September 11, 2006

IPTV's future still 'wide open'

FALL 2006 VON -- Service providers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on IPTV -- even though they aren’t precisely certain where the technology is going, said panelists at the Fall 2006 VON show Monday.

“Right now, it’s wide open,” said Verizon senior product manager Jeff Harris, part of a panel at the Telephony IPTV summit. “It’s still too early in the game to put a stake in the ground and say ‘this is going to happen.’”

Along the way, Harris said he expects advertising models will change, although he -- and the other panelists -- couldn’t specify exactly how advertising approaches to IPTV will evolve.

Marc Le Clerc, manager of Ericsson’s IMS Expert Center, suggested that service providers will have to provide IPTV across different platforms, which will require vendors to cooperate on developing workable standards. Le Clerc said Ericsson’s studies have found that teenagers will want to seamlessly shift from watching IPTV on a cell phone screen to a large television screen.

Rex Wong, CEO of DaveTV, said it will be important for providers to allow users to get IPTV different platforms, but still be interactive in a “non-intrusive way,” especially if it targets desirable demographics like the 18 to 35 age group.

“This group isn’t watching TV now,” Wong said. “We have to engage in their behavior that is out there.”

Shari Barnett, director of Media Services at Microsoft TV, cited the video watching interests of one interesting viewer -- Bill Gates. She noted that in a email Gates told her he watched videos ranging from physicist Richard Feynman’s lectures to lectures on AIDS research as well as golf tournaments. Barnett used the example to illustrate the variety of programming the public will want.

Posted by paul at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2006

The big kids (like NBC) join the videoblog crowd

As noted by Jeff Pulver in our videoblog last week, the big incumbents in television are part of the disruptive force bringing TV to the Net. Case in point is a new videoblog from NBC chief anchor Brian Williams, with just-good-enough quality that gives the peacock network instant vlogging street cred.

The NBC videoblog, called The Early Nightly, just started this week, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which will probably become a must-read for the Internet TV crowd going forward. In the segment up now, Williams has a camera follow him down the hallway as he shows off the NBC Tel Aviv bureau, and his body armor. Bonus vlogging points to the NBC employees who don't even bother to move to the side as Williams and the cameraholder come past.

While the "edginess" of these clips is likely scripted, the lack of "professional" broadcast quality in the clip shows that NBC, like CNN before it, is more than willing to put stuff up quickly without too much polishing, meaning perhaps that we will get more substance and less flash. It will be interesting to see if Williams uses the vlog to provide background or his opinions on the news as it unfolds, something the format is well suited for.

Lured in by the videoblog, I found myself watching a few of the related clips, including the well-produced, three-minute segment that fully explained what Hezbollah is, and why the various players in the world's newest battle are up in arms. Great stuff, and I didn't have to wait through NBC's prime-time agenda to get it.

Gee, information on demand, when I want it, in a quick, easy-to-digest format. Done by professionals, who aren't afraid to not look their best anymore because they are confident in the material, not the makeup. Anyone want to bet that this is where videoblogging will really succeed, at least for most of the audience?

BONUS online video link: Dave Winer sees a revolution starting with John Edwards' embrace of BitTorrent. Still think we need AT&T's quality of service to get interesting Internet video?

Posted by paul at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)