Pandora’s unveiling of its long-awaited premium on-demand service Tuesday was little more than a glimpse after months of references to a December rollout. A video on the company’s blog Wednesday focused on Pandora's legacy as a personalized radio service. As the company attempts to take on Apple Music and Spotify, among others, it will use its proprietary “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” features as differentiators. “All your thumbs create your unique playlists instantly,” it said. Subscribers can start a playlist and “we’ll help you finish it” by adding similar songs, Pandora said. It promoted offline availability, something its free and $5 services don’t currently offer, and it included a brief artist clip showing integration of local concert information, leveraging its purchase of Ticketfly purchase last year. “Find the songs you love and let the songs you love find you,” was a key message. The service is to roll out next year at about $10 per month. In a research note to investors, BTIG analyst Brandon Ross pitted Pandora Premium against the established competition: Spotify’s 30 million and Apple’s 15 million subscribers and “deeper pockets and consumer engagement” from YouTube and Amazon. Subscription content exclusivity is “starting to become a differentiator,” said Ross, and that will take financial resources and relationships with the music industry, he said. Meanwhile, reports have been circulating about a possible acquisition by SiriusXM. CNBC said Pandora was open to selling itself and willing to engage with SiriusXM, and in an update Wednesday, CNBC expanded the suitor possibilities beyond the satellite music company. Pandora had no immediate comment on the reports.

Netflix announced a video preview feature Tuesday designed to keep subscribers within Netflix while they search for content. Netflix’s video preview service shows content in real time to help subscribers “decide whether to hit play,” said Stephen Garcia, director-product innovation for TV, and Chris Jaffe, vice president-product innovation, in a blog post. A new interface that will roll out globally over the next few weeks will be available on Netflix-enabled devices, including “the majority of game consoles and Roku devices,” they said. A company spokeswoman emailed us that initial products to support view previews are the Sony PS3, PS4, Xbox One and S and Roku 2, 3 and 4 streaming media players. Smart TVs and the Xbox 360 will be updated in coming months. The phased global rollout was used to ensure smooth deployment, the spokeswoman said. Video previews aren’t teasers or conventional trailers, said the blog post, but are “specially designed video synopses” that help subscribers choose content by “quickly highlighting the story, characters and tone of a title.” Netflix testing showed “people watched more of a story, demonstrating these previews helped them browse less and watch more,” they said. Our Roku player hadn't received the update by midday Tuesday, but a YouTube video embedded in the blog post showed a brief sample of a video preview in the upper right corner of the screen. The roughly eight-second clip showed four scenes from Stranger Things. Video previews were developed at Netflix and then tested to learn which content helped subscribers make “quicker and more confident decisions when browsing,” the spokeswoman said. Previews vary in length and can be as long as a “couple of minutes,” with different titles requiring different types of previews, she said.

James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox CEO, sees the growth of virtual multichannel video programming distributors as possibly helping grow video consumption the way direct broadcast satellite, AT&T's U-verse and Verizon's Fios did, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote investors Monday. Murdoch also considers the direct-to-consumer over-the-top business particularly difficult, saying Fox intends to look instead at third-party MVPDs and advanced advertisements, with a lot of its growth focused on video consumption, Fox News and Fox Sports 1 and 2, Ryvicker said.

In a week packed with alternative-TV announcements appealing to cord cutters -- AT&T’s DirecTV Now streaming video launch (see 1611280058) and Netflix’ announcement of a download option for offline viewing (see 1611300010) -- Amazon kept pace with its Thursday announcement of a $14.99-per-month HBO subscription available to Prime members through Amazon Channels. It also announced a $9.99-per-month Cinemax subscription on Amazon Channels, joining Starz ($8.99), Showtime ($8.99) and other a la carte pay-TV channels as an alternative to cable. Amazon’s $15-per-month HBO subscription doesn’t affect the HBO streaming perk available for free to Amazon Prime subscribers, a company spokeswoman emailed us Thursday, and “nothing has changed with the HBO content that is available for free for Prime Members.” At launch, Amazon is offering a 30-day free trial for HBO and Cinemax vs. its typical seven-day free trial period. More than 80 subscriptions are available via Amazon Channels, a platform available on more than 650 devices, said Amazon.

Netflix’s download capability for offline viewing currently extends (see 1611300010) to iOS and Android but not to Amazon’s variant of the Android operating system, a Netflix spokeswoman emailed us Thursday after we succeeded at downloading Netflix content to an iPhone but not to a Kindle Fire tablet. The download feature for Kindle Fire will be available in the “next couple of weeks,” she said.

Cable has little to fear from cord cutting -- especially from customers dropping their video service for a competing over-the-top offering -- since much of that lost revenue will come back from charging for stand-alone broadband and from customers opting for higher speed tiers, said MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Thursday. His analysis is based in part on a Survata survey of 507 online respondents, with the analyst saying the results indicating those who said they are or would consider dropping their pay-TV service for OTT also would upgrade to a faster broadband service if they switched, even though most of them said their current speed was sufficient for satisfactory Internet video. Moffett said that and the net recovery that could come from dismantling a bundled discount provide "dramatic" protection against cord cutting.

Netflix added off-line viewing as a feature to its streaming video service, it said in a blog post Wednesday. The company said the download function comes at no extra cost, and some content is available for offline viewing "with more on the way."

The FCC should proceed with care in addressing mandates for over-the-top apps as the commission considers real-time text (RTT) technology as a substitute for legacy text telephone (TTY) service, Microsoft and the Voice on the Net Coalition said. They reported on a meeting with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff. In April, the FCC approved an NPRM on the TTY-to-RTT transition (see 1604080053). “Given that over-the-top applications rely on the best efforts internet, the FCC should recognize the inherent characteristics and limitations of such applications and their inability to guarantee performance criteria, including with respect to access to emergency services,” the filing said. “Even where OTT applications provide interconnected VoIP service, they may still use the best efforts internet and, as a result, may be unable to guarantee the proposed performance requirements,” the filing said. “The parties also emphasized the importance of avoiding any confusion with respect to consumer expectations around the use of an OTT application to contact emergency services.” The filing was posted in docket 16-145.

It's time to abandon "over the top" as a way to describing broadband video, with the term OTT "a relic of a previous time," The Diffusion Group analyst Eric Grab wrote in a post Thursday. While OTT describes delivery of video over networks not owned by the distributor, "the modern video ecosystem is now inseparable from the Internet," Grab said, adding that "even the name 'Internet Video' doesn't seem to fit the bill." The Internet-delivered video itself is less important than the services enabled by the internet, Grab said. While OTT will be used for years to come, he said, "Gradually the industry will recognize the need to replace the term with ... something that captures the essence of the quantum video and the complete entertainment experience."

MPEG LA is launching patent-pool licensing for the MPEG dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (MPEG Dash) standard, the licensing authority said in a Thursday announcement. MPEG Dash enables the streaming of content over internet application protocol to be “dynamically adapted to changing network conditions to provide smooth, high quality playback of video and other content without stalls or re-buffering events,” said MPEG LA. Current Dash patent holders in the pool include Amotech, AVerMedia Technologies, CableLabs, Columbia University, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Fraunhofer, Hitachi Maxell, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Siemens and SK Planet.