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thePlatform Launches New Video Publishing System
thePlatform is rolling out a newly revamped version of its video publishing platform, which it says will make it easier for new and existing customers to manage and distribute their videos to a wide range of platforms and devices. By launching its new “mpx” white-label video management system into beta, thePlatform hopes to be able to more aggressively compete for large and medium-sized video publishers.
According to CEO Ian Blaine, the company has been building out the publishing system’s new capabilities for the past two years, focusing on the user interface and extensibility, making the resulting dashboard extremely customizable while also providing added support for new distribution points and products, such as Boxee, Apple’s iPhone or even the newly announced Apple iPad.
Kyte Updates Its Video Management Platform
Kyte rolled out the latest update to its white-label video management platform today, in an effort to provide its customers with easier-to-use workflow, scheduling, moderation and player management. The launch of Kyte Console 2.0, which went live this morning, marks a “complete reworking” of the platform, according to Kyte COO Gannon Hall, one that came after a year of examining how customers were using its dashboard and determining ways it could be made more intuitive.
The biggest changes that the console makes are around the user experience, reducing the number of steps it takes for customers to accomplish basic tasks and allowing them to customize the editorial workflow to streamline processes. The new console also provides more advanced scheduling of shows and other videos on the platform and the ability to create manual or smart playlists.
Vid-Biz: Hulu, Boxee, Sky
At Hulu, ‘Free’ May Turn into ‘Fee’; one plan that the site is considering would allow users to view the five most recent episodes of TV shows for free but would require a subscription of $4.99 a month to watch older episodes. (LA Times)
Boxee Adding a Payment System; video startup plans to release a payment platform this summer that will allows users to make purchases with one click on a remote. (Boxee blog)
Sky Loses ITV Appeal; UK satellite firm has lost an appeal against having to sell its stake in the commercial broadcaster ITV, and as such will have to reduce it to below 7.5 percent from a current 17.9 percent. (Broadband TV News)
Discovery CEO Zaslav Makes $34 Million Profit on Options; Zaslav reaped a $34 million payday as a result of a stock appreciation rights plan that kicked in earlier this month, according to an SEC filing. (paidContent)
The Cord-cutting Threat May Be Larger Than You Think; operators continue to see little evidence in support of cord-cutting, but the industry is being impacted incrementally by a number of forces, all of which collectivity point to a “perfect storm” in support of the phenomenon. (The Diffusion Group)
Josh Silverman: How Video Changes Everything; Skype CEO argues that video is not only an entirely different way of communicating, but a really important one. (GigaOM)
Bharti Airtel Partners With Limelight Networks for CDN services; the deal enables Limelight to expand its access in India, while letting Bharti resell global CDN services to its customers. (press release)
Kaltura Releases Open-source Video Extension for Moodle; white-label video platform company releases an extension for Moodle, a popular open-source learning management system for remote learning programs. (emailed release)
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.
Vid-Biz: BBC, Ooyala, Kaltura
BBC to Offer Over 2,000 Hours of Winter Olympics Coverage; the Beeb’s Red Button interactive TV service will have 2,000 hours of coverage available, compared to approximately 160 hours of coverage on BBC Two. (InteractiveTV Today)
Telegraph.co.uk Ditching Brightcove for Ooyala; The Telegraph has signed a deal with Ooyala to manage the clips on its Telegraph TV section. (paidContent)
Video Ads Become More Engaging; online video ad companies are responding to agencies and advertisers by providing more flexibility in how they deliver their messages. (VideoNuze)
Unigo Selects Kaltura to Power Video for Its Online Platform for College Students; white-label platform will be used to deliver video on Unigo.com, including WSJ On Campus. (press release)
VOD Outperforms DVRs; Video On Demand will reach 54 percent of US households by 2015, compared to 44 percent for DVRs, according to a new report from Interpublic’s Magna Global. (Broadband TV News)
Ooyala Enters Japan with NTT Partnership
Mitsuyoshi Okamoto, president of NTT SMC, and Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher
In the coming weeks, NTT Smartconnect will begin selling a localized version of Ooyala’s Backlot white-label video distribution platform to its clients. The agreement builds on a memorandum of understanding that the companies signed in May 2009 to work together on interactive video advertising solutions and “explore possibilities for collaboration between the two enterprises.” Apparently that collaboration extends to a reseller partnership between the companies.
Stickam to Open Its Pay-Per-View Service to All Users
Stickam was one of the early pioneers in allowing customers to charge for live streams of exclusive events, like concerts or investment seminars. But now it’s taking that technology and enabling all its users to add pay-per-view content directly through their channels.
For nearly 18 months, Stickam has offered a white-label, pay-per-view service to professional artists and video producers as a way to make money from live events on their own sites. Stickam’s Pay-Per-Live service has been used by artists such as Wynonna Judd and Cypress Hill’s B-Real to charge for live concert streams, and supermodel agent Paul Fischer has been utilizing it as a way to monetize seminars he gives online. The service has also become a part of pledge drives of charity organizations like the Ronald McDonald House.
Brightcove Releases iPhone SDK, Reports Record Signups for Updated Platform
Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire
Brightcove, ever since it released the latest version of its white-label video management platform last month, has been busy signing up new customers and adding features to its product set. And one of those features — a software development kit (SDK) that will enable customers to build native apps for Apple’s iPhone — was released last week.
In an interview with NewTeeVee in New York last Thursday, Allaire spoke on a wide range of topics, including his expectations for TV Everywhere, growing industry support for HTTP streaming, and what he predicts will be huge growth of video viewing on mobile devices.
Such a prediction is the motivation behind the iPhone SDK, which was announced in November and rolled out to customers last week. “The year-over-year growth for video on smartphones is going to be significant in 2010,” Allaire said, adding that it will be further boosted by an increase in the monetization of mobile video. As a result, Brightcove is looking to increase its support for native apps on additional smartphone platforms, such as Google’s Adroid and RIM’s Blackberry. Brightcove already allows delivery to mobile web through its unified delivery technology, although Allaire admits that mobile web is still a very small portion of its overall business.
Can SPOTi Take on Flash & Silverlight for Adaptive Streaming?
There’s a 
new entrant in the video delivery business, a Madrid-based company called SPOTi that’s focused on tackling the management and distribution of high-quality, adaptive bitrate video streams to multiple platforms and devices. The main advantage of using SPOTi’s software, according to CEO Thierry Scelles, is the ability to lower costs for publishers against current streaming and progressive download technologies. By adapting to the bandwidth available to the end user, SPOTi can deliver the highest-quality stream while ensuring that customers aren’t paying for more bandwidth than they need.
The startup isn’t the only company offering this type of technology, of course; both Adobe and Microsoft have their own adaptive bitrate solutions. So what’s the advantage of using SPOTi, as opposed to the established players? For one thing, the startup says its adaptive bitrate technology is capable of working with the largest number of users.
Brightcove Taps TubeMogul for Analytics
Brightcove engagement reporting
Brightcove has partnered up with reporting firm TubeMogul to power analytics for its white-label video management platform, enabling more granular analysis of where viewers are coming from, how engaged they are, and where in a video they are dropping off.
To do so, Brightcove has licensed TubeMogul’s InPlay analytics software and is using it as the default reporting dashboard in Brightcove 4, which was released just last month. While TubeMogul provides the data store for the analytics product, Brightcove created the user interface for the reporting dashboard, which was integrated into the video management system.
But the two won’t stop there; as part of the strategic partnership, the two companies are collaborating to create and enable even more robust reporting solutions in later editions of the Brightcove product, including a set of “premium” analytics products that they expect to release in 2010.
This is a pretty big win for TubeMogul, which has gone from being a longtime member of the Brightcove partner program to powering analytics for the largest video platform provider out there. The continued relationship between it and Brightcove — especially in creating new products together — should only serve as a positive for the reporting and analytics startup.
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