Todays best video clips

Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported. At least two suitors have expressed interest in the TV listings businesses, sources with knowledge of discussions told the Tribune.

Murdoch: YouTube Helps More than Hurts
Murdoch told the audience he didn’t sue YouTube because it provided promotion for shows like the Simpsons. And Hulu, said Murdoch, was a way for News Corp to control its copyrights. Murdoch expressed interested in online alternatives to broadcast television and traditional film releases, but said he still expects television to be “central.” Releasing movies only online? — he said that’s possible, but hasn’t been tried yet

Iger: Nets Should Embrace VOD
The Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger told an audience at an industry conference Wednesday that programming networks need to embrace video on demand to survive in the changing media landscape. Iger, speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, said that many programmers have been reluctant to provide compelling content to the VOD platform “until the opportunity becomes really obvious.”But he said the viewing habits of younger viewers will force content providers to allow more of their content to appear on the platform.

“Everybody will get there. I can’t tell you when,” Iger said. “I actually believe that consumers, particularly young consumers, are going to be much less tolerant of accessing or getting programming in a linear form on a traditional network and much more demanding of the product they get in a video-on-demand form, meaning individually.”

IndieFlix Introduces CrowdSourced Film Festivals
ImdieFlix, a marketplace for independent films, has launched MyFestival, a new streaming video site that will let film festivals crowdsource the movie selection process. MyFestival is making its debut in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which is taking place from May 22 to June 15.

Death knell for television as we know it
Japanese television technology that will give viewers access to high-speed broadcasts over the internet could render conventional television obsolete and transform the media landscape within years, analysts have predicted.The country's electronics and telecommunications industries are developing a technological standard for a new "internet television" set, which will let users browse websites and watch streaming programs at the touch of a remote control.

Best Practices: Online Video Improves Journalism
Al Morning, of Poynter Online, has published a great interview on their site with The Washington Post’s video journalist and documentary filmmaker, Travis Fox. Travis discusses how the medium of online video helps to better tell the story and goes on to discuss some best practices that he follows when it comes to producing online video, including a discussion regarding ideal length for journalistic video stories.

New Research - 1 Billion Online Video Users by 2013
A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.

Redlasso Refuses to Cease and Desist
In a letter to be delivered today at 5:00 PM ET to legal counsel for five broadcast content providers, Redlasso (www.redlasso.com) has said it will continue to make its site available for use by bloggers providing social commentary on newsworthy events as it continues to work towards cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangements with those and other content providers. Redlasso also announced that Michael Jordan, former Westinghouse Corporation and CBS chief executive, and one of the nation’s best-known CEOs, has joined the company as a senior advisor. Among his responsibilities will be serving as chief liaison to the networks for Redlasso, as well as providing strategic counsel to the management team.

TiVo’s Profit Quadruples to $3.6M on Lower Costs
Some cable systems are starting to complain that too many of the programs they pay for are being given away on the Web for free.

Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune (NYSE: TXA) is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Revision3 bought down by MediaDefender
Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback said MediaDefender, an ArtistDirect subsidiary formed to fight peer-to-peer piracy, caused the Web video studio’s server and site to shut down over the Memorial Day weekend

Don't Mess With Google
The search giant fired back at Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), which filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against it last year, by claiming that Viacom was jeopardizing the free exchange of information across the entire Web."By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression," Google stated.

State of the Internet (release)
Akamai observed that from a global perspective, South Korea had the highest measured levels of “high broadband” (>5 Mbps) connectivity. In the United States, Delaware topped the list, with over 60% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. At the other end of the bandwidth spectrum, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands topped the list of slowest countries, with 95% or more of the connections to Akamai from both countries occurring at below 256 Kbps. In the United States, Washington State and Virginia turned in the highest percentages of sub-256 Kbps connections. However, in contrast to the international measurements, these states only saw 21% and 18% of connections below 256 Kbps respectively.

Mark Cuban: All Your Videos Belong to Us
Addressable set top boxes. Encoded Triggers. Video Hot Spots. Video Quality. Broadcast costs per user rather than unicast. All the features that have been promised as part of internet video and TV for years are finally starting to happen for real on your HDTV. While internet video is looking for a box to replace the set top box, Digital Cable is looking for ways to completely remove the set top box. The excitement in video over the next 5 years is not going to happen on the Net. Deal with it people. As exciting as people watching 10 minute videos on Youtube is. As exciting as the growth patterns for those videos are, digital video is no longer limited to the internet. While Google and others are searching for ways to monetize video, its already happening on your HDTV. Which also means that for video content producers, the money will be where the money is right now. On TV rather than the net.

Death to the Set-Top! Long Live the Set-Top!
Some folks missed the real implication of the Sony agreement, anyway. It had less to do with removing set-tops from the equation, and much more to do with the fact that Sony and the cable industry have, at last, found common ground on the sticky two-way issue.With so much weight behind tru2way now from the consumer electronics industry and some top MSOs, that means the FCC may look more favorably upon tru2way as the method to open up the retail market for cable boxes and nifty digital TVs, and, therefore, may opt not to saddle MSOs with a competing platform called DCR+, which now appears to be the one that's dying a slow and almost certain death. That sound you hear is a collective sigh coming from the cable industry's video engineers. The prospect of supporting DCR+ is one monster headache they'd just assume to avoid.

Viral video cashing in or selling out?
Depending on how you look at it, product placements in viral videos are either a benefit to video makers and brand owners or simply a sad development

TiVo Service Will Deliver Selections of TV Critic
Television viewers have been reading the recommendations of local critics for years. Soon a subset of TiVo users will be able to automatically record a critic’s picks of The Chicago Tribune. TiVo, a leading maker of digital video recorders, is expected to announce on Wednesday a partnership with The Tribune that will deliver the recommendations of Maureen Ryan, the TV critic for The Tribune, straight to the TVs of users who sign up for the service.

New York Times to go programmable with API
The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to "make the NYTprogrammable. Everything we produce should be organized data."Once the API is complete, the Times' internal developers will use it to build platforms to organize all the structured data such as events listings, restaurants reviews, recipes, etc. They will offer a key to programmers, developers and others who are interested in mashing-up various data sets on the site. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

AT&T VRADs in CT Need Landowner Approval
The Connecticut DPUC yesterday ruled that AT&T must get the permission of abutting landowners and municipalities before it can install utility boxes for its U-verse VDSL/IPTV service. The large VRAD cabinets have been a sore spot for a growing number of communities, who consider them property value killers.

New YouTube numbers
Forbes says YouTube will make $200 million this year and $350 million in 2009. For reference, that’s about twice the number we’ve printed here — some $70 million to $90 million — and had corroborated by other sources.Forbes says YouTube homepage ads cost $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to spend $50,000 more in ads on Google or YouTube. That’s a bit different from what TVWeek reported in January (a $100,000-per-day flat fee plus a $100,000 incremental spend on Google and YouTube within 90 days.) Branded channels cost $200,000, according to Forbes (TVWeek had said $250,000 across Google and YouTube, $100,000 of which must be on YouTube).

Amazon Launching Pay-Per-View Streaming Next Week
Word that Amazon will be launching a pay-per-view streaming service next week. Amazon, of course, already has a pay-per-view rental/download service -- the pretty-much-ignored Unbox -- so unclear what exactly they'll be rolling out. Sadly, Walt Mossberg, who's already seen the service, presumably under NDA, didn't bother to talk about it.

MediaDefender Takes Down Revision3?
Online video studio Revision3 suffered web site outages over the long weekend and extending to Tuesday that it is now blaming on the anti-piracy outfit MediaDefender. Rev3 CEO Jim Louderback posted a long and well-written account of the events on the company blog this morning. Rev3 operates a BitTorrent tracking server to distribute high-quality downloads of its shows.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 27 May 2008 2nd edition

Cable firms in pact to allow TVs that don't need set-top boxes

Consumers will be able to buy digital televisions that allow them to receive cable service without a set-top box under an agreement announced Tuesday between Sony Corp. and six of the biggest U.S. cable operators. Industry leaders said that by eliminating the box, cable companies can simplify installation and reduce costs, while consumers will have one less component to worry about in home theater systems.

Sony Electronics and Major U.S. Cable Operators negotiate natonal two way play
Sony Electronics and major cable operators which together pass over 105 million U.S. homes have negotiated and signed an agreement that will enable consumers to purchase innovative “two-way” digital televisions and other devices that can receive interactive digital and high-definition video services without a set-top box, Sony and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) announced today. The terms of the agreement are embodied in a binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated by Sony Electronics and the six largest cable companies – Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks – which serve more than 82 percent of all U.S. cable subscribers.

Measuring Online Engagement Seen as Key to Boosting Ad Dollars

Online video sites and services like Break.com and Blip.tv are in the early stages of striking partnerships with Web analytics firms to offer more detailed information on how long consumers watch online video.That type of data can help sites develop a means to measure “engagement,” an increasingly sought-after measure of how much attention advertising gets. Advertisers say they are keen for more data on how long Web viewers stay tuned in to a video, whether they fast-forward and when they stop watching.

Verizon Offers Starz Broadband Video Service
Verizon announced on Tuesday a multi-year deal to offer Starz Play, a broadband video service from the Liberty Media unit, to its 8.5 million broadband subscribers. The $5.99 per month Starz Play service will offer both live Starz programming, and downloads of 2,500 movies and videos such as "Spider-Man 3" and "Ratatouille" for unlimited viewing for as long as a subscription is current. The deal will also see Verizon offer Starz products to its FiOS TV, FiOS Internet and DSL subscribers.

Cable firms in pact to allow TVs that don't need set-top boxes

Consumers will be able to buy digital televisions that allow them to receive cable service without a set-top box under an agreement announced Tuesday between Sony Corp. and six of the biggest U.S. cable operators. Industry leaders said that by eliminating the box, cable companies can simplify installation and reduce costs, while consumers will have one less component to worry about in home theater systems.

Viacom Ups Ante In YouTube Copyright Spat: Google More Than A Mere Enabler
Google is getting a lot of attention for claiming in its latest court brief (.pdf) that Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression." The rhetoric headlines a familiar legal argument, that the DMCA protects YouTube's right to host copyrighted content from third parties without fear of liability.

Google Says Viacom “Threatens” Expression

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Friday, YouTube owner Google said Viacom’s $1 billion copyright lawsuit threatens the very way hundreds of millions of people exchange information over the Internet. According to the Associated Press, Google said that YouTube “goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works.” Google went on to say that Viacom’s seeking to hold carriers and hosting providers liable for online communications “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”

NBCU Completes Stake Buy In India's NDTV; Option To Increase To 50 Percent
NBC Universal has completed its stake buy in India's TV conglomerate NDTV Networks, the companies have informed the local stock exhange. NBCU has taken an indirect stake in 26 percent of NDTV Networks PLC for $150 million. More importantly - NBCU has the option, in two years, to increase their stake in the holding company to 50 percent, with the NDTV group holding an equal 50 percent stake.

More Than One Billion Users Will View Online Video in 2013
Sparked by increasing broadband penetration and rising connection speeds available to a growing percentage of the world’s population, over-the-top video has seen phenomenal growth in very recent years. A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.

Broadcast networks under siege
IT seems much longer than four years ago that NBC marketed the blazes out of a miniseries called "10.5." A disaster epic about a series of giant earthquakes on the West Coast, "10.5" was a silly hunk of overripe cheese ("a four-hour tour de force of lameness," in the words of critic Tim Goodman). But the 2004 "event" movie was also emblematic of a then-cherished network tradition, the sweeps ratings period, when stations banged the drums for all sorts of specials and stunts crafted as viewer bait. Like the networks themselves, though, the quarterly sweeps -- which some stations still use to set local ad rates -- have fallen on hard times. For the May sweep that ended last Wednesday, NBC couldn't be bothered to make the earth move. Among the network's prime-time offerings as the period drew to a close: repeats of "The Office," "Law & Order: SVU" and "Most Outrageous Moments."

ABC Shows Top BitTorrent Downloads
ABC programs accounted for four of the top five BitTorrent TV downloads for the week ending May 19, according to an analysis for NewTeeVee by Big Champagne. Fox’s “Prison Break” took the fifth slot.

Watch Out Time Warner, Cablevision: Verizon Takes on NY

Verizon just took a big step closer to getting a license to wire all five boroughs of New York City for its FiOS TV network. Today New York City's Franchise and Concession Review Committee voted unanimously to allow Verizon to proceed. The next step is approval from the Mayor's office and the New York State Public Service Commission--both should be easy checkoffs. After that, the real work begins for Verizon. Residents are concentrated in New York City, meaning many potential customers, but each building presents an engineering challenge, as does the city's aging infrastructure itself. "If we are successful in the last steps of the approval process, we will deliver on our promise to begin offering FiOS TV in parts of each of the five boroughs later this year,” said Monica Azare, Verizon senior vice president for New York and Connecticut.

That's it folks

Memorial Weekend roundup

CDN Pricing Stable In Q1: Drop In Price Only at top levels

At the Streaming Media East show, Dan Rayburn published his CDN pricing for Q1 in a session entitled "CDN Pricing: The Going Rate For Video Delivery". You can download the slides from the presentation here and here is a summary of prices from his survey

Cable Networks Put More Content Online

IFC is making a bet that people are hungry for online video with their lunch. The network’s two-month-old Lunchbox is a daily Web show of independent-culture news and entertainment that premieres new episodes each day at noon. The two- to five-minute programs are hosted by different IFC Web personalities each day, and themed around topics like music and films that are near and dear to IFC’s audience base.

Joost developing a web service
Joost, the peer-to-peer Web TV service that was supposed to take the world by storm, is close to launching its second act. Its much more modest ambition: Staying relevant.

Viacom cool on Joost
On Joost: Viacom was an original investor in the much-hyped video service from the founders of Skype. Is the service where he thought it would be? ”We come at Joost or other platforms from the point of view that we cannot predict—nor did we in that case or any other case—predict which ones are going to be hugely successful, moderately successful, which won’t work. ... We root for all the distribution platforms because the more of them there are, the more exposure our content has.” As for Joost, says Dauman, “They’ve been trying different things. They’ve been tweaking the model but we’ve certainly been happy with the relationship.” But will Viacom take part in the start-up’s second round? Doesn’t sound like it. Dauman: “We did receive equity in connection with our original deal and we’re happy where we are. … I don’t think it’s fair to them for me to comment.

Showstash hit with $2.7 m piracy damages
A federal judge in Los Angeles this week ordered a website that posts links to pirated films on third-party sites to pay $2.7 million in damages to studio members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The ruling against Showstash.com follows a similar $1.3 million judgment issued on May 7 against Cinematube.net; the sites are also prohibited from engaging in any other activity that would infringe the studios' copyrights.

Web Video Chases Monetization (extract one)
It seems sage since the sheer size of the market—10 billion streams per month and $1 billion in Web video ad revenue forecast to grow to an estimated $12 billion in 2012—suggests that there is a lot of upside to finding breakout ways to inject messaging into this medium. Making money against that burgeoning market seems to rest in two areas: the receptiveness to messaging and the acquisition, measurement and monetization of meaningful audiences in terms of both qualification and reach.

A report conducted last June by the Online Publishers Association shows that, so far, people seem pretty opened to messaging in Web video, at least if it’s not too intrusive or totally out of left field. Of the respondents, 80 percent had seen advertising in online video, with 52 percent taking some sort of action, ranging from seeking more information to actually making a purchase. In a 2007 study, Doubleclick found that the clickthrough rates on video ads were markedly higher for static image spots. Sound and motion online seem to draw a deeper connection and engagement with users/viewers.

Web Video Chases Monetization (extract two)
VideoEgg CEO and co-founder Matt Sanchez has led the commercialization of the overlay concept of video advertising and is now rolling out the next generation of video messaging in a product called Ad Frame. To Sanchez, the challenge going forward in a world where users are in control, disruptive media is flawed and fragmentation is rife—look at any 17-year-old’s MySpace page and there are probably dozens of video links—is creating accountable rich media for advertisers.

That accountability, said Sanchez, means that buying page views on a cost-per-thousand basis needs to be replaced by a cost-per-engagement metric that kicks in only when a video is clicked on or rolled over.

“The page view doesn’t make sense anymore because they don’t have a consistent value, where cost per engagement is a clear signal from the users that they’re interested,” said Sanchez.



BitTorrent Teams Up With Orb
Popular peer-to-peer network BitTorrent is continuing efforts to grow its reach by signing a partnership agreement with Orb Networks. The agreement bundles BitTorrent’s P2P software with that of Orb’s, which allows users to stream their music, movies or other media to their PCs, phones and other devices.

Of Dogs And Men On New WE TV Site

WE TV is refreshing its Web site, switching from a promotional site for its channel content to more of a social contact and lifestyles site.

Under the umbrella of www.wetv.com, the network is launching secondary destinations for the different stages in a woman’s life: as a single, preparing for marriage, expecting a baby and as a mom. The niche areas will contain new Web-only content, such as original Web series and other short-form programming.Other content areas will mine topics such as pets and food.

P2P: Friend of Carriers, Savior of Online Video
Over the past two months, peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has gone from the source of all evil to being a miracle cure for distributing video if a panel of speakers at Streaming Media East are to be believed. It won't be IPTV, but P2PTV, if service providers and P2P companies can cooperate together.

Today's best video clips 26 May 2008

Akimbo, online video delivery company, throws in towel for good
We’re hearing that Akimbo, the San Mateo, Calif. video set-top box company that raised millions of dollars in fresh funding less than three months ago to make a fresh start in a new direction, has just thrown in the towel anyway.In February, Akimbo brought in a new management team, $8 million in fresh funding [Update: Apparently, the company only raised $4M; the original announcement of $8 million had been a targeted amount, but it only ever raised $4M] and refashioned its technology to help video publishers deliver their own video online. It also wanted to help publishers monetize the video, by offering them ways to charge for pay-per-minute content, run advertising and subscriptions.

Google: White Space Broadband Inevitable says Page
Microsoft, Google and Dell have formed the backbone of a six-partner coalition named the Wireless Innovation Alliance. Their goal is to use the so-called unlicensed "white space" spectrum -- partially freed by the migration to digital television -- to offer un-served consumers inexpensive Internet access via the airwaves (with these companies obviously providing the hardware, software and most importantly to Google: ads).

However, tests at the FCC haven't gone well, with an initial round of testing showing the device couldn't cleanly avoid nearby signals, and a second round suffering from power problems. That isn't stopping Google co-founder Larry Page from sharing his vision of "Wi-Fi on steroids" as part of a discussion this week at the New America Foundation (see video). The Google blog suggests Page believes it's inevitable:

Insatiable Demand for Bandwidth and Need for ‘F...
Broadband access networks are undergoing a change in terms of architecture and the applications and services being run on them. This change will have fundamental implications on the way access networks and associated business models are viewed. Service providers must consider network architectures that can address the challenges posed by the changing trends in end-user broadband usage.

Mobile TV using indoor wireless

While many mobile network operators (MNOs) are planning to use a combination of 3G and dedicated mobile broadcasting networks to deliver mobile TV and video services, they must not overlook emerging alternatives, according to a new report, Critical Ingredients of Mobile TV: femtocells and sideloading, published by Analysys Mason.

Many MNOs already offer TV and video services over their 3G networks. Concerns over capacity and quality of service are driving MNOs to combine 3G networks with dedicated mobile broadcasting networks (such as DVB-H and MediaFLO). However, these are not the only ways of delivering mobile TV content. Indoor wireless systems (such as femtocells and WLAN) and sideloading (where content is transferred from a PC or other device to memory in a mobile handset) are important delivery mechanisms with valuable benefits.

Welcome to Las Vegas - Home of the technology superpower you've never heard of
Drive a couple of blocks past the Loose Caboose and the Carburetor Shop on E. Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas, and you'll find one of the world's leading technology companies. The name of the company - Switch Communications - will go unrecognized by almost all of you. That's because it has operated in near total secrecy for the last few years. Switch has preferred to keep its gold mine a need-to-know type of affair. "Pay no attention to the secure fortress in the strip mall."

A few months ago, word of Switch's apparently fantastic operations started to reach my in-box. Most of the people who visited the Switch facility were bound by non-disclosure agreements, but that failed to stop them from leaking out a few choice details. "This is the most advanced computing center in the world," I was told. "It's like the internet superhighway wrapped up in one package. All the heavies are there."

BitTorrent’s Achilles’ Heel
The popular BitTorrent web site Mininova was sued by the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN this week in a bid to get Mininova to filter unlicensed content. The organization has had some success in the past against Edonkey and BitTorrent web sites, so there is at least a possibility that Mininova will be forced to either take down most of its torrent files or shut down completely. Either way, it would be a big blow for the BitTorrent community. Since launching in early 2005, Mininova has quickly become one of the biggest BitTorent directories, with almost 5 billion torrent downloads to date.

Championship Gaming Series Launches YouTube Channel
Worldwide gaming league Championship Gaming Series is launching its official YouTube channel. The channel will offer high-quality content from CGS' pro gaming broadcasts to YouTube's audience, Online Media Daily learned Thursday. Ad-supported content from CGS will be uploaded to a dedicated partner channel, the league plans to announce during the L.A. Games Conference on Friday.

Measuring Online Engagement Seen as Key to Boos...
Online video sites and services like Break.com and Blip.tv are in the early stages of striking partnerships with Web analytics firms to offer more detailed information on how long consumers watch online video. That type of data can help sites develop a means to measure “engagement,” an increasingly sought-after measure of how much attention advertising gets. Advertisers say they are keen for more data on how long Web viewers stay tuned in to a video, whether they fast-forward and when they stop watching. These efforts to apply more detailed metrics to online video probably will accelerate the flow of advertising dollars into the growing online video business, media agency and video Web site executives said. Also, these initiatives are yet another sign of the maturation of the Web video economy, as online video advertising moves beyond the experimental phase

Dan Raeburn summarises CDN challenges
Dan spoke about this years SME conference, some of the challenges facing CDN's, how to monetize content issues facing Creatives

Microsoft spiffs up Mediaroom developers’ kit
Microsoft this week released a beta version of its Microsoft Mediaroom Presentation Framework to the 150 software developers that are part of the Microsoft program, allowing them to now directly import Web Services content into IPTV applications

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -22 May 2008

ABC Adds Video Goodies
ABC.com, which claims the top spot among network video Websites (according to Nielsen), is adding still more viewer-friendly features to its online player. Not only is video now available in full-screen format, in high def, and with closed captioning, ABC is the first network site to include an embedding function. Following the lead of sites like Huluis a pretty big first for a major network, but it seems like an obvious step -- whatever helps snag viewers to play ads is a good thing.

Akamai Stock Hammered After Downgrade
Shares of Akamai Technologies Inc. fell as much as 8.6 percent this morning, after investors took one analyst's advice to sell.

Akamai stock was down $2.77 (7%) to $36.50 in early afternoon trading after Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst Derek Bingham downgraded the company based on its valuation and increasing competition in the content delivery network (CDN) market. Earlier, the stock hit an intra-day low of $35.88. "Beyond valuation, we are also concerned about intensifying competition as private entrants proliferate and selected large network operators begin to eye the space," Bingham writes.

CDN Wrap: Deluxe NYC Edition
Mirror Image announced it has added Adobe Systems Inc. 's Flash Media Server 3 to its network, joining the legion of CDNs jumping on the FMS 3 bandwagon. While the company has offered Windows-based streaming for some time, Mirror Image director of marketing Marty Hayward says the ability to stream via Flash has become increasingly important to the company's customer base. Select customer trials of Flash-based streaming are underway now, and the company expects to make the offering generally available by late June.

SME Observations: AT&T, P2P; Ads, Ads, Everywhere
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the companies in attendance are getting serious about exploring new ad formats and ad models, or at least learning about them. Breakout sessions revolving around advertising -- and there were plenty of them -- were mostly full, as content owners (presumably) and service providers scout out how they're going to monetize the gobs and gobs of video content they're streaming to end users.

Media Pass buys Gigant
MediaPass, a Santa Monica, CA-based online media and music services firm, has bought out Gigantic Entertainment, a video production firm headed by director Kevin Kerslake, with the idea that the merged company will develop series for mobile and broadband distribution, reports Variety.

Brightcove Gets New Funding For Japan Subsidiary; Includes Dentsu
Brightcove, the online video services company which has been quiet for some time now, has launched a new Japanese company Brightcove KK in which it owns a majority. The funding was led by Dentsu, J-Stream, previous investor Transcosmos, and Cyber Communications, with money pitched in by Brightcove as well, for a total of about $4.9 million in the new company.

Bit Torrrent links up with Orb
Popular peer-to-peer network BitTorrent is continuing efforts to grow its reach by signing a partnership agreement with Orb Networks. The agreement bundles BitTorrent’s P2P software with that of Orb’s, which allows users to stream their music, movies or other media to their PCs, phones and other devices.

BitTorrent, Orb Networks to Bundle P2P, Place-shifting Software
- Time Warner's AOL on Thursday announced the launch of new video portal sites in Canada, India and Taiwan,

Today's best video clips 21 May 2008

Moblyng Gets $5.7M to Bring Flash to Phones
Moblyng, which was formerly known as Fliptrack, just raised $5.7 million to translate Flash content from the Web into videos or stills that can be viewed on most cell phones. As a transcoding junkie, I thought this was cool — until I realized that the company will use its translation prowess to allow you to scrape your “photo bling” from MySpace, Friendster and Facebook (only via the Moblyng Mobile slide show Facebook app) and render it fit for viewing on a WAP page on a cell phone.

Flip Video's new Flip Minos spotted in catalog
Flip Video may not have officially revealed any new products yet, but a new simple video camcorder from the company has been spotted on Wednesday in a B&H print catalog. While not much is known about the new camera, its $180 retail price suggests it will be the company's flagship offering, and will be available in black or white.

Hulu expands its distribution network
So where can you find Hulu? You can already stream our videos on AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. And starting today, Hulu is also available through TV.com, home to millions of TV fans who connect through their favorite shows.

You'll also find Hulu videos on great sites like these in coming weeks:

• TV Guide, the Web site for the iconic TV brand name -- and home to one of the web's leading TV fan sites.
• Break.com, a leading video destination site for guys.
• Zap2it, a leading TV, movie and entertainment community.
• BuddyTV, a leading TV fan site that is host to forums, news, spoilers and interviews.
• Flixster, the largest movie community on the web, where users can rate, share, review and discover films they love.

CBS Audience Network adds more retro programming
Looks like offering old episodes of Star Trek and MacGyver proved successful: CBS Interactive announced this week that it has added a selection of new "classic TV" content to its CBS Audience Network of online video partners.Full episodes and clips of select seasons from Twin Peaks, Beverly Hills: 90210, The Love Boat, Family Ties, and Perry Mason are now available on CBS' 300-plus partner sites, which include downloadable video service Joost, AOL and its newly acquired social network Bebo, video-sharing site Veoh, and a few hardware partners like Slingbox. CBS has also added more seasons of MacGyver, The Twilight Zone, and Hawaii Five-O to complement what it first started offering in February.

Outsourcing hits Madison Avenue
Outsourcing has hit Madison Avenue. Until recently, Web ads were produced mostly by creative types in downtown lofts in places like New York City or San Francisco. But big marketers are now increasingly shipping off that work to little-known businesses in places like Costa Rica and Bulgaria.

TurnHere Launches Travel-Themed Video Network
TurnHere unveiled a new Web video network, TurnHereTravel.tv, dedicated to traveling. The main site launches with a collection of feature clips from Hawaii and China, among others.

Is the CDN market a bubble?
In a panel yesterday, experts in public and private equity discussed whether or not the current content delivery network (CDN) market is a bubble. The verdict? It depends on who you ask. Ray Conley, a CFA at Palo Alto Investors, wasn't optimistic about the state of the CDN industry, saying, "There are too many of them and most won't survive." He added that the amount of money going into the CDN space "is the function of too many VCs with too much money." Not surprisingly, Panther Express Inc. founder Kevin Ryan disagreed, citing the size of the market and the growing opportunity in it. "This is a billion dollar industry, and it's growing 25 percent per year." Despite that opportunity, he points out that there are only two companies -- Akamai Technologies Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc. - making more than $100 million per year.

Video: What Do Web Shows Cost?
What does it really cost to produce a Web video series? $200 per minute or $2000? Or maybe $20,000? Daisy Whitney's "New Media Minute" gives you the low-down.

Reddit Users Get Their Own TV Show
PBS is partnering with social news service Reddit to pilot a television series called YourWeek that combines user-submitted video segments and in-studio commentary.

BBFC Launches Download Classification Scheme in Partnership with the Home Entertainment Industry (Release)
The BBFC’s widely recognised and trusted classification system is moving to the world of downloadable films, programmes and video games. The BBFC has worked closely with the home entertainment industry to develop this voluntary regulatory scheme that will bring the benefits of the DVD classification system to the world of downloads and the internet. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Europe, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox have signed up and other key industry players, who have been involved in the development of BBFC.online, are poised to join the scheme.

Launched today, BBFC.online – as the new service is called – has been designed to give consumers the assurance they seek when choosing new media content. The scheme will see the BBFC’s famous ‘black card’, category symbols and Consumer Advice appearing on a wide range of ‘new media’ content, including video-on-demand and streamed video which is offered to the public through websites, set-top boxes and portable media devices.

There is currently little independent classification of downloadable or streaming video content, either on the internet or delivered by video-on-demand services and via set-top-boxes. This is in spite of independent research that indicates that 63 per cent of adults (74 per cent of parents) are concerned about downloading video material which does not come with independent content advice and labelling. In addition, 84 per cent of adults (91 per cent of parents) want to see BBFC film and DVD classification on downloadable/streaming films and other digital audiovisual content.

BBFC.online has been developed over the last 18 months, in close partnership with the video and new media industries and the British Video Association. There are already some 700 videos with ‘online certificates’ and this is likely to rise to about 1000 by the end of the month.

Howcast Adds Distribution Partners
The how-to video company Howcast expanded its reach today via distribution deals with AOL, Metacafe, Bebo and Blip.tv. Under the new deals, Howcast’s user-generated, how-to videos will be available to those sites. Howcast said the deals expand its reach to more than 87 million online viewers. AOL and Bebo are displaying Howcast content using Howcast's customizable player with content targeted for the audience of those sites.

Video Execs: We Love H.264
Industry executives foresee wide-scale adoption of H.264 as the standard for high-quality video, but say there's always innovation on the horizon

Time Warner Officially Announces Plan To Separate Time Warner Cable; Will Get $9.25 Billion Dividend
This had been coming for awhile: Time Warner has officially announced plans to separate its Time Warner Cable unit, a chunk of which already trades independently.

Perfecting Online Video Ad Tactics
"Getting Beyond Pre-Roll" was one of the more challenging panel sessions held at the Online Publishers Association Europe conference last week in London.

Google to have video sorted in next 12 months
Henrique de Castro, head of European sales for Google, stressed the enormous growth in the online video audience recently, but acknowledged that video search has a long way to go in helping audiences get what they want out of it. Mr. de Castro predicted that proper video search would be "sorted" [out] in the next 12 to 24 months, however.

Cable, satellite get rotten grades
If you thought that U.S. consumers hold the federal government in the lowest regard, think again and look no further than the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index. Another poor showing in the annual survey for cable and satellite TV companies Tuesday led some experts to warn that sector players better get their act together amid a weak economy and heated competition -- or risk losing out longer-term.The picture is not pretty," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. "The pay TV group is, overall, a disaster, ranking worse on average than the IRS." Moffett warned that while "it was good enough to be the 'best of the bad' " among TV distributors in the past, that's no good anymore amid heated competition from telecom firms, video games, online video and the like.

"Weak customer satisfaction -- for the whole industry -- is an enormous Achilles heel for pay TV and perhaps more than any other factor threatens the foundation of the pay TV model," Moffett said.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 20 May 2008

Party's Over, Bloggers: CBS, NBC, Fox Threaten Free Clip Service Redlasso
Redlasso, a TV clip service favored by bloggers everywhere, is being threatened with legal action by three of the major media conglomerates: Fox (NWS), CBS (CBS) and NBC (GE). The three companies have sent the Web firm a cease-and-desist letter for recording television and distributing it without their permission, and are giving them until May 29 to stop or get hauled into court. What's Redlasso? It's hard to imagine media and political blogs like Huffington Post, Perez Hilton or Hot Air without it. The company records live TV and allows users to search for clips, grab them and embed them on their own sites. It's pretty sweet! It's also a version of what Sling Media is trying to do -- except Sling is going through the laborious process of getting the networks, producers and the countless other rights holders to give it permission.

Netflix to Sell a Device for Instantly Watching Movies on TV Sets
Netflix, which pioneered the business of offering DVD movie rentals by mail, is now offering its 8.2 million subscribers an option to watch movies easily on their televisions without involving the post office.

Roku Device Streams Netflix Movies to TV
OpenTV (NASD: OPTV), a provider of interactive TV software and services, said on Tuesday that NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) has signed a deal to use its OpenTV Participate solution to power and manage its interactive TV applications across Web, mobile and set-top box platforms. The deal follows a successful test of OpenTV's system on a series of interactive TV application's for "Heroes" by NBC.com.

YouTomb Tracks Video Takedowns
YouTomb is a new service that monitors and tracks videos being taken down off YouTube because of copyright violations. The cleverly named site that was created by the MIT student organization MIT Free Culture scans YouTube to see both who issued a copyright violation complaint, and how long the video in question was up before it was taken down.

Hulu Leads Network Sites, Adds Partners
Hulu just broke into the top 10 of all online video sites, according to Nielsen’s April measure. The site, which has only been public for two months, is now seeing more than 63 million streams and 2.4 million users per month, with each user viewing more than two hours of video. That beats out all network TV sites — including Hulu’s parents, FOX and NBC.

New Beta Program for Live Flash Streaming Platform
Mirror Image Internet, a leading provider of content delivery solutions powered by a patented global network, today announced a beta program for its live Flash® streaming solution.

Current TV: Ad Revenue Drops At Al Gore's Network; Losses Widen En Route To IPO
Not the trend you want to be showing as you work towards an IPO: In its Q1 ended March 31, Current TV had ad revenue of just $2.5 million, a decline from $2.64 million in the year-ago quarter, according to an amended S-1 filing. Total revenue for the quarter was up 23 percent, helped by growth in distribution revenue. Ultimately though, the Al Gore-backed cable network needs to show improvement on the ad side

Userplane Gets Into Video Hosting

Userplane, the company behind Webchat and a number of other online communication services, has introduced a new video app dubbed “Mediaplayer”. The free white-label app will allow web publishers to add hosted video uploads to their sites under an ad-supported model.

Mediaplayer users will be able to upload videos as large as 100MB, and there is no limit on the amount of upload or streaming bandwidth they can consume. For the time being, all ad revenue from Mediaplayer will go to Userplane, but Michael Jones, the company’s CEO, says that they hope to introduce the revenue sharing model seen on their other apps in the near future. The current version of the app is restricted to video only, but the next release will feature Minichat, allowing users to chat while they watch clips.

Where Are the YouTube Ads?
Are the YouTube ads missing because advertisers aren’t buying? Or is there a technical glitch prohibiting them?

Russian Portal Yandex To Do US IPO, Seeking $1.5-$2 Billion: Report
This should make for some fun S-1 reading when it comes out: Yandex, the dominant Russian portal/search engine plans to do a US IPO, according to Reuters. The report says the company will seek to raise $1.5-$2 billion via the offering (likely on the NASDAQ), at a total valuation of $5 billion. For 2007 Yandex's revenue was up 130 percent to $167 million from $73 million in the year-ago period.

Netflix launches $99 settopbox
Working with a small Silicon Valley company, Netflix will begin marketing a $99 device on Tuesday that will allow customers to play thousands of movies and shows on their televisions instantly, for no charge beyond their normal subscription fee.

NBCU Digital Chief: Apple Moving in the Right Direction

NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff says that Apple Inc. is "moving in the right direction" by offering variable pricing for iTunes downloads. Kliavkoff, who's in charge of NBC's digital media strategy, applauded the news that Apple had negotiated a variable pricing deal with Home Box Office Inc. last week. The HBO deal came about after NBC pulled content from iTunes because Apple failed to reach an agreement for variable pricing. Kliavkoff says Apple's stance on pricing went against every other distribution deal it had with partners. "It's the content owner that sets the wholesale price, and then the retailer decides what the price is to the consumer," Kliavkoff says. "On every distribution deal, with every partner except one, we've been able to set the wholesale price."

Popjax Launches Branded Video Trivia Games With Heavy Metal Rockers Avenged Sevenfold
Two of the most popular things to do on the Web are play games and watch videos. Popjax, a startup backed by Shasta Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, combines the to to create a new form of casual game: video trivia. The company creates mashups of its own trivia questions with embedded videos from YouTube.

Semantic Video Search Indexing
Semantic video indexing is the process of automatically detecting the presence of semantic concepts in a video stream. This incredible session (my personal favorite), titled, “Semantic Video indexing,” was presented at the 2008 Video...

Comcast's Fancast.com Adds "South Park," Other Viacom Shows
Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) announced on Monday that it has added full-length streaming episodes of Viacom-owned programs including "South Park," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" to the offering at its Fancast.com service.

That's it folks

Adobe's wake up call to the FCC (and the world)

Let us hope the wise men and women of the Federal Communications Commission are on Adobe's press release list. Adobe late last week unveiled the beta version of its latest Flash player, code named Astro. The much anticipated player exploits a new P2P technology which enables very fast, secure bit transfers at a fraction of the bandwidth of traditional protocols. Known as Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) it has been described (correctly) as a stunning piece of engineering and has been developed from a technology Adobe picked up when it bought a small development firm two years ago called Amicima. (Adobe must surely be the smartest acquirer of technology -- it bought the Flash technology when it acquired Macromedia for a cool $3.4 billion in 2005).
Bottom line is video (and audio) can be served direct from the browser using Astro, meaning the need for any special client software disappears. And because the bandwidth requirement is minimal the need for a centrally managed delivery system also disappears.
The implications of this truly game changing release are now being digested. Already there are predictions that it spells the death of the CDN industry --or at least the radical transformation of Akamai et al to glorified ISPs. And without the need for client software to broadcast video and voice the business model for any client based players looks much less compelling.
Brand strength and distribution may keep them relevant but even for the mighty such as You Tube and Skype, Adobe's Flash 10 player is a major business model threat.
Yahoo once was the directory for text based content but lost its crown when Google arrived with a search engine which meant you did not need to post your content any more to a centralized library to have it read.
Will Astro do the same to sites like YouTube now that you don't need its base technology to broadcast your video? Ditto Skype. Why be locked down to a proprietary system when VoIP telephony is available direct form the browser.
While this may sound overstated Flash already enjoys major distribution strength and a simple upgrade of the current Flash player to version 10 Astro would instantly establish a major P2P platform. Open the player to outside programmers and it is not hard to envisage a very different delivery and application technology and industry architecture to now.
If CDN's are no longer needed then ISP's once again will be asked to pick up the load --often with networks not built to handle large amounts of uplink traffic-- a problem Comcast has run into with the FCC after it tried to manage P2P traffic to avoid congestion.
For the regulators this is a technology which underlines just how important P2P technology is to the future of the Internet. Unless you live under a rock everyone knows there is train crash coming with predictions the Internet will grow nearly 50 times over the next 7 years fueled by the demand for video.
Smart file sharing P2P technologies are going to be critical if theInternet is not to become an unusable swamp as video floods the routers and pipes of the web. Which is why the FCC's review of Comcast's traffic management practices is now emerging as a seminal judgment for the U.S. regulator.
Finding the balance between net neutrality and congestion is a pragmatic issue and the risk is the FCC in its attempt to "regulate" a solution could stifle the very technology which offers most hope for "decongesting" the Internet. Wisdom suggests if the FCC does not have an answer then maybe it is better just saying nothing and let the market sort it out.

Tom

Today's best video clips 19 May 2008

Worth noting: Web Video attracts $217 million investment; P2P in Flash 10 Beta - a YouTube, Skype killer; U-verse offers dual HD streams

Investors Target Web Video
This time, will it be different for investors who come to Hollywood seeking riches by creating content? Venture capitalists with long, successful records are pouring money into content, betting that the Web video economy will change the rules that for decades have made show business an effective mechanism for separating outsiders from their money. With a checkered history of investment failures, Hollywood and the venture capitalists who rule Silicon Valley, Boston and New York have never been the best of friends. Investors historically have been reluctant to pour money into a hit-driven entertainment business. Internet video has become the bridge between the two worlds. Venture capitalists poured $461 million into online video services and software companies last year in 68 deals in the United States. In the first three months of this year, they’ve already funneled $217 million into such ventures, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Adobe Introduces P2P and VoIP
Today Adobe announced the public beta of a new Flash Player that is going to change the way we all use the Internet. More importantly, the new player changes the economics of the Internet. Interestingly the two really key features are not getting much play in the news yet as people have focused on the new graphics capabilities. But graphics is not what is really interesting here.

P2P in Flash 10 Beta - a YouTube, Skype killer
The inclusion of p2p in the Flash 10 beta threatens to bring down everyone from YouTube to Skype. Using P2P, Flash sites will be able to serve higher quality video than YouTube at a fraction of the cost. Meanwhile, the combination of the Speex audio codec and the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) will enable sites to seamlessly integrate VoIP without requiring a Skype install. The impact of this change is hard to fathom. We’re talking about a fundamental shift in what is possible on the Internet, with Flash demolishing almost all barriers to integrating P2P on any site.

Flash P2P: Now That’s Disruptive
The reason we should pay attention to this product is Adobe’s distribution strength. The company can easily upgrade its Flash clients and instantly become owner of one of the largest P2P services. What that means is that now anyone can contemplate a Joost-like service that works within a browser. Using AIR to extend those P2P abilities to the desktop would be fairly easy as well. Ironically, both Joost and Jaman have spent considerable time, money and attention doing this. The early version of Flash is rather simple, but it does offer a way to lower bandwidth costs while still delivering high-quality video. In addition, companies like Tokbox (our story) and Woome (NTV story) can add more functionality, such as cheaper, live video-voice service, without spending too much money.

Lieberman protests YouTube's alleged terrorist video
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Monday called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West.

The videos are branded with Al-Qaeda logos – a practice detailed in a recent bipartisan Committee staff report entitled “Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” These production logos are easily recognizable, making it easy for Google to remove them from its Internet sites. Lieberman called on Google to enforce its own community standards against videos that show gratuitous violence or people getting “hurt, attacked, or humiliated.”

Video view numbers are still misleading
On Wednesday, online video analytics company TubeMogul will be releasing its study of what counts as a view across a dozen video sites. The basic finding is that with only a few exceptions, all a view means is that a video begins to play. Notice how I didn't say it means "someone began watching" -- watching has nothing to do with it. On YouTube, AOL Video, MySpace Video, Yahoo Video, Veoh and Revver, a view is counted as soon a video begins, meaning tick marks are handed out even if viewers didn't watch a single second. It doesn't matter if your video is two minutes or two hours -- if it started playing, it was viewed.

Telecom Giants See a Savior in Video
As the dinosaur wireline businesses creep toward extinction, telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are getting a big boost from an unlikely offering: video. Ten years ago, it would've been hard to believe that a phone company would find a savior in video, but as the fierce competition between AT&T, Verizon and cable operators heats to a boil, it seems the telecom companies' best defense is business diversity.

Fancast.com to Stream Additional Programming from MTV Networks and BET Networks (Release)
Comcast Corp.today announced that Fancast will have access to an expanded library of full length programming from MTV Networks (MTVN) and BET Networks (BETN), including episodes of COMEDY CENTRAL’s “South Park,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.” Fancast will also stream exclusive MTVN and BETN stunts monthly, including content like advance looks at the series premiere of VH1’s “Brooke Hogan Knows Best” and Nickelodeon’s new “The Naked Brothers Band” TV movie titled, “Polar Bears.” The new agreement expands on the existing deal, announced in January, under which MTVN and BETN provide Fancast with more than 50 hours of full length episodes and 150 short form clips each month from their brands, which include MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and BET. As part of the agreement, Comcast’s video on demand customers will receive more high and standard definition content from MTVN and BETN.

U-verse offers dual HD streams
Though I've been unable to get official launch plans out of AT&T yet, our users are reporting that the telco is now offering dual-HD streams in a number of U-Verse markets.

Fox to Launch Online Ad Network in Latin America
The new “Worthnet.Fox” network will be anchored by News Corp.’s Fox International Channels. Participants include Web sites for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch.

Ad Network JellyCloud Takes $6 Million Of $11.5 Million First Round
yCloud, a company that promises better performance for online ads via targeting, has called down $6 million of an $11.5 million first round, reports peHUB. The round, led by Softbank America, U.S. Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital and Sand Hill Capital, was first announced back in April. Basically, the company is yet another ad network

Univision to Offer VOD Content
Spanish-language broadcast network Univision will offer more than 1,000 hours of video-on-demand content through its distribution partners, the company announced at the Cable Show in New Orleans.

After Forays With ABC and HBO, a Video Blogger Returns to Video Blogging
Now Ms. Congdon, feeling a little burned by big media, is back blogging and hosting and producing. Working with the independent production studio Media Rights Capital, she is reintroducing herself on “Sometimes Daily,” an irregular look at life through Ms. Congdon’s eyes.

Millenials media habits
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced the initial results of a new study on the influence and behaviors of the Millennial generation (young adults ages 16-27) regarding consumer technology decisions and rich media consumption habits. Motorola’s study among 1,000 young adults found that Millennials are not only looking for more rich media, they are also greatly influencing the buying decisions for the services and technologies in the home and on the go.The study, commissioned by Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility group, explores how the preferences and habits of today’s Millennials are shaping the future of content consumption. By understanding the interests of end users, Motorola will better help cable operators and service providers customize their offerings to accelerate the delivery of personalized media experiences to their current and future customers.

9 Video Marketing & Advertising Services for SMBs
With the online video advertising market booming a long list of services are coming forward and offering you a variety of solutions for online video marketing and online video advertising. These companies offer affordable solutions that work great for small and medium sized-businesses (SMBs). Here are some highlights of both existing and recently announced video advertising service providers aiming to take your advertising online, over the airwaves, digital signage and even onto mobile phones and devices.

FiOS Puts ON Networks' Web Shows on TV
Online video studio ON Networks’ shows will now be available on traditional television sets, under a deal the Web shop inked a deal with Verizon’s FiOS TV service

Truveo Developer Challenge Offers $100,000 in Prizes for New Video Search
TopCoder(R), Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, today announced the Truveo Developer Challenge. With a prize pool of $100,000, developers will compete to build customized applications that use Truveo's open API for video search available at developer.truveo.com. Truveo is the world's leading video search engine with an index containing over 170 million videos that is continuously updated, cleaned and expanded to include the latest videos from the most popular video destinations on the Web. Competition details are available at www.topcoder.com/truveo and Truveo can be accessed at www.truveo.com.

Dailymotion Execs Get Joost
In hopes of jump-starting its floundering video business and attracting new viewers, former next-big-thing Joost added two new programming executives to its management team. The company announced today that Danny Passman and John Schultz, both formerly of Dailymotion , have joined the Joost team as global head of programming strategy and director of programming strategy, respectively. Prior to working at Dailymotion, the tag team worked in series development and production at MTV Networks.

Video: The Top 10 -- plus 1 -- funniest YouTube
With still more than six months to go until the presidential election, most of us likely will be enduring a slew of serious, straight-laced political television ads until November. But as the first presidential race to take place in the new Web 2.0 world, we can find on YouTube a wide variety of political parodies and funny videos created by supporters – and detractors – of the three remaining candidates. So to offset some of the summer doldrums that could be setting in early this year due to the seemingly endless search for the Democratic nominee, Computerworld combed through YouTube’s archives to unearth the funniest and most clever videos focused on the presidential candidates.

That's it folks!

Today's best video clips -- 18 May 2008

Comcast Interactive Capital Invests in CDN GridNetworks
Comcast is continuing its backtracking and cozying up to P2P providers, and has now invested in GridNetworks a Seattle-based P2P video content delivery network

AOL-Bebo: $850M Deal Closes; AOL Combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ Into People Networks Headed By Shields
It's official—AOL now owns Bebo, closing the $850 million acquisition roughly two months after making it public. The social media network will not stand on its own; instead, AOL is combining Bebo, AIM, ICQ and its other community platforms into a new business unit known as the People Networks with some 80 million unduplicated users

Wired Buys Back HotWired and Webmonkey Too; Relaunches Latter
Wired Digital, part of CondeNast, who has just bought tech news site Artechnica (we reported on it this weekend), has also quietly bought defunct developer site Webmonkey and the original online web magazine HotWired, from its parent Lycos USA (which in turn is owned by Korean company Daum). Webmonkey was closed down by then owner Terra Networks in 2004.

Qualcomm Grabs UK Spectrum for Mobile TV - Fighting EU over DVB-H standard
An SNL Kagan study conservatively estimates that 10% of those over-the-air U.S. households will opt for pay television after the transition, with cable receiving the majority of converts and satellite and phone companies splitting the remainder."

Bush Addresses the Web for the First Time
Bush sat down with Politico’s Mike Allen and Yahoo News for a wide-ranging and not especially hard-hitting interview that included some serious topics (global warming does exist, Bush said; he also offered aid to Burma and insisted that “America doesn’t torture”),

Rootclip Lets You Tell the Story
Two mild-mannered dudes from Tennessee think they’ve come up with a cool way to add collaboration to the movie-making process. Their site, Rootclip, aims to rev up audience participation by letting users determine where the story goes.

Dish Wants Partner For Mobile Video Service
Dish Network is looking to find partners to potentially launch a mobile-video service with the 700-Megahertz wireless spectrum it purchased earlier this year for $712 million, officials said Tuesday.

MeeMix Debuts Personalized Web Music Video Channels
MeeMix, a personalized Web radio service, on Tuesday announced its expansion into personalized music video channels. The company combined its taste prediction technology with YouTube's extensive music video catalog, so that users of its radio service can simply switch to "video mode," without having to create new video channels from scratch.

Thats it folks

Today's best video clips -- 15 May 2008

CBS Digs Deep To Snap Up CNet
CBS announced on Thursday that it has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, a technology publishing company that operates sites including News.com, ZDNet, GameSpot, TV.com and MP3.com, in a deal valued at $1.8 billion. CBS will pay $11.50 per share, an impressive 45% premium over CNET's share price at closing on Wednesday; CNET's board has unanimously approved the deal.

Samsung, LG get green light on mobile TV standard
The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OVMC), an organization of 850 local broadcasters, today submitted its viability report findings giving Samsung and LG the stamp of approval to pursue mobile TV based on the best of both manufacturers’ competing standards.

Dell and Ericsson ink mobile-broadband deal
Dell is to start incorporating Ericsson's mobile-broadband modules into some of its laptops. The deal, announced on Tuesday, will see Ericsson's HSPA (high-speed packet access) modules used in Dell machines, as of this quarter. However, just a month and a half ago Dell said it would be using Qualcomm's Gobi chipset for its embedded mobile broadband. This raises the possibility that Dell will be using different modules for different classes of device, but the company has refused to comment on the matter.

BT Vision gains 94,000 new customers
BT Group Plc gained 94,000 new subscribers to its BT Vision IPTV service during the first quarter of 2008. The company now has 214,000 BT Vision customers who, on average, accessed video on demand services 29 times per month. BT Vision offers both Freeview channels via digital terrestrial and video on demand over a DSL

Cox Caught Blocking BitTorrent
Comcast isn’t the only U.S. ISP with anti-P2P network management in place. Fellow cable provider Cox was also caught interrupting its subscribers’ BitTorrent uploads.

Photo-music video creator Animoto raises round from Amazon
Animoto, a company that lets you create music videos out of your photos albums, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon.com.
New York-based Animoto offers a way to create a more advanced version of the sorts slideshow widgets you see on MySpace, made by companies like RockYou and Slide. Animoto launched last year with a stand-alone site where users could create 30-second videos by uploading photo albums, choosing a song, and letting the company turn it into a sequence of flashing lights, your pictures, and the song you choose.

Despite the Ramp of Blu-ray Drives, DVD Burners Will Continue to Be the Leading Volume Product Until
Overall PC market growth, driven by portable PCs, will give the worldwide CD/DVD market a moderately positive outlook in 2008 and lead to increased demand for slim drives. Despite the ramp of Blu-ray drives, DVD burners will continue to be the leading volume product until 2012. However, as the PC market's adoption of DVD burners becomes saturated and increasingly commoditized, Blu-ray adoption will accelerate in 2009 and Blu-ray drives will become the majority of the total market value in 2012. "DVD burners will remain the bread-and-butter business for ODD vendors," said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director, Removable Storage at IDC. "Despite Blu-ray's win over HDD in the format war, Blu-ray drive adoption will be limited in 2008 because of their high price and only moderate consumer interest."

Program-Starved Web Streamer Shuts Down
A Chicago-area company that sought to provide cable television channels over the Internet has suspended service in part because it never got a ruling from the Federal Communications Commission on its legal right to obtain programming controlled by established cable operators.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -- 14 May 2008

Worth noting: Comcast acquires Paxo; Forrester: Get More Ads in Online TV, Stat;
Financier Icahn to run board slate for Yahoo

Plaxo's Personal Card: Comcast to Acquire Plaxo (Release)
Big doings at Plaxo today! We are really excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo: We have just signed an agreement to be acquired by Comcast, the nation's leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services (and our largest customer and partner).

Joining forces with Comcast is a real win for our customers, our investors, and our employees. Comcast has an exciting vision to bring the social media experience to mainstream consumers. Together, we will be able to help users connect with all the people they care about, across all of the devices they use, with all the media they love to consume, create, and share. This is also great news for the Internet industry at large, where Plaxo has been – and will continue to be – a strong advocate for opening up the Social Web.

Accenture Buys Digital Video Services Company Origin Digital
Accenture, the global management consultancy form, has bought out Origin Digital (OD), the New Jersey-based digital video services firm. The firm will use OD’s expertise in online, mobile and IPTV video to help its clients grow in these areas. OD provides video capture, transformation and delivery services to content owners. The official rationale from Accenture: “The addition of Origin Digital video capabilities to Accenture’s Digital Media Services group will complement the experience we developed in music through our acquisition of Digiplug last year.”

List Of Video Delivery Networks Now Tops 40 Providers
Back in January, I posted a list of CDN providers for video delivery and since that post, more providers continue to enter the market. Today, the list of video delivery networks continues to grow with the number pushing past 40 providers. To make the list easier to find on my blog, all you have to do is go to www.cdnlist.com for the latest update.

Turner to Make TV Ads More Like the Web
During its upfront, Turner Entertainment unveiled a new TV advertising system that should sound a little bit familiar to web-savvy folks like yourselves. Dubbed TVinContext, the service provides relevant ad targeting based on the content of a show.

For example, a show featuring a wedding scene could be followed by an ad for diamond rings. Or a scene of people building a house would be followed by a commercial for a hardware store or power tools.

Forrester: Get More Ads in Online TV, Stat
TV networks need to amp up advertising in their online streaming, and do it fast, says Forrester analyst James McQuivey in a new, very savvy research report. He posits that online streaming of TV-like content is only going to increase, so networks should start setting expectations for more advertising now in order to avoid a backlash later.

EchoStar unveils SlingModem, hints at future cable products
EchoStar will be officially unveiling the SlingModem at next week's Cable Show trade event in New Orleans. As the name suggests, the product combines a standard DOCSIS cable modem and a Slingbox media placeshifter--which transmits live TV broadcasts to Windows PCs, Macs, and a variety of smartphones--in one compact housing.

Will Wireless Broadband Supplant FTTH?
Even if Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire LLC are successful in building their nationwide WiMax network, they won't pose an immediate threat to wireline broadband service growth, according to some experts at Light Reading’s The Future of Broadband conference yesterday.

It might be tempting to think about a mobile network displacing wireline broadband, but the idea is “a combination of speculation and reality,” said Arun Bhikshesvaran, CTO of Ericsson AB North America, during an interview with Light Reading. “Mobility is becoming an increasingly important part of our lifestyle. But the convenience of fixed broadband in terms of raw data rates is always going to be an advantage over what you can get with wireless.”

Financier Icahn to run board slate for Yahoo
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has elected to move ahead with plans to run a dissident board slate at Yahoo Inc, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

CBS Sets 2008-2009 Slate
Comcast Media Center announced HITS Advanced Interactive Services (AxIS), which provide a centralized hosting platform for developing interactive TV applications and will let smaller cable operators deploy them.

Philadelphia to Lose Its Wi-Fi Network
EarthLink is pulling the plug on its troubled wireless high-speed Internet network in Philadelphia, once seen as a national model.

Earnings: DISH Q1 Revs Up 7.5 Percent; Sub Growth Slows On Competition, Economy Hurts Churn |
Satellite operator DISH Network reported Q1 revenue of $2.84 billion, a 7.5 percent increase from $2.64 billion in the year-ago quarter. Net income was up 64 percent to $258 million ($.57 per share) from $157 million ($.35 per share). While the numbers are going up, subscriber growth is slowing considerably: “Slower subscriber growth rates continued in the first quarter of 2008, during which we added 35,000 net new DISH Network subscribers. This rate of growth was substantially lower than we have historically experienced on a quarterly basis....”

Vidnik: Record video directly from your iSight to YouTube
Vidnik (0.13.0 beta) is an Apache-licensed app that allows you to record video from your iSight and upload it directly to YouTube. You can title, tag, categorize and add a description to the videos right from within the app itself.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -- 13 May 2008

Worth Noting: PBS Goes Public With ThePlatform; Yahoo's Primetime wins 20 million views; Zooming In on Online Video - Newspaper Association of America (Release)

YouTube launches "buzz targeting"

YouTube introduced a product today called “buzz targeting,” which tracks videos about to go viral and pairs them with ads.
It’s something Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted at earlier this month on CNBC when he talked about new products coming out soon.
The new product predicts which videos are most likely to go viral by measuring acceleration of views, favorites and ratings activity. The service then allows advertisers to target their ads specifically to these videos on YouTube.

PBS Goes Public With ThePlatform

Seattle's thePlatform Inc. has signed a deal to power PBS's online video initiative. ThePlatform's content management system will be used to manage and deliver video content to PBS.org. Per the deal, PBS will use thePlatform's technology offerings to manage its broadband video content on sites such as PBS.org, PBSKids.org, PBSParents.org, and PBSTeachers.org. PBS will also distribute its content to local PBS Websites.

Testing Web Video Economy
In the 12-24 age group, TV accounts for only 40% of video-based entertainment consumed in a typical day, with the balance going to the PC, cell phone, video game or DVD.

AT&T Offers U-Verse To Small Businesses - 10Mbps for $100, no SLA
AT&T today announced that they've just opened up their U-Verse VDSL service to small businesses. AT&T's offering speeds up to 10Mbps ranging from $40-$100; a far cry from T1 costs, but according to the AT&T FAQ, there's no SLA. It's also obviously not quite as speedy as business FiOS.

Yahoo's Primetime wins 20 million views

Yahoo has found a way to bolster its Web video traffic in a big way.
The portal hit a high last week of 4 million streams per day for its new Web show “Primetime in No Time,” Beet.TV reported today.
Wow. That, folks, is an eye-popping number. I don’t have to do the math for you, but that translates into possibly 20 million views a week. How happy do you think Verizon is right now? (It’s sponsoring the show.)

Zooming In on Online Video - Newspaper Association of America (Release)

Online video represents an enormous opportunity for newspapers to grow revenue and audience.
“Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspaper Web Sites” is intended to help newspapers of any size develop profitable video applications. As competition heats up for online video mindshare, newspapers have an excellent opportunity to leverage their skills and content and capture an even larger share of online advertising spending.

Media Buyers: So Old They Still Watch CBS
The reality is that people buying media are at least a generation or so removed from the way in which people are truly consuming video and media.

Korean STB maxes widgets
A Korean software company called NomadConnection has released Chameleo, a pretty-looking open-source video player with a focus on extensibility and widgets.

New Japanese Satellite Hits 1.2Gbps - The Big Kizuna
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency is currently conducting successful tests on the satellite, which by July should provide Japanese homes with speeds up to 155Mbps (businesses could see up to 1.2Gbps). Initial tests seem very promising:

CC to Move Smaller Advertisers Online
Clear Channel Radio has struck a deal with online production company StudioNow that will help its smaller advertisers place video ads on Clear Channel Web sites. Today, when listeners activate the audio player on Clear Channel Radio Web sites, they are greeted by a 15- or 30-second pre-roll ad. Those ads more than likely come from one of Clear Channel's Fortune 500 advertisers, who can either afford to create exclusive Web content or simply reformat an existing TV spot for the Internet. Smaller advertisers are rarely able to take advantage of the Web videos simply for matters of cost and scale.

That's it folks!

Can Apple whip Hollywood?

Can Apple do to Hollywood what it did to the music industry? In a little under seven years the fashionable iPod and its clunky proprietary player software, iTunes, have become the dominant sales venue for recorded music.
The once all-powerful record companies are now compliant clients of Apple and in the U.S. it is 99 cents or nothing. CD's, which the record stores used to sell for up to $30, are now going the way of vinyl records.
Apple cleverly returns most of the iTunes' revenue to the artists and says there is little profit from its billion dollar iTunes business. Apple, of course, makes its real money from iPod sales, all 150 million of them.
And now Apple is following the same play book with video, today confirming it had won over HBO which announced it was using iTunes to sell video on demand downloads of several of its blockbuster series.
Apple had to compromise on its single pricing policy and it is very much a catch-up move by HBO. The Time Warner unit has been a digital laggard among broadcasters, nervous that it will cannibalize its lucrative DVD sales channel for its premium original content. Already there are signs the big Hollywood players are not going to let Apple have it all their way. NBC Universal last year baulked at Apple's "you do it our way" attitude and is now off playing with Apple's nemesis Microsoft, which has its own player and software it too is promoting.
And unlike the music industry where Apple got the jump over its rivals with an uber-cool, easy-to-use music player the Apple TV box has not won the hearts and minds of TV consumers. The game console makers --Sony and Microsoft in particular-- are keen to use their large embedded base to emerge as the major player in the video on demand (and online video) market.
In the U.S. the cable MSO's are already planning to upgrade their set top boxes to offer a more sophisticated video delivery platform in one box, rented as part of a cable subscription for a relatively minimal monthly fee. And Netflix and Blockbuster are both looking to migrate their DVD business online.
Also not to be ignored are the two big telco's, Verizon and AT+T, with their IPTV offerings, FiOS and U-verse and their regional colleagues who are well down the track with their television services. Both Verizon and AT+T are rapidly signing customers, even if it is the attraction of super fast Internet rather than a look-a-like TV offering, which is winning them over.
Deep pocketed and well connected in Washington, the telcos are desperate to reinvent themselves as full service digicoms as their old wire-line business rapidly commoditizes.
Possibly more than any other player the telcos have most to lose. If the future is a set of known and unknown digital IP services--media, security, gaming, communications, and whatever--then "owning" the hub which controls them all (and distributes them throughout homes) is a key prize.
If the telco's allow Apple, Microsoft or Sony to snaffle this key relationship, then they end up just being the cable guys.
Whatever this is definitely a heavy weight battle and while Apple has won a key scalp with HBO the fight for the lounge room has many more rounds to go.

Today's best video clips -- 12 May 2008

Apple and HBO Close to a Deal
Apple is close to announcing it has signed a deal to sell HBO programs and movies on the iTunes website, according to HBO employees involved in executing the agreement. Time Warner unit is close to announcing a deal to sell popular programs like Entourage on Apple's iTunes, with flexible pricing.Time Warner unit is close to announcing a deal to sell popular programs like Entourage on Apple's iTunes, with flexible pricing.

Microsoft software for video chats
Seeking more revenue from Internet ads, Microsoft has introduced software that allows users to exchange messages while watching online videos. Messenger TV combines the Windows Live instant-messaging program with video software, Microsoft said. Users will be able to watch and share clips from companies such as MTV Networks and Sony BMG.

Microsoft is expanding its Internet business to spur online ad sales and catch up with Google, whose YouTube video site already shows ads on its home page and alongside some clips.

AT&T Building Out CDN, Preparing To Push Into The Market
Since December, AT&T has been busy working on the build out and expects to spend between $70-$80 million on infrastructure this year. By the end of 2008, AT&T is aiming to have 400Gbps of capacity online, for all their content delivery services, which would increase their capacity by 4x what they have now. When completed, their content delivery services will be delivered from 32 nodes in 7 countries and they will be Adobe Flash Certified by year's end and will be supporting live and on-demand delivery for all the major formats.

Genius loss widens after weak TWC slate
Microsoft has launched Messenger TV, a new video feature for its instant messenger application currently available in 20 European countries. Users can send one another up to four-minute-long video clips from providers including Reuters, Channel 4 and EMI and chat while watching the videos

Rise of an Internet Star - Parlaying YouTube Fame Into Big Business
You might not have the time to create a regular series of videos, but if you can find the time to generate even a few great videos, here are some video sharing sites that give a little back to the creators of the videos.

New BlackBerry Doubles Screen Resolution
Singapore Telecommunications will bring the iPhone to Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines later this year, Southeast Asia’s largest phone company said.

Thomson Reuters and RIM Launch $150 Million Mobile App Fund
RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), the makers of Blackberry, along with media giant Thomson Reuters (NASDAQ: TRIN), is launching a $150 million venture capital fund that would invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry platform and other mobile platforms. Canadian VC firms JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners will co-manage the fund

SingTel, Associates to Bring iPhone to Asia This Year
Singapore Telecommunications will bring the iPhone to Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines later this year, Southeast Asia’s largest phone company said.

Financial News Sites Bank on Video
CNBC's biggest threat at the moment isn't cable's recently launched, much-hyped Fox Business Network--it's Web video. Top business/financial news sites like CNNMoney.com and Yahoo Finance are pumping out more original video and now claim audiences approaching the daily ratings of the category's leading cable network.
Such a Web-beats-cable story should turn heads in the TV industry, given the conventional wisdom that the audience generated by online video is purely additive. Thus, it's a story some sites are bringing to buyers.
"I do think that we can start to become part of those conversations," said Jonathan Shar, general manager of CNNMoney.com. Since dialing up video output in January from roughly two clips a day to upwards of 20, the site has shot to the top of Nielsen's VideoCensus ranking for the financial news and information category, delivering 14.6 million total streams in March, nearly 10 million more than second-ranked MSN Money. CNN claims a daily collective reach of 807,000 viewers, over three times the 238,000 averaged by CNBC in April, per Nielsen. (CNBC officials did not return calls seeking comment.)

First Embeddable Live Player w/ Integrated Maps
Seero.com just notified me that Seero’s Chief Creative Officer, David Rothschild, will be broadcasting live & on-location from the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference conference May 12 - 14 in San Francisco. David will provide in-depth coverage and interviews on recent advances in location-based technology as a member of the press.

Procera’s Smarter Bandwidth Throttling
The bigger issue remains: How will broadband providers handle the ever-growing demand from Internet video, P2P and other applications? Procera Networks is among the vendors pitching a solution to this thorny problem. The company is preparing to unveil a high-capacity bandwidth management system, the PacketLogic PL10000, which Procera claims can intelligently parse through Internet traffic and prioritize different packets based on defined policies. What's key, according to Procera, is the system can do that faster than anything on the market.

In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time?
This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers?

UK Town Embraces Sewer Line Broadband - 88,000 homes to get more fiber
the town of Bournemouth is the first town in the UK to use sewer lines to help deliver broadband services. More than 88,000 homes will now have access to fiber thanks to a $58 million project by H20 Networks.

Google CEO sees new YouTube products in few months
Web search company Google Inc expects to launch new products for its YouTube Internet video service in the next few months, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Thursday. Schmidt, who was speaking to reporters ahead of the company's annual meeting, has said that getting the video service to make money is his company's top priority for the year.

It's Official: Cablevision Confirms Newsday Acquisition; Acquiring 97 Percent For $632 Million
As expected, Cablevision has won the Newsday-stakes, and will acquire 97 percent of the Tribune-owned paper for $632 million. Tribune will get another $18 million related to prepaid rent, bringing the total value of the transaction to $650 million.

Web Video Viewing Up 64% In March, Led by YouTube

Internet users in the U.S. watched 11.5 billion online videos in March, a 64% gain from one year earlier, led by Google’s YouTube with more than 4.3 billion views in the month, according to research firm comScore.The videos viewed in the month, up 13% from February, came from almost 139 million users, or 73.7% of the total U.S. Internet audience, comScore estimates. The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video, up 14% from an average 206 minutes in February. The average online video clips duration was 2.8 minutes, compared with 2.7 minutes in February.

YouTube Video Upload Tool for Mac’s iSight - Vidnik
Check out Vidnik. This is a new application for the Mac that lets you record online video from your built-in iSight camera for purposes of sharing on Youtube or elsewhere. Vidnik was released on the Google Code site and is mentioned as being a tool for creating a “video diary.” This is a very simple program to use. Once you download and run the program, your iSight needs no configuration, you are ready to go.

SoftLayer Goes After the Little Guy

While some content delivery networks (CDNs) are going after large media & entertainment players, new entrant SoftLayer Technologies Inc. says it's just fine going after the little guy. SoftLayer, which for the past two years has provided "on-demand hosting services," comes to market with a CDN offering priced to compete for the very low end of the CDN scale -- customers that it says wouldn't otherwise buy CDN services.The company offers a CDN plan that includes 200 Gigabytes of traffic for $20 per month, with each additional Gigabyte costing 20 cents thereafter.

Charter Keeps Wireless Options Open
Smit reiterated that Charter will begin testing Docsis 3.0 later this year, referring to a new CableLabs platform that bonds together multiple channels to produce shared Internet speeds in excess of 100 Mbit/s. Just last week, CableLabs awarded first-ever certification stamps to modems based on the emerging spec. Charter today is in the process of widely rolling out a 16 Mbit/s (downstream) single-channel "Max" tier. (See Modems, CMTSs Break Docsis 3.0 Barrier and Charter Launches 'Max'.)

After MySpace And Facebook, Google Completes Open Trifecta
If you must have your news accompanied by a gripping narrative, then you could say that on back-to-back-to-back business days, MySpace, Facebook and Google all announced new social networking initiatives designed to "out-open" each other.

Inside AdSense: Video advertising & monetization
We thought our publishers would be interested in hearing some perspectives on industry trends, some new details about AdSense for video, and the opportunities that Google is offering advertisers to get their messages in video content. Here are some highlights to guide your viewing:

A state of the market: First, your friendly author takes you through trends in video consumption, users' consumption habits, and the estimated market size for video advertising.

History of video ad serving: Robert Victor uses conversations with "Joe and Sam" to describe the evolving needs of buyers and sellers, and previews how Google and DoubleClick In-Stream can fill the gaps.

AdSense for video: Shamim Samadi goes into detail about AdSense for video, describing the various formats we're supporting and recent success stories from Revver on the publisher side and HP on the advertiser side.

YouTube: Tracy Chan describes the compelling opportunities for advertisers on YouTube and how marketers and video creators can take advantage of the new Insights tool to gather a variety of data on viewership of their videos.

Veodia Raises $8.3 Million In Series-A Financing Recent Activity Stimulates VP Hire

Veodia, a software-as-a-service company that enables effortless streaming of high-quality video using h.264/MPEG-4 straight from a standard browser, today announced it has raised $8.3 million in a Series A funding round from Clearstone Venture Partners, the D. E. Shaw group, and an angel group led by iParadigms chairman Steven Berger. The new financing will be used to support product development and add more talent to the team.

The most recent addition to the Veodia executive team is Etay Gafni, who comes from SAP and joins the company as VP Products. Mr. Gafni brings more than 13 years of experience in product development, user-experience, community development and global management. He was one of the founders of the SAP Developer Network and worked closely with the office of the CTO, SAP Ventures and product teams in defining, designing and building SAP's next generation Enterprise 2.0 applications. Mr. Gafni will be responsible for product strategy and user experience to give Veodia's customers the most advanced options to create and consume live and on-demand video content.

"Veodia has had an incredible year since launching in April 2007," said Guillaume Cohen, CEO and founder of Veodia. "We have dedicated our efforts to growing a company with world-class engineers and seasoned executives. We were also able to partner with top-tier financial partners like Clearstone and the D. E. Shaw group who bring tremendous value and experience. And we are thrilled to be chosen as one of the leading enterprise 2.0 video providers - this and the growth we're experiencing continue to show that there is a great demand for simple, high-quality video services for enterprises and other business users."

Daly, Madison Road team on Web
Branded entertainment shingle Madison Road is partnering with NBC latenight gabber Carson Daly on a daily webcast devoted to user-generated videos. Daly and Madison Road will launch in July "The Really Big Internet Show," a daily five-minute webcast that will feature the day's most talked-about original online videos. Justine Ezarik, an Internet vid star who goes by the name iJustine, will host.

NBCU Set To Release Health-Related Online Video Net
As expected, NBC Universal has finally made its foray into online wellness with the release of its Digital Health Network, which is mainly focused on the distribution of original video. The health video channel was planned for several months—we were expecting an announcement as early as March. The network will be up and running in June.

New BlackBerry Doubles Screen Resolution
R.I.M. introduced its first major new BlackBerry model in more than a year: the Bold, a high-end model that further demonstrates the company’s desire to make tools for both work and play.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 9 May 2008

Worth Noting: Blinkx Benefits from Rumors, Says It’s Not Being Bought; 10-Q Watch: What Yahoo paid for Maven; Liddell Takes Over Panther;
Cablevision To Offer Customers Free Wi-Fi - Will cost about $100 per customer

Storybids Launches Product Placement Auction House

Storybids, Inc. today announced the launch of their product placement marketplace where online video content creators can get paid to feature physical products in pre-production user-generated videos, serial mini-dramas, videoblogs and webisodes. Advertisers may use Storybids searching capabilities to seek out video creators that meet their demographic criterion such as viewership, subscriptions, and ratings or by genre or age demographic. Video creators looking to fund their independent or professional film projects may now seek out product placement advertising opportunities by targeting specific advertisers that complement the storyline of future content. Storybids also works as a social media marketplace for filmmakers by allowing them to connect with other filmmakers for advice and collaboration on film projects.

Over two years in the making, Founders Joseph Morin and Juan Prado spent considerable time conducting research and development for the most compelling brand entertainment and online video advertising business model. The two have created a complementary means of monetizing user generated and professional video. Storybids secured a Series A round of venture capital financing in August, 2007 from STN Labs of Toronto, Canada and soft launched a beta marketplace in February of 2008. Based on a storyboarding concept where video creators would upload storyboard samples of potential scenes to feature product placement, the website features the capability to accept any form of digital media such as a storyboard, images or video as an example for advertisers to peruse for brand placement opportunities.

A recent research study by Mindshare shows that viewers react negatively to interruptive TV style ads and attempt to skip them whenever possible suggesting that consumers are far more receptive to product placement in online video programming than pre- and post-roll advertising. PQ Media released a study in February, 2007 that showed spending on branded entertainment marketing grew 14.7% to an all time high of $22.3 billion in 2007 and is projected to increase by another 13.9% in 2008 to $25.41 billion driven by product placement, event sponsorship/marketing, and advergaming/webisodes.

Blinkx Benefits from Rumors, Says It’s Not Being Bought
Shares of Blinkx rose as much as 53 percent today on the London Stock Exchange following speculation it might be bought by Google or News Corp. Blinkx, however, released a statement saying it was “not aware of any external bids or bid-related reason for the [share] movement.”

Beet.TV: Hollywood Blockbuster: Bebo Has One Billion Videos Views Per Month!
Bebo, the fast growing social network which was sold recently to AOL for $850 million, is driving an extraordinary amount of video consumption. Ziv Navoth, Vice President, told Beet.TV that Bebo is driving one billion videos views a month. Bebo doesn't require that publishers use its video player. It provides an open platform which accommodates many players. So, it doesn't host or serve these videos.The company is also distributing and producing original content. KateModern, produced by EQAL, received 50 million views over the past 10 months on Bebo, Ziv says.

10-Q Watch: What Yahoo paid for Maven
The exact price of Yahoo's purchase of Maven was $163 million (it had previously said it was approximately $160 million). $141 million of that is upfront, with the rest to vest over the next four years. For the entire quarter, the company spent $166 million on acquisitions, though the rest came from asset purchases that didn't count as business combinations.

Prepare for glory: Viral video leads to DTV
With the major studios rushing to launch direct-to-video initiatives and even dedicated labels, the indies that once claimed DTV as their own are feeling the squeeze. After all, they don't have big libraries of high-profile theatrical features to mine for DTV sequels as the studios do. Allumination FilmWorks is taking a novel approach to this dilemma. The independent DVD supplier's next major DTV release is "305," which began life as a five-minute viral video on YouTube -- where it racked up nearly 4 million views as a comic spoof of the theatrical blockbuster "300."

TimeTube: The Timeline That YouTube Should Build
TimeTube is a new mashup from Dipity, the interactive timeline site, that takes the mostly unsorted mess of videos that is YouTube and arranges them by date, offering a useful (and often unexpected) perspective on recent events. Links to each video are situated across a horizontal timeline, with emphasis placed on the most popular videos (they appear bigger). Users can expand or contract the timeline to isolate a particular time period, and the viewing window features a handy “next event” button.

CDNetworks Buys Japanese Firm
With the purchase of content distribution firm Hit Pops, content delivery network (CDN) CDNetworks Co. Ltd. reaffirmed its commitment to the Japanese market and picked up some blue-chip customers along the way. CDNetworks chief strategy officer Steve Chung says his company acquired Hit Pops from Space Communications Corp. to expand its presence and service offerings in the Japanese market. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

PPlive Accused Of Violating IPR
Beijing Shidai Yingyin International Entertainment Co., Ltd has filed a lawsuit against Shanghai Juli Media Technology Co., Ltd, the owner of Internet video platform provider PPlive which allegedly violated its copyright, at the Shanghai Pudong Court and claims RMB330,000 in compensation. This is the first time that PPlive has been sued because of a violation of intellectual property rights. Shidai Yingyin says it found in March this year that PPlive was offering Huahua Xingjing, a film for which it owns the copyright, online to users and this has caused great economic loss. A representative from Juli Media says that PPlive has been respecting copyrights and spent more than RMB60 on copyright protection last year.

Sony films set Scandinavia download
Sony Pictures Television Intl. pics will be available for download in Sweden, Norway and Finland via Sweden's film2home. Among the first films set for the service will be "Ghost Rider," "Spider-Man 3" and "The Da Vinci Code." SPTI exec veep Stuart Baxter said, "The Nordic countries have been very active in making features available digitally, and this deal is an important milestone for our business in Scandinavia." Film2home has similar deals with BVI, Warner Bros. and Universal, alongside 20 indie distributors.

ESPN Serves Up WTA Tour Online
ESPN360.com and the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Thursday announced a new partnership agreement to stream live video coverage of more than 70 matches from 11 women’s professional tennis events over the next six months. Live online coverage begins Thursday with matches from The Qatar Telecom German Open in Berlin and will conclude with the season-ending Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha.

KIT Digital Raises Another $15 Million: Says It's The Last One
Internet video company KIT Digital (fka Roo Group) has raised another $15 million from accredited institutional investors, including, but not limited to major shareholder KIT Capital—which controls the company. The investors bought in at a price of $.20 per KIT Digital share. Funding will go towards financing some of its recent deals, including interactive ad agency Sputnik and Swedish mobile video firm Kamera.

Netflix Watch Now: Missing too much popular content
The "Watch Now" feature on Netflix is a great idea: instant access to thousands of movies and TV shows, available for instant streaming to your browser at the touch of a button. There's just one big problem: despite an advertised library of over 8,000 titles, very few of them seem to be movies or TV shows that I want to watch. Out of 41 titles currently in my queue, only 4--The King of Marvin Gardens, Das Boot, The Good German, and Pickup of South Street--are available to be streamed.

Logo launches gay library
Logo has launched the world’s largest library on online video aimed at the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Essay: Can We Stop with the Video CE Hardware Already?
Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of set-top boxes that were going to revolutionize entertainment. Rather than learning from this grim history, however, some kind of failure torch is being passed from one generation of dying-out hardware makers to a new breed angling to take a prize that just isn’t there.

Exclusive: Former Level 3 Exec Takes Over Panther
A former Level 3 Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: LVLT) executive is taking over as CEO of content delivery network (CDN) Panther Express Inc. While Panther has not yet made a formal announcement, it confirmed that Steve Liddell, who served as group vice president of Level 3's transport and infrastructure unit, has been hired as the company's new chief executive.

Circuit City Opens Door To Blockbuster; Icahn May Buy Chain Himself
The awkward pairing of Circuit City and Blockbuster is past the spitball phase and into the handholding phase. The struggling electronics giant says it will allow Blockbuster and its investor Carl Icahn to conduct due diligence into the company, and it says it has hired Goldman Sachs to help it explore strategic alternatives.

CableLabs Certifies First DOCSIS 3.0 Modems - Five vendors get green light for new modems...
CableLabs today announced that they've officially certified the first round of DOCSIS 3.0 compliant modems. DOCSIS 3.0 theoretically allows cable operators to provide downstream data rates of 160 Mbps and upstream data rates of 120 Mbps. Now that the gear's getting closer to being fully cooked, you've just got to wait on cable operators, many of whom are taking the wait and see approach to network upgrades.

Cablevision To Offer Customers Free Wi-Fi - Will cost about $100 per customer
Cablevision added a new wrinkle in their competitive fight against FiOS today. While discussing their first quarter earnings in a conference call this morning, the company announced they intend to offer free Wi-Fi to all of their customers within two years. Non-customers will be able to access the network for an as-yet-undisclosed fee. Cablevision COO Thomas Rutledge had this to say about the new network:

That's it folks

Today's best video clips 8 May 2008

Worth noting: Broadcast Sales to Fall 2% to 14%; Your Chance to Finish a Movie Microsoft Started;Move: Online Profits Approaching TV Levels; Limelight Q1 Revs Up 29 Percent; But Outlook Flat

MeeVee Finds A Home, Acquired By Live Universe
Brad Greenspan’s Live Universe continues its acquisitions spree: they’ve bought troubled Silicon Valley startup MeeVee we’re heard from multiple sources. This comes less than a month after they announced the acquisition of Pageflakes, another northern California startup.We do not know the acquisition price, but it is undoubtedly less than the $25 million Meevee has raised in venture capital over the years. The company, which was founded in 2000, let 20% of its staff go in mid-2007, and made more layoffs earlier this year. Meevee integrates online TV listings with video.

Limelight Q1 Revs Up 29 Percent; Still Adding Customers Post-Ruling, But Outlook Flat
Limelight , the struggling number two in the CDN space, reported Q1 revenues of $30.2 million, a 29 percent year-over-year increase. But the top-line fell short of consensus estimates of $31 million. And the company still isn't making a profit, as it lost $18.4 million or $.22 per share—$.05 per share if you exclude ongoing legal costs associated with its patent fight.

Analyst: Upfront Sales to Fall 2% to 14%
Broadcast TV networks' upfront advertising sales will be down this year, posting a drop of between 2% and 14%, a leading Wall Street analyst said. A "material decline is probable given ratings declines, the disruption in the development cycle due to the recent writers' strike and economic woes," Jessica Reif Cohen of Merrill Lynch said in a report published yesterday.In what Ms. Reif Cohen called her "bull case scenario," the broadcast networks would take in $8.79 billion in prime-time ad commitments during the upfront, down 2% from last year. Including daytime, late night and news, the broadcasters' take would decline 2% with commitments of $11.05 billion, she said.

Your Chance to Finish a Movie Microsoft Started
Calling all would-be Judd Apatows, Martin Scorseses and Coen brothers. Your cinematic ambitions may be supported by an unlikely patron, based not in Hollywood but more than a thousand miles to the north in Redmond, Wash.That geographic clue gives away the sponsor: the Microsoft Corporation, which is underwriting an online movie-making contest in an effort to stimulate sales and burnish the reputation of its Windows Vista operating system. The product has met with mixed reviews since its introduction last year.The contest is another example of the popular marketing trend known as user-generated content. It is intended to promote the higher-end version of Vista — Windows Vista Ultimate — among videophiles, early adopters of technology and filmmakers.The contest, which is to begin on Thursday, is called the Ultimate Video Relay.

Move: Online Profits Approaching TV Levels
We sometimes worry if we write about Move Networks too much. But it’s an interesting startup with real technology making an increasingly significant impact on how people are entertained. And hey, when the CEO stops by your office and spews out a bunch of numbers with dollar signs attached to them, you gotta write it up.

West Coast View: Surf It, Buy It, License It
ExpoTV specializes in consumer product videos and reviews. Here's one of a baby stroller. Hildebolt had some observations on how much work has yet to be done for online video.He points out that it's still difficult to integrate video with other content on a Web pages, due to a lack of standards and metadata. And video search, he points out, still isn't happening. "In many ways video exists in a completely different stack of the Internet; it's an island." Video providers need good reporting tools to sell their content to advertisers. "If there's not reporting, there's not advertising," he says. But Hildebolt ended on a bright note, pointing to progress in video standards. "This year I think it's all coming together."

Can Online Video Cure DVR Commercial Skipping?
Web video might get more DVR owners to see commercials, although viewers say they don't pay much attention to those ads. A new study conducted by Google's DoubleClick Performics division confirmed that DVR owners watch more television but fewer commercials. However, the survey also found that many DVR owners are watching TV programs online -- but aren't paying much attention to ads in that venue, either.DVR owners for the most part said they ignore commercials on TV and the Web. About 35 percent said they pay attention occasionally (or more often) when watching ads on TV. That number falls to 9 percent for spots viewed online. In fact, 38 percent said they pay less attention to the online ads. Performics found that half of all DVR owners had watched at least one TV program online. About 22 percent said they would watch more programming online where commercials, though typically fewer, cannot be fast-forwarded.

IPhone Gets More Video, But Not From Apple
A couple of new services are sending video to the iPhone, which has been hampered by a narrow choice of supported video formats ( Flash being the most noticed). NBC is streaming episodes of30 RockandThe Officeto the iPhone over the WiFi network reports NYT quoting Silicon Alley Insider.

TI, others see potential for smart video security systems
The Olympics can showcase athletes – or lunatics.To keep the spotlight where it belongs this summer, security firms are blanketing Beijing with smart video systems. Computers will "watch" live video from hundreds of thousands of cameras and flag suspicious people and objects.Such technology already protects monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and adds profit for manufacturers such as Texas Instruments Inc., which makes chips used in the systems. But the real benefits, for both security and earnings, will come over the next few years as smart video spreads from monuments to malls.

ESPN in Broadband Video Deal with AOL
Sports programmer, ESPN, is syndicating its video content through a third-party Internet portal for the first time, thanks to a new deal with AOL that sees it offering short-form video on AOL’s AOL Video and AOL Sports services (note: ESPN.com’s own video portal has proven fairly popular: according to ESPN, consumers viewed its videos over 1.2 billion times last year, representing a 54% increase over 2006). The video content includes highlights from games and major sportingevents and clips from ESPN’s original programs, and is presented in an embedded ESPN player on a dedicated ESPN channel page.

Cool Tools: Make a YouTube Timeline
Check out TimeTube, a mashup from San Francisco startup Dipity, which makes an interactive timeline out of any YouTube keyword.

ABC News calling out to students - Entertainment News, Los Angeles, Media - Variety
ABC News is giving university journalism students a chance to have their local reporting carried on any of Alphabet's digital or broadcast platforms, including "World News With Charlie Gibson" and "Good Morning America." The network announced a partnership with five colleges, where ABC News will open "digital bureaus" in September. The five schools involved are Arizona State U., Syracuse U., U. of Florida, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and U. of Texas.

Adobe’s Open Screen Project Indicates Strategy Alignment
Adobe’s Open Screen Project is a good move for the company and a reminder that, per Andy Grove, only the paranoid survive. TechCrunch has a good article on the details of the announcement. What’s perhaps a little more interesting is the fact that there have been some significant changes at Adobe in the past few months.

House Passes Studio-Backed, Anti-Piracy PRO-IP Act
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved the PRO-IP Act, a bill pushed for by Hollywood studios that would beef up law enforcement dedicated to protecting intellectual property, as well as increase penalties for piracy.

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -- 7 May 2008

Worth noting: Web-based Ad Agency Spot Runner Gets $51 Million; NBC content makes jump to Zune; CBS's Syndication Strategy: 'Extend & Embrace'; Google, Comcast, Time Warner and Intel joins WiMAX consortium

TorrentSpy ordered to pay $110 million in damages to MPAA
After a federal judge awarded the MPAA a summary judgment against former BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy late last year, the only question left was how much it would end up costing TorrentSpy's admins. We've got our answer, and it comes in the form of a staggering $110 million damage award, or $30,000 in statutory damages for each of the nearly 3,700 files in the MPAA's complaint. The MPAA announced the award in a press release (PDF) earlier today. "This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. "The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders."

Web-based Ad Agency Spot Runner Gets $51 Million
Spot Runner, a Web-based advertising service that helps local businesses create ads and place them on TV and radio, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $51 million in new financing. The new round, which brings the company's total funding raised to date to over $110 million, included participation from Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, Legg Mason Capital Management, Groupe Arnault/LVMH and previous investors.

Google, Viacom: We Won't Settle YouTube Fight Out Of Court
A day after Sumner Redstone railed against YouTube in a speech he delivered in Seoul, Google delivers its own retort in the South Korean capital (what's going on in Seoul? A digital forum of some sort): "Nope," David Eun, vice president in charge of content partnerships at Google, told Dow Jones Newswires at a press meeting when asked if Google had any plan to resolve the issue outside court. "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court,'' Eun said. "We're very clear about it.''

NBC content makes jump to Zune
That big, colorful screen on Microsoft's Zune device finally can be used for something other than music videos and song titles. Eighteen months after the software giant unveiled Zune as its answer to Apple's ubiquitous iPod, it has struck a deal with several content companies that will provide it with 800 episodes of popular TV shows. Most notable are shows from NBC, considering the network broke away from Apple's iTunes Store last year after a disagreement over pricing. From the Peacock, the Zune Marketplace at Zune.net will sell episodes of "The Office," "Heroes" and "30 Rock." Also on the docket are "SpongeBob SquarePants" from Nickelodeon, "Battlestar Galactica" from Sci Fi Channel, "South Park" from Comedy Central and "The Hills" from MTV, among others. Each episode will cost the equivalent of $1.99 in Microsoft Points, the currency of Zune.

CBS's Syndication Strategy: 'Extend & Embrace'
A change in the way media is consumed has led CBS Corp. to attempt to make its content ubiquitous, says Anthony Soohoo, CBS Interactive senior VP and general manager. "The world where there's only three channels to choose from ended about 15 to 20 years ago with the proliferation of cable," Soohoo says. That's led the broadcaster to shift the way it distributes its content to end users. For one thing, the company is making its content available in as many places as possible, which Soohoo says improves mind share and could increase viewership not just of short-form content online, but of broadcast content. "People who want to view our content might not necessarily think of -- or come to -- CBS.com initially," Soohoo says. As a result, Soohoo says the company started an "extend and embrace" strategy focused on bringing its content "out to where people reside on the Web."

Google, Comcast, Time Warner and Intel joins WiMAX consortium
Google, Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners have entered into an agreement to invest $3.2 billion in a new wireless broadband company. The new company will combine Clearwire's existing consumer WiMAX business with Sprint's broadband infrastructure and 2.5 GHz spectrum to create a new nationwide wireless broadband network. In addition to our $500 million contribution as part of the investment group, we will provide search and applications to the network's users, and will work with Clearwire to offer additional services and applications. This will include jointly creating an open Internet protocol to work with mobile broadband devices (including Android-powered devices) and implementing other open network practices and policies.

Video Site FORA.tv Lands $4 Million
FORA.tv, a video site that specializes in political and cultural content, has raised $4 million in its first round of funding, from Adobe Ventures, William Randolph Hearst III and others, Beet.TV reported. Sometimes called the "C-SPAN of the Web," San Francisco-based FORA.tv's homepage is currently offering videos featuring Henry Kissinger, Lowell Bergman, Arianna Huffington, Farhad Manjoo and Dan Savage.

YouTube launched in India
Google on Wednesday launched its popular video-sharing site YouTube in India. YouTube debuts in India with a number of partners, including Zoom channel from the Bennet Coleman & Co, UTV and Rajshri Group, among other production houses. All uploaded content on YouTube is protected by its digital hash technology for copyright protection.

MTV Networks launches video hub for gay community
Execs at MTV Networks say the best way to distribute media over the Web is to "go an inch wide but a mile deep." Instead of one central Web destination, Viacom-owned MTV Networks is building hundreds of sites around its content. An example of that strategy can be found at Logo, the unit that serves the gay and lesbian community. Logo launched a new video hub on Wednesday that Lisa Sherman, Logo's general manager, said will feature 3,000 ad-supported clips and be the largest central library of videos for the gay and lesbian audience.

Microsoft talking to Facebook
Microsoft's bankers recently contacted Facebook to gauge the Internet company's willingness to sell Facebook to the software giant. Last year, Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in the social-networking site.

MRC, Second City go into 'Quarantine'
Media Rights Capital and the Second City are set to announce Wednesday that they are partnering on an online comedy venture. The project, dubbed "The Second City's Quarantine," will launch this year and feature original material from the improv troupe's current roster and alumni network, which includes Tina Fey, Steve Carell and Bob Odenkirk. MRC digital media president Dan Goodman said the talent involved in the project is being finalized and that the site should launch with six or seven "mini-shows." The venture will have a stand-alone site and also be syndicated through the Web. Goodman said there will be more announcements coming regarding distribution.

Another One Bites The Dust: Turner Folds Comedy Site SuperDeluxe Into AdultSwim.com
Yet another comedy site fails to deliver its overpromise ... paidContent has learned that Turner told staff today it is folding SuperDeluxe.com into AdultSwim.com, and laying off much of the SuperDeluxe team. From the internal memo by Paul Condolora: "Our management of the Turner Animation, Young Adults & Kids brands requires us to always look for efficient, strategic ways to grow them. In Super Deluxe.com and Adult Swim.com, we have businesses whose potential for individual growth is limited by their increasingly complementary content.

France Telecom lifts IPTV customers to 1.4 million France Telecom added another 167,000 IPTV customers in the first three months of 2008, taking its total to more than 1.4 million.

New IPTV numbers

Nearly a third of Hong Kong's households get their television service via the internet, according to a new report from Telecommunications Management Group, a consultancy. Internet protocol television (IPTV) uses the same technology that links together computer networks. In addition to the services provided by traditional broadcast television, IPTV also offers subscribers services such as on-demand video. Europe accounts for more than half of the world's subscribers to IPTV. Less than 1% of American households with a television use IPTV's extra services. Among large countries, France has the deepest IPTV penetration.

DVD-by-Mail Users Stuck in the Past
Movies-by-mail rental services like Netflix and Blockbuster seem to have ripped open a hole in the movie-watching time/space continuum. Subscribers are stuck somewhere between the years 2004 and 2006, unaware that movies like Juno and No Country for Old Men are out on DVD. How else to explain the dearth of anything remotely resembling a “new release” in their respective Top 100 lists?

That's it folks

Today's best video clips -- 6 May 2008

Worth noting: Microsoft to offer TV downloads; FIM to Launch Self-Serve Video Ad Product; HP Products Stream YouTube Content; VeriSign Sells Kontiki CDN Business For $1 Million; Cisco Revs Up 10 Percent; Sees Weak Growth In Current Quarter; Cable Co. Revs Down

FIM to Launch Self-Serve Video Ad Product
The self-serve video ad space is rapidly becoming crowded with lesser-known startups, but a new entry has a familiar name. Fox Interactive Media will soon launch a service for creating video and display ads targeted to small, local advertisers. "Self-service advertising is very important," said Ron Berryman, senior vp and GM of FIM's Stations Group. It's an area that we're putting an awful lot of effort into," he continued, stressing the fact that the service will allow advertisers to create ads without working with a salesperson. "We're capturing that market where small businesses can create their own ads without having a lot of touchpoints," he told ClickZ News at The Kelsey Group's Drilling Down on Local conference in Seattle on Friday.

Comcast Considering 250MB Cap, Overage Fees
A Comcast insider tells me the company is considering implementing very clear monthly caps, and may begin charging overage fees for customers who cross them. While still in the early stages of development, the plan -- as it stands now -- would work like this: all users get a 250MB per month cap.

Microsoft to offer TV downloads
Microsoft is finally going after the TV download market with its Zune device and online network. Company has added more than 800 episodes from congloms including NBC U, MTV Networks and Turner to its online store as part of a subscription push. Offerings pale next to the selection at the iTunes Store, but Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune, said the company wanted to "launch with what we've got" and build from there.

'It's the Wild West' now for Web video
With most celebrities still on the Web sidelines, videos that go viral often are the work of unknowns fiddling around in dorm rooms or basements. Sports nut Chuck D says the Web has the potential to act as baseball farm teams do for the majors: "It could really be an incubator for great stuff if structured well." But not everyone here is bullish. "My concern is that online video hits are the exception, not the rule," says Satya Patel of Battery Ventures, one of many Silicon Valley funds exploring the scene. "It seems that a true destination site is just antithetical to the nature of the Web, where the point is to bounce around." While entertainment on the Web may not be quite ready for its financial prime time, it remains a beacon for content creators. Rewards may be low, but so is the cost to play.

RedLasso Has Insane User-to-Unique Ratio
RedLasso, a pre-launch startup, says it had 24 million unique visitors in April. And I don’t mean pre-launch like Gmail-is-still-in-beta pre-launch, I mean you can’t actually get in through the front door of the site if you aren’t explicitly given special access. Only 18,000 people are part of its private beta.The user-to-unique ratio is at the core of what the company does: let its users share relevant bits of broadcast TV. So that time last week when Paula Abdul flubbed her American Idol lines, or Tom Cruise came looking for redemption on Oprah, or Barack Obama appeared on Fox News, bloggers had near-immediate access to the evidence.

HP Products Stream YouTube Content Web video news blog Beet.tv has signed a partnership with online video content producer and distributor TurnHere to create a news-gathering network with 3,500 videographers in more than 50 countries.

Blinkx Launches Advanced Platform
Video search firm Blinkx is offering publishers its Advanced Media Platform, which will manage video search, insert ads and target video to users, Silicon Alley Insider reports.

Biddle to Market Networked Blu-ray Content Service in U.S.
Dreamer, a Korea-based interactive TV developer, said on Tuesday that it has opened an office in Burbank, Calif. to market its Biddle technology, a platform that lets content distributors deliver customized, interactive programming and services to networked Blu-ray Disc players or PlayStation 3 consoles. Dreamer said its Biddle platform is currently in use by over one million subscribers in Korea.

Liberty switches unit to films from TV division Walt Disney Co.’s fiscal second-quarter earnings jumped 22% as home entertainment titles such as Enchanted (pictured), The Game Plan and No Country For Old Men helped boost profit at its studio entertainment unit. Enchanted and The Game Plan were both among the five biggest DVD sellers during the first quarter, helping Disney buck the trend of flat overall DVD spending in the U.S.

Flickr rules in photo sharing, as video tiptoes in
Yahoo Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse, who oversees Flickr, says he "couldn't be happier" about the response so far. "It's quadrupled the overall number of videos sent in to the Yahoo network," he says. "It's indicative of a very unmet need being met by the community." Some members of the Flickr community, however, have been outspoken in their opposition. "I didn't sign up for Flickr to see videos," says Paul Snook of Christiana, Tenn. "Flickr is a site about photos, and it should stay that way." Louis Collins, a piano teacher in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says he's getting used to video on the site, but he still doesn't like it."If the videos assist photography, and show how the picture was made, I'm OK with that. I just don't want to see Flickr turned into YouTube."

VeriSign Sells Kontiki CDN Business For $1 Million
Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it has added more than 800 downloadable TV show episodes from NBC Universal, Viacom , Time Warner , Liberty Media and other providers to the online store for its Zune portable media player. Notable in the deal is NBC Universal's inclusion, as the company's programs disappeared from Apple's iTunes Store in December following disputes over pricing and bundling.

Akamai CEO: We'd Rather Be IBM Than Radio Shack
Paul Sagan: I think the only thing that matters is quality revenue and profitability. We focus on getting high-quality customers. I guess it would be sort of like saying Radio Shack is a better business than IBM because they've got a lot more customers. IBM focuses on the top 50 accounts -- or whatever the right number is for them -- the highest-value businesses to provide big-time solutions, while somebody else is selling batteries and spare parts.Our focus is very much the same. There are lots of things that can be sold as an online solution, and we're focusing on big customers who have really big problems about how to drive a business online and we want to sell them comprehensive solutions that make them more successful. Earnings: Cisco Revs Up 10 Percent; Sees Weak Growth In Current Quarter; Cable Co. Revs Down Economic bellwether and online video beneficiary Cisco has announced earnings, up 10 percent to $9.8 billion from $8.9 billion in the year-ago quarter ending March 31. This is a deceleration from the 16 percent growth it saw last quarter, and it's basically flat sequentially. Net income slipped 5.4 percent to $1.8 billion, but this quarter included a $246 acquisition-related charge. Excluding this, non-GAAP net income was up 9.4 percent to $2.3 billion ($.38 per share). Both the top and bottom line figures came in a bit ahead of estimates, but the question again is outlook.

Lycos Cinema Gets Innovative With Social Video
U-Verse users indicates that AT&T is finally starting to roll out dual stream HD to some users in the St. Louis market. So far, users who sign up for 10Mbps VDSL data service say their gateway is syncing at 25Mbps and they're getting two HD streams without any apparent loss in quality.

How good are the how to sites
Overall, I preferred the look of Howcast's site and its well-organized videos. But its content paled in comparison to WonderHowTo's 110,000 videos and even eHow's 100,000 instructional articles. WonderHowTo.com does a nice job of gathering content from across the Web, though the inconsistencies of other sites (including advertisements, layout and video player) were a bit frustrating. EHow's articles were useful, as were its few videos, but I couldn't get over the site's unyielding video pop-up ads. Blinkx Signs Publishers To Video Search, Ad Deals Blinkx, the video search firm that recently retooled as a Web TV play, is adding yet another line of business. The company is licensing what it calls its Advanced Media Platform to publishers to manage video search, insert advertising. Cable Ads Again Accentuate the Negative With their attack ads, the cable, satellite and phone companies are preaching as much to current customers as they are to prospective ones. One of the biggest financial drains for these companies is "churn," or customer turnover. Some cable companies can lose up to 25% of their customer base in any given year, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, and replacing those customers with new ones is extremely costly.

Webby Awards Winners Named; Colbert is 'Person of the Year'
The winners of this year's Webby Awards were announced on Tuesday, with special achievement honors going to TV host Stephen Colbert, film director Michel Gondry and musical artist will.i.am. Colbert was named the Webby Person of the Year for the innovative ways he uses the Internet to interact with fans of his show, while Gondry was recognized in part for inspiring user-generated content with his new film, "Be Kind Rewind," and will.i.am for the songs and Internet videos he produced for Barack Obama.

That's it folks

Will free media kill journalism?

Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research has set the cat among the pigeons with a provocative piece that argues advertising is not going to underwrite the online video industry. His claim is part of a broader thesis that the emergence of "free" news is causing the demise of traditional investigative journalism -- and with it one of the pillars of democracy. The problem is simple: consumers are turning to the web for news, but will not pay for it and digital ads can not make up the shortfall. According to Moffett:

"Five years into the video-over-the-Internet revolution, we have learned two things. First; consumers won't pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. And second; it won't be ad supported."

Moffett argues online video consumers will only tolerate about two minutes of advertising per half hour and when a like for like comparison is done between TV and online video, web producers will need to produce content at 1/8th the cost of traditional TV to make the same returns. The question he asks: "Are content producers prepared to reduce production costs…by 88%? Moffett is pessimistic about the ability of Hollywood to make this transition and it is a question equally relevant to magazines and newspapers, as news organizations around the world seek to re-size and re-make their newsrooms and sales forces to fit with the new order. (Radio arguably went through its re-incarnation a decade ago.)

Some random observations why the roof is not about to fall in:

• For many media organizations it is a case of going from 30 % plus margins to something around 20 %. The media business is still a nice earner and will make margins retailers, communications providers and manufacturers would die for. Take into account the relatively low capital costs of establishing a media business, (which thanks to technology are also collapsing,) and media remains a very attractive business.
• Most media has always been "free." Broadcast TV, radio, community and commuter newspapers and many magazines have successfully built strong franchises from an advertising-only model. Indeed in some cases it has made sense to actually pay consumers to take a media product as a means of reaching a key advertising demographic (e.g. a magazine about large sailing boats.)
• It is not that consumers don't want news -- the web has vastly increased the audience for numerous "traditional" media brands-- they just want it in a different form. The one-size-fits-all model most favored by old media looks curious, to say the least, in a world where consumers can buy multiple flavors of Coca-Cola in a variety of packs ranging from a small glass bottle in the convenience store to slabs of cans in the supermarket. Ditto cars, mobile phones and virtually any modern product you can think of.
• An example of rethinking the old model: slicing eight years of Jon Stewart's Daily Show into 13,000 pieces topped and tailed with video ads to be played on mobile phones, PCs and laptops around the world.
• There are some success stories of traditional media transitioning to digital. The lesson: it is not rocket science, but does take leadership, clear vision and focus.
• Open source technology and cloud computing platforms are creating lots of good opportunities for media start ups and investors. The booming U.S. blog industry is the best case in point. The only barrier to entry for media companies to the blog sector is their own "conservatism" -- Gizmodo, Techcrunch, Autoblog could arguably have been all started by any media company in the world.
• There are lots of different revenue models which media companies have not even begun to explore. Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, has suggested for example a micro payment subscription model based on usage similar to say electricity or telephones. Two hours of the NYT would cost say 20 pennies.
• These new models also include lower cost advertising which is attractive to residential and small business consumers, both previously locked out of the high cost broadcast sector. Google simply took the old classified system of cheap user based ads and made them smarter and easy to do. Small (and big) business loved it and $16 billion later (07 revenue) they are laughing. Already we are seeing sites which enable video ads for as low as $170 and both the UK based Daily Mail and News Corp. have bought into the budget self serve advertising game.
  
• Google has been truly disruptive, but hopefully sooner than later someone will come along with a search engine which actually returns information in an intelligent and usable manner, rather than the illogical and now completely gamed, page rank returns we now get. The point: What Google does is not unique and although much better than the first generation of search engines it still has serious inadequacies and inevitably some one will find a better way to do search. That suggests more disruption, but also the need for media to stay focused on what they know best: creating communities around the the stories which interest them.
• As the IP (internet protocol) revolution continues there will be lots of opportunities for smart media companies who understand the power and opportunities which comes from connecting all the various devices and applications together. (Video tours of communities streamed into GPS devices in cars is my own under the shower idea today.)
• As the IP revolution plays out how journalists make and publish their stories changes and in many cases quite radically. Is it as radical as when television arrived in the 1950's? I don't know. Over the next few decades a lot of newspapers closed, but without checking the numbers I would contend that television (and radio) actually grew the media (and advertising) pie.
• Economists are fond of describing the new media model as akin to the modern book store industry. Low barriers to entry and little restrictions on access. If so then some journalists will work in the big "Barnes and Nobel" shops, some in the "indy" neighbourhood stores and others in the virtual world, similar to say Amazon.
• While fragmentation is the order of the day, all the surveys suggest the traditional 80/20 media rules still prevails i.e 20 per cent of the sites get 80 per cent of the traffic, confirming what we all know: that we are creatures of (brand) habit.

So while the big newsrooms of today may not survive --the industry will still have major players with deep pockets. Will they invest in the classic long-form investigative journalism which Moffett, and many others, argue is core to a healthy democracy? Not sure. Some times just having someone independent witnessing events is more important than having the Jessica Mitfords and Bob Woodwards of the world lifting lots of rocks. In the U.S. many of the blogs are now stepping into the specialist space and focusing on "live" reports of events which other wise would have gone unrecorded.

Today's best video clips -- 5 May 2008

MovieBeam Rises From The Dead - Again
Just when you thought it was safe to salvage your Moviebeam box for spare parts, there’s new hope on the horizon that Moviebeam may once again be coming to a television screen near you. Like a zombie from a bad horror flick, Moviebeam continues to rise from the dead feasting on the rotted brains of media moguls and venture capitalists with each new incarnation.

According to the Daily Bankruptcy Review, Movie Gallery has asked for bankruptcy court approval to sell their VOD service to Dar Capital Limited at a $2.25 million price tag.

“Movie Gallery pulled the plug on its-on-demand movie service, called MovieBeam, in December as part of its restructuring under Chapter 11 protection. Dar Capital Limited has agreed to buy MovieBeam, which had about 1,800 subscribers at the time it was shut down. The service required customers to purchase a television set-top box that allowed them to order films for between $1.99 and $4.99. Movie Gallery said in court papers filed Thursday that it began shopping the MovieBeam business soon after shuttering the service and that 14 parties showed an interest in the company. Dar Capital is picking up MovieBeam’s remaining assets, which include certain trademarks and intellectual property associated with the business.”

Is 2008 the Year of VOD?
Time Warner has announced that all of its DVD titles will be released concurrently on VOD this year. Apple says it will offer movies for purchase on the same day they’re released on DVD (something Vudu has offered for a while). VOD will play an important distribution role for the new pay network being created by Viacom, Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM. And let’s not forget the on-demand capabilities that TV networks are providing, both through their own sites and through sites like Hulu.

But the studios aren’t offering up all those sweet shows because they like you — they see dollar signs. A recent survey by consulting firm Oliver Wyman predicted that by releasing content on VOD on the same day and date as DVDs and jacking up the rental prices to anywhere from $7 to $9, consumer spending could be boosted by $5 billion by 2010.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Launches Digital Specs
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release of “Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines.” Created by the IAB’s Digital Video Committee, a group comprised of 145 leading interactive companies, they are the definitive format guidelines that directly address digital video advertising.

The guidelines focus on the most widely used current in-stream ad products, including linear video ads, non-linear video ads and companion ads. They were created in order to meet the following marketplace needs:

• Simplifying digital video ad buying across multiple sites through minimum common ad specifications for video, overlay and companion ads.
• Achieving more efficient operations through a common set of creative submission guidelines.
• Increasing consumer understanding of ad interactions and environments through best practice recommendations for creative development and player environments.

"The interest surrounding digital video is no surprise," said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. "Consumers have been swift to embrace the digital video experience online, and marketers have incorporated it just as rapidly into their advertising plans. With the creation and adoption of these formats and guidelines, we see no end in sight to its potential for growth."

Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines & Best Practices
In order to simplify the digital video advertising buying and selling process, the Digital Video Committee of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has developed these guidelines and best practices for the most common current in-stream ad formats, including:

• Linear video ads
• Non-linear video ads
• Companion ads

These recommendations have been constructed for these ad formats in order to meet the following marketplace needs:

• More efficient operations through a common set of creative submission guidelines
• More efficient development of ads and players through minimum common creative guidelines, including click functionality and duration definitions
• Easier digital video ad buying across multiple sites through minimum common ad sizes for overlay and companion ads
• Better consumer understanding of ad interactions and environments through best practice recommendations for creative development and player environments

Mark Cuban: Low-Budget Doom and SEO Gloom for Web Video
When all that’s worth watching on a network is one show, or all that’s worth watching in a show is one scene, or all that’s worth watching in a scene is one line, just take us straight to the good stuff, right? But Mark Cuban, in an apocalyptic blog post, says online video will be destroyed by its ability to cater to these a la carte watching habits, because the economics don’t support them. He seems to thinks this will lead to the eradication of quality content.

Inspired by a Bernstein Research report that’s not publicly available, the cranky Cuban (who’s often blogged about his dissatisfaction with web video) quotes Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett,

The Ala Carting of Video on the Net - Will it lead to disaster ?
Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research wrote an amazing report entitled And Now for the News...The Emperor Has No Clothes". If you can get a copy, read it. Starting with the disappointing but expected news that journalism is no longer a service consumers desire to pay for, he moves on to the problems facing Internet video. He does a far better job than I ever did explaining the failings of Internet video and the expectation of free content. This is the report I wish I had blogged. From the report: Ironically, we are headed down the same self-destructive road for other kinds of traditional media,as well. Five years into the video-over-the-Internet revolution, we have learned two things. First; consumers won't pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. And second; it won't be ad supported. In the cable TV network world, half of all revenues come from affiliate (carriage) fees paid by the Comcasts and DirecTVs of the world. The other half comes from advertising. But in the TV world, a typical half hour show supports an ad load of about 8 minutes.

Blu-ray player sales down despite format victory
Looks like it wasn't the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle that was keeping potential customers away from high-definition video players after all.The NPD Group released some of its retail sales tracking data Wednesday that showed sales of Blu-ray standalone players (not a PlayStation 3, combo player, or PC with Blu-ray drive) had mostly decreased since the beginning of the year. Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the U.S. decreased 40 percent from January to February and saw a very slight increase (2 percent) between February and March, according to NPD.

Steve Jobs Stakes Out the TV Den
While a lot of us carry a little bit of Steve Jobs around in our pocket, Apple is now after the remaining bit of life-share that it doesn’t already own, the home front. On Thursday, the company announced deals with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among others, to sell movies for download on iTunes on the same day they are released on DVD. The “day and date” downloaded movies (as they are called in industry jargon) will play only on Apple gadgets, but that characteristic may finally give the company the toehold in the American den that it has been looking for via Apple TV.

Google: Those TV Spots Better Be Good
If you're fretting that Google's TV Ads system will somehow commoditize the $64.4 billion the TV industry takes in ad revenue, don't. Google has a more radical notion than that.As it does with its AdWords search system, Google plans to sell spots based not only on price but on how well an ad performs. Better-quality advertising -- advertising the audience deems most relevant -- will be rewarded, as marketers will pay less for the same spot. Lower-quality advertising -- the ads deemed less relevant by consumers -- will acquire higher media bills.

Fox to Reinforce That TV Is King
Fox sales and marketing executives say that while it is trendy to praise online and other emerging media for their effectiveness in targeting consumers, only a very small percentage of online opportunities offer the kind of sight-sound-motion video advertising that engages and motivates consumers on the same level as TV spots.

IPTV Equipment Sales Grew 47% in 2007
The IPTV equipment market grew 47% year over year in 2007, with Cisco Systems reaping the lion's share of the revenue, according to a report from Synergy Research Group.

Yahoo Holders Turn Up Heat Some digital advertising executives are disappointed by the collapse of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, saying the industry needs consolidation to help standardize everything from the way digital ads are placed to how clients are billed.

Here comes cable
So what happens if you are an existing video distributor? Well, it would appear that these players are also entering the online video space. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), the largest U.S. cable operator, has been making strategic acquisitions of online properties and technology vendors. Most notable of these was movie theater ticket site Fandango. Comcast then launched Fancast.com, a video distribution hub and in February it got on comScore’s top-10 list. That's fast, and it demonstrates both the importance Comcast senior management is giving its online strategy, and its ability to acquire and promote video content on new channels.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has long been a major Internet brand thanks to its acquisition of AOL LLC . It too is ramping up its video distribution capabilities and also ranked within the top 10 video sites in February. This week, we also saw Cox Communications Inc. , a major broadcast and cable company, acquire Adify Corp. Adify is an online ad network and has delivered advertising for sites such as Martha Stewart's Omnimedia and Forbes magazine.

Blockbuster to join Viacom?
According to the Wall Street Journal, the movie rental chain is preparing to join Viacom (which owns Paramount Pictures Corp. ), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. , and Lion's Gate in launching a pay-TV channel featuring movies and original TV series from these studios. Blockbuster would get the digital rights to content on the channels in return for its investment.

That's it folks

Silverman's event TV prediction an old radio re-run

Ben Silverman's prediction broadcast television will become event driven is strangely déjà vu. Radio in the 1950’s was the home of drama, comedy and episodic features. Millions listened to their favorite radio series in the evenings. Along came television and it proved a far better medium for what is today known as entertainment programming. Radio had to adapt and went to a strip format with anchors introducing and hosting several hours of music, talk or whatever the genre.

Wind the clock forward 50 years and we find “traditional” television being challenged by the Internet – in particular the ability to obtain video any where any time. And it is this on demand feature of the Internet which is the underpinning functionality change driving a migration of any thing pre-recordable to the Internet.

Weather it is watched on an iPod, desktop screen, mobile phone or 50 inch plasma is broadly irrelevant (other than ice hockey being really hard to follow on a cell phone). As NBC's Silverman suggested at TelevisionWeek’s Upfront conference this week programming for television becomes much more focused on events eg Olympics, live shows eg Concerts, contests eg American Idol, and big news happenings. Series launches as Silverman suggested still get their start on TV, but quickly is distributed everywhere through various IP networks.

Live TV is probably the best descriptor for this genre with everything else on demand. Out goes the block programming as it did with radio in the 1950's and in comes strip formats built around a mix live and big. As an aside content becomes truly king in this scenario as the media's ability to bottle neck distribution rapidly breaks down. Little wonder Time Warner decided this week to get out of the distribution game.

Today's best video clips -- 2 May 2008

Worth Noting: NBC's Silverman: Broadcast to Be Event-Driven; Apple to Lose Money on Same-day Movies; Media sales flat in 2007; Google TV Ads Now Available to U.S. Advertisers

ABC.com To Experiment With More Ads Per TV Stream Viewers of video at ABC.com might soon be seeing two advertisements, one after the other, within each video break. "It would be premature for us to say people only want one ad," said Albert Cheng, executive vp digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, to the Hollywood Reporter. "It's a likely sort of thinking, but we want to push it a little bit to see how it would go."

Google TV Ads Now Available to U.S. Advertisers
CNET reports that Google announced on its AdWords blog that Google TV Ads, a program that has been in beta since June 2007, is now available to all U.S.-based advertisers. The program allows advertisers to reach over 13 million households nationwide on 94 channels.

NBC's Silverman: Broadcast to Be Event-Driven
In 15 years, broadcast television will only be useful for high-profile live events like the Super Bowl, awards shows and programs like “American Idol,” Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said during a keynote interview at the TelevisionWeek Upfront Summit in New York. Other shows will have to live on multiple platforms to survive. “[Broadcast] will also be where we launch our episodic storytelling vehicles, but they will be living and breathing everywhere,” he said. NBC plans to experiment with driving viewers to the Web from TV with its new fall show “Kath and Kim.” NBC will offer continued scenes online after each episode airs, Mr. Silverman said. “Around our new offerings there will literally be shows that end on air and the last scene will continue online,” he said.

Media sales flat in 2007
The industry's prevailing fear that home video sales are fast eroding was confirmed in the report, which indicated that the 5% uptick in international sales could not offset the eyebrow-raising 17% plunge in the U.S. domestic market. Moreover, the summary notes, a 4% growth in DVD in 2007 was not enough to offset the 850% decline in VHS. Booming movie rentals and a steady flow of TV license fees combined to compensate for sluggish home video revenue and bring about a "flat" all-media sales performance worldwide for the major Hollywood studios last year. A healthy 9% hike in foreign tallies made up for an 8% domestic decline "to balance each other out," according to a confidential summary sent to member-company executives by the MPA and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Apple to Lose Money on Same-day Movies
Apple said yesterday it had finally scored deals to sell movies from almost every major studio on the same day they come out on DVD. What’s surprising is that the company will lose a dollar on every new release it sells, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Redbox to file for IPO
Redbox, the DVD vending machine provider co-owned by McDonald’s and Coinstar, is hoping to become a publicly traded entity. The company, which offers $1 a night rentals on new releases, said on Thursday it will file a registration statement for an initial public offering of common stock, subject to market conditions.

Movie Gallery to sell MovieBeam
Movie Gallery has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Va., for permission to sell the MovieBeam set-top service, which the company shut down at the end of last year.

Amazon growing the digital music market
New figures from NPD Group suggest that the Amazon DRM-free digital music service is doing more to grow the overall digital music market as opposed to simply stealing customers from iTunes. The research group says only 10% of Amazon customers had previously bought music from Apple's iTunes service. While many tagged the Amazon service as an "iTunes killer" when it first launched, the music industry's hope all along was never to cannibalize iTunes sales but rather encourage new digital buyers. NPD's data suggest exactly that is happening.

Flash for Video Pros
Greg Rewls shows off how sophisticated video tools in Adobe Flash Professional CS3 help you create, edit and deploy streaming and progressive-download FLV content with comprehensive video support.

That's it folks

Digital video and DVD to be released simultaneously

Big day in the history of online video today when the film studios finally relented and agreed to release their product simultaneously on disc and online. Yesterday Time Warner admitted they had trialled dual release and saw little cannibalisation of their lucrative DVD channel. CEO Jeff Bewkes let the cat out of the bag when he told analysts digital releases had three times the profit margin of disc (and finally announced TW was splitting out its cable business from its content play.)
The move by the studios was announced by Apple but is not exclusive and suggests the DVD business has seen its best days, although to date there are few who have been able to succeed with digital delivery. There have been some big name failures including WalMart and the pure play, Cisco/Intel backed MovieBeam retired late last year with less than 1800 subscribers. Another start up, Akimbo decided the market was not ready for its proprietary box last year.
But with research showing consumers would be far more interested if the digital copy was released at the same time as the disc, the scene is now set for what should be a fascinating battle as players seek to gain brand dominance in a potentially lucrative market.
Apple is hoping to leverage its music dominance with iTunes into the video world --although it will need to abandon its highly proprietary approach if it really wants to compete in the already disaggregated online video market place. Apple of course already has some experience with the video on demand market through its Apple TV box (Steve Jobs infamously described Apple TV as a hobby).
Other players in the rental space include both Blockbuster and Netflix which are also hoping to migrate their offline businesses. Earlier this year Netflix abandoned its own set-top box ambitions and announced it would go with a purpose built LG box. The box will enable Netflix to migrate its 7 million DVD subscribers to a networked HD streaming service beginning mid this year. No pricing was released and follows Netflix tentative step into the internet download game with its Watch now service that streams a limited number of movies to customer PCs.
The home video giant Blockbuster is developing a set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets and is expected to announce the offering sometime soon. Blockbuster acquired Movielink last year a service which enables consumers to watch films licensed from the major studios on their PCs. Movielink was created in 2002 by MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warners and was sold in 2007 to Blockbuster for $6.6 million. Blockbuster gets online rights to about 6,000 movies fro the deal although there are questions if this extends to TV viewing.

Today's top video clips -- 1 May 2008

Worth Noting: Studios Selling Movie Downloads and DVDs at the Same Time; New STB internet TV box from ZeeVee; Sezmi touts all-in-one box;
One True Media offers new SMB ad creator; Akamai powers on but disappoints the Street; BBC America Debuts Strongly On iTunes


iTunes Gets Same-Day Release
Whither the DVD? Apple Inc. will soon begin offering new releases of movies at the iTunes store on the same day as home video releases are available. Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, and New Line are in on the deal. MGM is not involved in the deal, but is -- with all of the other studios -- taking part in offering movie rentals at iTunes.

Studios Selling Movie Downloads and DVDs at the Same Time
Thursday, Apple announced instant online purchases: It has gotten all the big studios to let people buy electronic copies of movies on the day of DVD release as well. Until now, studios generally let Apple sell downloaded copies of films about 30 days after their release on disc. There’s nothing exclusive about Apple’s deal. I see some new DVD releases for sale as downloads on Amazon as well.

Offering rentals and purchases immediately are both logical moves for the studios. Why offer someone the chance to rent something for $3.99 and not let them also choose to buy it for $14.99? Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive, said Wednesday that digital movies have three times the profit margin for the studios than discs.

What the Hulu is Hulu doing on YouTube?
Picture ABC taking out an ad for itself during CBS' prime time. Or the Dodgers setting up a merchandise booth at AT&T Park. Or no, how about Coke adding themselves to Pepsi's Wikipedia entry. Yeah, that's it. Hulu, the Fox/NBC Universal online TV destination and one of YouTube's direct competitors, has established a popular channel in the heart of its rival's territory. The Hulu channel contains dozens of million-plus hit clips from Fox shows like "Family Guy" and "The Moment of Truth," as well as NBC's "The Office." The YouTube clips are branded to the hilt with Hulu graphics and ad text.

This looks almost bizarrely incongruous just a couple of weeks after Hulu CEO Jason Kilar totally ripped on YouTube during a presentation at the NAB, where he showed a slide from a clip of "Felicity" someone posted and said, according to CNET's account, "the only way to get (Felicity) is from unauthorized sources."
Watch for yourself at our video channel

Sezmi touts all-in-one box
Seeking to capitalize on the era of flux and consumer dissatisfaction with TV and homevid offerings, a new company launching Thursday believes it has the next-gen solution. Sezmi is backed by a consortium of venture capital funds and features execs and board members with experience at Sony, Viacom, NBC, Bell Labs and other companies. It features a single set-top box and remote that bring together broadcast, cable, movies and Internet videos.

Using an iPod-like track wheel, the remote allows the user to scroll through options, while the box uses an antenna to pull in wireless signals from cable and Web sources. The interface also encourages social networking by allowing users to recommend shows, movies or videos to friends.

New STB internet TV box from ZeeVee (release)
Startup company ZeeVee Inc. announced today the launch of ZvBoxTM, a new consumer electronics product for watching any Internet TV, online video, or computer content on HDTVs at home. Available for preorder online exclusively at Amazon.com, ZvBox will redefine television as we know it.

One True Media offers new SMB ad creator
Online video editing startup One True Media caters primarily to MySpace kids and home-video making moms. It has 3 million registered users, 70,000 new videos per week, and 4 million video views per week. But after noticing an increasing number of businesses using its service to create how-tos and customer testimonials, the company is launching a new small business video ad creator called SpotMixer.

Comcast Confirms Digital Dongle Project
Comcast Corp. confirmed Thursday that it is developing an inexpensive digital-to-analog adapter that will be used to help the MSO push ahead with an all-digital strategy slated to get underway later this year. Cable Digital News was the first to reveal details about the MSO's Digital Terminal Adapter (DTA) project in February. Steve Burke, the president of Comcast's cable division, served up a few details on the forthcoming DTA device this morning during the MSO's first quarter results conference call. He said the MSO expects to begin relying on the DTA by the fourth quarter of 2008, noting that it will cost less than the most inexpensive CableCARD-based set-top Comcast deploys today.

In Style to Launch Celeb Video Series
In Style is planning to launch a weekly, celebrity-related video series sometime in the fourth quarter based on the recent success of a content initiative from its March issue, which drove readers to InStyle.com to view a wealth of related, original video material.


Akamai powers on but disappoints the Street
Still not succumbing to a price war, Akamai reported Q1 revenue of $187 million, up 34 percent year-over-year from $139.2 million. On a sequential basis, it was up 2 percent. On an adjusted basis, the company earned $75.6 million ($.41 per share), up 49 percent from $50.7 million ($.28 per share). The total customer base increased 8 percent to 2,672.

Dont Count Plasma Out Yet
While the television display technology du jour has shifted in recent years from plasma to L.C.D., plasma is far from dead. In fact, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. But just not here.Over the last year, the number of plasma panels (the set’s display screen) shipped by manufacturers has jumped by 53 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007, according to a report out Thursday by DisplaySearch, a market research firm.

TV Images to Dazzle the Jaded
There’s a new TV on the block, and its picture is so amazing, it makes plasma and L.C.D. look like cave drawings.It’s called organic light emitting diode, or O.L.E.D. This technology has been happily lighting up the screens of certain cellphone and music-player models for a couple of years now, but Sony is the first company to offer it in a TV screen. It’s called the XEL-1, and it’s available only from SonyStyle stores. Its picture is so incredible, Sony should include a jaw cushion.

Three More CDNs Launch, Market Too Crowded
Amazingly, the number of new content delivery providers in the market continues to climb with three new CDNs launching in the past few weeks. The new entrants, which I will cover next week are Jittr Networks, SimpleCDN and EdgeStream.

Adobe offers free Flash for phones
Adobe said it will license its video-enabling Flash software for free for mobile devices to help developers make mobile Internet experiences more closely resemble the experience on computers.

AT&T Launches TV Service on New Phones, Rivaling Verizon
AT&T is launching its new video service for cell phones Sunday on two phones, and will charge $15 per month for 10 channels.

Comcast First Quarter Results - Telcos pulling video subs, but Comcast dominates VoIP Comcast continues to see some video losses to FiOS, but they're more than compensating with strong VoIP growth as users ditch their landlines.

BT Lines Up Telepresence Service
BT has joined AT&T in unveiling inter-company telepresence services based on Cisco's immersive, multimedia conferencing technology.

BBC America Debuts Strongly On iTunes
BBC America timed the arrival of its shows on iTunes to just after the debut of season 2 of Robin Hood last Saturday on the cable channel. So thus far, only one episode of that action-adventure show is on iTunes, for $1.99 each, the standard per-episode rate.

For shows where full seasons are available, the first and second seasons of sci-fi drama Torchwood ($25.87 each) and the third series of comedy Little Britain ($11.94) cracked the Top 10 list of iTunes TV season sales Tuesday night, after such titles as Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Showtime’s Dexter and FX’s Nip/Tuck.

AT&T is Set to Introduce TV Service for Cellphones
AT&T Inc. plans to launch a television service for cellphones next week, following in the footsteps of rival Verizon Wireless, even as skeptics question whether there is consumer demand for such mobile broadcast-style programming.

The service, which will be available in 58 markets, including most big cities, will offer programs from several major TV networks, including CBS, Comedy Central, NBC and Fox. While some of the network programming will air simultaneously with what is airing on television, a little more than half will be delayed from the TV airtime. The lineup of 150 programs includes popular shows such as CBS's "CSI" and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." The service won't come cheap. Consumers must purchase one of two new AT&T phones to watch the mobile-TV service. LG Electronics' Vu, which has a large touchscreen, will sell for $300 with a two-year service contract and a mail-in rebate. The Samsung Access will be $200 with the same fine print. Additionally, users must sign up for a TV service plan on top of their monthly voice and data plans. The starter package is $15 a month for unlimited access to television. A $30-a-month plan adds additional features, including Web browsing. AT&T also hopes to generate revenue from advertising.

Exclusive: U.S. Online Video Startups Raised $461M in 2007
Profits may not have arrived for online video, but venture capitalists are still happy to pick up the bill. More and more U.S.-based, venture-backed online video companies are attracting more and more financing each year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Some $460.5 million was invested in such startups in 2007, up from $266.9 million in 2006. And already, in the first quarter of 2008, another $217.3 million rained down on the category.

Bocelli charity video for download
Italian superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli is following in Radiohead's footsteps by releasing a video directly to fans at the price they feel like paying. Dare To Live will be available through the ActionAid website www.actionaid.org.uk for digital download from May 5. Organisers of the project said it is the first commercial music video whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay.

Time Warner Refocusing With Move to Spin Off Cable
For years, it was a widely held belief within Time Warner and the media business that there were real financial advantages to owning both the content — television shows and films — and the means of distributing it to people’s homes. But Wednesday’s cable announcement, which came as Time Warner reported first-quarter earnings, spotlighted the company’s future as a pure content provider. From now on the media company will revolve around two core content businesses that have been out of the limelight in recent years: the Warner Brothers movie studio and Turner Networks, which includes the television channels TNT, TBS, HBO and CNN.

Hollyood stars launch video campaign for Myanmar's Suu Kyi
About 30 Hollywood celebrities will kick off a campaign Thursday to seek the release of Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and push for freedom in the military-ruled nation. The 30-day campaign will see stars such as Will Ferrell, Ellen Page, Judd Apatow, Anjelica Huston, Jennifer Aniston and Rosanna Arquette appearing in video clips on the Internet highlighting human rights issues in Myanmar. It is aimed at building a network of one million people to join the US Campaign for Burma, a group in the forefront of efforts to free 62-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient who has spent more than 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest.

That's it folks