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Early Bird Discount for June 15th VideoSchmooze LA Breakfast Ends This Week
A heads-up that the early bird discount for the June 15th VideoSchmooze LA breakfast end this Friday. The breakfast and panel discussion will be at
the beautiful SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills. The topic of our panel discussion is "How Hollywood Succeeds in the Digital Distribution Era."
Click here to learn more and take advantage of the early bird discount
I'll be moderating the panel, and the discussion will be structured for maximum audience participation and Q&A. We have tons of great topics to discuss such as Netflix's streaming success, the pending impact of Google TV, the importance of affiliate fees in the pay-TV ecosystem, the rise of multi-platform distribution, the future of linear, ad-supported TV, etc. The VideoSchmooze breakfast is a perfect opportunity for those looking to better understand Hollywood's digital distribution future and network with colleagues.
Our outstanding panel will help us understand what all this and more means:- Albert Cheng - EVP, Digital Media, Disney/ABC Television Group
- Gannon Hall - Chief Operating Officer, Kyte (co-lead sponsor of the breakfast)
- Justin Herz - SVP, Direct-to-Consumer, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution
- Ted Sarandos - Chief Content Officer - Netflix
- Ben Weinberger - CEO and Co-Founder, Digitalsmiths (co-lead sponsor of the breakfast)
Thanks to the event's co-lead sponsors Digitalsmiths and Kyte, and supporting sponsors Akamai, Horn Group, Irdeto, ScanScout and Signiant.
Click here to learn more and take advantage of the early bird discountCategories: Events
Topics: VideoSchmooze
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With Leanback, YouTube Could be the First Big Beneficiary of Google TV
A couple of weeks ago at the Google I/O conference, YouTube provided a tantalizing glimpse of a new UI called "Leanback" which optimizes YouTube for viewing on TV.
With Leanback, YouTube videos can be navigated and consumed in more of a TV-like manner - more passively and for longer durations. Converting YouTube - the king of short online video clips - to a more conventional TV experience might seem like a surprising ambition for Google, but in the context of Google TV, it's actually quite strategic. Not only should it help Google TV gain acceptance, it could also position YouTube to be the first big beneficiary of Google TV.
Way back in March, 2008, in "YouTube: Over-the-Top's Best Friend," I argued that providing full, open Internet experiences was the best path for new OTT devices to succeed, and that YouTube would be their perfect partner. YouTube is so valuable for OTT devices like Google TV and others because it dominates the online video world, accounting for 40% of all video views every month for the past 2 years. For many users it is the only online video brand they know and by far the most heavily used.
Categories: Aggregators, Devices
Topics: Google, Google TV, Hulu, YouTube
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Rhythm New Media Releases Bullish Stats on Mobile Video Usage and Ads
A report this morning from Rhythm New Media, a firm that develops mobile video apps for TV programs and runs its own mobile video ad network, provides fresh reasons to be bullish on mobile video. The report is based on an estimated 250 million video views/month that Rhythm has tracked in Q1 '10 on its mobile video platform. Two key stats that jumped out for me: an average 86.7% completion rate and a 1.7% click through rate for its 15-second pre-rolls. The latter is roughly consistent with data Will reported from Rhythm about 6 months ago. It is noteworthy that Rhythm's click through rates are holding steady as it scales up.
To get a sense of how Rhythm's mobile data stacks up against online video advertising data, I compared it to a report eMarketer and YuMe released based on Q4 '09 data, which showed a steady decline in click through and completion rates for pre-rolls. Rhythm's completion and click through rates are 24% and 56% higher than those in the eMarketer/YuMe report. While it's
a bit of an apples vs. oranges comparison because YuMe's much larger network includes many different types of video content (vs. Rhythm's TV program only) and the ads YuMe surveyed were a mix of 15-second and 30-second spots (vs. Rhythm's 15-second only), the differences may be an early indicator of the contrast between mobile and online video.
Categories: Advertising, Mobile Video
Topics: eMarketer, Rhythm New Media, YuMe
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Roku Ready to Push Snazzy New Netflix UI
Roku will begin pushing out a snazzy new UI for Netflix Watch Instantly users tomorrow. I've been playing around with it today and can enthusiastically say it's a huge step forward over the prior UI. First and foremost the new UI allows on-screen search, browse and Watch Instantly queuing - features that eliminate the process of teeing something up on your computer and then flipping over to your TV to watch. These have been available on the game consoles for some time and are an important step forward for Roku.
Roku owners will be able to use their remote controls to scroll through cover art and select what they want to watch. The cover art is arranged in nearly identical categories to those displayed in Netflix's own Watch Instantly online UI (e.g. new arrivals, comedy, kids, etc.). It's impressive how fast the Roku app interacts with Netflix online. I added and deleted movies in each and toggled back and forth to see if the other was updated. In all cases the queue was immediately current.
Categories: Aggregators, Devices
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #63; Yankee Group Cord-Cutting Research Download Available
Daisy Whitney and I are pleased to present the 63rd edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for May 27, 2010.
In today's podcast Daisy starts us off by discussing her New Media Minute this week, in which she highlights recent research from Yankee Group forecasting that 1 in 8 consumers will become cord-cutters in the next 12 months. With the rise of online video viewing, cord-cutting - the idea of consumers discontinuing their pay-TV subscription service in favor of free online sources - has become a very hot topic.
In this context, the Yankee research got a lot of attention when it was released. I recently had a chance to speak to the 2 analysts responsible for the research, Vince Vittore and Dmitriy Molchanov, who walked me through some of their assumptions. They've also been kind enough to share half a dozen of their slides, which are available for a complimentary download here.
Yankee's conclusion is based on annual research the firm conducts which includes certain questions about consumers' intent. In this year's survey the question, "Does Internet video offer enough options for you to consider canceling your pay TV subscription?" As slide 3 shows, Yankee took the respondents who are considering this and then extrapolated how many will actually follow through based on trend lines from past research. I think it's a plausible approach, though 1 in 8 over the next 12 months seems very aggressive to me.
Personally, I've been skeptical about any onslaught of cord-cutting. Back in October, 2008 I laid out my 2 principal arguments: that it's difficult to watch online video on TVs (where it must be enjoyable by mainstream audiences in order for cord-cutting to really take off) and that cable programming will be very limited on the free Internet (and as a result this will be a big disincentive for fans of cable channels to drop them).
While a lot is happening on the convergence front (e.g. Google TV, Roku, etc.), with the advent of TV Everywhere, the likelihood that cable programs will not leak out onto the open Internet is lower than ever. That's not to say there isn't a ton of great video available for free or through other paid options (like Netflix's streaming), but for the vast majority of pay-TV subscribers, I'd maintain that cutting the cord will be a distant option for a while to come. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating topic which will surely get even more attention going forward.
What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).
Click here to listen to the podcast (12 minutes, 59 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Cable Networks, Devices, Podcasts
Topics: Yankee Group
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BT Wholesale Readies CDN Launch; Relies on Skytide for Analytics
While most of my focus is on the U.S. market for online video, I recently had a chance to catch up with Simon Orme, GM, Content Services Group of BT Wholesale, who gave me a deep dive update on what's happening in the U.K. market. Simon's specific focus has been a 2-year long project for BT to roll out CDN services to broadband ISPs who lease BT's network. The project is now moving into trial.
The U.K. video industry has robust satellite and cable competition, and more recently the BT Retail side has been rolling out its BT Vision IPTV service as a competitor to both. BT is also involved in "Project Canvas" a partnership of the major U.K. broadcasters and several communications companies to roll out broadband content.
A key challenge for Simon has been how to enhance the value of these CDN services for the ISPs who in turn offer them to content providers. Simon believes that a key driver is end-to-end quality of service. To deliver this BT is using Skytide, a U.S. provider of reporting and analytics software.
Simon explained that ISPs are already relatively sophisticated about how they manage their networks, yet traditionally they haven't had a lot of insight into what data is running on their networks. Therefore, the opportunity is to marry CDN services to these networks. In Simon's view, since most content providers are already using CDNs, the ISP must further distinguish itself in order to gain business. Doing so requires deeper insight about quality of service through a reporting and analytics layer. This is why BT is offering Skytide as part of its CDN service offering.
Skytide ingests multiple data sources in real time and then crunches the data, presenting it in various dashboard views, which might include for example network capacity utilization, volume of traffic by customer and distribution of traffic. Having evaluated multiple options, Simon said BT chose Skytide as the best of breed. The goal is to give its ISP customers all the potential levers to adjust in order to maintain the highest quality of service to their content customers.
There are currently a lot of moving pieces in video delivery in the U.K. and it will be worth keeping an eye on to see how they unfold.
(Note if you want to hear Simon talk in more detail about the U.K market and CDN dynamics, here is a recent interview he did with Murali Nemani from Cisco.)Categories: Analytics, CDNs, International, Telcos
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How to Navigate the Video Format Battlefield
Today I'm pleased to offer a guest post from Jeff Malkin, president of Encoding.com. With all the recent news around video codecs, formats and corporate battles, the world is getting increasingly complicated for content providers looking to benefit from the shift to online video. Encoding.com is in the middle of this action and today Jeff cuts through the noise and provides some recommendations for success.
How to Navigate the Video Format Battlefield
by Jeff Malkin
For content publishers and consumers, there is chaos in the video ecosystem, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. No doubt you've been reading about HTML5 vs. Flash vs. Silverlight (and recently, WebM), Apple vs. Adobe, H.264 vs. VP8, iPhone vs. Android, Do-it-Yourself vs. OVP.
Whether serving tens or thousands of videos, maximizing viewership with reasonably high-quality videos across web and mobile devices is the new imperative. With so many permutations of video codecs, formats, containers and features, it's confusing to design a video workflow that's cost-effective, flexible to change with the evolving formats and scalable to meet your growth requirements. With this post, I offer a couple of recommendations to help simplify the array of options currently available.
Case in point: Just when it appeared that H.264 was emerging as the video codec leader, primarily because of YouTube support and strong backing by Apple on its devices, Google went and threw an open-sourced VP8 codec into the ring via the recently announced WebM project, a new video format launched by Google with support from other leading industry players such as Mozilla, Opera Software, Brightcove and Encoding.com.
While both H.264 and VP8 are good quality codecs, only VP8 is currently royalty-free and therefore has a great opportunity to emerge as the new leader within the next year or two. However, for web distribution today, we recommend encoding your videos using the H.264 video codec in an .mp4 container. This is a high-quality output format already supported by Flash, and the leading HTML5 browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer v9.
Categories: Technology
Topics: Apple, Encoding.com, Flash, HTML5, Silverlight, WebM
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Kylo TV Browser Can Now be Tweaked to Watch Hulu
Hillcrest Labs, maker of the Kylo browser, which lets users browse the Internet on their TVs, is announcing the Kylo 0.7 beta release this morning. The new release includes updates allowing advanced users to change the
browser's user agent string in order to view Hulu. Just two months ago, when Kylo was introduced, Hulu very quickly blocked access, just as it had when boxee tried delivering Hulu to TVs. The new workaround represents another step in the cat-and-mouse game that Kylo is playing with Hulu.
In the press release, Dan Simkins, Hillcrest's CEO and founder said, "It remains our position that Kylo is simply a Web browser based on open-source Mozilla code, like Firefox. We fully respect the rights of content owners and aggregators, and as such, we do no deep link, re-index, divert users past ads, or overlay different user interfaces on video players. However, we believe consumers should be able to use the Kylo browser to visit any site on the Web on the display screen of their choice. Our hope is that a respectful dialog with Hulu will encourage them to consider changing their policies."
To my knowledge Hulu hasn't ever publicly addressed this situation and I'm guessing it's won't this time either. It is extremely likely that Hulu will once again block Kylo, as it seeks to enforce its computer-only viewing model. As I wrote last week in "5 Reasons Google TV Looks Like a Winner," this insistence is really backing Hulu into a corner marginalizing the site for users who just want to watch whenever, wherever they'd like.
Aside from the Hulu tweak, Hillcrest is also announcing new features including a Windows Media Center plug-in, auto-hide control bar, improved zoom, keyboard hiding, multi-screen support for Mac, printing and updated links. Hillcrest is also putting its Loop pointer on half-price sale of $49 through June 11th. The Loop lets you easily navigate Kylo.
What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).Categories: Aggregators, Technology
Topics: Hillcrest Labs, Hulu, Kylo
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