CBS Does About Face on HD
As we noted earlier, CBS is testing an HD version of its video player. This caught our eye since CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith was pretty anti-HD just a few months ago. So we fired off a quick note to Smith, who was ready for us. Here’s his (unedited) response:
Was waiting for this.
Thankfully, am not a politician and the Internet is not Washington, ie times change fast and we can ‘change our minds’ or be wrong. Totally cool with you calling CBS/me out.
What’s changed: broadband adoption rates and compression speeds are making it easier for the user today vs yesterday. No comment wrt advertisers yet. 80% of the video market is still YouTube and they don’t seem to care about HD. So maybe we’re crazy. Or maybe pro content is different than semi-pro.
What’s key no matter what is that we have to solve for what users want and if it works and is easy – then roll it out. Also keep in mind, Labs is made to be a lab, not sure how we’re going to implement it yet. This is a flex of tech muscle, we can do a lot in this new world and need have these tech monsters like Soohoo and his team in Silicon Valley breaking land speed records. HD Player was built in 6.5 hours.
A few months in Internet time is a few years in real time, so we won’t accuse Smith and CBS of “flip-flopping,” (or even try to Swift-boat him). The better-lookin’ video online is, the better off we all are.
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I’m wondering when we will see a shift in video advertising to HD. Right now lots of folks are building ads for 4:3. At some point they will have to go 16:9 but ads don’t last forever so it may not be a big re-do for advertisers – just for the technology guys delivering the ads.
I would say it’s true that quality will define the pros from the amateurs, but it’d be a mistake to sleep on Youtube, or assume they don’t care about something – they’ll offer, and find a way to offer, whatever will yield the most eyeballs. if people are moving away from Youtube because they want to see HD, Youtube will offer HD, and if they have to offer professionally produced video in order to get people to come to the site, Youtube will license professionally produced video. Google didn’t spend a couple of billion dollars on Youtube to let it lag and become second best.
Interesting how the CBS HD site looks like a complete copy of Hulu. I actually thought it was Hulu for a second.
I think this is proving that Hulu is not the only game in town. Other media companies should follow CBS lead here and do this themselves rather than outsource to Hulu.
What’s Hulu? Never heard of it.
Hi Hiro– check out http://www.hulu.com. It is open to the public now.
HULU looks like every other Flash Flex Video site out there .
Thats the problem here no innovative video sites are being made and they are still focused on navigation via the PC and not migrating to the TV .
The Showtime side of CBS has been pretty aggressive with HD on the Web. Their full-screen sampler (http://www.sho.com/site/order/preview.do) looks fantastic, as does their Emmys screening room – which is available for Emmys voters.
Disclaimer – The Showtime experience was developed in partnership with my company, Brightcove.
will it bring “H” (in Miami) back from the dead?