VideoNuze Posts

Live video events have become a big business, as brands, sports leagues, music promoters, and others have come to realize their huge audience appeal can drive engagement and monetization. But planning and executing a high-profile live streaming event isn't easy, with multiple technologies required to work together for the kind of flawless delivery that viewers expect.

Given these opportunities and challenges, former AEG Digital Media executives John Petrocelli and Josh Lennox have joined forces to launch a new firm, Bulldog Digital Media, which will facilitate clients' live video content strategies and monetization across multiple platforms. I've known John and Josh from their AEG Digital days and last week I caught up with both.

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Ever had the experience of hearing about a movie, being intrigued by it, wondering when/where you'll be able to see it, and then, as time passes, forgetting all about it? GoWatchIt, a free service, cleverly solves this problem, allowing you to search for and save movies to a queue and then alerting you as they become available in the future, whether in theaters, on DVD/Blu-ray or online/on-demand.

Now GoWatchIt has partnered with the Sundance Institute, whose 2013 Film Festival is currently underway. Sundance is historically the place where some of the hottest independent films are debuted. However, given the nature of film distribution cycle times, frequently these movies won't actually become available for viewing for many months.

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I'm pleased to present the 163rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon. Before getting into today's topic, Colin shares exciting news that he has set up a new firm, nScreenMedia. Congrats to Colin!

This week we dive deeper into Smart TVs, focusing on the challenges they face, and what incremental improvements came out of CES (which Colin also wrote about earlier this week).

While we both agree that fragmentation and relatively low volumes are holding back app development, Colin sees the solution as a unified "app framework," while I believe what's really required is the equivalent of an underlying common operating system for Smart TVs. This OS would not only create baseline consistency among them, but would also be interoperable with other devices like smartphones and tablets. This is crucial for viewers to seamlessly move back and forth between all their devices.

Since I think the likelihood of something like this emerging any time soon is relatively low, I believe that the circumstances are ripe for Apple to extend its iOS to the living room by launching a full scale television (and an upgraded appliance as well). I wrote about this in detail earlier this week in "Post-CES, the Stage is Now Set for an Apple Television."

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 30 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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

Broadcast TV networks continue to find themselves in the middle of a ton of innovation, as clever entrepreneurs look for ways to help viewers discover and consume their content. The latest entry in this space is a startup called Fredio ("FREE-d-oh") which announced its launch at CES. Fredio enables viewing on smart TVs of freely available TV programs that are posted online.

The proposition is relatively simple: all broadcast TV networks, and some cable TV networks (for certain shows), have been putting their episodes online for years now. But if you want to watch them you're typically limited to viewing on your computer, tablet or smartphone. If you want to watch on your smart TV, you're out of luck because no apps exist, with the exception of Hulu Plus, which requires a subscription

Fredio aims to change that by creating a free app for smart TVs that crawls the web for free TV shows. The app then categorizes them by network, allowing quick search and personalization through a straightforward UI (limited online demo here). You'll also be able to search Fredio online or on its tablet/smartphone app, select shows there and have them ready to play on your smart TV. When a show is selected, Fredio simply calls the network's web site to initiate the stream.

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upLynk is debuting its HD Adaptive Streaming Platform this morning, a next-gen spin on encoding and playback which reduces content providers' capex and opex for delivering high-quality video to multiple devices. As validation of its approach, upLynk is also announcing that Disney is using upLynk for its ABC Player, ABC Family and Watch Disney TV Everywhere apps.

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Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year or two, you've no doubt had your fill of stories about the elusive Apple television set - not the existing puck-like Apple TV device, but the actual full screen monitor. At the risk of adding to the topic's cacophony, today I'd like to articulate why, with CES now behind us, I believe Apple has a massive opportunity and that a television is 100% inevitable - with the only question being the specific timing of its introduction.

Apple's television opportunity is not simply to one-up the competition's stable of Smart TVs, but to re-imagine the entire TV experience as an integral part of our lives. Simply put, Apple's task is to leverage all of the foundational pieces that already exist - high-speed broadband delivery, Wi-Fi, HDTV, its robust app store/developer network, and the massive installed base of touch screen iPads and iPhones - and then to create an unparalleled experience layer that allows users to do things heretofore unimaginable.

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Audience fragmentation isn't a new concept, but the proliferation of high-quality online-only originals suggests the trend is only going to intensify. These days, a week doesn't go by without another key player announcing a new or renewed online-only series, in turn creating ever-more choices for viewers and advertisers. Combine the surge in originals with the broad adoption of video-enabled connected devices, and the pieces are falling into place for even more changes in viewing behaviors.

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I'm pleased to present the 162nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, who is back from spending several days at CES. Though Colin concedes he didn't see anything that really "blew his socks off," he does share specific reactions to what he saw in second screen apps, UltraViolet, home gateways, Ultra High-Definition TVs, Google TV and incremental improvements in Smart TVs.

One thing that did get Colin jazzed was Near Field Communications (NFC), which allows devices to talk to each other, simply by touching. Colin describes it as "magic" and was quite impressed.

We then shift topics to discuss Aereo, which earlier this week announced a new $38 million financing and plans to expand to 22 metro areas in 2013. As I wrote, I think that as Aereo's awareness increases this year, it's going to challenge pay-TV because it effectively eliminates the broadcast TV reception element of pay-TV's value proposition. By "hollowing-out" this important feature, Aereo will cause many pay-TV subscribers to question whether they really need/value the myriad cable networks they don't really watch. Given pay-TV's escalating cost and Aereo as an alternative, many people could begin to scale back.


Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 31 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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