For those of you who missed iHollywood Forum and NXTcomm’s Q&A with Survivor and Apprentice Producer Mark Burnett about the future of digital content delivery, just click on the image to the left to go a page with links to view the video. (About the middle of the page; Quicktime and Windows Media). NXTcomm is the replacement show for the giant Supercomm show, produced by the Telecommunications Industry Association and the U.S. Telecom Association. Burnett will be keynoting NXTcomm08, which is dedicated to the intersection of voice, data and content.

iHollywood Forum will be co-producing Communications Goes Green with NXTcomm on June 19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Keynotes include AT&T’s Dorothy Attwood, Senior Vice President for Regulatory Planning & Policy and Chief Privacy Officer; and Verizon’s Kathryn C. Brown, Senior Vice President
Public Policy Development & Corporate Responsibility.

If you’re involved in IPTV, cable or broadcast TV content and infrastructure, and if environmental concerns are important to your business, this is the show for you.

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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

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Premium sports content heading to the web in China shows the challenges facing Pay TV

Posted under Michael's Blog

Operators now have the ability to give you digital content simultaneously on your TV, PC and mobile phone.

But how much does the customer value or want this?  In Singapore incumbent cable operator StarHub will start the EPL soccer season this August with a groundbreaking new service that streams video to mobile phones and PCs as well as your TV.

This is all included in the package for free say StarHub.  Some viewers complain that actually this season they are stumping up an extra S$10 (US$6.57) a month, an increase from S$15 the previous year for the sports package.

The challenge when investing in often costly new services is working out what the customer is prepared to pay for. Watching sport falls into the classic lean-back lounge experience in front of a large plazma screen with a beer in hand.

In this case High Definition (HD) TV is one service that combined with sports, is taken as the must-have service upgrade for avid fans. Watching on a PC or mobile phone would surely seem a poorer substitute -surely the only option if you are on the move or at work.

For StarHub, acting aggressively to be a first mover to bring HD sports content from overseas is not straight-forward, however.  It is likely to be costly as it quite possibly would have to bear the satellite transponder cost alone to transmit the HD signal to Asia.

Last year, StarHub was heard to complain no other operators in Asia Pacific would join them in a trial to take HD World Cup soccer. Their best hope might be PCCW. Its NOW IPTV service is proceeding with trials in Hong Kong with HD and they also have EPL rights. 

In the meantime StarHub is still sitting pretty with a strong grip on the Singapore Pay TV market despite SingTel recently launching an IPTV service, complete with some HD channels. 

And StarHub’s hold on the market and its customers was solidified last week by a ruling from Singapore’s Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA), Lee Boon Yang to refrain from intervention in exclusive carriage agreements in Singapore’s pay-TV industry. Something SingTel had been after. by Craig Stephen

See Also

Posted under Michael's Blog

by Craig Stephen

See Also

• European Commission
• consortium

Posted under Michael's Blog

When I used to interview job applicants, I’d ask them if they know what IPTV is.

"It’s television over IP,” they’d reply. "You know, Internet television."

"It is not," I’d snarl. "It’s the telcos getting into television. TV over phone lines. AT&T and Verizon, and those hundreds of rural telcos, too.”

Of  course, they’d never get the job.

Well, my reply would also get me the boot at any online video company.

Yes, IPTV is about those telcos taking on the cable and satellite companies. But it’s really about how video is becoming platform-independent. The video on your broadband will soon become the same video on your TV and your mobile phone.

That fact was made dramatically clear at last week’s IPTV World conference at NAB 2007 by the presence of a Revver executive on the opening panel, "Battle for Eyeballs”.

Revver, a user-generated video site, has a deal with Verizon to supply video to both its Fios IPTV and Vcast mobile services.

Its content also plays on Jack Black’s experimental Acceptable.tv TV show on VH1. Watchers get to vote on just how acceptable that content is via cellphones or the Internet.

How cool is that? Think that qualifies as IPTV?

Thinking of video is something that’s passively watched on a clunky TV is passe. It’s time for me to get with the program.

See Also

• IPTV World video coverage
• Verizon to Offer Revver Clips on FiOS TV
• IPTV World conference

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Walt’s story in the Wall Street Journal (see my blog earlier today) is right across from one about Sprint’s CEO searching for a way out of its woes caused by annual subscribers canceling. Bad service aside (and I can personally vouch for that), Sprint’s most interesting prospects for luring new customers may be in new branded services for cable and IPTV companies.

Time Warner, Cox, Comcast and Advance/Newhouse are  quintupling to 40 metropolitan areas the wireless customers they service through leased space on Sprint’s network, according to BusinessWeek. Each service will have the respective cable company’s moniker on the screen and Sprint’s name on the phone.

Sprint’s already is the most enthusiastic endorser of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), hosting the likes of Virgin, Movida and Boost.

There was an AOL Time Warner, once upon a time. Maybe soon there will be a Time Warner Sprint.

See Also

• BW: Sprint-cable venture expands to business
• WSJ (Subscription Required): Sprint’s CEO Seeks Stronger Connection

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