Category: IPTV

The GoogBox

What’s the point of an Android-powered TV – isn’t television supposed to be kind of dead anyway? Now, let’s be realistic. Dead looks like GM’s Hummer: a broad butted relic from those merry days, when the environment was something to train your four wheel drive in.

Sure, TV as-is gets into some rough spots: economic downturns and big corp ad spending don’t go that well together. Local TV has been an almost exclusive ad playground for local car dealers. Tivos are attacking scheduling and audience flows. But, guess what: people are still watching. Because, addictions are hard to break.

Still, we tend to mix the means of delivering content (broadcasting television) with consuming this content (watching tv). For peak audience content, broadcasting is still hard to beat (just look at the half a billion Dollars big G is supposedly shelling out for streaming YouTube’s vids). But descheduling and instant access, that’s is pretty much how consumer’s want to see their future tv. That’s why the toughest competitor to network tv is not a YouTube channel, but your home network.

I really mean it: if you’re running a tv network, treat home networks as potential affiliates in a different time zone. And that’s how we’re coming back to Android. It’s just a boring operating system, currently huffing and puffing inside some halfway decent smartphones. It’s free (hardware guys like that idea) and the potential trojan horse for one of the most aggressive data driven media companies (like phone book publishers in the 20th century) in the whole world. Which is a bad metaphor, as ye olde Greeks needed their one trick pony to resolve a 10 year long siege. But the Goog needs a whole army of tiny trojans to foster new markets to prevent itself from becoming the one trick pony riders of the contextual text ad.

Now, what’s good for Google isn’t necessarily good for the rest of us. If an 800 pound gorilla waltzes through the jungle, “do no evil” does not prevent massive collateral damage. But especiallly in the realm of TV and TV distribution, some creative destruction might be welcome.
I don’t believe in Android powered TVs as a home media platform. It’s bad practice to hardwire a piece of furniture (displaying device: life expectancy of roughly a decade) with a computing platform (tends to age in hyperspeed). But if my stupid Android-enabled TV talks to my Android-powered smartphone, we might be getting somewhere. Especially, if everything’s linked in the background by one mighty media company.
For developers, the beauty of a concept like Android for TV is easy: the days of the web as the all consuming platform are numbered. We’re entering a data driven world, with lots of devices and platforms, talking to API-enabled services. Look at Twitter as a poster child. Conten/data and presentation layer are not related in any kind of way.

On the other hand, the world of tv distribution and its related hardware is still a cumbersome hodgepodge of everything. It’s the old school of electric media, when radio was a humming thingy called radio, which was sitting in your living room, which you turned on to listen to: radio. Don’t expect anyone anytime soon referring to his tv or whatever device as an Android.

The iPhone of iTV

We’ve seen the future of iTV. And it’s purple. Seriously. Yahoo’s Intel-based Widget Channel might become the iPhone of interactive TV. Not because both are based upon a expensive platforms. But because the Widget Channel leverages formatted internet data onto a TV screen. Web surfing on a tv set is just a poor experience. Visualizing targeted data is something completely different.

It’s just like on the iPhone. I don’t browse the NY Times web site in Safari, but I read Paul Krugman on the iPhone app. Same with the Widget Channel. Mostly, I don’t want to search weather.com. I just need my local forecast now.

Chumby hooking up with Samsung leads into the same direction. Grabbing existing data and displaying them on consumer devices (digital picture frames are just bonsai-sized video displays anyway).

The Google Set-Top Box

TechCrunch has a pretty interesting write up on this. And of course, it’s not about a settop boxes at all. Think Android For TV, says Erick Schonfeld. Right. Google getting into CE hardware would make as much sense as King Midas getting into copper mining.

Still. With an Android TV, we should finally stop thinking of settop boxes. First of all: what’s an STB anyway?

  • a mostly ugly piece of cheap plastic and some electronics, attached to a mostly beautifully designed displaying device (vulgo: tv set)
  • a crutch, which assists your standard compliant displaying device (we’ve got it all set: NTSC, PAL, DVB …) in descrambling a standards compliant signal, which has been artificially crippled (I mean, protected) by your network operator
  • a wheel chair, to carry yer good olde analogue tube into the 21st century

    • Now, let’s take a step back. There’s this wonderful new HDTV set you just bought. It probably already has more computing power than NASA needed to put a man on the moon. The descrambling part, well, think CableCard 2.1. You just need a card reader, like the SIM card on a GSM phone. There’s no need for a stupid box to be attached to a smart tv.
    And of course, as the history of computing teaches us, the smart tv – if you really want it to become smart – should have something like a nice, stable standardized OS as a foundation. The basics, besides handling all the standard stuff like putting moving images on a screen, would probably be something like

  • intelligent handling of distributed storage: attach an USB-HD. Connect a NAS via W-LAN. Access your network PVR. Get stuff from your PC. Or any othe connected PC.
  • intelligent handling of different networks: all IP, broadcast networks, anything networks. Why should you care?
  • intelligent handling of the user interface: consumer electronics still tend to look like a pre-war (Gulf War I, I mean) game console. And the appeal of retro does have its limits.

    • Now. Forget about storage and networks. The really interesting part will be the UI. Why? Well, Google is in the ad business. And the quantum theory of adverising teaches us: an ad nobody looks at does not exist.
    Now look at the status quo. In one corner, we’ve got the media sales super giant with a market cap higher than the stratosphere. In the other corner, we’ve got the incumbents: cable MSOs, satellite operators, some DSL, and last but not least: the tv networks and stations. Representing the allocation of the largest piece of global media cake. Backed up with a finely interwoven network of legalese and some well greased, age old business relationships. Don’t try to push some interstitials in between their shows. Because that’s exactly the incumbent’s billion dollar business. And a well protected turf.
    So. Where’s your disruptive moment? Your leverage? It’s not that the tv ad sales business is desperately looking for some streamlining.
    Now think UI again. And have a look at the Electronic Programming Guides of nowadays: thick as a brick. TV means: you’ve got time to waste, but no screen real estate to do the same. And what does your run of the mill EPG? It wastes your valuable tv-time AND your screen real estate. Instead of waiting for the scrolling listings of the TV Guide on Screen (late 20th century), now (early 21st century) you click, click, click until you might find (or, most likely, not) the craved for nugget of information. Even worse: with all the computing power in your household at its (virtual) finger tips, an EPG stills treats your grandmother with the same relentless indifference as it treats you. For an EPG, The Weather Channel (TWC) comes just after TCM, because it’s spelled like that.

    Current EPGs are just plain vanilla displayed data. Not even information, because this would imply some intrinsic value. How comes? It’s a structural problem: “Premium” EPGs, which are slightly better, cost you a premium.
    You meaning: the operator. And the question you’re asking yourself (or your market researchers) is: is a better EPG a reason to subscribe? Would it reduce churn? Good question. Your panel won’t be able to answer that. Because they’ve never seen a really good EPG.
    Or you meaning, the manufacturer. Mostly trying to keep cost down, down, down. Because if you want to ship units, it’s a really low margin business.
    Or you meaning: the consumer. Yes, friends of Tivo, if you’re really good, a company might find some handfuls of consumers, paying a monthly premium. But tv is a mass market. Paying premium is not. Therefore, Tivos are the CE equivalent of a Beemer.

    Now how about this. If a well known company offers you (the manufacturer) a piece of software for free (hey, no licensing fees!), which even handles most of the basics things you’re going to have to implement anyway? Maybe you’ll have to add some dollars for hardware. But at least, that’s a business you understand. And it’s still cheaper and it even gives you some leverage with your operator clients. Because it’s not just a better device. There are even some ad revenues the well known company is offering to share with the operator. But wait, there’s more: how about if you (the operator) doesn’t just get a new, incremental business. They’re even throwing in the additional incentive of lowering your cost of operations (it has been nice working with you, Gemstar). And that’s just the beginning.

    Sorry. I got carried away a bit. This wouldn’t be Android TV, but Trojan TV. And maybe, you do not even need the operator that hard. As long as you are in the tv and got a net connection. What the heck. As long as your Android powered TV set chats happily ever after with your Android powered cell phone, filling iGoogle with all the behavioral data it needs to serve you the ads you deserve.

    Looking for Soccer Fan Videos

    http://halbzeit.in/files/mediaplayer.swf

    If you are a) into soccer (or fussball or football …) and b) own a cam corder (or a mobile which handles a video a bit better than my SE K610i), you’re invited to put your fan video on halbzeit.in, which translates into halftime.in and is our little video sharing site.
    Why are we doing this? On YouTube, MyVideo, Sevenload, there’s already tons of fan related material. Sure. But a) we like soccer and b) we want to put the stuff on our tv channels (don’t try this with bootlegged flash encoded video material).
    And not to forget c). Yes, on YouLoadMySevenVideo, there are already some trillions of uploaded videos. So your pretty cool fan action will have neighbors like this one.

    TV 2.0?

    First thing I have to say: Bertram and Harald did a phantastic job. This is grand. But unfortunately, I’m a bit in a nitpicking mood.

    Let’s start with some of the basic assumptions. The assumed basic cost structure for a free tv network doesn’t make too much sense. Yes, the key areas are right: content licensing/production, marketing, and distribution. But distribution is not a variable. At least not, if you need national reach. The more coverage you want, the more you pay. Let’s just assume that German mega broadcaster RTL pays annually about 12 million Euros to reach its tv audience. 9live has almost the same distribution. And therefore pays about the same amount of money. The big difference: RTL has renevnues of round about 2 billion Euros. 9live makes about 60 millions.

    This has of course serious implications. The cost of distribution limits the access to the public (as do the technical limitations, e.g. available spectrum). It’s called mass media, because you need the masses to watch (or interact, as it’s the case with 9live). Otherwise, you’re going to be out of business pretty fast.

    Pay tv is kind of different. Essentially, as a channel operator you have to convince a gate keeper, that the he should shoulder the cost of distribution, against a revenue share. Joost seems to aim to become some kind of funny in between. A gate keeper for a p2p -based distribution of free tv.

    Both approaches pose quite serious barriers of entry. That’s why one of the key factors in tv 2.0 is the lowering of the cost of entry. With web based distribution, you can reach an international audience for zilch. Hey, that’s a start.

    Now, what’s going on with this audience? As a side note: tv networks (as most traditional media players) do not like Google. But the media sales organizations of tv networks do not (yet) feel the sting of Google’s AdSense. Yes, Google is a juggernaut. But the bauty of the text ad system has been, that Google found a whole new pot of gold. Google isn’t making it’s billions with the handful of mega brands, that fill the koffers of the tv networks. That’s why traditional media is much more scared of bud.tv and the likes. If the media buyers become audience aggregators of their own … As it turns out, it’s not that easy. Especially, because as a media buyer, you’re buying into consistency of reach. Ventures like bud.tv are, like any new media brand, a risky thing. And don’t forget: one of the heaviest spender in media is media itself.

    But back to tv 2.0. OK, web based video lowers the barrier of entry. That’s good. The same reasoning applies to the cost of production. Not because of the web, but because the hard- and software for video production and editing is finally approaching zero. This applies to all areas. With my own company, we’re deploying professional broadcast playouts into cable headends. Unthinkable a couple of years ago. same with professional video editing. HDTV cameras. Post production and 3D animation. You name it.

    This is good. But still: producing a video is still quite some effort. Will “moving images replace HTML pages”? Never ever. Producing a video is too much effort for the producer. And, for most parts, watching a video takes is too much equally. Why? Video is a linear medium. You can scan a written page in light speed. Speed watching isn’t that easy.

    OK. Enough nitpickin’. Bertram and Harald are of course right. TV is going to change. The means of access to video content are changing. Channels as the main organizers of content access will have to change.

    The funny thing is: we really don’t know, what tv really is. Do we define tv by content. Most likely not. Otherwise, we wouldn’t make a difference between tv and DVD. Do we define tv as a technology? That’s probably a bit closer.
    It’s tv, if it’s broadcasted and displyed on a tv set. But how about PVRs? With video and DVD, we distinguish between a solid media and ethereal broadcast receptions. PVRs are a virtual broadcast.

    tv reception itself won’t change that much. Why? tv is a linerar medium. If it’s good, you watch. If not, you switch. Or tune off. That’s all the interacton you ever need.
    What going to change is how you find and access content.

    The main difference between tv (as is) and tv (2.0) is the enhanced on Demand factor: on Demand with an URL. Because the URL opens up all other means of access, business models, and social feature you can imagine.

    TV2.0 – Digitaler Film

    Vudu voodoo

    Does Vudu really have the Holy Grail of digital TV entertainment? It looks like. Even if the idea of conquering the entertainment world by selling settop boxes seems a bit ridiculous.

    The facts: afetr two years in stelath mode, the news are starting to trickle out. Gizmodo has a picture. The NY Times has got the facts.
    In a nutshell, it goes like this: Vudu is the video stoe of the 21st century. No walk-ins. No “we mail you your DVD and you send it back”. Everythings happening in front of your tv, with instant gratification. Press the button, watch the show.

    And instead of ruining itself with a monstrous centralized server installation, Vudu is going to be assisted by all its users. The cute little settop boxes are part of a peer to peer network. But the real magic of Vudu has been happening behind the scenes. All major studios are workig with Vudu. Except Sony Pictures, as they probably have their own, PlayStatoin-related plans to take care of.

    The somewhat crazy part of Vudu is of course the settop boxes business. Because in the real world., that’s no business at all. As you will have to convince consumers that they have to shell out §300 for the privilege of watching movies in DVD quality on their tv sets. Which means: the brazen early adopter has to stack another box on top of his cable box, his DVD player, his tivo …

    The good news is: they might just get rid of the hardware an end up as a software stack. And the even better news is: compared to the personal video recorder business, where the early overs like tivo and replay became almost something like an endangered species, Vudu has a big advantage: their contracts with the studios. But Sony and Microsoft (yup, the Xbox) have another thing going for them: theri some million boxes are already deployed. But hey: why shouldn’t there be a Vudu outlet in the Xbox or PlayStation mall next to your screen? It’s just a piece of software.

    Hype.tv

    It’s a funny idea: ditch cable and/or satellite, use AppleTV instead. Steve Rubel goes wild again: At home I have a Microsoft Xbox 360 (they’re one of our clients) and an Apple TV connected to my Sony HDTV. The content I download off the Internet for the two set top boxes has definitely eaten into my time with cable. The latter cannot be beat for live news and sports – yet.

    But is this scenario really ready for prime time? And, if not yet: when? Serving 110 Million US tv households their daily dose of tv content via the Internet isn’t even a pipe dream – it’s actually a nightmare for the guys running the pipes. Just a small handul of people are currently heavy users of Bittorrent. But the p2p brethern is already clogging up 60 percent of the net (sez Gartner). Currently, you cannot scale net video to mass markets (not to mention HD deliveries). And don’t anybody YouTube me now. According to Compete, this February the top 20 videohosters served round about 260 million web videos. Which is about 2.5 videos per householf per month. Meaning an average viewing time of roughly five minutes. Per month. TV is currently eating of 4.5 hours per person and day. So puh-lease: yes, it’s exciting. And yes: it’s great to be ahead of the curve. But the debroadcastization of the tv world won’t happen any time soon.

    Micro Persuasion: Between All-You-Can-Eat and A-La-Carte TV

    The Bandwith Blob

    Most telcos agree: the future of TV isn’t about broadcasting anymore. It’s on demand, IPTV, server based, what ever. The idea of the network as a programming entity will be replaced by networks as a technical layer, where the videos are hosted and delivered, and a social layers, which assists you in choosing programming you want to get.

    Sounds godd – but has some ramifications. That’s why Google and cable firms warn of risks from Web TV As Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, explained at the Cable Europe Congress 2007: The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s (infrastructure) doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect.

    Statements like this have always to be taken with a grain of salt. But to deliver high quality TV content you need either have to wait for multicasting to finally take off (whcih means just broadacsting). Or you need quite some barns full of servers and access to cheap bandwith (The Google Way of life). One nice looking solution might be peer 2 peer networking. Joost is doing a great job here, trying to push p2p from the digital fringe into the consumer mainstream. But mind that: currently, the biggest chunk of all Internet traffic is alreday related to p2p-file transfer.
    How can you scale this as an ISP? Only if you own your network from core to edge, from backbone to the last mile. And you will have to host as many peers as possible, so that you can keep as much traffic in your own network. Even than, it’s a rat’s race. As one Cable Operator explained at the Cable Conference: People (Internet service providers) don’t like to talk about (the fact) that just to stand still, they have to invest.

    Tom Evslin has a nice post on this. If we all shift to watching TV on the Internet, the total bandwidth (Internet and other) required INTO our homes will decrease and the load on the Internet backbone and the regional distribution portions of the Internet will be – well – interesting. Of course, his calculation is a bit misleading. Most of your home-bandwith of today, used for broadcasting, is one way traffic on a shared medium.

    As there’s no such thing as a free lunch: where’s all the bandwith coming from? And who’s going to pay for it? That’s why operators want to build up their walled gardens. And charge everybody else for putting stuff on their networks. Question is: do we really want to upgrade the delivery network monopolies of today into virtual content distribution monopolies, with some wholly owned social networking attached?

    TV revolutions

    Here we go. The Bill is merging PCs and TVs. Again (remember webTV?). And according to his Davos-speech, it will take just about five years to revolutionize the tube.

    Of course, Mr. Bill is right. “I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. Yes. What we‘ve had. Let’s not forget. Microsoft is the leading supplier of IPTV backend software for the leading telcos of the world. So it’s very much likely, that in five years, with Windows Vista being slowly replaced by its successor, Microsofts TV foundation will finally deliver on its promises.

    Currently, IPTV isn’t any different from any other broadcasted multichannel tv. Same content, same linear delivery. That’s going to change. Slowly. Because for building huge proprietary interactive applications, you’ll need a huge audience. For building small proprietary interactive applications for micro audiences, you’ll need a huge incentive.

    That’s where the blur starts. Huge IPTV deployments currently means a quarter million subcribers. That’s a lot if you have to start from scratch. But essentially equals the online population of Memphis, TN. And if you want to revolutionize a mass medium reaching billions of people all over the world, fueled by a global content industry, revolutionizing Memphis will be an important first step out of several gazillions.

    That’s why The Bill is making a switch. To quote Reuters: The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set. Uhm. Interesting math. But Douglas A. McIntyre is making another point here: Using YouTube is actually a poor example of what is likely to happen. Making money from teenagers lip syncing music or farting in the tub is not likely to supplant content like the Superbowl. Unless, of course, Mr. Gates has odd tastes.

    Broadband TV à la YouTube and IPTV à la Gates aren’t twins, separated after birth. It’s two completely different business models. Merging them will happen as soon as Microsoft publishes its software under a GNU license.
    Let’s get back to the revolution. “Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it,” explains the software tycoon. “Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior.”

    Yes, tv is (sometimes) terrible. An commented on demand features of live events would definitely be a very nice thing to have. But let’s put it like that. TV content is software, too. PC software and tv software a.k.a. broadcasting content are both increasing return businesses. Both are businesses because of the underlying intellectual property rights. But the major difference is: Windows XP has a life cycle of half a decade, at least. Events like the Olympics are good for month and a half. So a real Microsoft TV would be the only available channel, broadcasting a single event for a couple of years in a row, with monthly updates, thank you.

    OK, unfair. Microsoft is in the enabling business. With Office being the premier User Generated Content-production suite. “Because TV is moving into being delivered over the Internet — and some of the big phone companies are building up the infrastructure for that — you’re going to have that experience all together,” sez Bill. Nope (No, he doesn’t have to care, as he’s delivering some building blocks for this infrastructure). But just because SAP data and YouTube-vids are delivered via IP, you will not be able to tune into TheWallStreetJournal.tv.