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Was YouTube Live a Success? That Depends
After much talk about experimenting with live streaming video, YouTube dipped its toe in the water on the weekend, with a much-hyped event (at least in blogosphere terms) called YouTube Live, featuring some of the “cewebrities” that have emerged on YouTube over the past year or two — including Tay “Chocolate Rain” Zonday, LisaNova and Chad Vader, as well as a few big-name entertainment-industry stars like Katy Perry and Will.i.am. The show had the feel of an awards show, although it was one featuring stars most people probably wouldn’t recognize. So was it a success for YouTube? That depends a lot on your perspective. Read more of this story
TelcoTV Report: IPTV Hoping for a Big 2009
Written by Nate D’Amico.
At last week’s TelcoTV event, the hot topics were convergence of media, triple-screen plays, and how consumers’ behaviors regarding digital content are evolving at a rapid pace. Strolling through the exhibit hall, I saw some great demos, such as Entone’s Janus set-top box, Nortel and RCDB’s Blu-ray setup, and Minerva’s updated middleware platform with a new widget framework for set-top boxes.
The big duo, AT&T and Verizon, were both present, each with their own keynote speaker. AT&T talked up its 780,000 subscribers to its U-verse service and said it expects to surpass the 1 million mark going into 2009. Verizon talked up FiOS and said it sees great opportunity in future services to be rolled out to its customers given the superior down/upstream capabilities fiber to the home provides.
One of the big takeaways from the event is that interactive television seems positioned for rapid growth. The majority of the crowd represented rural telcos, which across the board average only a few thousand subscribers each. These smaller players, who can’t operate at the same capacity as an AT&T or Verizon, see IPTV as the way toward bundled services to fend off the cable providers whose roll-out of voice service is encroaching on their territory.
As IPTV and cable providers roll out updated set-top boxes, content providers will be armed with the tools necessary to develop more interactive programming. Currently, interactive TV collectively is in the Web 2.0 mashup state (like the Fickr integration provided in the U-verse service). There were lots of demos in the exhibit hall showing TV widgets that get news, weather, sports, stock information from Yahoo, ESPN and other data providers. This will evolve over the next couple years as more advanced interactive experiences, including gaming and efforts like those Verizon is undertaking, become easier to deploy.
Nate D’Amico works with telecommunications providers on implementing SaaS solutions for their business and consumer customers. He has also written for our sister site OStatic.
TiVo Adds Jaman, CinemaNow
Written by Adrian Covert.
Following previous revelations that TiVo would be teaming up with CinemaNow to provide users with Disney movie rentals straight from their DVRs, they appear ready to unleash that content to the public, with digital film provider Jaman.com also along for the ride. Rentals from CinemaNow will be available next week for $2.99, while content from Jaman.com is available now for $1.99, with a 24-hour rental period for both. CinemaNow will only offer Disney rentals on TiVo for now, but plan to include movies from other studios in the near future. A number of shorts and full-length movies on Jaman.com are also available for free.
Contrary to previous promises of HD, movies only come in standard definition and include Disney classics like Dumbo, major blockbuster films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, and independent favorites including Supersize Me. With the current streaming media arms race going on between electronics companies, TiVo is actively trying to differentiate itself from competitors as more than just a DVR.
Adrian Covert is a San Francisco-based tech journalist and television addict.
Hipster Sports, The KazooKeylele: NTV Station Today
Ukulele covers of popular tunes aren’t a new phenomenon — but YouTube user crouts0’s KazooKeylele is no ordinary ukulele, and this is no ordinary song.
Hipsters and sports fans don’t ordinarily mix — except when it comes to oddball sports like dodgeball and urban golf, a fact that the new web series Wild Frontier of Sports attempts to capitalize on. How does the Good Magazine-produced series fare in capturing the insane energy of these events? Find out at NewTeeVee Station.
NBC Integrated Ratings Disappoint, Show iTunes Numbers Are Insignificant
A version of this post originally appeared on TVbytheNumbers on Oct. 15.
I praised NBC earlier in the year for the experiment with TAMi — the total audience measurement index that seeks to measure the total viewing of shows on various platforms and not just television. While I do appreciate the attempt, I am no longer finding it praise-worthy and find it mostly useless because the comparisons and numbers used are apples-to-pears or apples-to-grapes style comparisons at best, and apples-to-orange comparisons at worst.
We think it’s fantastic that NBC is measuring and reporting numbers involving newer technologies, and we applaud them for that. But we wish they’d have reported based on total engagement so the numbers and relative comparisons would’ve actually been useful.
Vid-Biz: Playboy, Graspr, Babelgum
Playboy Dumping DVDs for Online; company will also layoff 80 people in a bid to save $12 million. (paidContent)
Graspr Introduces gCard; technology will carry the identity of the video creator wherever the video is embedded. (TechCrunch)
Babelgum Keeping the Download Client; online TV service is not going the way of Joost and Hulu. (paidContent)
NBC Marketing Exec Leaves to Form Production and New Media Company; Vince Manze departing the peacock after 18 years, says he’s working on a reality show/online game hybrid. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Heavy Offering Crash Before its TV Debut; men’s video site to get preview clips and first episode of the new Starz dramatic series. (MediaWeek)
Edgeware AB Partners with 3rdi Technology; deal will integrate Edgeware’s web TV servers into the Guardian Video Community Platform. (emailed release)
Flip To Go HD in Time for the Holidays
Written by Adrian Covert.
Flip Video will release an HD pocket cam to its product line before the end of the year, according to a spokesperson for the digital camcorder company. Previously, it had mentioned an HD pocket cam was in development, but now there’s a firm release window to back that up. Flip has only offered scant details on the new product, however, so while we hope that the Flip HD will record video in 720p resolution, we’re not entirely that’s the case.
The Flip HD seems like a response to the well-received Kodak Zi6 digital camcorder, which also records 720p video and has a macro mode for shooting close-up objects. Despite the bump to HD, Flip is still committed to making web-friendly products; it noted over the summer, for example, that it was looking at ways to integrate HD-quality video with a web streaming infrastructure. Specific dates and pricing for the Flip HD are still unannounced, but should be available soon.
Adrian Covert is a San Francisco-based tech journalist and television addict.
How the Downturn Will Affect Video Startups: One VC’s Take
We asked Danny Cohen, a venture capitalist at Gemini Israel — which has multiple online video investments including adap.tv, Intercast, and Novafora — what advice he will be giving his startups about coping with the economic downturn.
Cohen first told us that video startups will need to take into account more general industry trends, such as softening demand, fewer new investments by VCs and lowered valuations. He said all startups should make sure they can run for 24 months on their existing cash, and if they can’t, start fund raising ASAP. Cohen also noted that run rates will be important to attracting top talent, who will be holding onto their existing jobs unless you can offer them something really stable.
What about video startups specifically? Here’s Cohen’s take, lightly edited: Read more of this story
TiVo Makes Its Way to the PC
Written by Liane Cassavoy.
Tivo’s excellent software is coming to a PC near you. TiVo and Nero have teamed up on a new product, called Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC, that will turn your PC into a TiVo-equipped TV.
The $200 product will include a copy of the TiVo software, 12 months of TiVo service, a Nero/TiVo remote, a TV tuner card (with an AV cable and an antenna), and an IR blaster and cable. A $100 downloadable version, including just the software and the subscription to the TiVo service, will be available for PCs already equipped with TV tuners.
It will compete both with standalone TV tuners — like Pinnacle’s PCTV HD Pro Stick and Hauppauge’s WinTV-HVR-950Q — and desktop PVR software, like SageTV’s Media Center. Both the Pinnacle and Hauppauge TV tuners, which cost about $100, include basic software that allows you to view live TV and schedule recordings. Software, like SageTV’s $80 app, meanwhile, is designed to add the features of a DVR to your existing TV tuner card.
Skype Shutters Personal Broadcasting Service
Written by Michael Stroud
Unobserved by mainstream journalists, Skype quietly closed its popular Skypecast personal broadcasting service late last month. The decision is setting off howls of protest from loyal users, who are ready to bolt to competitive services.
In a brief missive on Aug. 26 entitled “Goodnight Skypecasts,” Skype announced it was closing the service as of Sept. 1. The program allowed anyone to broadcast to up 100 people, all of whom could join in and comment. While the service only supported audio, video — one of the most-requested features by users — was supposedly in the works as well. Skypecasts covered everything from lonely hearts to computer technology to stuff that’s inscrutable to me because it’s in Arabic.
Skypecasters have been frantically searching for a replacement, most with video, such as Paltalk, OoVoo, TokBox and EkkoTV. But the lion’s shares of them act as little more than video-conferencing services, don’t promote broadcasting, and don’t have Skype’s millions of users to whom they can market.
Skype, a unit of eBay, was vague about why it’s closing down the service.
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