VideoNuze Posts

Adobe announced last evening that the BBC will be using the company's "Project Primetime" video platform to deliver live and VOD streaming coverage of the London Olympics, which start tomorrow evening. The BBC win follows news from 2 weeks ago that Adobe is also powering NBC's ambitious NBC Olympics Live Extra app, which will offer 3,500 hours of video. If all goes well from the NBC and BBC efforts, Project Primetime will gain significant credibility from the Olympics, helping position Adobe as a major player in the intensely competitive online video platform space.

For its Olympics coverage, the BBC is using "Primetime Simulcast" which allows it to live stream events across the web, mobile devices and connected TVs. Specifically, a new HTML5 app has been developed using Adobe PhoneGap, a cross-platform toolset. Video is prepared and delivered by Adobe Media Server for both HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) adaptive bit rate streaming formats. The video player uses the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF).

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Netflix reported its Q2 '12 results yesterday, and once again DVD subscriber losses in the U.S. were a driving factor in the company's overall performance. While Netflix added over 500K streaming subscribers, the company lost another 850K DVD subscribers. This has become a persistent theme in Netflix's U.S. subscriber dynamics: modest growth in streaming undermined by significant DVD losses.

In fact, as the chart below shows, over the last 3 quarters Netflix's DVD subscribers (standalone and hybrid with streaming) have dropped by 4.7 million, from 13.9 million to 9.2 million. That 34% drop is even more significant if you broaden the period to include estimated churn during Q3 '11 and forecast churn for Q3 '12. Q3 '11 was the quarter in which Qwikster was announced/withdrawn and the DVD/hybrid price increases were instituted. Churn spiked by about 2 million subscribers vs. Q2 '11; it is probably fair to assume that almost all of that was among DVD subs. For Q3 '12, Netflix's mid-point forecast for DVD subs is 8.5 million, a 700K drop from Q2.

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At last month's VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, our closing session was a big picture debate on the future of online video advertising, featuring AOL's Frank Besteiro, NBCU's Peter Naylor, TiVo's Tara Maitra, TubeMogul's Brett Wilson and YouTube's Suzie Reider, which I moderated.

One of the things the group addresses is whether buyers of online video advertising will prefer an impression-based model (akin to traditional TV advertising) or an engagement-based model (akin to search and other forms of online advertising). I believe it's a key question as it goes to the heart of how video advertising will work and the experience viewers will have online. Within this larger question is the omnipresent issue of measurement - when will there be an accepted currency for online video advertising, and what will it be?

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Video technology provider NeuLion is powering China Network Television's (CNTV) streaming coverage of 5,600 hours of live coverage of the London Olympics, via a new premium service called CNTV 5+ VIP. The service, which is free, has exclusive streaming rights in China. CNTV 5+ VIP is yet another example of how central streaming will be to this summer's games, which start later this week.

Chris Wagner, NeuLion's EVP and co-founder, told me last week that while streaming is ubiquitous in China, what's noteworthy about CNTV 5+ VIP is that it is adaptive and will deliver an HD experience, streaming at an average of 1.6 mbps, compared to most online video in China which is 300-500 kbps. NeuLion is ingesting the linear broadcast and specific event video, encoding and distributing via its CDN as well as providing the video player technology.

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One of the hottest topics in the online video world is whether ad dollars are shifting over from TV. Given that so much of original online video is free, and that ad spending as a whole is roughly flat, the success of online video pretty much depends on persuading media buyers to allocate some of their dollars to online video.

At last month's VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, a panel of industry experts from GroupM, Digitas, Adap.tv, Collective and Canaan Partners discussed this topic and key challenges to increasing online video ad spending. Not surprisingly, the top challenge is improved viewer measurement and more specifically, unifying online metrics with traditional ones from TV. This wide-ranging discussion provides great insight into what media buyers are looking for and how the online video ad market is evolving.

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 140th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast.

In this week's podcast Colin and I discuss NOW TV, which Sky, the big British satellite-based pay-TV operator, launched on Tuesday. Initially the service allows unbundled access to Sky Movies, a collection of around 600 early window movies, on either a monthly subscription or a la carte rental basis. The big breakthrough here is that traditionally Sky Movies was only available if you first subscribed to the basic service, which costs around 60 pounds/month.

Colin views the move as an attempt to re-start growth at Sky, moving the company beyond the approximately 10 million subscribers it has, mainly by appealing to broadband-only households. Clearly in NOW TV's cross-hairs are both Netflix and LoveFilm. More broadly, Colin and I discuss how NOW TV might or might not be a model for U.S. pay-TV operators to consider. I wrote earlier this week that with the cost of pay-TV service continuing to rise and consumers' expectations shifting, it's time for the industry to present more flexible pricing and packaging options to subscribers.

Listen in to learn more.

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 36 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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This summer, England is the epicenter of sports video streaming; a couple weeks ago Wimbledon had multiple online video enhancements, then starting July 27th will be the Summer Olympics, the biggest live streamed sporting extravaganza ever. Sandwiched in between, running today through the weekend, golf takes center stage, as the storied Open Championship from Royal Lytham & St. Annes offers a variety of online video features to immerse golf fans in all the action.

For U.S. viewers, the centerpiece of online viewing will be ESPN's simulcasting of its 73 hours of TV coverage on WatchESPN, including 10 1/2 hours of live play of the first two rounds. Of course WatchESPN is an authenticated TV Everywhere service, so you have to be a pay-TV subscriber to access it (and not all pay-TV providers support it yet either). I've been tuning in this morning and the quality of the video is outstanding. ESPN also has a separate feed for cameras positioned at holes 1 and 18 so you can see all the players come through, plus other "outside the ropes" video and non-video features.

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Dailymotion, the 2nd-largest video portal in the world, is re-launching its Dailymotion Cloud service this morning, bringing further competition to the already crowded online video platform space.

Dailymotion Cloud has been enhanced with features like DRM support for Adobe Flash Access and Microsoft Playready, syndication between it and the consumer-facing Dailymotion.com platform, customizable player designs and streamlined file uploading and encoding. Underscoring that all these features are table stakes for OVPs, in a briefing earlier this week, Roland Hamilton, managing director of Dailymotion US and product head Florent Pajani emphasized that pricing and an all-inclusive approach will be Dailymotion Cloud's main differentiators.

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