Science/Technology
Cisco: Professional Content, Not YouTube, Leads U.S. Online Video Boom
YouTube has almost become a synonym for online video in recent years, but professional online video platforms like Hulu.com are dominating YouTube’s dancing babies, according to a new Cisco study. The company just announced the results of its Visual Networking Index Survey (PDF), which compared TV and online viewing habits in the U.S., China, Germany and Sweden. The survey finds that U.S. Internet users spend 2.5 times longer watching professional content as user-generated video clips on their PCs.
Video viewing devices used by U.S. Internet users. Chart courtesy of Cisco.
These results should be music to the ears of Hulu’s management, but the survey also shows that content owners have to play catchup when it comes to licensing their catalogs for overseas audiences. Germans spend twice as much time on their PCs and laptops viewing user-generated videos as opposed to professional content, most likely because there just is no Hulu.de yet. However, Cisco and other devices makers still have some work left to do, as well: Many Internet users around the world don’t seem to be too excited about the prospect of online video on their TVs.
Whatever Happened To P2P Set-Top Boxes?
2008 was supposed to be the year when Internet video finally reached the living room, thanks to a whole bunch of set-top boxes. Part of that mix was supposed to be P2P, either in the form of distributed streaming, or good old BitTorrent downloads. Well, guess what: It hasn’t really happened — at least not on a large scale. Most of us still watch YouTube and Hulu on our laptops, and file-sharing continues to be almost exclusively PC-based.
So whatever happened to all those P2P set-top boxes that were supposed to revolutionize not only how we watch video, but also how those bits reach our living room? With the year coming to a close, we decided to check back, report about progress (and failures) and give an outlook for the fate of these boxes in 2009.
Post Online Video and Risk Going to Jail
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) this week published its annual prison census, which puts the spotlight on imprisoned journalists from around the world. 2008 marks the first year in which the report is dominated by online journalists, with 45 percent of those jailed bloggers, online reporters or editors. And the report makes clear that repressive regimes are increasingly targeting online video makers.
The findings serve to show how quickly online all forms of online media are gaining importance. When it comes to online video, many repressive regimes are afraid of the worldwide audience garnered by sites like YouTube, using the same laws meant to control state-run TV stations to crack down on video bloggers and video journalists.
Throwing in the Towel on ZvBox
Written by Liane Cassavoy
I completely understand the desire to link your computer to your HDTV. But my enthusiasm for the concept has waned a bit more with each media extender — devices that allow you to view content from your PC on your TV — that I’ve tried. And after my experiences with the ZvBox, I’m about ready to give up.
The ZvBox, made by ZeeVee Inc., is a device that uses the existing cable wiring in your house to take the content that’s on your PC and make it accessible from any HDTV in the house. It sounds simple, but in reality it’s anything but. To be fair, the company warns you that the product can be tricky to install, but tricky doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Apple Disputes NBC’s Variable Pricing Spin
One thing’s for sure: Each time Apple and NBC’s relationship spills out into public view, they both claim they’ve won the latest battle. Except that with two fierce negotiators like these, that’s never really the case.
In case you’re not up to speed on what’s happened so far, here’s a brief recap: Apple announced this week it would begin selling NBC shows again on iTunes, reversing the public breakup the two companies went through last year (first NBC said it wouldn’t renew, then Apple booted it off iTunes entirely). NBC TV episodes will now be sold for 99 cents, $1.99, and $2.99, depending on whether or not they are old, basic, or HD. NBC claimed this as a victory for its “variable pricing” crusade. We at NewTeeVee and many other industry watchers wondered if this was really the case, given that what NBC initially wanted to do was raise prices on certain, more popular shows (it also wanted better anti-piracy tools).
Now Apple is fighting back against that characterization, saying NBC is actually just getting the same deal as everyone else. CNET’s Greg Sandoval has gotten Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president in charge of the iTunes store, on the record.
“We’ve never told anyone they can’t lower prices,” Cue said
and
“We’re glad to have NBC back and they are participating under the same terms with all of the other content providers.”
What’s clear is that working together is better for both hot-headed companies than not, especially since NBC used to make up 40 percent of iTunes downloads.
Also, on the topic of clarifying characterizations of NBC’s distribution deals, the network tells us today it did not dump Microsoft’s Silverlight for its NFL live-streaming, as had been speculated.
Whatever Happened to Red Swoosh?
Remember Red Swoosh, the P2P company that was bought by Akamai for $18.7 million in April 2007? Red Swoosh used to be a competitor to Akamai, albeit on a much smaller scale, offering P2P-powered content delivery services to corporate customers. Shortly before the Akamai acquisition, the company reinvented itself, rolling out products for amateur videographers and file-swapping consumers.
This new direction opened up a lot of possibilities for Akamai. In particular, it offered a way for Akamai to extend its business model to blogs and other platforms for user-generated content. Call it the CDN solution for the long tail, if you will, complete with options to enter the advertising market. But none of that materialized. Instead, it looks like most Red Swoosh products have been discontinued or taken down.
Starz to Sell on iTunes
Starz will launch on iTunes tonight, said Marc DeBevoise, SVP of business development and strategy for the production company, speaking at a panel at the Future of Television West conference in Hollywood.
DeBevoise said that consumers have demonstrated that they will buy content “as long as it feels like free,” attributing that idea to Fred Seibert of Next New Networks.
Food Fight: History as Told by Cuisine
Bratwurst assault destroys a population of fish and chips. Kebabs and lox bagels engage in a lethal standoff. And Vietnamese spring rolls face off against croissants and hamburgers. Food Fight, Stefan Nadelman’s epic short depicting the history of 20th century American warfare with food, uses computer-generated stop-motion techniques to depict real food engaged in deadly combat. And it’s racked up more than 1.5 million views in the two weeks it’s been on YouTube.
“Before and after the film was completed,” Nadelman writes on his web site, “the friends I screened it to fell into two camps: You Should Have Captions and You Shouldn’t Have Captions. I felt that if I added captions it would be too easy.” He made the right choice; the lack of captions inspires a level of engagement that enhances the film’s power. Without reading Nadelman’s cheat sheet, I didn’t immediately understand some moments, notably the kimchi and the Cuban sandwiches. But there are some beats — some battles — that require no context.
EveryZing Offers Video SEO
EveryZing, a search startup using speech-to-text to analyze what’s inside video, is launching a product to help media sites promote their video content. The company had switched to a business-to-business focus when it raised a $10 million Series B round last June, and new product “ezSEO” is the fruit of those labors. Its original podcast search engine is now a “a good proof of concept and sandbox but not any part of our revenue success,” according to EveryZing CEO Tom Wilde.
The problem, as usual, is it’s hard to find out what’s going on in a video so it can be searched and advertised against like text. EveryZing’s solution is to make video act more like text. For customers such as Boston.com, the company creates transcripts of videos and then maintains search engine optimization (SEO)-friendly pages of text related to them. Google has added 50,000 new Boston.com pages to its index in the last month, driving a fresh heap of traffic to the site’s video. I don’t see why any media company with a video archive shouldn’t give this a try.
Popular
- BitTorrent After The Pirate Bay: Do You Still Need Trackers?
- Tumblr Marriage Proposal: Behind the Scenes of Justin and Marissa's Engagement
- Ten Sites for Free and Legal Torrents
- Get Ready for Flash Player 10.1 to Stream P2P Video to Millions, Swap Files BitTorrent-style
- The Megawoosh Waterslide Viral: How It Was Really Done
- Six Steps To Get More HD From Your Scientific Atlanta Set-top Box
Recent
- BitTorrent After The Pirate Bay: Do You Still Need Trackers?
- Microsoft and Nielsen Partner for 1 vs. 100 Measurement
- Premium Content Drives Connected Device Adoption
- Site Sponsor: Twistage
- Tumblr Marriage Proposal: Behind the Scenes of Justin and Marissa’s Engagement
- Sungale’s Sub-par Portable Media Player
Network
- How Video Is Changing the Internet [GigaOM]
- e-Book Echo: Nook Sells Out; Kindle Update Coming [jkOnTheRun]
- Weekend Vid Picks: Twilight Parodies For Bitter Boyfriends [NewTeeVee]
- Earth2Tech Week in Review [Earth2Tech]
- WWD Weekend Reading List [WebWorkerDaily]
- Weekly App Store Picks: November 21, 2009 [TheAppleBlog]
© 2009 The GigaOM Network. Marketing consulting by ACS.
