VideoNuze Posts

Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 152nd edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast. This week Colin and I first share our reactions to the launch of Boxee TV earlier this week. Colin is struck by Boxee TV's unlimited video recording feature, the first that either of us have seen. Colin also points out potential challenges with upstream bandwidth that could be a challenge for Boxee TV recording programs at HD quality. Overall though, Colin likes Boxee TV's direction and believes it's a better strategy for the company than the original Boxee Box.

As I wrote earlier this week, I see Boxee TV in the context of innovation happening with broadcast TV and DVR. Along with Simple.TV and Aereo, consumers are gaining more control of their broadcast TV experience. In addition, they're all overlapping to an extent with Hulu and Hulu Plus which already offer unprecedented access to broadcast TV programs. It's still too early to tell which of these approaches will succeed, but Colin and I share our predictions.

Click here to listen to the podcast (21 minutes, 39 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Here's another great reason to register now for the Dec. 5th VideoSchmooze Online Video Leadership Forum in NYC: all early bird registrants will be entered in a drawing to win an $850 Samsung 40 inch LED Smart TV. This highly-rated 1080p HDTV's screen is just 1.8 inches thick and is WiFi enabled with all your favorite over-the-top apps integrated. The Smart TV is being graciously provided by NeuLion.  The only qualifier is you must actually be in attendance when we do the drawing on Dec. 5th.

The early bird discounted ticket price is $95, which includes the full morning program through 12 noon, continental breakfast and networking. 5-pack and 10-pack group rates are also available.

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Odd as it may seem on the surface, the intersection of broadcast TV and the DVR has become a hotbed of innovation. Yesterday brought the latest player in this space, Boxee TV, which followed news earlier this week that Simple.TV has begun shipping, which itself followed the launch earlier this year of Aereo.

While each has its own unique approach, they all fundamentally provide viewers more flexibility to record and play back broadcast TV programs by leveraging over-the-top, broadband delivery, while seeking to undercut the price of a monthly subscription to pay-TV. They are all segmenting the consumer market, pursuing a cohort of "cord-cutters" and "cord-nevers" open to alternatives to pricey multichannel TV bundles.

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Advertising on connected TVs is continuing to improve, as Rovi late last week announced a new polling feature in its Rovi Advertising Network. Jeff Siegel, SVP, Global Media Sales, told me that this is one of the top capabilities advertisers have been asking for. Advertisers will typically seek a viewer's opinion on something and as a reward will offer a coupon or other incentive.

Rovi is a key player in the budding connected TV advertising market, as it both powers and sells ads for connected TV manufacturers Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Panasonic. NPD recently estimated that 27% of TVs shipped in Q1 '12 had Internet connectivity. However that number can be a little deceiving, since not all these buyers will actually connect their TVs. Jeff explained that Rovi breaks the TV market into four buckets: total number of TV sets shipped, the percent of these that are connectable, the percent of these that are actually connected, and finally what they are used for.

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Yesterday marked another milestone in online video's continuing evolution as 8 million concurrent live streams of Felix Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos Mission were delivered (note that's according to YouTube, but has not yet been independently verified). I was one of those live streams, gathered with my family around my Mac watching the jump unfold on YouTube in full screen mode.

I figured a lot of people were also watching, so what really hit me was the quality of the stream - no buffering, no audio/video synch issues, no pixelation, nothing. Just a seamless high-quality feed for the full hour we watched. In my experience, that would be noteworthy even if only a small audience was tuned in and it was on-demand. The fact that it was done with 8M live concurrent streams seems quite significant.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 151st edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast. This week Colin and I first discuss YouTube's curation plans which I wrote about yesterday. I've received a number of emails about my post, with most readers intrigued by the idea, and wanting to learn more. Colin likes YouTube's curation direction too, seeing it as a reminder of the value of programming.

Colin then walks us through some of the interesting reactions he got on a panel he moderated at the TV Next conference, "The Rise of the Next-Gen Operator." He asked the question - imagine its 2022, what does a pay-TV operator look like? Listen in to learn more.

Last but not least, Colin is moderating a session for Ooyala at next week's Digital Hollywood. Ooyala is offering complimentary admission to the conference in exchange for completing the form located here.

Click here to listen to the podcast (21 minutes, 15 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!

YouTube has gained a huge amount of publicity for its original channels initiative, which was expanded internationally earlier this week. Now, according to an article by Magnify.net's CEO Steve Rosenbaum in Forbes yesterday, another critical and emerging YouTube strategy is "curation."

YouTube is the 800 pound gorilla for video uploads - with 72 hours added every minute - and the idea behind curation is to get users to cull through that massive video library to either add to their own channels and/or to build new ones, using others' videos.

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Here's a pretty eye-opening update of how pay-TV operators' VOD movies options are faring compared with OTT services like Netflix, Redbox, Amazon and others: just 22% of pay-TV subscribers order at least 1 VOD movie per month, whereas half of them use an OTT service. The data is according to a new study by Digitalsmiths of 2,000 pay-TV subscribers in North America over age 18 and speaks to the business opportunity in on-demand movies that pay-TV operators have left open for OTT competitors.

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