break even.

ALSO:

Amazon Cloud Player beats Apple and Google to the market

Apple unlimited music downloads: a step to streaming?

AT&T's bandwidth caps: a bad deal for whom?

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

The blog Broadband Reports broke some bad news over the weekend for AT&T DSL customers. Starting May 2, AT&T plans to stop offering flat-rate pricing for unlimited Internet use. Instead, it will impose a monthly cap of 150 GB on its DSL subscribers and 250 GB on its U-Verse customers. (U-Verse is the pay-TV service that AT&T transmits over high-speed phone lines; the cap would apply only to those customers' Internet use, not their TV viewing.) Those who exceed the limit will be charged $10 for every additional 50 GB they consume.

The company says its average DSL customer uses a mere 18 GB a month, and just one out of each 50 customers has been exceeding the new limits -- presumably someone who downloads or streams a lot of video, games or software. To put it in some perspective, consider the case of an online video fan. At standard-definition data rates, that person would need to watch (or download) more than six hours of full-screen video a day to hit 150 GB. High definition video is much more of a bandwidth hog, but even then an AT&T customer could download one a day and still have plenty of room left under a 150 GB cap.

On the other hand, it's troubling when a broadband provider that faces little competition summarily raises prices, particularly when the move hurts rivals in a separate market. AT&T's pay-TV service competes with online video-on-demand offerings from Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, Apple and CinemaNow, to name just a few. If the bandwidth caps deter consumers from using those services, that's a very bad thing.

The move was condemned by Free Press, an advocacy group that's been among the most vigorous proponents of strong Net neutrality rules (and, as such, a frequent critic of AT&T). Echoing the Bells' arguments against those rules, S. Derek Turner of Free Press called AT&T's caps "a poor solution to an unproven problem, and it will have a chilling effect on economic growth and innovation online."

I wonder about that, too, and about the chances of AT&T increasing the caps steadily as bandwidth prices continue to drop and the demand for data grows. As Turner put it, "When ISPs force their customers to watch the meter, experimentation, innovation and business will suffer."

One thing that he failed to note, though, is that the caps are a better deal for most broadband users than all-you-can-eat pricing that forces them to subsidize the outsized data appetites of a small minority. That's the dirty little secret of the flat-rate pricing model that AOL made standard across the Net: It costs most users more than they would have to spend under the pay-as-you-go model.

All the same, consumers love the flat-rate model because they don't have to worry about the incremental cost of each session online, or about getting the same sort of nasty surprise in their broadband bill that they occasionally receive from their mobile phone company. So it may be that even modest users of AT&T DSL switch to cable modems after the caps go into effect -- assuming their cable provider isn't Comcast, which imposes a 250 GB cap.

For its part, AT&T pledges that none of its customers will be caught unaware by the new caps. It plans to alert them when they reach 65%, 90% and 100% of the limit, and not to impose the extra charges until they've exceeded the caps three times. And those who reach their limits have a way around the extra charge: They can read e-mail, watch videos and send tweets on their smartphones. Unless, of course, they've already hit their wireless data caps.

RELATED:

AT&T and Verizon offer free wireless calls and texting, temporarily, from U.S. to Japan

Dish Network stock jumps amid talk of AT&T bid

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Having played with Rdio's updated iPhone app for a week or so, I find myself sinking even more deeply into the tank for subscription-music services. If they can get the mobile aspect right -- and Rdio's update is much closer to "right" than the beta version -- I believe that subscriptions will finally deliver on the "any song, anywhere, anytime" promise that made them so interesting.

Like Rhapsody, Napster, MOG and other subscription-music services, Rdio offers consumers unlimited access to an online jukebox for a flat monthly fee: $5 for use only on a PC, $10 to add mobile devices and living-room gear. Rdio's particular strength is the way it applies social tools to music discovery. The service lets users follow other Rdio subscribers, then prominently displays the ever-changing lists of albums, songs and playlists that are getting the most play within that group. It's a beguiling way to learn about new artists and tracks.

The beta of the Rdio mobile app, however, offered too thin a slice of what Rdio provided on a PC. It showed you what was popular within your group and what you'd been playing lately; displayed the playlists you'd added to your collection; and allowed you to search for artists, albums and songs. But there was no recommendation engine, no list of new releases, and no way to wander through the broader Rdio members to find new people to follow or playlists to add.

The best aspect of the app, in my view, was the ability to load a mobile phone with songs "rented" from Rdio, avoiding the battery drain and occasional hiccups on a mobile or WiFi network. That's particularly handy on the iPod Touch, which doesn't have the continuous connectivity of a mobile phone. The songs remain on the device until you delete them or cancel your subscription, whichever comes first.

The update -- dubbed version 1.0 -- adds browsable lists of new releases and the most popular albums, songs and playlists on Rdio; album recommendations, which are based on your activity on the service; and a greatly improved search capability that also looks for matches among playlists and Rdio's membership. In short, it's a portal into far more of the Rdio experience.

It's still missing some important elements, such as the ability to build and collaborate on playlists, to follow like-minded listeners and to easily explore the broader Rdio community. (The latter is do-able, it's just not simple or intuitive.) I'm also eager to see a similar update for the Android application. Nevertheless, the new iPhone app is a great leap forward.

The last big pieces of the puzzle for subscriptions, I think, are easy and affordable ways to plug them into the living room and the car. Devices such as the Roku player, the Logitech Squeezebox and the Sonos ZonePlayer are providing solutions for the home, although not necessarily at a mass-market price. And a growing number of automakers (and aftermarket suppliers) are enabling drivers to plug mobile devices into their car stereos, either with a wire or via Bluetooth.

Granted, there's still the widely held view that subscriptions aren't as good a value as 99-cent MP3s. But it's not an either-or proposition. Think of subscriptions as a premium cable approach to television, not to be confused with buying complete seasons on DVD. As services like Rdio bring more of their features to their mobile apps, the premium-cable approach looks better and better.

Related:

Rdio CEO Drew Larner on the future of music subscriptions

A new kind of online Rdio

Who says music subscription services are dead?

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Credit: Rdio.com