Richmond's public access channels operate from offices like these in city hall. (Courtesy: WTVR)

City officials in Richmond, Va. are facing questions about where the tens of thousands of dollars in fees collected every year from cable TV customers in the city ultimately go.

WTVR-TV in Richmond received an anonymous tip suggesting most of the money collected isn’t being spent according to plan.

Ordinance 2007-32-44 requires that part of the city’s franchise fee collected from providers like Verizon and Comcast “will be used to support public, educational and government (PEG) programming.”

But a WTVR investigation found that most of the money collected since 2007 — nearly $1.2 million — was instead parked in a Richmond city bank account.

The city has only spent around $70,000 dollars of franchise funds on a new camera, microphones, some lighting and a video editing system; but only for government channel 17, the one showing the mayor and city council at work, according to the station.

That means local politicians look fine on government access channels even as public access and educational programming languishes.  In fact, nothing tells that story better than a look at the makeshift offices in place to support Public Access programming — one the size of a broom closet located inside City Hall.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTVR Richmond Cable TV money and the city of Richmond 9-14-11.mp4[/flv]

WTVR in Richmond investigates where cable franchise fees collected by the city of Richmond are being spent.  (3 minutes)

Verizon Communications has fired six workers and suspended more than three dozen others in Taunton, Mass. for engaging in “illegal gambling.”

But some union workers suspect Verizon’s sudden interest in last winter’s Super Bowl office pool may have more to do with the company’s ongoing conflict with its union employees, who resumed work several weeks ago after a short strike.  The company and members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are still trying to come to terms on a contract renewal agreement.

One sales representative at Verizon, wishing to remain anonymous, told Wicked Local she didn’t understand the company’s sudden interest in office pools, which have been commonplace among workers at Verizon for years.  In fact, Verizon was encouraging sales staff to participate in their own version of a Super Bowl contest tied to sales performance, although one that didn’t reward winners with cash prices.

The sales representative echoed the sentiments of many members of the Boston media who were wondering, “What’s the big deal?”

WBZ Radio’s NightSide Weekend Commentary features Dan Rea dismissing claims that the office pool crackdown had nothing to do with Verizon’s union troubles.  Aired: September 18, 2011. (2 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Verizon says illegal activity on company property is always forbidden, and adds it took a long time to complete the investigation before finally acting with termination notices for some, suspensions for many others.

Most of the affected workers belong to Local 2222 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Eric Hetrick, business manager for Local 1400, another union with affected members, issued a press release late Friday afternoon stating that his local is conducting its own investigation into the circumstances of the firings and suspensions.

“Many of the affected workers have exemplary records with Verizon and some are long-term employees,” he told the Taunton Daily Gazette in an e-mail, adding that additional comment at this time would not be appropriate.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWLP Springfield Verizon Workers Fired Over Office Pool 9-12-11.flv[/flv]

WWLP-TV in Springfield covers the firings of Verizon workers over a Super Bowl office pool.  Bonus: A completely incomprehensible interview with one local resident commenting on the potential impact on office pools elsewhere.  (1 minute)

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Consumers and businesses across Chattanooga, Tenn. are saying goodbye to Internet Overcharging from AT&T and Comcast, making the switch to EPB Fiber Optics.  While Big Telecom companies claim community-owned broadband is a business failure, see why so many businesses and consumers in southeast Tennessee reject that claim and have made the switch.  Speed that blows Comcast away, prices that deliver a much better value than AT&T, service and support that is fast and reliable, and a community-owned provider that keeps its earnings right at home working for the people of greater Chattanooga.  EPB is one of Stop the Cap!’s most highly-recommended broadband providers.  If you are lucky enough to live or work in their service area, we can’t say enough about EPB, and that’s an unsolicited testimonial from us!  You can call them at (423) 648-1372.

Watch these testimonials from actual customers, sign up, and spread the word.  (10 minutes)

MediaMall this week introduced PlayLater, a new software DVR for online video, allowing users to record online streamed content from Hulu, Netflix, or from almost any other website, storing unlimited content on your personal computer for later viewing.

PlayLater is being marketed as a companion to the company’s first product — PlayOn, which streams virtually any video format to television sets and portable devices like smartphones and tablet computers.

MediaMall’s products directly target pay television “cord-cutters.”  By serving up unlimited video content from web video providers — recorded or live — to television sets and portable devices, there may be more than enough to watch without paying for hundreds of cable networks you don’t care about.

PlayLater works easiest with its built-in online program guide, listing programming from the various “channels” the service supports.  Already “built-in” is listings for online content from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon’s Video On Demand, Pandora, YouTube, CNN, Fox News, TNT, and at least a dozen other networks.  Third party “plug-ins” extend the number of “channels” to other video content websites.

Viewers simply find the show or shows they want to record through the guide and press the “record” button to begin the capturing process.  Shows are quietly recorded in the background, and small pop-ups alert you when various recordings are completed.  The resulting files, recorded in a secure DRM Windows Media format, reside on your hard drive for later viewing.  You can record as much as your hard drive can accommodate, and beta testers quickly found they often amassed hundreds of recordings over a month — providing more content that most cable DVRs can handle.

When combined with MediaMall’s PlayOn, PlayLater viewers can take the show on the road, watching their stored shows over a television set in the next room or in another state, remotely streamed over your broadband connection.  You can also watch on Android or iPhone smartphones, or on tablet computers like Apple’s iPad.

MediaMall products come with a 14-day free trial, but after that you have to pay to keep watching.  The company intends to sell the packaged suite of PlayOn and PlayLater for $7.99 a month, or $69.99 per year.

Stop the Cap! has been using PlayOn at our headquarters for a few months now, and we’ve been very impressed with the results.  PlayOn effectively streams virtually any video file format we throw at it over to our Roku box.  It has largely replaced our first generation Apple TV running Boxee software, which has gotten progressively more troublesome with age.  The picture quality over our wireless N network has been excellent, and the accompanying Android app has also worked well streaming shows over Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network or Wi-Fi.  With Time Warner Cable’s 30/5Mbps DOCSIS 3 broadband service, PlayOn’s picture quality remains excellent even when streamed to remote televisions.

PlayLater is an interesting concept, but we’re not as impressed with MediaMall’s newest endeavor, for these reasons:

Android Phone PlayOn Media Player

MediaMall has no official partnerships with any of the content producers supported by the product.  After covering other product innovations that offer consumers increased viewing convenience, we’re certain content producers will adopt the same hostile response to PlayLater they have with other recording software that allows viewers to store a digital copy on their home computer.  That response could come in lawsuits or through technical adjustments to try and block access to PlayLater.  The company says the legality of their software DVR should not be an issue, considering consumers can already record shows on cable company DVRs and home video recording units.  The biggest “risk” for MediaMall is the fact it allows users to record and save shows from services like Hulu, even after their “online viewing window” expires (typically after a month).  You could theoretically build a season-long collection of shows with PlayLater, a concept that violates Hulu’s terms and conditions.

While the concept of a DVR for online viewing allows for convenient time-shifting, most of the shows available to record are already available “on-demand.”  It makes little sense to record a show you can launch and watch anytime you want.  MediaMall says their product will appeal most to travelers who find themselves without an Internet connection, either because they are flying, driving, or visiting relatives without Internet access.  In these cases, watching pre-recorded shows may make sense. We think the concept of automatically recording shows from live video streams (or from Slingbox, cable or satellite TV) would be more helpful.  Those of us who would like to keep cable but dispense with overpriced DVR rental fees would thank you.

The PlayLater application currently works only on Windows-based computers.  A Mac version is reportedly in development.

Remote viewing requires the PlayOn companion application, which means leaving two software programs running continuously.

Recordings are DRM-protected and technically rely on a “screen-recording” approach, albeit one that takes place in the background.  Recordings occur in real time, and the video quality suffers slightly from the transcoding between the original media format and the DRM-protected video file eventually produced and saved on your computer.  Tests showed some occasional screen glitches when busy websites suffered from traffic congestion.  We also found very slight audio sync problems from time to time, but were barely noticeable.

You can’t currently move the video files and watch them on another computer or device — they either have to be watched on the original computer, or streamed with PlayOn to another device.

The package may be too expensive for some viewers’ tastes.  Without PlayOn, PlayLater sells for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year, but that ties your viewing options down.

Overall, PlayLater will probably be most attractive to those who find themselves uncomfortably without their Internet connection and looking for something to watch.  If you install the software on a portable laptop (left on to handle recordings), watching on the computer itself may prove to be the most convenient way to watch.  But we’re not impressed with the restrictive DRM making it impossible to simply transfer recordings between devices without streaming, and the concept of recording on-demand programming that can be watched whenever one wants anyway is not going to convince a number of people to pay $50 a year for the software.  PlayOn has proved far more useful to us than PlayLater probably ever will.  But one benefit we did appreciate with PlayLater — the ability to easily skip the increasing commercial load found on Hulu.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/PlayLater.flv[/flv]

An introduction to PlayLater.  (1 minute)

If you are a Comcast/Xfinity customer, are you still paying for anti-virus and security tools?  If so, Comcast may be able to save you some money, assuming you value the services they bundle with your broadband subscription.

Some customers first become aware of Comcast’s Constant Guard security protection suite after receiving e-mails warning they may have been infected by a bot or other malware.  Comcast has actually been providing some form of this service to customers since 2009, but many are completely unaware of the service, which includes free anti-virus software from Norton.

Comcast’s security alert e-mails usually don’t directly identify a misbehaving computer.  Instead, the company obtains lists of compromised IP addresses from third party security vendors who track botnets and other illicit computer crime.  When a Comcast IP address can be tracked back to a customer, Comcast can send an e-mail to that customer alerting them to the possibility they are running a compromised PC.

One major problem is that recipients of these e-mail messages often suspect they are phishing messages not actually sent by the cable company, and a number of them forwarded to Gmail e-mail accounts end up in the spam folder.  But, in most cases, they are actually legitimate Comcast e-mails.

Comcast advises customers to download their Constant Guard security suite to identify and remove potential threats from their computers.  The suite is free for Comcast customers and includes:

• Norton Security Suite: Provides protection that helps guard against identity theft, viruses, hackers, spam, phishing and more. It also includes parental controls to help keep your kids safe online.
• Secure Backup & Share: Securely backup and share your valuable files, like photos. (2 GB storage included at no additional charge.  Remember the 250GB monthly usage cap!)
• Desktop Applications: The Comcast Toolbar includes anti-spyware, network-embedded anti-spam and anti-virus technologies brought to you through partnerships with Bizanga, Cloudmark®, Goodmail CertifiedEmail™, and Return Path. In addition, Comcast uses up-to-date blocklists from Spamhaus and TrendMicro to help reduce and guard against unwanted spam.
• Proactive Bot Notification: As a new feature of the Constant Guard service, Comcast may email a “Service Notice” to your Comcast email address if they believe one or more of your computers may be infected with a type of virus called a Bot. A Bot is a malicious form of software that could use your computer to send spam, host a phishing site, or steal your identity by monitoring your keystrokes.

Considering it’s free, it may be worth a try.  Comcast customers can obtain the software and additional information from the Constant Guard website.

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Comcast demonstrates Constant Guard’s password and credit card-saving features.  (4 minutes)