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July 28, 2005
CinemaNow Adds High-Def
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(Excerpted from July 27 Broadcastingcable.com)
Movie download service CinemaNow has reached a deal to distribute programming from HDNet, marking the first time HD content has been available for legal downloading over the Internet.
The service will distribute more than 100 episodes from HDNet's library of original series, including Across America, Get Out! and several other HDNet specials. CinemaNow users will be able to download permanent copies of HDNet's programming for unlimited playback on the device to which it is downloaded. The service will rely on Microsoft's Windows Media Video HD.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 07:31 PM | Comments (1297) | TrackBackMotorola's Set-Top Unit Reports Increased Sales, Earnings
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Motorola’s stock has been trending up nicely for the last two months mostly on the strength of its cellular phone strength. However, the company has good news from its set top box unit, too.
Second quarter financial results and shipment totals for its Connected Home Solutions Segment (i.e. its set-top box division):
-- Sales totaled $718 million, up 35% from the year-ago quarter.
-- Operating earnings totaled $47 million, compared to $38 million for the year-ago quarter.
-- Set-top box shipments totaled 1.95 million units, compared to 1.4 million units for the preceding quarter. The company claims to have shipped a total of 39.2 million set-tops to date.
-- Shipments of thin-client digital set-tops totaled 1.12 million, compared to 691,000 for the preceding quarter.
-- Shipments of HD DVR's totaled 644,000, compared to 545,000 for the preceding quarter, while shipments of HD set-tops totaled 191,000, compared to 153,000 for the preceding quarter.Posted by Martino Mingione at 07:07 PM | Comments (1207) | TrackBack
Tut Systems, how'd you get so funky?
Oregon based, IPTV technology provider, Tut Systems, has raised $14.9 million via the sale of common stock and warrants to institutional investors.
"This financing provides Tut Systems with a fully funded business plan, which we believe will enable us to turn cash flow positive in the second half of 2006," Tut chairman, president and CEO, Sal D'Auria, said. "This funding provides us with the capital to expand our leadership position in our core IPTV markets, and to pursue top tier carrier opportunities around the world with our content video processing and FTTH edge modulation solutions. We are excited about the emerging opportunities in the IPTV market space and the confidence that our new investors have placed in Tut Systems."
Tut also released their second quarter results for 2005:
* Revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2005, was $9.7 million compared with revenue of $5.1 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2004.
* Net loss for the three months ended June 30, 2005, was $(4.5) million or $(0.17) per basic and diluted share. This compares with the net loss for the three months ended June 30, 2004, of $(3.6) million or $(0.18) per basic and diluted share.Posted by Martino Mingione at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2005
Atlas and C-COR Partner Up
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I prefer studying business deals where someone writes a check and someone else cashes it. "Strategic partnership" deals are less interesting but can be informative what direction a company wants the world to think they are headed and where they draw their lines.
Yesterday, C-COR and Atlas On Demand announced such a partnership deal. Atlas is a division of aQuantive who announced two months ago that they want to extend their Internet tools to enter the VOD space. To be fair, Atlas has indicated that their agency products will not be ready until the beginning of 2006, so maybe PR is all we can expect to have for now.
From their press release:
"The integration of C-COR and Atlas capabilities will form a technology backbone that will enable operators and programmers to respond quickly to the market demands for relevant and addressable advertising. The technology will address every step of the On Demand lifecycle, enabling advertising agencies to efficiently plan, buy, execute, and measure Video On Demand (VOD) campaigns, while allowing cable operators and network programmers to increase their advertising relevancy to viewers for greater revenue opportunities."
"...Our collaboration with Atlas On Demand will help establish an advanced advertising model to enable cable operators and the agency community to deliver dynamic and addressable advertising opportunities on VOD," said Terri Richardson, vice president of product and market management, C-COR Solutions Group.
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Atlas and SeaChange (C-COR's competitor) also struck up a strategic partnership two months ago. |
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C-COR has won some patent infringement suits against SeaChange this month. |
SBC says Full Lightspeed Ahead
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Amy Friedlander is the Senior Vice President of Programming at SBC having been appointed in March. Her background has many years experience in new media and IP, video-on-demand, broadband content and technology. This includes Xanthum Partners and Intertainer.
Ms. Friedlander dismissed speculation about any delays to SBC's forthcoming IPTV broadband internet protocol television service.
“We anticipate starting our controlled launch by the end of the year, which will be fairly small and then really start to roll out to the market in Q2 of next year,” she said. “I know that there’s been a lot of talk in the press about Microsoft and not being on time. Everything is still on track to roll on the time frame that we’re set to do.”
They are amassing enough broadband subscribers to equal a decent size cable company, that is if everyone of them became IPTV customers. SBC reported that the company has added 864,000 broadband customers over the last six months, giving them a total of nearly 6 million.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 06:50 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBackJuly 24, 2005
The New TV Dinner
This last week we heard that Gerald Thomas, a C.A. Swanson & Sons executive, died. He was credited with inventing the TV Dinner and changing America's eating habits ever since. Now, the WSJ reports a new trend - flat panel televisions "prices have dropped precipitously, making such displays more popular" and replacing CD's music as background ambiance.
"In both homes and restaurants, televisions are being turned on -- not off -- once the first guests arrive. Café Europa, a Bethesda, Md., restaurant known more for its romantic atmosphere and Continental cuisine, recently installed a flat-panel TV above the fireplace in its lounge."
Ah, but beware for that same story recounts many evening entertainment disasters arising from this trend.
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July 23, 2005
Is Television Ready for its Online Close-up?
Rebecca Lieb has some good comments that are pertinent to television content making its way onto web sites.
As recently as five years ago, media companies safely considered their Web sites mere brand extensions; summoned into existence to promote a core print or broadcast product. A site wasn't a product unto itself.
… In this new landscape, every medium must master all the media, and the real media masters want to master the Web … It must have been part of the reasoning behind AOL TimeWarner and Barry Diller's IAC. It's why top Yahoo! executives, such as Terry Semel and Lloyd Braun, were plucked from Hollywood studios.
… Will old dogs learn new tricks? … Somewhere between citizen journalism and global media conglomerates … a lot of media companies out there are cramming on new skill sets.Posted by Martino Mingione at 09:03 AM | Comments (460) | TrackBack
July 20, 2005
In Theater Advertising
Do you think you are watching too many commercials at your local movie theater?
From 2003 to 2004 in-theater advertising revenues increased 23% from $356 million to $438 million.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 12:33 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBackJuly 19, 2005
C-COR Handed a Victory in Patent Fight with SeaChange
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Seachange may be beating C-COR in VOD server market share but C-COR has the courts going for them. C-COR, the company which acquired nCUBE last December, has been handed a victory in a patent-infringement case that was brought by SeaChange in June, 2000.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a decision by the US District Court. Seachange contended that the C-COR/nCUBE MediaCube-4 product infringed upon SeaChange's patent that describes a method for redundantly storing video data objects in a distributed computer system. The case will now go back to the District Court, which must determine whether the SeaChange patent is, in fact, valid.
In a press release, SeaChange stressed that the ruling would not impact its financial statements as "no costs or awards were granted to either SeaChange or C-COR." Bill Styslinger, SeaChange CEO, added that the decision would not "have any impact on SeaChange's future opportunities in the on-demand television market worldwide."
An appeal of a decision by the same district court and the same judge in a second patent-infringement case between C-COR and SeaChange is still pending. In that case, the court ruled that SeaChange deliberately infringed upon a C-COR/nCUBE US patent that allows video servers to provide scaleable video services.
Originally, the jury in that case decided that SeaChange must pay nCUBE over $2 million in damages, plus a 7% royalty on all sales of infringing products post February 1st, 2002 and Judge Farnan decided that the case warranted awarding nCUBE double damages. And just to pile it on a little more, SeaChange was ordered to pay $62,000 of interest on those damages, and legal fees and court costs totaling $1.8 million.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 12:39 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBackNielsen will pester TV viewers every 42 minutes
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Most people know that Nielsen Media Research measures television audiences. Nielsen says that it has decided to prompt audience panel members who are using its new Active/Passive Meters every 42 minutes rather than whenever they change channels.
The shift to time-based prompting is because of the growth of non-linear viewing options, such as VOD and PVR, that render the old channel-based prompting model inadequate.
This new service level should really endear Nielsen further into the bossum of America.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 12:34 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBackJuly 18, 2005
Bundle up those services
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I generally am a best-of-breed type of guy and bundled services hold only margin value to me. However, much smarter people say that triple and quadruple plays will make or break cable MSO's and telco's in the future. Here is some information that supports their thesis.
The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) in a new study tracked interest in bundled communications services from cable providers. The data was drawn from phone surveys of 1,013 adults conducted by Centris in April.
The CTAM survey reinforces a general sense that bundled services are appealing to a wide range of consumers: 57% of those surveyed said they’re interested in bundling all communications services under a single provider.
59% of digital cable subscribers would like their operators to offer local phone service.
38% of all customers would like to see wireless phone service available from the local cable provider.
23% are interested in getting VoIP from their cable company vs. 11% who are interested in an independent third-party Voice-over-Internet Protocol service.
Full survey results are available here.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 08:48 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBackFederal Hill to Help Global Vision Gain VOD Business in Hollywood
Federal Hill Communications has been contracted by Global Vision to help establish business opportunities with Hollywood studios for its VOD content management system and encoding services in the Canadian market.
Federal Hill specializes in assisting companies in negotiating content-licensing and other types of agreements with movie studios and independent producers.
Global Vision has developed an Internet-based asset management system, dubbed VOD Canada/Wired-Vision, which it says oversees metadata, window allocation, access control, promotional materials, virtual storage of assets, order tracking, and delivery authorization. After content orders have been approved by a distributor, Global Vision handles the encoding and the secure delivery of assets.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 08:29 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBackAll Access Technology adds IPTV
All Access Technologies is a broadband provider that operates private Fiber-to-the-Home(FTTH) networks in Dallas, Las Vegas, and southern Florida. Presently, they deliver VOIP, high-speed data, security and other services to high-end multiple-dwelling units and master planned communities. I am guessing that they have more than 40,000 subscribers.
Now they want to add IPTV to the mix. So, AAT has tapped Eagle Broadband and GlobeCast to provide technology and support. IPTVComplete provides a combination of video content, headend infrastructure, satellite distribution and set-top boxes.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 08:21 AM | Comments (167) | TrackBackJuly 17, 2005
Time Warner tests Internet Television
It is being reported that Time Warner Cable has "quietly embarked on a trial in the San Diego area" that delivers 75 channels - all of Time Warner's expanded basic tier -- via IP to the PC.
This news was first reported in The San Diego Union-Tribune and is said to be a "six-month trial." About 9,000 customers who take the MSO's video and Road Runner data services are participating. According to the paper, the service is powered by a RealNetworks media player. Users must log in via a special Web site.
CED Broadband pointed out that this "service creates an automatic rival to non-cable affiliated companies such as Sling Media and Orb Networks." Perhaps, but I feel certain that this was not the motivating factor.
I am looking at recent actions occurring inside other Time Warner divisions. How about TBS and TNT going more into VOD. Or AOL starting up a joint venture that will deliver live and on-demand concerts and comedy shows. Or that Warner Brothers says it has already digitized most of its library of 5,000 films and will start selling some of them online later this year.
The more plausible explanation is that Time Warner is tired of its status as a slumbering giant of the "old media." It sees that Google is a media company that Wall Street gives a higher valuation! If you are Time Warner with all its assets, now is the time to start figuring out how to be a "new media" powerhouse. Some experiments may fail, but you don't get there without trying.
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Read my analysis about Time Warner's undervaluation. |
Verizon Adds Turner Content
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Verizon took another step forward for its Verizon FiOS TV video offering. Last week it signed a programming deal with Turner Broadcasting System.
The deal covers carriage of TBS, Turner Network Television, Cable News Network, CNN Headline News, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, CNN International, CNN en Español and Boomerang. The deal also covers carriage of TNT in HD.
“We are delighted to add Turner Broadcasting to the list of major programmers for FiOS TV,” said Terry Denson, vice president of programming and marketing for FiOS TV, in a prepared statement.
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Verizon signed NBC and Starz a few months ago. |
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
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The recent Live 8 concerts reminds us why it is important to dig a little at the television audience numbers. Across the Internet and in some publications, the perception is that the audience watching the concert over the Internet was larger than those who watched on traditional television.
Five million for AOL and just 2.9 million for ABC! “MTV and sister station VH1 had an average viewership of only 2.2 million viewers,” the Los Angeles Times said of the channels’ “soft ratings.”
In a bit of typical post-concert analysis, the Philadelphia Inquirer said, “The Internet left cable in the dust. To put it bluntly, MTV sank and AOL soared.”
"It turns out that the ratings [were an] apples-and-oranges comparisons. AOL’s 5 million figure was a cumulative number; the average viewership was 175,000 at any one time. " [A distinction that was pointed out on this blog]
"The ABC and MTV numbers in the 2 millions were averages. The networks’ cumulative audiences: 16.2 million for ABC’s two hours of coverage, and 13.3 million and 9.1 million, respectively, for MTV’s and VHI’s eight-hour simulcasts. Oh, and AOL’s numbers were global, not just U.S."
The analysis above came from Broadcast and Cable.
Still, it is an accomplishment for an Internet audience to even begin to be compared to television. I suspect we will see more of this trend. I recall the lopsided balance in audience sizes when comparing the broadcast to cable during its early years. Today, the aggregate cable audience is larger and still growing.
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Fresh from the Live 8 success, AOL, XM, and AEG formed a Joint Entertainment Venture |
July 15, 2005
Tandberg Television Opens 24/7 Network Operations Center for VOD
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Last year TANDBERG Television acquired Atlanta-based VOD infrastructure technology provider N2 Broadband. Now it has opened a 24/7 Network Operations Center (NOC) in Atlanta to provide technical support for its VOD and video compression technologies. According to Tandberg, the NOC is currently supporting over 1,500 VOD devices.
TANDBERG Television Americas president, Reggie Bradford (former CEO of N2) said: "We're clearly ahead of our competitors in providing a single support environment. Our center is staffed with highly skilled VOD and compression engineers. Our number one focus has always been customer satisfaction and now we're best placed in the industry to help customers optimize system availability while reducing operational costs."
In a seperate (but cryptic) press release on July 1st, TANDBERG said it "received [a software] order, valued in excess of $9M, from a North American cable customer" but did not specify who.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 05:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackBelgium has IPTV
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Belgium's incumbent telco, Belgacom, has commercially launched its DSL-based IPTV service. The service is powered by Siemens Surpass, Siemens' end-to-end IPTV solution.
The service provides subscribers with linear TV channels, an EPG, VOD, and pay-per-view content. The VOD service offers only movies but Belgacom says it will eventually also offer TV programs. They do not yet offer Web browsing or DVR.
Belgacom says their IPTV service is available to over half of Belgium's population with an expectation of that growing to 60% in the near future.
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Comcast Teams with Corus Entertainment on Children's VOD Service
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Cartoons and the sentence "Vortex On Demand demonstrates the synergy of our vertically integrated company, looping in our content division and the branding and packaging expertise ..." should never be mixed. But that is exactly what Corus Entertainment's CEO said. [note to John Cassaday, time to get a new PR copy writer]
Comcast is partnering with Corus Entertainment to provide nearly 200 hours of animated children's shows. Vortex On Demand will launch on Comcast's ON DEMAND platform later this month.
Vortex On Demand will join two existing children's programming services on Comcast: PBS Kids Sprout and Pre-K Kids On Demand. Comcast also recently began offering a VOD service, "Alpha Mom TV," that provides parents with informational videos on child-rearing.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 04:54 PM | Comments (222) | TrackBackBad News Bells
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Telco's are taking their legal battle to congress now. Congress may be too little too late for telephone companies battling with cable.
"In the past two weeks, lawmakers have announced plans for three different bills [which] ... would allow Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and other phone companies to add television service without getting permission from local regulators, as long as they pay franchise fees and comply with other requirements that municipal officials typically demand of cable companies ..."
City governments are similarly opposed because they don't want to relinquish any authority in setting cable-franchise fees and dictating schedules for ripping up roads and laying fiber communications lines into the ground.
Any phone company could cut the time needed for negotiating a franchise to a month or two by agreeing to the same terms as the local cable company. But few phone companies will take that option because they would be required to serve an entire market, not just the most profitable neighborhoods.
“Their big objection to complying with existing franchise deals is the market- wide–buildout requirement,” says Paul Gallant, media-policy analyst for Stanford Washington Research Group.
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Verizon vs. New Jersey |
China Tightens Controls on TV
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Maybe its just my simple brain, but I have never understood how a market economy and authoritarian governance can co-exist. But that is what we are told is happening in China. Nevertheless, the inherent conflict between those two macro forces is very evident in the television and radio industries.
China on Wednesday tightened controls on its television and radio stations, announcing a ban on forming partnerships with foreign broadcasters to operate channels. The rule supposedly took effect on July 7th.
From the WSJ:
"Some foreign companies such as Viacom Inc.s Nickelodeon have formed joint ventures with Chinese partners. Others sell blocks of programming, while a small group including a Chinese-language channel owned by News Corp.'s Hong Kong-based Star Group have been granted rights to broadcast to small areas of the mainland. It wasn't clear how those arrangements might be affected."
Om Malik has pointed out that China is #2 in Broadband penetration at over 28 Million. Many postings on this site have highlighted the fact that television shows and news are increasingly available as web channels. I suppose that Chinese authorities have a lot of regulatory work ahead of them.
An interesting coincidence: USA Today ran an article on the same day called "Can the future of TV be seen on the Web?"
Posted by Martino Mingione at 03:49 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBackSue the Bastards
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Forgent Networks is suing cable companies and satellite TV providers. The list includes Comcast, Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, CableOne, EchoStar and DirecTV. Forgent says that DVR providers are violating a patent filed by a videoconferencing company Forgent acquired.
While not suing Scientific-Atlanta, Motorola or TiVo at this time, it looks as though they might be next.
The whole purpose of Forgent appears to be 'technology licensing' as a business strategy. It has sold or shut down the video conferencing business it acquired over the years, but still holds patents for video compression and other technologies related to the conferencing business.
They make you proud to be an American, don't they?
UPDATE:
Forgent has previously met with some success in enforcing a patent for the JPEG compression format which it acquired, and Forgent claims that its licensing program has generated over $100 million in revenues from companies in Asia, Europe and the US. The DVR patent at question in the new litigation describes a computer-controlled video system that allows playback during recording: during playback.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 01:07 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBackThe coming Adpocalypse
The inspiration for the above picture comes from my post about Les Moonves and VOD. I recalled that while reading Charlene Li's blog today, specifically her entry entitled Google Video potentially offers business model options. She wrote:
"I want to propose another business model option – advertising. What if instead of charging consumers [they] could get advertising dollars...? Hmmm, Google has this little thing called AdSense that it could easily tap for advertising – I’ve written in the past how they could expand their text ad networking into rich media and video."
I state without hesitation that advertising is inevitable business model for this type of platform/service. People do not want to pay more money for their video on demand. One could argue that there are a number of people will not pay anything – micro-payments not withstanding.
Heck, around 25% of the television households in America still don't pay for either cable or satellite hookups. Of the other 75%, how many think their monthly bills are too low or reasonably priced?
Comcast and Time Warner determined that many people were unwilling to pay 'per viewing' or pay additional subscription fees (SVOD). I remember early on when one Comcast official discussed the vital role the UI played in customer acceptance of VOD. When VOD first appeared, many people would not click to the free content because they were worried that each click meant a larger cable bill and they were not taking any chances.
People understand that advertising is the necessary annoyance that keeps their bills lower. Ideally, the advertising model that would work best for non-linear video is similar to the ROI based models used throughout the Internet today (with a few twists). A VOD ad model could possibly carry themes from Google’s AdSense: that is, context sensitive placement.
This posting is not intended to convey the details of the ad business. Instead, the point is to state that VOD’s ultimate business model will have a strong advertising component to it.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 11:03 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBackJuly 14, 2005
The IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF)
The ATIS, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, launched the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF). The ATIS is based in Washington, DC more than 350 communications companies participate. Its goal is to develop and promote technical and operations standards for the communications and information technology industry.
“IPTV will enable consumers to use television as never before,” said Bill Smith, the chief technology officer of BellSouth and chairman of ATIS. “The ATIS IIF will provide the neutral ground for carriers, service providers, application developers, content providers and equipment manufacturers to work together and make the wide-scale deployment of standardized IPTV a reality.”
The forum wants to create "a reference architecture for IPTV, including interface definitions, and establishing standard metrics and requirements for content security and the quality of customer experience."
Posted by Martino Mingione at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJuly 13, 2005
DVD sales slow
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We recently witnessed DreamWorks Animation and Pixar Animation Studios having to adjust their earnings estimates when Shrek 2 and The Incredibles sold fewer DVDs than the companies had predicted. Their stock prices plunged on the news.
The studios have been able to bank on revenue from sales and rentals of DVDs, which have accounted for 60% of the entertainment companies’ bottom lines, compared to just 20% taken in ticket sales. Now, however, there are signs that DVD sales are starting to mirror the recent box-office slump.
Shrek 2 sold 35 million DVDs instead of the 55 million that DreamWorks executives had estimated. (The original Shrek sold 49 million DVDs.) The Incredibles is expected to sell 30 million DVDs instead of the 34 million projected.
What do you think is responsible for this news?
Lower overall quality of new movies dampens both the box office and DVD sales.
Netflix lowers the need to own the DVD.
BitTorrent file sharing steals away legitimate purchases of DVD's.
Consumers are waiting for either HD/DVD or BlueRay and do not want to buy now and then 'upgrade' later.
Newer VOD options are more convenient to watch than DVD.
The DVD upgrade cycle is finally over and people have finished upgrading their VHS collection.
Please tell me your thoughts.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 10:21 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBackI love to watch but my arm is getting tired
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The folks at the MIT Advertising Lab point us to where television, cell phones, and french chic may be headed. They write:
"France Telecom’s wireless unit, Orange SA, will soon roll out a new mobile video service that will let cellular phone subscribers view TV, movies, photos and broadband Internet content with a big screen viewing effect using Kopin-enabled [head mounted displays]."
I include it here because every once in a while we should look at cool gadgets worn by french chic models dressed in black.
However, I am trying to wrap my head around (oops, poor choice of phrase I suppose) exactly what the target market is here. Perhaps Parisians who want to be somewhere besides their living room; are still within a cell phone service area; and have nothing else happening around them so they watch TV?
All I know is that if the U.S. had these things, we could go to a baseball game and watch a movie instead.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 09:47 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBackTBS and TNT go VOD
Time Warner Cable is adding video-on-demand content from TBS and TNT. Each will provide 8-10 hours of programming per month to Time Warner's free VOD service.
Both networks are a part of the Time Warner corporate empire. But in light of last week's news that these and other Time Warner companies will be providing video assets to AOL, it makes you wonder if a bigger tectonic shift is in the making.
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Read that post, including comments about Time Warner's undervaluation. |
Expect the TBS offering to have short-form content and highlights from current and upcoming programs, as well as original TBS movies. TNT will take a slightly different approach, using VOD to complement programming themes on the linear network.
First up for the new service? Subscribers in Austin, Texas; Binghamton, N.Y.; Charlotte, N.C.; Los Angeles; El Paso/Rio Grande, Texas; and Syracuse N.Y.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 06:56 AM | Comments (912) | TrackBackDigital Convergence: TV- or PC-Based?
This thought by Sean Carton:
"Consider convergence through the eyes of us old fogies who grew up with 'old media.' Of course the TV would be the focal point of information delivery and entertainment. It's where we spent most of our time as kids getting entertained, right? Now look at convergence through the eyes of a 13-24 year old who spends more of his time in front of the computer. The idea of having to go to the living room makes less sense. Could it be the real frontier of interactive entertainment and TV programming isn't the TV but the PC?"
Maybe.
This casts some interesting new insight into Viacom's experiment with TurboNick.
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TurboNick: Cartoons on Demand |
The Eye on America now eyes Internet VOD
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Yawn. Another broadcast news group is going to offer up free video clips on the Internet? This time it is CBS News. They, like other traditional media companies, want to capture TV viewers who are flocking to the Internet. OK, really they want to capture advertisers who are noticing that viewers are flocking to the Internet.
This news story in the WSJ comes on the heels of Nickelodeon 's beta test of TurboNick, which will offer both repurposed television show and original content as VOD.
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TurboNick: Cartoons on Demand |
CBS says CBSNews.com will offer more frequent updates, with more videos available than on competing sites.
"The video will be much more timely; we may update stories six or seven times during the day," said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media. [quote appeared in the WSJ]
By allowing Web surfers to call up videos on demand, CBSNews.com will do more than cable networks, Mr. Kramer said. He added that the cable-news business is "a burden" and not one he'd want to venture into these days.
That last quote must be why I am making a note of this story to you. Fox News, ABC, and NBC started offering news video content on the Internet a while ago, so adding CBS news is nothing earthshaking. But I think that Mr. Kramer may be right: leapfrogging directly to Internet-based VOD seems like a smarter move than starting another cable network.
UPDATE:
The changes mentioned above come as CBSNews.com lags behind rival news sites. For the month of June the Web site had an audience of 5.8 million unique users, making it 17th out of the top 20 online news providers. The list is topped by Yahoo News, with 24.9 million unique users.
Plans call for the network's general news staff to begin producing video content for round-the-clock broadband play. New online offerings will include on-demand versions of 60 Minutes, The CBS Evening News and what network executives said would be a blog-like feature incorporating video from daily staff editorial meetings.
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For premier content airing on cable, CBS would take $1 per VOD view?. |
Aug 17, 2005
Bill Martens was named director of business development for CBSNews.com. He joins CBS from Reuters, where he was responsible for global newswire strategy in the agency’s media group. He also worked as a journalist in Asia.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 02:46 AM | Comments (705) | TrackBackJuly 12, 2005
Time Travel: the Killer App
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Further details have emerged on BT's plans for its broadband television service, now aiming to launch by summer 2006. BT will offer a hybrid broadband and broadcast system, combining a digital terrestrial television receiver with an Ethernet network connection.
Interestingly, they promise the ability to catch up with television programs from the previous week. Industry reports suggest that it will include an electronic guide featuring programs for fourteen days in advance and seven days previous. The ability to go back in time by up to a week is seen as the killer application.
BT says it has a license to cover all BBC programs for up to seven days, while negotiations are ongoing with other channels. Whether a blanket arrangement can be negotiated remains to be seen.
I have some news for content owners: wake up and smell the BitTorrent. Your content already is available for subsequent viewing – and not just last week’s copy!
Video Networks already offers the ability to ‘catch-up’ on particular programs with its HomeChoice service in the London area. Cable operator Telewest is planning a similar service that it calls Teleport Replay. This autumn the BBC will run a public trial of its IMP web-based peer-to-peer media player, which will offer a similar seven day window to view programs after they are first broadcast.
Some British Television will be Streamed over Broadband
The number of on demand or unicast streams that any broadcaster can currently support over broadband is relatively limited. AOL serve 175,000 simultaneous streams during the recent Live 8 concerts, which is believed to be a record.
However, using a system such as multicast, currently available only through a limited number of service providers, any number of users could potentially be provided with live streams.
The BBC is to premiere some of its comedy programmes on the web, while Channel 4 is reported to be planning to stream its entire television output over broadband.
Stuart Murphy, the controller of BBC Three, said that it is a natural progression to make programmes available on broadband: “Crucially, it can deliver a television experience whenever people want it.”
Channel 4 is apparently planning to simulcast all of its television content on broadband, although this could present significant issues with programme rights.
The channel says it is in the process of developing its broadband strategy and will be making further announcements in the coming months.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 12:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackAOL, XM, AEG form Joint Entertainment Venture
This just in: America Online, XM, and AEG have form a joint venture called Network Live that will deliver live and on-demand concerts and comedy shows via the Internet, wireless and satellite. They have named Kevin Wall as its CEO.
"We're creating the network of the future, being able to access entertainment digital content anytime, anywhere on any particular device," Wall said.
AOL recently had success in delivering seven separate feeds from the July 2 Live 8 concerts -- all without any meltdowns. Kevin Wall was in charge of that project. Some 5 million people viewed the shows online, and AOL broke its own records with a peak of 175,000 simultaneous users.
Network Live will also try to license programming for distribution on wireless, HDTV and other platforms, though AOL said no deals have been struck yet.
Revenues will come from ads and licensing fees, with no current plans to charge for shows on a pay-per-view basis, Wall said.
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Read the entire story at Yahoo News. |
In a previous post, I noted that AOL Video offers free access to search and playback for more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets from Time Warner, including television programs and music videos, movie trailers from Warner Bros. and news clips from CNN, MSNBC and others.
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Read that post, including comments about Time Warner's undervaluation. |
Sun spots IPTV opportunity and shines on advertising
Andy Bechtolsheim was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems with Scott McNealy. In 2003, Andy went and founded Kealia, a super-secret startup that was building a distributed, high-availability video server of some sort called Streamstar. In 2004, Sun Microsystems aquired Kealia.
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Why should we take notice? It appears that Sun spots IPTV as a significant business opportunity.
"We are going to go to carriers and offer an end-to-end IPTV solution," says Darrell Jordan-Smith, VP of Sun's global telco industries group. "We'll offer everything from the streaming technology, the processing technology, the storage technology, the Web services technology, the set-top box technology -- all the way down to the devices themselves."
Scott, way to go there! I am glad to see that you have limited yourself to just one piece of the IPTV pie. Could there be anything else? Why yes there is; and it is near and dear to my business heart.
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Indeed, Bechtolsheim's pitch to broadcasters at the NAB2005 conference earlier this year highlighted network-based video recording capabilities -- a sort of gigantic TiVo that serves thousands of users much like a Web server hosts thousands of customized Web pages.
"The advantage is that the ad insertion behavior is completely under central control, and can range from no-skip to mini-ads... to any other business model that is acceptable to advertisers," Bechtolsheim noted in his presentation.
Informitv says that Sun is understood to be offering carriers an end-to-end solution in partnership with other suppliers.
Among these could be interactive television software provider Digisoft, based in Ireland. Sun gave an IPTV demonstration in conjunction with Digisoft at the Supercomm conference in Chicago last month. Digisoft provides interactive television applications and application management for the MHP and OCAP platforms, which are both based on Java.
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Read 'Sun Shines on IPTV' in Light Reading. |
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Read more about Digisoft and Sun at Informitv.com. |
July 10, 2005
Interactive Television (ITV); Where is it at today?
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Interactive TV is one of those technologies that enable many new services but yet we know so little about. In its simplest explanation, interactivity means this: there is a 'return path' between the broadcaster and the viewer. Therefore, television can be transformed from a passive activity into an interactive one. All you need are 'ITV applications' that engage the viewer and viola!
I am not a big believer that people have a burning desire to 'interact' with their televisions. However, there are some focused ideas that make a lot of sense. For direct revenue opportunities, the main money seems to be on gaming and gambling, although the latter represents more of a challenge in the United States.
I thought it wise to review some of my notes about ITV in light of the recent news that Emuse was partnering with Five to deploy interactive sponsorship for Peugeot, and that OpenTV was giving its interactive application for The Sporting News away free to Echostar subscribers.
The most informative read about where ITV is today was an assessment by informitv.com of the Interactive Television Forum 2005 that took place in London in late June. Here are some excerpts that I find interesting:
"The general tone ... was more self-critical and less self-congratulatory than at some conferences over recent years, suggesting a mood of pragmatic realism rather than idealism at what seems like a transitional period in interactive television."
"... there is a growing recognition that interactivity is no longer an interesting add-on; it has to support the core business of television."
"There was an evident tension between a perceived need to justify the return on investment through direct consumer revenue, and a wider, more strategic approach to support the television medium. For many, it was apparent that immediate commercial objectives were the priority."
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I do see a significant revenue possibility in the future (defined as 3 years out at least) of using some ITV technology in a VOD advertising solution. Interactive elements can be integrated into video on demand to transform the idea of advertising from 30-second commercial inserts into one of measurable opt-in only when the viewer is interested. But I will save those rantings for another time.
The report concluded with the following industry assessment.
"... following the news that BT is teaming up with Microsoft to launch a broadband video service, there was general recognition that broadband and on-demand services offered new opportunities for interactive television ..."
"The emergence of IPTV, internet protocol television, has without doubt been one of the most important developments in the field of interactive television over the last year. The jury is still out, but billions are being bet on the outcome."
"There is a lot to learn from the UK’s interactive television experience, but there is a strong sense that the real revolution in digital television has yet to come."Posted by Martino Mingione at 09:42 AM | Comments (91) | TrackBack
Forget the Bootleg, Just Download the Movie Legally
(Excerpted from The New York Times Technology Section)
After years of avoiding it, Hollywood studios are preparing to let people download and buy electronic copies of movies over the Internet, much as record labels now sell songs for 99 cents through Apple Computer's iTunes music store and other online services.
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The studios have been working to confront the business challenges of digital sales. Those initiatives gained new urgency on June 27 when the Supreme Court ruled that companies distributing software that allows users to trade pirated copies of audio and video files are liable for copyright infringement only if they induce users to break the law.
Sony is converting 500 movie titles to a digital format that can be downloaded and sold. Universal Pictures ... is preparing nearly 200 titles for digital online sale. And Warner Brothers ... says it has already digitized most of its library of 5,000 films and will start selling some of them online later this year.
The studios have strong incentive to make sure they offer consumers legal options: the rapid adoption of high-speed Internet connections is making the trading of pirated copies online easier and more widespread.
Not surprisingly, the videos that people most want to download are those that Hollywood is most shy about making available online.
Studios do not want to undercut box office receipts and DVD sales for hit movies, and TV networks do not want to put popular shows online, which might allow more viewers to skip the commercials. CNN just moved most of its online video content from a paid service to its free Web site, with a commercial in front of each clip.
And even lengthier programming is gaining appeal. About 700,000 people watched the season premier episode of WB's "Jack and Bobby" through video streaming when it was on AOL last fall.
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Broadband's Sizzling Growth. |
July 09, 2005
AOL Recent Live 8 Statistics
AOL provided live coverage of the recent Live 8 concerts, featuring feeds from London, Philadelphia and other capitals around the world, reaching a record 175,000 simultaneous streams and a total of 5 million unique users.
“On-demand video is rapidly emerging as a mainstream behaviour on the Web, and we want AOL to be the first place users go for online video,” said Kevin Conroy, the chief operating officer of AOL Media Networks. “We’re combining best-in-class video search technology with extensive video programming to offer consumers the best video experience anywhere on the Web.”Posted by Martino Mingione at 11:54 PM | Comments (475) | TrackBack
The Sporting News is given away free to Echostar subscribers
OpenTV is an Interactive TV middleware company owned by Liberty Media. I keep an eye on them because they are putting together the relationships and ITV technology that might make them a significant player in the future of television. (More on this in another post).
The Sporting News is a channel developed by OpenTV and is available free of charge to subscribers of the Dish Network with compatible receivers. EchoStar Communications Corporation serves more than 11.2 million satellite television subscribers in the United States.
The Sporting News channel covers headline news, scores, standings and statistics for seven sports: National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and NCAA football and basketball.
EchoStar customers with the following OpenTV-enabled receivers can see the Sporting News channel: Model 3900, 4900, DISH 301D, 301E, 111, 311, 322, DISH Player - DVR 501, 508, 510, 522, 721, DISH 811 and DISH Player - DVR 921 and 942.
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OpenTV's middleware resides on more than 50,000,000 set top boxes. |
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OpenTV announced an IPTV solution. |
Nickelodeon Cartoons on Demand (NOD?)
(Update Below):
Here is another example of a cable network experimenting with Internet Television.
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Nickelodeon has launched a new broadband internet channel called TurboNick. The "channel" will contain 20 hours of original programming including SpongeBob SquarePants. Unlike NICK the cable network, viewers can watch TurboNick on their own time schedule.
The only bad thing I saw was that I had to fire up Internet Explorer because Nickelodeon is oblivious to the fact all the cool kids use Firefox. After finding my IE icon, I can confirm the video quality on TurboNick is TV quality.
Advertisers are showing interest. Nickelodeon has commitments from Topps, General Mills, Kellogg's, Activision and Sony Pictures. TurboNick is using Nick's existing sales force to sell the advertising, consisting of pre-roll :15 and :30 spots appearing no more than once within a five-minute period.
Nick Jr., a Nickelodeon channel targeted at pre-schoolers, is launching a new version of its "Nick Jr. Video" Web-based VOD service. According to Nickelodeon, the new version features improved video quality and more content.
Both long- and short-form programs are available on the service, and all offerings can be viewed in full-screen mode. Other content available at launch includes full-length episodes of the shows, "Dora the Explorer," "Blue's Clues," "Little Bill," "Oswald," and "Gullah Gullah Island," as well as around 70 other videos.
Programming will be refreshed on a bi-weekly basis. Among other things, the new service features playlists, and a host who helps preschoolers navigate through the site via interstitials.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackBroadband Grows 7% in Q1 2005
Broadband penetration in the U.S. is a growth market right now. Here are some statistics published by Leichtman Research Group about market size and market share as of the end of Q1 2005.
The breakout by provider is interesting as is the split between Telco's and Cable. But what interests me the most is the aggregate number: 38.87 Million subscribers. Lets put that into some perspective:
Number of television households in the U.S.: 108,500,000
Number of Cable television households: 91,400,000
Number of Broadband households: 38,867,000
What this tells me is that it is possible to build interesting VOD businesses that are Internet based. Do not read that to mean IPTV -- rather, Internet Television.
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What is the difference between Internet Television and IPTV? |
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MSN and Yahoo are two Internet Television plays, each signed content deals with Mark Burnett Productions. |
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Microsoft sees that video is going to be a key driver in developing future markets. |
July 08, 2005
Cables Lacks High-Def Content For VOD
(Excerpted from Videobusiness.com) )
Cable operators bemoan the fact that, "For the first time, cable is actually in the lead in deploying something," says Time Warner Cable Digital Services Director Glen Hardin, referring to HD over VOD. Nonetheless, fear of piracy and a reluctance to release films to undermine the value of the DVD window have led the studios to keep their most valuable high-def content away from VOD.
"High-def DVD hasn't come out yet. So if you're the studios, do you want to have a high- def product in the marketplace that's more convenient than DVD?" InDemand president- CEO Rob Jacobson said. "DVD has been a phenomenal product for Hollywood. They don't want cable operators to come out with a better product that isn't as profitable to them."
Jacobson predicted that studio attitudes toward a high-def VOD service would not begin to soften until a high-def DVD format is established in the market.
High-def VOD content also is caught between programmers' desire to charge a premium for high-def programming and cable operators' drive to include as much on-demand programming as possible on free or subscription VOD tiers.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackWhere oh where is our VOD content? Where oh where can it be?
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From today's Wall Street Journal in regard's to the annual Sun Valley CEO retreat:
Sumner Redstone is known for telling investors and journalists that "content is king." But something else is vying for that throne. What people watch is fast losing ground to how those people watch it. [Emphasis added since this is major theme of my blog]
... content providers seem to be falling all over themselves to do deals to distribute their programs -- or tailored versions of them -- to all sorts of new venues. Witness the push of Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN in December to target sports fans with sports content on ESPN-branded wireless phones using Sprint Corp.'s wireless network. Or efforts by News Corp.'s Fox TV network and others to distribute "mobisodes," or short versions of television programs aimed at screens on mobile phones.
Now if someone spots Sumner Redstone and Brian Roberts talking, wake me up. Maybe a VOD deal can be had!
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What the major players say about why VOD is a collection of low-demand items. |
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Newsweek had a fascinating article entitled Television Reloaded. It talked about these new forms of how people will watch TV. |
July 07, 2005
Now I can be a Hammock Potato
Is it too late to trademark that phrase?
TiVo created its TiVo-To-Go program that allows you to carry your recordings on portable devices such as a laptop. This blog reported about Echostar investing in Archos to do that same thing with their DVRs in a program called PocketDish.
Television is quickly becoming an "everywhere" kind of thing. Cheap hard drives, flash memory and color displays are quickly causing the TV and DVD player and portable music player to merge into a fascinating class of device called the portable media center. Everyone's getting into the act. To a lesser extent, even cell phone makers and service providers are jumping on the bandwagon. The newest cell phones will soon download songs and play video.
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While doing my research on Archos, the company who received the $9M investment by Echostar, I ran across what looks to be a great device -- the AV700. It really shows what happens when a number of popular consumer electronics merge together. Archos has been pressing the case for a device that is more independent of the PC and, as a result, a little more functional than Microsoft's Portable Media Centers.
The concept of the device is simple. Take a large hard drive and combine it with a nice liquid crystal display and enough electronics to sync with a PC, a TV set-top box, stereo system or other entertainment device. The result is part Apple iPod, part TiVo, and as portable as a paperback novel.
What interested me about the AV700 is the screen size and weight. There have been many portable media devices unveiled in the last year, but, at 7 inches, the AV700 is nearly twice as big. It's sufficiently large enough to watch a full-length movie or a TV show.
It's also light--weighing a bit more than 20 ounces. It's 8 inches long, about 4 inches wide and less than an inch thick. It can fit in the pocket of briefcase or even in a small purse.
I am not sure that I would buy one for the hammock just yet because these things can only get better with time. However, they do appear ready for prime-time today and are on sale at Amazon.com.
Posted by Martino Mingione at 03:34 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBackThe US (so far) is a distant third in IPTV
I know, I know ... you read this blog (and others) for news about IPTV and inevitably you end up reading about so many things going on in Asia and Europe. But some of us live right here in the good ol' U S of A! What gives?
The fact is that Asia is the fastest growing market for IPTV with subscribers set to double in the next 12 months (Source: Gartner, March 2005), followed by Europe and the U.S. as a distant third.
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Jeffrey Soong, CEO of Broadband Network Systems points out that while "Asia as a region is far from homogeneous, there are a number of common factors across many countries which have provided a fertile ground for telecommunications operators here to venture into the IPTV arena."
"First of all, telcos in Asia tend to ... be well financed and to have existing connectivity to a much larger number