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ExtendMedia Raises $10M for Video Platforms
ExtendMedia has confirmed with us that it has raised $10 million in Series C funding from previous backers TVM Capital, Atlas Venture and Venrock Associates, as was reported this morning by peHUB based on a regulatory filing. The Newton, Mass.-based company powers consumer video services for customers including media companies and consumer electronics makers.
ExtendMedia has secured some high-profile deals, but they haven’t necessarily gone all that well. It helped power SanDisk’s TakeTV and Fanfare PC-to-TV content service, which shut down just eight months after launch. It was also behind last year’s problematic release of NBC Direct, the network’s video download software that sucked up users’ PC resources. But it’s also the chosen media delivery partner for AT&T’s new CDN effort.
ExtendMedia CEO Keith Kocho attested in a phone call today that the economic downturn has not negatively affected his company — he said he actually expects harder times will be a good thing for ExtendMedia, in that it will help lessen the competition. While claiming you’re exempt from a market this bad doesn’t sound particularly tenable, it’s true that Kocho was able to raise $10 million in the current climate. However, that’s less than ExtendMedia raised in its $12 million Series B round in April of last year. The company’s total funding amounts to $23 million. It has approximately 50 employees, and it released a new version of its platform earlier this month.
peHUB also reported that KZO Innovations, a streaming video provider whose web site is incredibly obtuse, has secured $1.68 million of a $2.08 million Series A round led by Valhalla Partners.
Panasonic and Samsung Invest in SiBEAM
The complicated world of wireless HD delivery just got a little more interesting today, as Panasonic and Samsung both made strategic investments in chipmaker SiBEAM. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
The financial support of the two consumer electronics giants gives a boost not only to SiBEAM but to the WirelessHD standard, which uses the 60GHz spectrum to wirelessly beam HD video in the home. It’s just one of many wireless options vying to become the de facto HD transmission standard, including Wi-Fi, Ultra-wideband and WHDI.
Blockbuster VOD Going to Blu-ray Players
Hot on the heels of releasing its own set-top box, Blockbuster said it will expanding its on-demand video rental service into Blu-ray players in the first quarter of next year, as the company goes toe-to-toe with Netflix over direct delivery of video content to your TV.
In an interview with E-Commerce Times posted over the weekend, Blockbuster CEO and Chairman Jim Keyes spilled the Blu-ray beans and other plans for the on-demand service:
We’ll be able to put the same capability into a Blu-ray player. We’ll go into DVRs (digital video recorders), game consoles, etc., just as others are doing to make the same capability available through other devices.
Not only is Blockbuster playing catch up with Netflix, it’s matching its video rival move for move. Netflix has the Roku set-top box; Blockbuster has the MediaPoint. Netflix is on LG and Samsung Blu-ray players; Blockbuster will deliver to Blu-ray devices. And will Xbox and TiVo, which have Netflix capabilities also have Blockbuster? Seems like a definite possibility, given Keyes’ statement.
The one area where Blockbuster won’t be copying Netflix is through its rental model. Blockbuster is sticking with the a la carte service in order to keep the new releases available, while Netflix has the subscription model, which inhibits its ability to get new releases, because of licensing issues with the studios.
Just Wow: YouTube Had 344M Global Uniques in Oct.
Not that you didn’t already know that YouTube commands an audience all over the world, but here are the numbers that prove it.
ComScore hasn’t given out U.S. video measurements since July (the delay is apparently because it’s in the process of expanding its video measurement techniques so it can measure ads vs. content, premium vs. user-generated content, and other distinctions). But venture capitalist Fred Wilson (who until earlier this year sat on comScore’s board) was able to rustle up some October worldwide numbers to prove a point he was making in a blog post about YouTube’s audience compared to oldteevee’s.
Never ones to let some online video stats pass us by, we’re republishing the chart here. So, what can we learn?
YouTube got 344 million global unique visitors in October. (Holy crap.)
YouTube’s audience is disproportionately European compared to the web’s worldwide audience. It gets 37.8 percent of its visitors from Europe, which has only 28 percent of the total web audience. By contrast, YouTube gets 22.5 percent of its visitors from Asia, whereas they comprise 40 percent of the total web audience. (Note that Wilson broke some countries out from their regions, so the chart’s percents don’t all add up to 100.)
Couple caveats here: comScore’s strongest and most consistent measurements are in the U.S. — and that’s what we’re used to seeing. Also, these are its “Media Metrix,” which aren’t specially adjusted for the way online video works like its “Video Metrix.” The video-specific measurements focus on number of streams rather than views, and include streams of embedded video around the web. Embeds comprise a significant portion of YouTube’s video views, and wouldn’t be counted in these numbers.
But unique visitors are still the way much of the web measures itself, and 344 million is a whole freaking lot of them.
Joost Launches iPhone App
Joost launched an iPhone app over the holiday break, making its P2P web TV service mobile. With the app, users can watch Joost’s content library of more than 46,000 videos on the go for free. The service streams video over Wi-Fi connections and not over the phone’s EDGE or 3G network. The content available is a mix of full-length movies like Men in Black, music videos and TV shows.
VentureBeat had some troubles with the app’s video playback being choppy. CNET praised the app as falling “just short of greatness,” lamenting the lack of decent content.
These outlets have frothed over the prospect of a Hulu app running on the iPhone with all its premium content. But the bigger wildcard may be YouTube, which is already on the iPhone and is making aggressive moves to acquire premium content with the likes of CBS and MGM.
Mobile video has bigger problems than what content is available. Finding a solid signal to stream a full-length movie while on the go is a dicey proposition (hello, train tunnel!). Even Joost’s Wi-Fi solution requires you to stay near your connection, limiting your “mobility.” In a conversation this morning, Liz called the Joost iPhone app “cute,” but thinks they should focus their efforts on the living room. While I agree with her, I like the notion that we are inching (no matter how slowly) to a world where we can pull down a video wherever we may be. Baby steps.
Criterion Collection Does Web Video
What does the highly esteemed Criterion Collection, distributor of film buff collectors’ editions, do in a digital age? Very few of its chosen “important classic and contemporary films” are available in any online format. If you want to buy a movie online, chances are it’s going to be Zoolander on iTunes. But Criterion this week started offering its own digital videos on its own web site (there’s a cute Sharpie-drawn introductory video on the main page, but it’s not embeddable).
We gave the “online cinematheque” streaming system a whirl on this quiet Friday. Here’s the deal: Movie rentals cost $5. You can stream them as many times as you want for a week. Then that $5 counts towards the purchase of a DVD. Today there are only 20 films to choose from, but apparently more will be posted each week.
Mac Version of uTorrent Released
The popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent, is now available for Macs. TorrentFreak writes that the long-awaited Mac version only runs on Leopard/Intel Macs right now and is in beta.
UTorrent for Windows has been around since September of 2005. BitTorrent Inc. acquired uTorrent in 2006, and roughly two years ago work on a Mac version began. An alpha version of the Mac client leaked on to the public earlier this year, but this version has significant improvements.
A BitTorrent Inc. rep told TorrentFreak that the company is now working to fix bugs with the PowerPC as well getting uTorrent to run on the Tiger OS.
The new Mac uTorrent can be downloaded here.
Netflix HD Streams Head to Blu-ray Players
Netflix is broadening the availability of its HD streams to Samsung and LG Blu-ray DVD players early next month. The addition of LG BD300 and the Samsung BD-P2500 bolsters the ranks of Netflix HD-enabled devices like TiVo, Xbox and by the end of this year, the Roku. There are currently only about 300 titles available in HD through Netflix streaming.
Adding sweet features like an HD stream helps distract from the fact that the Netflix streaming service is still severely lacking in content — especially new releases. Earlier this week, Blockbuster announced its own set-top box, which is a la carte vs. subscription and will offer new content.
Revenue, Schmevenue; Let’s Talk International Video Consumption
Dude, eMarketer, you’ve gotta make up your mind. Yesterday you’re all doom and gloom about online video revenue, and today you announce, “The Future of Online Video Looks Bright.” What gives?
Well, turns out this new report is more a compilation of research about video consumption from throughout the year. There’s a section about monetization, but it cites Strategy Analytics revenue forecasts rather than eMarketer’s own data. What eMarketer wants to talk about is video viewership — which is still on its way up, of course. The firm says says the U.S. audience for online video will hit 190 million by 2012, when viewers of online video advertising are forecast to reach 174.8 million in 2012.
It’s that recurring theme popping up again: When it comes to online video, traffic is always good, but there’s no money to speak of. But if we’re going to talk consumption, let’s talk consumption. Though its focus is on the U.S., eMarketer did do a valuable service in digging up some charts of international data.
TiVo Subscriber Numbers Keep Tanking
TiVo released its third quarter results today, and while the company reported a profit (thank you, EchoStar for that $105 million patent violation payment) the DVR maker lost 163,000 subscribers, dragging its total number of subscribers down to 3.46 million — the lowest it’s been since the spring of 2005.
TV by the Numbers has been tracking TiVo’s subscriber freefall and has a comprehensive and pretty chart (well, pretty if you’re not a TiVo employee or shareholder). Bill Gorman over there writes:
TiVo may have a valuable intellectual property portfolio, but its hardware selling business is over. For the most recent quarter, it sold fewer than 500 TiVo DVRs a day.
TiVo reported net income of $100.6 million ($0.98 a share). Last year at this time, the company reported a net loss of $8.3 million ($0.08 per share). Revenue for this latest quarter slipped to $64.5 million from $75.5 million with non-hardware revenue from its service and technology groups dropping 11 percent to $51.7 million.
And the company doesn’t expect its fortunes to change much this quarter. TiVo said the down economy will put the kibosh on sales this holiday season. TiVo made it known through a regulatory filing last week that it was laying off staff and taking a $1 million pretax charge for severance charges and outplacement.
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