Samsung Devices to Get UVideos Service This Month, Univision Says
Univision’s UVideos bilingual digital video service will be made available to select Samsung CE devices later this month and will be on a total of nine platforms by the end of 2013, Carlos Alimurung, Univision vice president-digital distribution, told us at the Media Summit New York on Tuesday. That will represent more than 200 million mobile and connected devices, he said.
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The digital service is already available online via a dedicated website, as well as on Windows 8 devices, the Xbox 360, Kindle Fire tablets, and iOS and Android mobile devices, said Alimurung. UVideos will also be added to Microsoft’s Xbox SmartGlass companion application for the Xbox 360 in April and on BlackBerry devices this summer, he said. SmartGlass, launched in the fall, lets Xbox 360 owners use their consoles in conjunction with Windows, Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.
A deal that Univision signed with Samsung will make UVideos available on all 2013 Samsung Smart TVs, connected Blu-ray players and home theater systems, Univision said in January. UVideos is the first Hispanic-focused entertainment app available on the Samsung platform, Univision said. Univision is “committed to TV everywhere” -- making its TV content available across multiple devices, Alimurung said Tuesday.
A challenge that Internet-connected TVs may face is their ability to be updated to remain competitive with other connected CE devices, Alimurung told the Media Summit. When a person is happy with a $1,000 TV, “how often are you going to change that” device for a new TV, he asked. Consumers will change out $100-$200 set-top boxes for newer, more advanced devices much more often, he said.
Hands-free TV control like what Microsoft’s Kinect offers is a nice feature, said Rhodes Mason, vice president-business development at online content distributor Internet Video Archive, during the same panel. That technology “still needs development, but it’s coming” and will improve, he predicted. But consumers tend to be perfectly content with the remote devices they now use, he said. Mason also predicted there’s “not going to be much” additional competition coming among TV content providers in the multiscreen universe. There won’t be many significant new startups in the sector, he predicted.