Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

A Comcast executive’s revelation at Digital Living Room last week that the cable company is testing cameras in its DVRs in the living room set off a storm of angry blogs.

It began when Chris Albrecht of NewTeevee quoted Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior vice president of user experience, as saying the company is testing cameras that recognize you when you turn on your cable box, allowing your TV set to make recommendations about what you might want to see, or to serve up tailored ads.

The angry comments started on the New Teevee site, ranging from "officially the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life" to "Comcast is trying to make Orwell’s vision of 1984 come true". From there the commentary spread to PC World  (Comcast’s Creepy Experiment) and the New York Times, among other places).

Kunkel responded to the outcry with a posting of his own on NewTeeVee, emphasizing that Comcast’s experimental camera-based gesture recognition device is "in no way designed to – or capable of – monitoring your living room".

The incident illustrates once again the morass cable companies and telephone companies are potentially stepping into as they continue to offer "triple play" services that combine TV, high-speed Internet and telephone service. Even if Comcast’s system doesn’t currently offer in-room monitoring, it clearly could without too much modification. And you can bet that when it becomes a reality, the government in its search for "terrorists" will be close behind.

It’s only fair to mention, however, that panelists at the show also talked about more benign uses for such technologies: monitoring a home when a family is away, for example, or allowing family members to monitor elderly parents.

As we move toward two-way video communication in the home, these issues are going to only intensify. It’s good to have an early heads-up.

See Also

• Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You?
• Comcast’s Creepy Experiment Puts Cams Inside DVRs to Watch You

Posted under Uncategorized

Ken Pyle’s Observations on Digital Living Room

Although the title of iHollywood’s conference this week was, the Digital Living Room, The Virtual Living Room would have an equally good description. A common theme throughout the show was the idea of portability and that consumers want to be able to consume entertainment on their own terms; wherever they are and whatever time it is.  OK, so this thought has become almost trite, but what was significant was the caliber of speakers who were echoing this theme. 

Jim Wuthrich, SVP Electronic Sell Through & Interactive Marketing of Warner Brothers Digital Distribution, pointed to the studios’ efforts to stay at the forefront of business model changes when he indicated that now it is, “Time for experimentation and try to figure out how to make content more accessible in the form they [consumers] want.”  Wuthrich went on to say that, the challenge for the studios is how to make the various models co-exist.   

He pointed out that theatrical release window is a very important part of the marketing for particular properties. He agreed, to a degree, with panel moderator, Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal, and her assertion that, at some point, producers could effectively bypass the studio system and go directly to the consumer via the Internet. He didn’t think it would necessarily happen with the bigger producers, like a Lucas, but that it would probably happen with smaller producers.    

Warner is working with many channels to get their content to the consumer, especially via the Internet. He suggested that consumers do not want to be locked into one service and there has not been a good solution for getting content from the Internet to the TV. He believes the ultimate solution will integrate broadband video directly into the television, eliminating the set-top. He emphasized the only way to unlock the value of the studios’ content is to make it easy for the consumer to discover and consume.

He stated that, “people are running out of time.” The studios are competing with so many ways to spend time that never used to exist; from gaming to social networking, that extending beyond the living room is important. Thus, portability and mobility is important to Warner Brothers going forward. 

Dan Simpkins, CEO of Hillcrest Laboratories, made a suggestion for a new kind of cross between mobility and video, when he envisions the possibility of using a cell phone as a television remote. Hillcrest has been thinking of this that the integration of their motion sensing navigation technology (think Wii) into cell phone is possible and would not affect form factors. When coupled with an iPhone-like user interface, the cell phone could serve as a search tool, meta-data screen and remote control, while the television does what it does best. 

A virtual living room may ultimately reside in a virtual computer; the so-called cloud computer. Ron Ferguson, SVP and GM of North America of Archos, thinks it is a matter of time before people rely on cloud computing, but for the time being it will be on a hard-drive. Archos finds that they cannot keep up with demand for storage; people want more and more storage on their personal media devices. Bryan Burch, Director of HP’s Managed Home Business unit, thought that consumers will always want to have some level of tangible ownership of content, so some of it may always be stored in the home. 

If Pandora, with 11 million registered users, is an indication of the direction of media, then the virtual living room is already here. Pandora knows the kind of music you like. It allows you to play your music in the living room, pause it and continue it on your cell phone. It streams through the Internet. Jessica Steel, VP, Business Development, says that their goal is, “to beat Clear Channel.” If that comes to pass, repercussions will go well beyond the living room.

For more Ken Pyle blogs, visit www.viodi.com

See Also

• Digital Living Room
• Viodi

Posted under Michael's Blog

Although we’re running a business summit called Digital Living Room next week, all signs suggest it’s a misnomer.

Not that people don’t gather in their living rooms to enjoy digital media. They do. Some 70% of kids now watch TV while surfing online — and presumably text on their mobile phones. My 13-year-old and 15-year-old can attest to this.

It’s a misnomer because people increasingly aren’t concerned about where they enjoy their media. They want access to it anywhere, anytime.

"It’s social convergence enabled by divergent technologies," says Mike Goslin, vice president for Disney Online Studios and a speaker at DLR. "People may be scattered all over the place, but connected virtually."

This isn’t exactly news. The digerati have been preaching anywhere, anytime access to content for years.

Curiously, though, the virtual living room seems to be coming together a lot more quickly than the digital living room. While companies like Sony and Philips belatedly announce connected TVs by next Christmas, consumers are already watching TV shows on their laptops. Kids are texting each other about what movies to go to. And people are beginning to download movies, TV and other video content on their iPods.

The take-away is that it is simply foolhardy now to develop content for one platform. Whether its a movie or advertising campaign, the message must be delivered to a fragmented universe of devices whose sum is far greater than the unified whole the broadcast networks once controlled.

Once Hollywood and advertisers truly grasp this idea, they’ll realize that the much-heralded convergence of TV and PC in the living room is a mirage. Divergence is coming, and it’s better.

Posted under Uncategorized

Two tech bellwethers may provide a glimpse of how digital media will fare in the months ahead.

Cisco helped stocks recover today after CEO John Chambers said he was "even more comfortable" with projections for long-term growth rate. Google fell to 52-week lows, amid continuing fear about flattening ad sales.

It’s hard to generalize about anything in these skittish economic times, but their performance today show’s what’s likely to happen in tech

The "heavy metal" companies are going to do the best (or suffer the least). Digital media companies focused on marketing, advertising or pure content will get hammered.

Why? Because companies will cut their marketing and advertising budgets long before they cut their budgets for the computing and networking investments they need to run their businesses.

Venture capitalists, which at the best of times aren’t fond of content companies, will also move to the comparative reliability of companies that make tangible products.

Consumers can pick up some of the slack in a recession.  If past is precedent, consumers will go to more movies, watch more TV and presumably will spend more time on Facebook and Google as they avoid more expensive recreation.

But digital media can’t survive on more clicks by consumers alone. It needs ad dollars — and hence the concern about Google.

See Also

• Stocks pull off lows on bargain hunting
• Cisco, Ambac Soften Blow to Stocks

Posted under Uncategorized

As global stocks skid today over fears of a U.S. recession increase, I’m noticing an interesting interrupt between companies and the people who work for them.

Among our customers, companies are still investing in new technologies and marketing. But the individuals who work for them are nervous about the future, and, in some cases, worried about their jobs.

Venture capitalists still appear excited, especially about "next-big-thing" technologies like green. Newspapers are in the doldrums and laying people off in droves. So are the studios, still mired in a post-writer’s strike hangover.

So the $100 billion question is: how much worse does it get?

See Also

• European Markets Fall Sharply
• US Stocks Drop, Led by Financials; JPMorgan, Citigroup Fall

Posted under Uncategorized