Broadcasters vow to fight white spaces

Google Praises White Space Vote - While NAB promises the fight has only just begun....
NAB yesterday quickly issued a press release proclaiming that the fight was only just beginning. NAB also argued, despite the fact that the use of this spectrum has been under consideration and open discussion for nearly six years, that the Commission "appears to have bypassed meaningful public or peer review in a proceeding of grave importance to the future of television." Despite findings to the contrary by FCC engineers, NAB continues to argue that the technology could interfere with TV service, though fear of broadcast competition is likely a stronger motivator.


Video Startup Veoh Cuts 18% of Staff
Online video site Veoh is laying off 20 people, or 18% of its staff of 110. The move comes a month after a Paidcontent reported layoffs in Veoh’s Russian office in St. Petersburg, which CEO Steve Mitgang says was a strategic decision rather than a financial one, as Veoh wanted to move its development staff to San Diego (where it has hired a replacement team).

YouTube adds new features
With close to 44 percent of our users watching embedded videos, we're committed to constantly refining the player. Today, we are pleased to announce four new features:

• High-quality start images (thumbnails) – Before you press play on embedded YouTube videos, the thumbnails for the video will be presented in high-quality. We're pleased with the results – let us know if you agree.
• Search in embeddable player – At the close of an embedded video, along with the usual recommended videos and URLs, a search box will appear. Not only will you be able search from within the embedded player, you will be able to watch videos through the same window. That's right, you can search all of YouTube from the comfort of your favorite blog, news, or humor page.
• Integrated video annotations – Annotations enable video producers to incorporate text information into their videos, create choose your own adventure-style stories or add links to any YouTube video. People watching videos through the embedded player can now join the fun.
• Integrated closed captions – Back in August we started allowing video creators to add captions to their videos. Closed Captions are now available in embedded videos like this one:

Vudu CEO to spend more time with his lovely wife
Vudu, which makes a nifty little set-top box that no one is buying, beat the rush by laying off employees in August. Today, an alert tipster notes that CEO Mark Jung has disappeared from the company's management page. Jung's LinkedIn profile has also been updated, putting Vudu in past tense.

NYC To Fund Year-Long Study On How To Help Media Industry
The New York City Economic Development Commission has a plan to increase employment for consultants: hire a team of them to produce the "NYC Media Scenario Series," at minimum, a year-long look at the media industry in New York in these uncertain times. NYCEDC, as stated in the RFP, "seeks to understand how the City and the private sector can work together to maintain NYC's position as the leading center of the media industry as the sector goes through the dramatic transition to digital production and distribution." One area of concern: the city's less than 25 percent market share when it comes to new media, while the West Coast and Boston are "perceived to be preferred." Proposals are due Nov. 18.

Warner Brothers will stream videos in China
Warner Brothers followed MTV and MySpace's unique entry into the anti-piracy battle Tuesday with the announcement that it would begin a legal streaming video service in China. Users will "rent" Warner Brothers titles for between 60 cents and $1 per video, according to the company's statement. The release mention movies I Am Legend, Fool's Gold and Speed Racer as some of the first titles to be made available through the deal.

FCC green lights new wireless broadband spectrum

FCC Approves Rules Allowing White-space Devices
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to approve rules that would allow new broadband devices to operate in unused television spectrum.
The FCC voted on the rules governing the operation of new devices in the so-called spectrum white spaces over the objections of television broadcasters, wireless microphone makers, several sports leagues, and dozens of performing artists and U.S. lawmakers. The vote will allow more broadband competition in the U.S., with wireless devices competing with providers of cable broadband and DSL/fiber-based broadband, said Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.
"Today's decision is consequential to our nation's future because wireless broadband has the potential to improve our economy and quality of life in even the remotest areas," Adelstein said. "One of the best options for promoting broadband and competition across the country, particularly in rural areas, is maximizing the potential of spectrum-based services."


Concerns Over FCC 'White Spaces' Decision
The Federal Communications Commission today voted to allow technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Dell, and Motorola to produce "white spaces" devices that will use the same radio frequency (RF) spectrum now being used by wireless microphone systems. Final text of the rules is not yet available, but the order is purported to greatly reduce the amount of clear spectrum available for use by professional audio and communications equipment.

Netflix to stream some titles in high-def
Netflix will soon make a limited number of its high-definition titles available for video-streaming through both the Roku set-top box and Microsoft's Xbox 360 videogame console.
About 300 of Netflix's 12,000 video-streaming titles will be available for owners of the Netflix Player by Roku box to send directly to their HDTV sets by the end of next month, wrote Tim Twerdahl, VP of consumer products at closely held Roku, in a Nov. 1 blog entry. Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey confirmed that the company would do a "soft launch" of about 300 titles for Roku and Xbox, though declined to give a specific deadline.


Adobe criticises Microsoft for trying to muscle into web video
Adobe's chief executive has attacked Microsoft for "opening its chequebook" in an attempt to muscle its way into the web video market.
Just weeks after the release of a new version of Silverlight – Microsoft's competitor to the hugely popular Flash Player – Adobe boss Shantanu Narayen said that the Seattle-based software giant was failing to get a foothold on the web, despite heavy spending.
"Either you have full penetration or you don't," he told a group of journalists at Adobe's headquarters in San Jose, California.


Two Year's Later, Google Still Can't Deliver YouTube Without Stuttering & Buffering
It's been just over two year's now since Google acquired YouTube and while the debate rages on in the industry about how YouTube will make money, few people are discussing the quality problem Google continues to have with delivering YouTube

CNN Profiting From User-Generated Content
CNN president Jonathan Klein attributes the network's success in reaching next-generation viewers to relying on more user-generated content and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter

Yahoo! Ends Live Streaming Video Experiment
When Yahoo! launched its live video streaming service, Y! Live, to the world earlier this year, it was admittedly an "experiment in live video" designed to elicit feedback from the market. Today, Yahoo! has decided that the experiment has received enough feedback - or perhaps too little. They're going to be closing the service down on December 3.
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've remained proponents of live streaming video, claiming more than once that it is "going to be huge." If that's the case, why is Yahoo! pulling the plug on Y! Live so quickly?


AT&T To Test Usage Caps In Reno
AT&T,  blaming a few bandwidth hogs for clogging its high-speed Internet network, is launching a trial in Reno, Nev. that would impose new fees on customers for exceeding monthly usage caps.
AT&T officials disclosed the plan, which was vague in some key respects, during an Oct. 31 meeting with an aide to Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin, agency records show.
AT&T officials said the trial was a response to "a small minority of our broadband Internet access customers consum[ing] a disproportionately large amount of the total bandwidth available to all the customers on a network”—practically the same words Comcast Corp. used to justify management of BitTorrent traffic that a 3-2 FCC majority found unacceptable in August.


NBC Universal digital chief Kliavkoff exits
NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff is ankling the Peacock. Kliavkoff told staffers on Monday that he is exercising an option in his contract that allows him to leave NBC U at the end of this year. The exec, the first in the digital job, helped spearhead the launch of Hulu, the conglom's online video joint venture with News Corp., and served as its interim CEO before Jason Kilar took the post.


Comcast 'P4P' Tests Boost P2P By 80% - Though there's still more questions than answers about
The P4P Research Group (pdf), a coalition of most major ISPs, researchers and Pando networks, is working on a more efficient P2P protocol that saves transit time by only serving file parts from local peers to reduce hops. Pando and the new coalition believe they can speed up P2P transfers by as much as 235% across US cable networks and up to 898% across international broadband networks. In Verizon tests, Pando increased the percentage of data routed internally across their networks from 2.2% to 43.4%, which they claim reduced inter-ISP data transfers by an average of 34% (up to 43.8 % in the US and 75.1% internationally).


Netflix, TiVo start streaming agreement
Last week, Netflix and Samsung reached an agreement allowing owners of Samsung's Blu-ray Disc players to stream Netflix's online video, following a similar agreement with LG Electronics in July.

Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World
Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.

Akamai CEO: We'll Avoid Web 2.0 Disaster
On yesterday's third-quarter earnings call, Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM) CEO Paul Sagan said his company was well positioned to weather the current financial environment, in part because the company has limited exposure to "newfangled sites" that haven't yet figured out their business models.
During the conference call, Sagan talked extensively about the financial issues facing a number of Web 2.0 Websites, particularly those that are venture funded and not yet profitable.
Sagan noted that Akamai had "picked up on some of those businesses running into trouble," and made clear that while those businesses were not Akamai customers (fortunately), they were probably affecting others in the content delivery network (CDN) market. 


Revver Site Having Problems
The lack of dependability magnifies the fact that Revver is no longer providing the service it did in its heyday, when many major video stars — such as Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, Lonelygirl15, and Invisible Engine — depended on the site as their main host and as a source of income. Revver does seem to have a few people left working on the site since it was acquired by LiveUniverse for about $5 million in February — however it does seem to be fading away.

Tivo and Netflix offer Internet TV

Is Tivo Poised To Take Control Of Home Movie Viewing over IP?
Tivo has concluded their long sought deal with Netflix to stream over 12,000 movie titles to your home, this via standard Tivo DVR's. In addition to the Roku player and LG Blu-ray player, both currently available, Tivo plans to support Xbox 360 by late fall of this year. Also, according to Steve Swasey, Netflix's VP of Corporate Communications. The company hopes to stream its content directly to television sets by the end of 2009. Is Tivo positioning themselves as the bridge between lean forward and lean back entertainment in the living rooms of the U.S.? With over 100,000 titles in the Netflix library, the Tivo/Netflix deal has a way to go before this loss leader strategy for Netflix starts to impinge on their existing business model, would they want to abandon mailing discs in the future in favor of VOD?

TiVo Enables Instant Streaming of Netflix Movies, TV Episodes
TiVo announced on Thursday a partnership with online DVD rental service Netflix  that will provide TiVo owners the ability to stream thousands of movies and TV episodes from Netflix directly to their televisions. The feature will be available at no additional charge to Netflix subscribers who also own a TiVo Series3, TiVo HD or TiVo HD XL. A subscriber's Netflix Queue will be automatically displayed on television via the TiVo interface, and using a TiVo remote users will be able to browse their instant Queue, read synopses and rate movies.

FCC member optimistic airwaves proposal will pass

A top federal regulator said on Wednesday he is optimistic communications officials will approve a plan, backed by Microsoft Corp and Google Inc, to open soon-to-be vacant television airwaves.The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled a November 4 vote on the proposal to allow unlicensed use of some airwaves called "white spaces." These pockets of the spectrum will become available when U.S. broadcasters are required to move completely to digital television next year."I'm very optimistic. I think this could be a 5-to-0 vote," FCC member Robert McDowell told Reuters. Three of the five FCC commissioners are needed to clear the plan.


60Frames Entertainment lays off six
Digital studio 60Frames Entertainment laid off six employees Thursday, the latest in a rash of online-minded startups shedding jobs amid the economic crunch.

The cuts, which leave eight remaining staffers, come as 60Frames rein in the high volume of productions in progress. Launched by UTA and ad-agency Spot Runner last year, 60Frames intended to produce as many as 50 short-form series, and has released over 30 series thus far. The company has over a dozen series still in production.A spokeswoman for 60Frames declined comment.The layoffs will not affect 60Frames' recently announced pact with NBC Universal Digital Studio to supply a slate of original series that would get greenlighted once a sponsor is attached.

Obama Ad Draws 33.5 Million Viewers
More than 33.5 million viewers turned in to see Sen. Barack Obama’s paid political advertisement last night, which ran on seven networks in prime time, including NBC, Fox, CBS, MSNBC, BET, TVOne and Univision. The total beats the last political advertising prime-time buy from Ross Perot, who bought airtime on NBC, CBS and ABC the night before Election Day in 1996. Those ads drew 22.6 million viewers.

Obama Drives ‘Daily Show’ to Record Ratings
Sen. Barack Obama’s appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” last night was the program’s most-watched episode ever. The episode attracted 3.6 million total viewers and a 2.6 household rating, besting its previous record—when Michelle Obama was a guest on Oct. 8—by 22%. The half-hour also garnered 2.2 million viewers and a 2.0 rating among people ages 18-49. “The Colbert Report” broke its previous record too, bringing in 2.4 million total viewers and a 1.8 household rating for the Oct. 29 episode.

Qwest FTTN: Available To 5 Million By 2010 - Should be available to 1.8 million users by year's
Qwest recently told us they were ahead of schedule on their $300 million ADSL2+ deployment plan, with their new 12Mbps/896kbps and 20Mbps/896kbps tiers available to 1.5 million customers. That number should reach 1.8 million by the end of this year, and may reach 5 million by the end of 2009, Qwest CEO Ed Mueller told investors this week.

Beeb’s Next-Gen iPlayer Tests New Features
The upgraded iPlayer will allow users to synchronize content across devices via Microsoft’s Live Mesh environment — functionality its Adobe AIR download management can’t support — and will add social networking features such as reviews and recommendations that essentially crowdsource some of the marketing for the already popular player. The social networking features will be limited to simple content-sharing options at first, as the national broadcaster has to tread a careful line between engaging a tech-savvy audience with one less familiar with digital media, Rose said. “The goal is not to build another Facebook.”

The Entire Video of John Doerr Giving 10 Tips for Start-ups
Here’sa video of star VC John Doerr reciting his 10 tips for start-ups to follow in the economic downturn. Doerr gave out the advice at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn”

Current Enlists Digg, Twitter for Election Night
Cable network Current has partnered with Digg and Twitter to power its Election Night coverage, the programmer announced today. Starting at 7 p.m. EDT on Nov. 4, Current will cover the election results on-air and online with live streaming headlines from Digg.com, a social news site that lets users vote on the most popular stories. The Digg headlines will live alongside so-called “tweets” from Twitter users. The goal is to capture the mood of the electorate by providing commentary from citizens across the country, rather than pundits. “By partnering with Digg and Twitter, Current is enabling our young adult viewers to directly influence what they see online and on TV, especially on Election Night on Current TV,” Current CEO Joel Hyatt said in a statement.

Earnings: CBS Swings To Loss On 12.5 Billion Write-Down; Q3 Revs Rise 3 Percent
True to its warnings about lower earnings earlier this month, CBS (NYSE: CBS) Q3 net earnings from continuing operations came in with a loss of $12.46 billion, or a loss of $18.58 per diluted share, versus earnings of $340.2 million, or $.48
per diluted share, for the same prior-year period. The earnings report also highlighted a $56.4 million write-down on items associated with "other-than-temporary declines in the market value" CBS' investments.

Comcast: AT&T Is Our Biggest Threat - Though VoIP adoption still giving Comcast the edge
Yesterday's Comcast earning numbers showed that despite a tightening economy and increased competition from telcoTV, Comcast is weathering the storm -- thanks in particular to the company's rapid VoIP growth. Despite the faster speeds offered via FiOS, Comcast COO Stephen Burke this week stated that AT&T was the bigger threat.

"We are actually seeing more competition from AT&T than Verizon right now, and that was the exact opposite a year ago," Burke said on today s earnings conference call. "We monitor it very, very carefully. AT&T has so much broader a footprint that we actually think they are having a greater effect on our business than Verizon.

SightSpeed bought by Logitech

 Logitech Buys Online Video Provider SightSpeed For $30 Million In Cash
Swiss computer peripherals manufacturer Logitech International is set to acquire SightSpeed, an online video tech and services provider for $30 million. The all cash deal—which adds both the video conferencing technology and the R&D team behind it to Logitech's roster—is slated to close in early November. Berkeley, Calif.-based SightSeed was founded back in 2003, with technology that grew out of Cornell University's Discover Lab.

Microsoft, Akamai team up for 'no-buffer' video streaming
Microsoft and content delivery network services provider Akamai are collaborating to produce a new video service that promises to deliver high-speed video streaming that will not require any buffering.The new service, called AdaptiveEdge Streaming, will build upon Microsoft's IIS Smooth Streaming server technology that gives users the ability to watch videos without buffering by adapting the video quality to the user's connection speed. Thus, a slower connection speed will result in a lower-quality video while a faster connection speed will result in a higher-quality video

Netflix HD Streams Coming to Xbox

The Netflix hits just keep on comin’. We’ve known for a while that the movie rental company was going to make its streaming service available to Xbox 360 users. But what we didn’t know is that it was going to offer movies in HD. Hot diggety, the battle for your TV just got wayyyy more exciting.
Gadget sites Gizmodo and Engadget got a preview of the can’t-come-soon-enough (it’s being released on Nov. 19) update of the Xbox Live service, the “New Xbox Experience.” Part of the upgrade includes the Netflix capability, which appears to work similarly to the Roku’s Netflix player in terms of design and functionality.


Metacafe Chops Producer Payments
Metacafe has changed the payment conditions of its Producer Rewards program, lowering the the amount paid to video creators by more than half. According to a post on Metacafe’s blog today, under the new terms, producers accepted into the program will earn $2 for every 1,000 views. Previously, producers were paid $5 for every 1,000 views.Additionally, Metacafe now explicitly excludes views from outside the U.S. from counting toward those producer rewards. So producers will only get that two bucks when 1,000 views from within the U.S. are reached. These new payment terms start Nov. 1 and will affect both new and existing program participants.


White Spaces Vote Still on FCC Agenda
Despite a chorus of pleas from broadcasters, musicians, sports and concert producers, religious broadcasters and a number of legislators, asking the FCC to reconsider holding a vote on allowing mobile, unlicensed devices to operate in the so-called “white spaces” of the digital spectrum, the planned Nov. 4 vote remained on the commission’s agenda
It could still be pulled anytime up to the day of the meeting. The chairman is said to have at least two votes and is trying to get the third locked down. A source told B&C last week that there were three likely votes, but not set in stone.


Brightcove Scores AOL
Brightcove, which just saw its investors at the New York Times fully deploy its product, now has fellow investor AOL using its video publishing platform. Brightcove will take over from AOL’s terrible home-grown video product “beginning in early 2009,” according to an emailed press release. Brightcove will also be integrated into AOL’s Platform-A advertising offering.


Hulu's One Year Old -- and It Looks Like It's Winning
Hulu is one year old this week. Though it may not generate anything close to the traffic of rival YouTube Inc. , the free online video service appears to be succeeding on its mission by offering a combination of quality streaming TV series and movies that contain only a handful of short commercials.

TMZ Drops Brightcove for Digitalsmiths
It’s hard to measure total reach for white-label video providers, but at least in terms of marketplace perception, Brightcove leads the pack. Be it thePlatform, Ooyala, Fliqz — it’s a long list — no enterprise video player comes through our door without mentioning Brightcove as a competitor.

Beyond YouTube: New Ways to Find Video on the Web
Type "home improvement video" into a traditional search engine and you're likely to get clips of the TV show starring Tim Allen, how-to segments on lawn sprinklers and video of groundbreaking ceremonies of a new Lowe's in Derby, Conn. Now, some video search engines are creating new tools that make it easier to search and sift through the results. Some video-search sites are moving beyond tags and keywords. For example, San Mateo, Calif.-based VideoSurf Inc. is using technology that can search the actual content of the video. Inside YouTube, Google Inc. is experimenting with speech-recognition technology to identify the words and phrases spoken in videos. Some sites, like CastTV, comb the sites of publishers' such as CBS.com and ComedyCentral.com and compile an index of links for one-stop surfing. Other search engines are supplementing traditional search technology by mining for additional details about video clips, such as how they have been rated by viewers and how many times they have been viewed.

Roku, Inc. Receives Funding From Menlo Ventures
Roku Inc., a leading innovator in digital media technology and maker of the popular Netflix Player by Roku, today announced it has received Series C financing from Menlo Ventures. This round follows a Series B investment from Netflix, Inc. that closed in January of this year.Shawn Carolan, a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, will join the board of Roku. “For years we’ve been looking for a company to bring the convenience and selection of Internet video to the television in a compelling way,” said Mr. Carolan, “when we met the Roku team, observed their success with the Netflix player, and came to know their roadmap we knew our search was over.”

Sony Names Eric Berger Head of Crackle Online Video Network
Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday named Eric Berger, currently its senior vice president of digital networks, to head Crackle, the company's online video network. Berger, who also manages operations for Sony's Minisode Network, the Vault and PIX, will oversee content development and programming, marketing and distribution for Crackle.

Blip.tv Inserts Ads Into iTunes Video
Blip isn’t the first company to offer such a service. VoloMedia and Kiptronic both insert ads into QuickTime videos. The news was announced at a Beet.TV Online Video Summit in New York this morning. These podcast-friendly ads use DoubleClick’s DART platform, but can only support clickthrough when the viewer is watching video within iTunes on a computer. Ads inserted into videos won’t be clickable when watched on other devices like an iPod or an Apple TV. The ads are dynamic, so they can be updated to reflect new campaigns or targeted to reach particular audiences. Examples of ads can be found here and here (both launch iTunes).


Video The Vote
Founded two years ago by Ian Inaba of Guerrilla News Network, John Ennis of Shoot First, Inc., and James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org, Video the Vote seeks to ensure "timely, complete, and accurate reporting of voter suppression and election irregularities by organizing citizen journalists to document elections and then using their footage to raise awareness about the ongoing challenges facing American voters."

Report: Online Video Ads to Surge
Surfing the Web without being fed ads seems more unlikely everyday, especially with the boom of online video. Whether it is pre-, mid- or post-roll, overlays or banner ads, substantial growth in online video ads means most people have seen one, even if they aren't aware.

Growth for online video advertising depends on the audience and the inventor--enough people to watch the ads and enough space to encourage mass marketers to buy the ads.

With 66.8 percent of all U.S. Internet users viewing some form of video advertising (in-stream, in-banner or in-text) at least once a month in 2008, the audience has reached critical mass.

According to eMarketer, by 2012 four out of five U.S. Internet users will view video ads--not surprising, since such ads will be ubiquitous by then.

Anystream Becomes Grab Networks After Acquisition
Anystream, a provider of Internet TV and video distribution services, has renamed itself Grab Networks, following its takeover of content-syndication firm Voxant last month

Online video advertising performance rises during holidays, says Eyeblaster
Digital media advertising solutions provider Eyeblaster released its Analytics Bulletin showing the increased potency of online video during the month of December, including big surges in video ad start rates and average duration among consumers.Eyeblasters’s Analytics Bulletin mentions that according to an eMarketer report, 37% of all Q4 2007 sales in the US were in December – an obvious tie-in to heavy purchasing done during the Christmas season. That data also translates to highest shopping periods online over other months, both with purchasing online and researching products online before conducting an in-store purchase.