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

Movie download services have been about to take off for nearly 20 years.

In the mid-1990s, Time Warner spent $10,000 a customer in Florida to show downloading movies over cable lines was technologically feasible. In 2008, movie downloads are still mired in the "proof-of-concept" stage.

Apple’s announced plans today for an online movie rental service could be the spark that sets movie downloads alight in consumers’ minds.

Not because Apple is offering a fundamentally new twist on VOD. But because it’s Apple.

The movie download market today is remarkably similar to where online music was before Apple launched its first iPod. Back then, MP3 players were already on the market. But they were largely niche products and most music that played on them was pirated. Apple created the first cool digital music player.

Steve Jobs was also the first technology executive with the heft in Hollywood to actually cut deals with studio executives to allow enough legal content online to create a marketplace — and demonstrate that making money from digital music was at least possible.

In 2008, most consumers still aren’t all that interested in cable companies’ movie download offerings — largely because the studios are so worried about piracy and cannibalizing their existing TV syndication and DVD businesses that they haven’t supplied enough product to interest subscribers.

Movie downloads from services like Netflix and CinemaNow are still largely a curiosity for hobbyists and people who don’t know how to download the pirated stuff. 

Until now, Apple hasn’t fared  that much better. It’s sold only about seven million movies, compared to about four billion songs and 125 million TV shows.

Once again, Jobs has persuaded the studios to make vastly greater stores of content available to consumers in exchange for the tacit promise that he can create enough of a market to offset the inevitable increase in piracy that will occur when millions of new consumers realize how easy it is to download and share movies on their computers, iPods and TV sets. (Just look at the movie piracy rate in Korea, which has the world’s most ubiquitous broadband).

Apple’s movie rental service could be exactly the spark Hollywood needs to jumpstart its online cinema business. Or the spark could become a conflagration that devours industry profits. Or it could flop once again, just as so many for-profit video-on-demand ventures have since Time Warner first dipped its toes in Orlando.

The only certainty is the movie downloads — legal or not — are here to stay.

See Also

• Apple Unveils Online Movie Rentals, Ultra-Thin Laptop Computer
• Time Warner’s ‘Time Machine’ for Future Video

Posted under Uncategorized

I’m so tired of the so-called DVD wars. Now that high-definition is clearly coming to DVDs, we’re supposed to believe that one side "wins" and the other "loses" — or even worse, they keep on fighting forever. A CNET article’s title today was typical:  "Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: War Without End".

That could happen, I suppose. But why weren’t the executives at DisplaySearch’s 5th Annual HDTV Conference and quoted in the CNET piece talking about the two formats playing on the same machine? 

Could it be that some of those executives have already picked sides or are trying to desperately not to be quoted on the whole war thing?

Hybrid machines aren’t fantasy.  LG’s Super Multi Blue Player Model BH100, released nearly a year ago at CES, does exactly that. Of course, there’s the high price  ($999 at Best Buy ) and the middling reviews, but traditional DVD players that played multiple formats like CDR-W, DVD-R, MP3 and Div-X used to have quirks and cost a bundle, too. That’s why we have product development and market forces.

See Also

• 2 disc formats play but at a price
• Total HD Dual-Format Discs Get Delayed Indefinitely

Posted under Uncategorized

If you’ve ever ordered a video-on-demand from your cable company, you know it’s a frustrating experience.

Not because of the technology — they got that down 10 years ago. It’s because of the lack of choice. I stopped looking at Time
Warner Cable’s offerings after seeing "Superman Returns" and "Freedom Writers" one too many times.

Now comes Vudu, a sleek, black, $399 settop box from a Santa Clara startup that hooks into your stereo with a handy HDMI connection, upconverts to high-def and has a record 5,000 movies you can download onto a massive 250 gigabyte hard drive. 

Problem is, a good chunk of those 5,000 films is junk, stuff like "San Franpsycho" and "Yoga for Depression and Gastro-Intestinal Disorders". Yes, there’s a lot of first-run stuff like "300" and "Blades of Glory", too. But Time Warner Cable has that, too.

Remember that Moviebeam, an outfit started by the studios themselves, has about 3,500 movies in its catalog, and very few people use the service. So will Vudu be able to get traction with its own still-sparse catalog? (Vudu plans to expand the catalog to 10,000 movies).

None of this is Vudu’s fault. It’s dependent upon the studios for hot product, and Hollywood is still reluctant to potentially screw up DVD sales and TV revenue by making movies available on an untried platform. It’s the same kind of studio thinking that’s made VOD a big revenue disappointment for cable operators.

Vudu’s catalog can’t possibly compare with the tens of thousands of videos in Netflix or Blockbuster Online’s catalog. It probably won’t even come close to matching your local video store.

Digital music sales, you’ll recall, didn’t really take off until labels released enough songs from their catalogs to create a Long Tail of millions of songs.   Sadly, until studios are far-sighted enough to make most of their catalogs available for download, cool services like Vudu will likely only have niche audiences.  

See Also

• High-Speed Video Store in the Living Room
• Vudu movie box: Veddy, veddy expensive

Posted under Uncategorized