VideoNuze Posts

No doubt you've already read a lot about the new iPhone 5. It's hard to add anything material to the conversation, except that, at the risk of stating the obvious, it sure feels like it's going to have a significant impact on mobile video. The combination of a bigger, higher resolution display, support for faster, 4G LTE wireless networks, longer battery life, a more powerful processor, 720p HD FaceTime and better video recording, and importantly a new and improved YouTube app are key ingredients for fueling a better mobile video experience, and therefore more use.

And with 45-50 million units projected to be shipped in Q4 alone, iPhone 5's impact on mobile video could be felt very quickly and broadly. It's going to be fun to watch (and yes, if you were curious, I'm planning to drop my Droid and get the iPhone 5).

Is online video its own medium, or is it a farm league for those aspiring to make the transition to the majors of traditional TV? This has been a persistent question for years, and has gained more attention as numerous big-name celebrities have begun creating online-only originals. Are these stars committed to online video, or is it just a stepping stone to the conventional TV world they know so well and have benefiting from so greatly?

No doubt, the question will be re-visited anew, as former Fox News host - and current online video star - Glenn Beck has announced this morning a new distribution deal with Dish Network for his online network TheBlazeTV, along with the intention to pursue other pay-TV carriage deals. Regardless of what you think of his politics, Beck's move back into pay-TV, leveraging his success online, will surely be viewed as a template by others looking to make a similar leap.

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YouTube's new app for the iPhone and iPod touch is now live and available for download. The news comes a month after Apple said it wouldn't include its own YouTube app in the next version of iOS, thereby paving the way for YouTube to build and deploy its own.

In a blog post, YouTube described some of the key benefits of the new app: tens of thousands more videos, a channel guide with swipe navigation, enhanced search tools and the ability to share videos via Facebook, Google+, Twitter, email and text. I'm not an iPhone user (though plan to be shortly), so I haven't been able to test the new app. However, the description suggests a lot of commonality with the Android app I'm accustomed to, though the UI does seem a bit different.

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I TiVo'd the "60 Minutes" interview with Mark Owen (his pen name), one of the Navy SEALs who shot Osama Bin Laden and has now written the new book, "No Easy Day" about the operation. As luck would have it, because of the U.S. Open women's finals, my TiVo stopped recording a third of the way into the interview. Frustrating, but not the first time this has happened. No problem, I figured I'd just go online to 60 Minutes' web site and the interview would be right there, front and center. Right? Wrong.

Oddly, if you visit the 60 Minutes site, you will see a large picture and the headline "SEAL's first-hand account of bin Laden killing" (in rotation with 2 other unrelated stories receiving equal prominence), but not the video itself embedded. In fact, if you scan the home page to try to find the link to watch the full episode, a thumbnail for it can't be found until about a quarter of the way down a lengthy page, well below the fold and after a group of related behind-the-scenes videos from 60 Minutes Overtime.

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Research firm GfK released data from its third annual Over-the-Top TV report late last week, finding, among other things, that consumption by Netflix subscribers age 13-54 is roughly 2,000 minutes per month, about the same as it found in its '11 study. That amount is in the same general ballpark as the 2,388 minutes/sub/mo that BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield calculated for June, 2012, and in line with the 2,000 minutes/sub/mo that I calculated during Q4 '11.

The survey of 1,051 persons age 13-54 and conducted in June, 2012, found the average Netflix subscriber watches 5.1 TV shows and 3.4 movies per week. The survey revealed that 39% of this age group are Netflix subscribers (up from 35% in '11), with 47% having ever been a Netflix subscriber.

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After a week off for R&R, I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 146th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. Colin is at the IBC conference in Amsterdam this week, so his audio isn't quite as good as usual. There, he attended a fascinating presentation by a Unilever executive on how the company is adapting its advertising to the realities of a multi-screen world. Colin shares his reactions, particularly to how Unilever is creating its own online content in order to engage its audience in ways not possible with traditional TV advertising.

Shifting gears, we then discuss Amazon's aggressive content licensing blitz that I wrote about earlier this week. Having spent hundreds of millions of dollars licensing premium content over the past 15 months in support of its Prime Instant Videos, I think it's pretty clear that Amazon has emerged as the strongest new competitor to Netflix. Colin agrees, but reminds us that although content parity is critical to competitiveness, user experience matter as well. On this front, we agree Amazon still has a lot of work to do to match Netflix. Listen in to learn more!


Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 41 seconds)
 

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Several weeks ago, after the WSJ reported that Apple was talking to cable operators about building a set-top box, I wrote in pretty absolute terms that I could not envision this coming to reality ("Apple to Make Cable Set-Top Boxes? Not. Going. To. Happen."). Given the shifting sands of the video landscape, I'm generally reluctant to argue so one-sidedly. But, as I wrote, with so many reasons for cable operators not to foolishly outsource living room innovation to Apple, I asserted that the odds of cable operators getting in bed with Apple were next to zero.

Well, three short weeks later, this morning Bloomberg wrote that Apple's set-top box dreams have gone essentially nowhere, buffeted by a laundry list of cable operator requirements and concerns. Among them: control over the user interface, whether the boxes should be sold direct to consumers or leased by the operator, concern by operators that a superior Apple set-top could undermine their multichannel business model, and access to content among others.

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The process of authenticating users for TV Everywhere content access is improving yet again, as Synacor announced this morning that users will be able to log in via their Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts. The use of social IDs has become widely deployed by web services providers, but had not yet been made available in the TV Everywhere world. With the feature, users will be able to tie their pay-TV accounts to their social media accounts which means they'll no longer have to remember pay-TV specific login credentials to gain access to TV Everywhere content. This will reduce friction and should drive higher TV Everywhere adoption.

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