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Move Networks Lays Off About 15% of Workforce
Move Networks made some personnel reductions yesterday associated with a shift from its legacy streaming business to providing a platform for delivering IPTV services. According to a source, the company reduced headcount by about 10-15 percent, leaving the company with 107 employees total.
The personnel cuts come as Move de-emphasizes its streaming media business, a decision that has resulted in some of its larger media customers looking for other vendors to deliver their web videos. Fox has already transitioned off the Move player, adopting Adobe’s Flash for the video technology and Brightcove for video management and distribution. Disney web properties, including ABC and ESPN, will reportedly follow suit, soon transitioning to Flash for their online video. With fewer media customers to serve, employees that were focused on those accounts are being let go.
The Fall of Move Networks
Just a few years ago, Move Networks was a high-flying startup with what seemed like unlimited possibility. The company had succeeded where many video technology startups (and some incumbents) had failed to deliver — by providing high-quality video streams to the end user without having to worry too much about how much bandwidth was available. It raised about $70 million and even nabbed a few deals with major broadcasters, being chosen as the default video technology for streams from ABC.com and Fox.com.
But despite a good amount of early traction, the company failed to deliver on its early promise. With those broadcasters now abandoning the technology and Move Networks shifting focus to sell its technology platform to Internet service providers to deliver IPTV services, it’s worth looking at where the company failed in serving major media customers.
So what went wrong? Read more of this story
Fox Drops Move Networks for Brightcove, Adobe Flash
A quick look at the Fox.com website shows that the broadcaster has switched technologies for delivery of its online video, transitioning from Move Networks technology to video delivered in Adobe Flash format and managed by white-label video platform provider Brightcove.
The transition from Move’s adaptive bit-rate technology shouldn’t come as a huge surprise; the company has de-emphasized selling its video player technology to media companies, instead focusing on providing IPTV services to service providers. Not only that, but it’s lost its technological edge against Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight, as both have added similar adaptive bit rate capabilities. With the addition of dynamic bit-rate streaming in Flash Media Server (FMS) 3.5, Flash can also deliver smooth, streaming video regardless of the bandwidth available on an end user’s connection.
Hands On with Comcast’s Xfinity: TV Everywhere That’s Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
After weeks of anticipation, I finally got a chance to go hands-on with Comcast’s Fancast Xfinity TV service while visiting family that subscribe to Comcast’s cable and broadband service. While the cable company should get points for launching the first TV Everywhere deployment in the U.S., my early experience has not been very positive. Due to significant issues with the authentication process and actual content library, I have to say that I’m more than a little disappointed by the service, especially after months of hype by Comcast and content partners like Time Warner.
Authentication
Let’s start with Comcast’s authentication process, which is the biggest stumbling block for Xfinity. To authenticate with the service, you have to download and install on your computer a client application that phones home to Comcast to confirm that you’re a subscriber and figure out what content you have access to. Each Comcast account can add up to three devices that can access Xfinity content, and each one has to have the Comcast Access client installed. In theory, this should be a seamless process, but in practice it involves a number of steps that could keep subscribers from being able to use the service. Read more of this story
Comcast Opens Up TV Everywhere Service
Fancast Xfinity TV
After weeks of speculation over when Comcast would officially launch its TV Everywhere implementation, the cable provider finally took the wraps off the service. Starting today, Fancast Xfinity TV will be available to Comcast customers who subscribe to its pay TV and broadband Internet services.
The Fancast Xfinity TV service will have full-length programming from nearly 30 content providers, including major cable channels like HBO, Starz and Cinemax. Altogether, the new service launched with 12,000 video assets, compared with about 17,000 that are available through Comcast’s VOD service.
To access the service, users will have to subscribe to both Comcast’s cable television and broadband Internet service, somewhat limiting the number of subscribers who can access Xfinity. The cable company wouldn’t say how many of its consumers use both services, but the number is less than the company’s official count of 15.7 million broadband subscribers. In time, Comcast plans to extend the service to all 24 million of its cable TV customers.
Streaming Media West Roundup: Internap, Ankeena, HD Cloud
Online video platform providers, CDNs and other media infrastructure companies have gathered in San Jose., Calif., this week for the Streaming Media West conference. Here are some highlights from vendors releasing news on Day One of the show:
Internap Updates Its CDN Offering
After a lengthy silence, Internap is announcing new features to its content delivery network that it believes will help make it competitive again. The features are primarily focused around improved ease of use for its enterprise customers, including new “set and forget” capabilities such as single-upload transcoding and continuous bitrate adjustment. The CDN has also been tweaked to leverage Internap’s Managed Internet Route Optimizer technology, which it claims delivers better performance by making sure that content is delivered from the right point of presence. Finally, the company updated its reporting features to provide more granular analytics.
While Internap has struggled to compete in the CDN market ever since it acquired the assets of Vitalstream two years ago, the company’s VP of marketing, Peter Evans, says the latest update may finally make the company competitive in CDN. “Now we have a product that we’re comfortable standing behind,” Evans said. “Do I think we’re going to go head to head with Akamai or Limelight? No. But I do think we can compete with them in an RFP, and I think we can go up against Nos. 3 through 50 in the CDN market.” Read more of this story
Streaming Media West Roundup: Ooyala/YuMe, Wowza, Cotendo
A number of CDN, online video platform and other media infrastructure companies are converging on San Jose, Calif., this week for Streaming Media West, which kicks off tomorrow. Here are some highlights of the announcements made by vendors ahead of the show:
Ooyala Partners With YuMe on Overlays
By partnering with ad monetization firm YuMe Networks, Ooyala will be able to better monetize live video streams with overlay ads as it will enable customers of Ooyala’s white-label video management platform to specify ad insertion points into their live streams. Ooyala has its own set of ad-serving platform and monetization tools for on-demand streams, but the partnership shows its homegrown solution may be lacking when it comes to delivering overlay ads into live streams. While the companies just announced general availability of these services, they say there are already dozens of customers using the combined Ooyala/YuMe solution for live and on-demand video management as well as ad insertion.
Wowza Partners With Tandberg
The companies said today that Wowza’s streaming media server will be integrated into the Tandberg Content Server, making it the company’s exclusive technology provider for streaming Flash in live and on-demand telepresence and video conference calls, as well as multimedia presentations. While the announcement specifies Tandberg’s use of Wowza for Flash streaming, the Media Server will also enable Tandberg to serve video to other formats, such as Silverlight, or to mobile devices such as the iPhone. Wowza was the media server software used by Livestream, for instance, during its live streaming of the space shuttle Atlantis launch today, as well as NewTeeVee Live last week, both of which were streamed to the iPhone.
Cotendo Updates Its Dynamic Site Acceleration
Cotendo announced an update to its Dynamic Site Acceleration product, which is designed to improve the delivery of static and dynamic content for a wide range of online retailers, ad networks and professional news sites. Unlike most other CDNs, Cotendo’s product is less about delivering large media files than it is about ensuring the quick delivery of dynamic content. Even so, by accelerating the delivery of these files, the company can help publishers boost engagement times and improve the overall user experience.
NewTeeVee at SMW
And check out NewTeeVee co-editor Chris Albrecht tomorrow as he grills representatives from Motorola, Move Networks, HBO Broadband and Boxee about the threat that broadband video poses to traditional cable providers. The panel he’s moderating, entitled “Bridging TV and Broadband and Cutting the Cable,” starts at 4 p.m. PST on Tuesday, Nov. 17.
NewTeeVee Live: Comcast’s On-demand Online to Be Ready “by Hanukkah”
At our NewTeeVee Live conference this morning, Comcast Interactive Media President Amy Banse narrowed down the time line for how soon customers will be able to use On-Demand Online service, which will allow subscribers to access premium cable content on their PCs. The verdict? Sometime before Hanukkah.
“If you were to present On-Demand Online to me as a gift, would it be a Hanukkah gift, or a Christmas gift, or maybe a Kwanzaa gift?” NewTeeVee co-editor Chris Albrecht asked.
“I can’t be very specific, but I can say that we will be able to accommodate all religious groups,” Banse replied. Later, she reiterated that the service would become available to subscribers sometime in early December, before the Jewish holiday begins on Dec. 11. Read more of this story
Forrester Ranks OVPs, Misses 90% of the Market
Forrester Research is bringing some visibility to the fast-growing market online video platform (OVP) market with a new report issued Friday. But while some OVP competitors got positive marks for their offerings, the vast majority of players were noticeably absent from the research.
“The Forrester Wave: US Online Video Platforms” ranked a handful of OVP vendors according to 37 criteria that could be broken down into three “high-level buckets”: current offering, strategy, and market presence.
Brightcove and Ooyala both ranked favorably in the report, and both issued press releases touting their rankings as “leaders” of the OVP segment. But there’s only one problem — Forrester evaluated only six vendors (Brightcove, Fliqz, Kaltura, Ooyala, Twistage, and VMIX), overlooking a large percentage of the overall market.
This Is Neat: ABC Adds Commentary Tracks, Plus Ability to Make Your Own
ABC announced today it would offer online text commentary tracks for full episodes of some of its programs. The first commentary is for the new V sci-fi remake with participation from executive producers Scott Peters and Steve Pearlman. It’s due to hit ABC.com Saturday, a delayed release after the first episode of the show aired on TV last night. Further, ABC is enabling fans to create their own commentary tracks using the same tools.
The use of the term “commentary tracks” might be a little misleading given the audio overlay tracks we’ve all come to expect on DVDs, with inside info from actors, producers, directors and the like. ABC.com’s new feature consists of text comments only.
Though I’ve only seen a screenshot, this looks to be a very cool variation on the concept of Social TV. Users log in to their Facebook accounts remotely and watch an episode. They make comments that are time-stamped and run alongside the ABC video player. Fans can do the same thing, starting a new and separate episode commentary track. Each track is released to the public but only the author’s Facebook friends can modify it with additional comments.
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