VideoNuze Posts

At the NATPE conference in Miami Beach last week I did a series of short one-on-one video interviews, which I'll be posting to VideoNuze over the next couple of weeks.

First up is Rob Barnett, CEO of My Damn Channel, which announced its new "My Damn Channel Comedy Network" at NATPE. In the interview, Rob talks about My Damn Channel's positioning and how the new comedy network differentiates itself. He delves into how he sees bigger online video properties emerging in the same way as happened in cable TV.  Other topics Rob discusses:

- More than 30% of the company's videos are now viewed on mobile devices and durations are being mainly kept to 2-3 minutes max as a result.

- Why My Damn Channel continues to focus on the series format, rather than one-off comedic clips.

- The important role of the "human element" in curating how creative work gets noticed and promoted.

- Brand extensions and the importance of entrepreneurs doing one thing right before moving on to others.

Watch the interview

Last week, when Time Warner Cable and the L.A. Dodgers sealed a deal creating a new regional sports network to carry the team's games, the Dodgers' CEO Stan Kasten released a statement that read in part, "Our fans deserve the best - the best players, the best baseball and the best experience - whether that's at the newly renovated Dodger Stadium or on television."

That's a wonderful aspiration, but there's one significant problem with it: the reality is that non-fans (or at least those that don't tune in regularly to watch the team play) will be paying the lion's share for all of these "bests." Given the reported terms of the new Time Warner Cable - Dodgers deal, by my calculations, the non-fans' tab could amount to a staggering $6 billion over the life of the deal, making it the single biggest non-fan "tax" the pay-TV world has yet tried to assess on beleaguered non-sports fans.

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I'm pleased to present the 165th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week I first share some reflections from spending 2 days at the NATPE conference earlier this week, focusing on content creators' attitudes toward online video.

That's a segue into discussing "binge-viewing," which will get a lot more visibility starting today, as Netflix releases all 13 episodes of its high-profile original series "House of Cards" (I watched the first 5 minutes of Chapter 1 this morning, and I'm hooked already). We discuss how binge-viewing is changing viewers' expectations and influencing content creators. For more about the pros and cons of Netflix's binge-viewing  strategy, see my prior analysis here.

Next we talk about eyeIO, and its THX certification announced yesterday. Colin provides a layman's explanation, that augments his post yesterday, of why this is so important along with the context of H.264 and the new H.265 standard just approved by the ITU. We also review the benefits to content providers and viewers.  

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

Click here for previous podcasts

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If you've been watching streaming video for as many years as I have, then no doubt you agree that one of the most remarkable changes has been the quality of video delivered. It wasn't that long ago when postage stamp sized windows with audio and video out of synch were the norm, whereas today, we can watch on big screen TVs, with buffering a random occurrence.

But the quality bar is getting even higher as this morning eyeIO ("I-I-O"), an early stage video processing technology company, is announcing it has been awarded THX certification for digital cinema HD video quality, a first for an online video encoder. The certification program objectively tests picture quality using 46 data points in 6 categories that were developed by the major Hollywood studios. A score over 90, on a scale of 100, is viewed as "THX Excellent Quality." eyeIO achieved a score of 95.528 for its H.264 first-generation encoder, when streaming at a rate of 5.8 mbps.

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Anyone working in or around the video ad tech space knows how incredibly crowded and well-funded it is. So, when a couple of weeks ago I noticed that a company I was only mildly familiar with, Altitude Digital, announced it had raised $5 million, I was intrigued. While not a blockbuster-sized round, financings of this size signal that the investors, after having done their customary due diligence, see some "white space" still available to operate in.  To learn more, I recently spoke to Devin Yeager, Altitude's COO, and Joe Salvador, VP of Video Operations.

Denver-based Altitude started up about 4 years ago as a display ad rep firm, but 2 years ago began building its own technology. More recently, Altitude has expanded into video, creating a new division called Visualtising. As a whole, the company is now processing about 12 billion display and video ad impressions per month. Altitude currently has 20 employees and is looking to double in size this year. It was also #54 ranked on Inc. 5000 list last year. Expanding Visualtising is the main purpose of the new financing.

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Beachfront Media has announced that its Beachfront Builder video application development platform now supports connected TVs from LG and Samsung, along with connected TV devices such as Roku and most Google TV products. In addition to these devices, apps built using Beachfront Builder also run natively in iOS devices, Android phones/tablets, HTML5/Web and Windows 8. Beachfront apps also include analytics and monetization in the form of video pre-rolls.

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Today I'm pleased to share a contributed post from Alan Wolk. Alan is Global Lead Analyst at KIT digital. He frequently speaks about the television industry in general and second screen interactions in particular, both at conferences and to anyone who'll listen. Recently named as one of the "Top 20 Thinkers In Social TV and Second Screen" Wolk is one of the main architects behind the award-winning KIT Social Program Guide and writes about the television industry at the Toad Stool blog. You can find him on Twitter at @awolk

If you are interested in contributing to VideoNuze, please contact me!

Social Recommendations: No Surprises There
by Alan Wolk

There’s a firmly held belief in the world of social TV and social media that our social graphs-- the people we are friends with on Facebook and Twitter and other social networks-- are the best source of recommendations for anything from restaurants to movies to TV shows. (Witness this week’s Facebook Graph Search announcement.)

I’m here to suggest that may not be the case, particularly in regards to television.

Let’s take Facebook, the most personal of the social networks. While it is considered good form by many on Twitter and LinkedIin to connect with relative strangers, our Facebook friends are generally people we know in real life.

Or knew.

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I'm pleased to present the 164th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, now heading his own firm nScreenMedia. This week we dig into Netflix's Q4 results, which were reported this week. As I wrote yesterday, Q4 was certainly the best quarter Netflix has had in a couple of years, and it's encouraging to see the company getting back on track. It is still quite early in understanding how the overall streaming market will shape up and what Netflix's adoption will be.

In the discussion, we explore key questions around the company's growth prospects, competitive landscape and international expansion. On the last topic in particular, Colin adds his observations of how Netflix is doing in certain international markets where he been doing research and traveling.

Click here to listen to the podcast (26 minutes, 44 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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