In this week's rundown of recent news items for cord-cutters: How to stream the Mayweather-McGregor fight, Roku still top streaming device and growing, Hulu now available through Web browsers, streaming service market may be headed for consolidation, and more.
Are you trying to find a way to live stream the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight without cable? We don't know of any way to do so that's both free and legal, but FanSided provides some streaming links for those willing to pay the $100 PPV fee for Saturday night's fight. To watch on TV, your best bet may be to purchase it on Sling TV. For Roku users who are not Sling subscribers, it's also available on the UFCTV Roku channel.
A new Apple TV model will be announced in September according to a Bloomberg report. The updated box will reportedly "be revealed alongside new iPhone and Apple Watch models" and will "stream 4K video and highlight live television content such as news and sports."
The streaming services market may be headed for consolidation says a research analyst at Ovum and reported by Rapid TV News. Discussing the plethora of services, with more being announced on a regular basis, he says that "a common question is how many can the market sustain?... [O]ur concerns are whether services are doing enough to distinguish themselves from competing offerings and whether the market can sustain the majority comfortably."
Have you ever considered how Netflix recommends shows and movies for you to watch? Netflix’s vice president of product innovation, Todd Yellin, told AP what goes into the personalized recommendations you see on the home screen. "First, a legion of Netflix 'taggers' screens every program, tagging elements that compose it. This data is crunched and continuously refined by the company's secret algorithm... Thus can Netflix take a “gateway” show and point the viewer to unexpected or unknown fare with presumably similar appeal."
Sling has just introduced Gamefinder, which makes it easy to find which channel your favorite team is on. According to Sling, just "go to sling.com/gamefinder and search for a team's city, state or name to see the date, time, channel and Sling TV service you'll need to watch the game. To determine which games are available in your area, simply enter your ZIP code to filter the results." Note that the service only shows you games that are available on the Sling service.
Roku is the top streaming device in the U.S and still growing, according to a new report from Park Associates and reported by TechCrunch (and many other media outlets). Roku devices reportedly made up 37 percent of all streaming devices in U.S. households during the first quarter of this year, up from 30 percent in the same period a year ago. TechCrunch offers more details: "The growth is coming at the expense of Roku's top competitors, like Apple and Google, with only Amazon’s Fire TV able to increase its install base during the same timeframe. Fire TV devices are in 24 percent of U.S. households, as of Q1 2017, up from 16 percent last year. That climb allowed Amazon to snag the second position from Google's Chromecast, which has an 18 percent share. Lagging behind, Apple TV’s market share fell to 15 percent"
Hulu now allows access to live TV and on-demand content through web browsers according to FierceCable. Hulu's head of experience "cautioned that the new web experience is a very early version and that Hulu expects it to 'evolve significantly over the next few months.'"
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