Shift to Web delivery – Page 5

Sky Anytime on PC: One Million Films In A Year

Sky Anytime on PC downloaded its one millionth film on the 14 January neatly marking its first year of operation.

The Sky Anytime on TV service is the renamed Sky By Broadband service, which delivers select Sky’s TV content over a broadband connection to a PC.

Sky Anytime: One Million Films In A Year

Figures for the film downloads could have been larger if Sky hadn’t had to pull the service back in September after their chosen DRM-restriction system, by Microsoft, was cracked.

We’re assuming that the million films that have been downloaded have been paid for, making it a pretty big bonanza, given the films are a wallet-emptying £3.95 each. Once subscribers have paid up, they’re given access to it for seven days, but are restricting to 48 hours viewing window after the first viewing.

Dawn Airey, BSkyB’s managing director of channels and services, was keen to say her piece about it … “We’re delighted that customers have taken to Anytime with such enthusiasm. Sky Movies is the UK’s most popular movie service and we’re able to use broadband to give customers more flexibility in how they watch. The fact that in this first year we’ve already seen 1m movie downloads is testament to customers’ willingness to embrace new technologies and get more from Sky.”

Sky report that the service has gained a quarter of a million registered users in its first year of operation.

Big Brother’s DRM Nightmare

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare Backstory
Forgive me. I forked over money to Channel 4 to become a paying Season Pass sucker for the Celebrity Big Brother live stream.

My dearest, a less-than closet BB fan, persuaded me to watch CBB on the launch night – something made all the more peculilar by the fact that I don’t watch TV anymore (apart from The Simpsons at 6pm on Channel 4, of course).

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare To be frank, by the end of the program I was grateful to her. The sight of the fantastic disdain of Ken Russell made it worthwhile in itself.

What got me reaching for my credit card was the sheer hilarity of seeing Jade Goody enter the house – post her journey through crowds of frantic screaming BB fans, proceeded by her 50-yard car drive and obligatory press photo pose – to a house with three grumpy, quiet people who didn’t jump up and down when they saw her enter. It couldn’t have been further from her expected truth.

Her face was priceless – well, I thought it was at least worth £5 to see it for a while longer, showing a mixture of confusion and pain.

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare It appeared that finally Endemol had got a quality production team behind this one, lead by an intelligent director.

Hence my giving money, enabling this rubbish to make huge profits for those concerned.

__Using DRM … it _does_ suck
Once I’d registered and paid for it, the first surprise was not to be sent a direct URL to access the stream. Instead the process is long and painful as you have to drag yourself through the Channel4 site to find the stream.

Here’s a run down of the hoops they get you to jump through …

*Deep breath now* –

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare Navigating through their home page to the CBB page; click on the “Watch 24/7” link; then the “Already own the pass” link. This pops up a new window with a form requesting sign up detail (despite the link being specific about already owning a pass).

After some searching you’ll notice, at the top of the window, a single word link for Login; which, once clicked, you’ll be asked for your email and password.

Finally the video player appears – hurrah!

Don’t be fooled, the agony isn’t over yet, this is where the DRM pain begins.

Despite having logged in a number of times already, you’re told that you do not have rights to play the content.

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare Clicking Yes takes you to yet another Web page, grandly entitled License Acquisition. Here you’re requested to login _again_.

Once you’ve bashed the keys in the right order, you’re requested to “wait a moment,” as the licence is “obtained”. Eventually you’re offered to click the Play button.

Finally, finally you get to the steam.

That’s bad enough to do once, but adding insult to injury, the worst of it is that each and everytime you want to watch a stream, you’ve got to go through this bullshit.

Summary – DRM Don’t Work
From the experience above you can see that the current version of DRM – Microsoft’s naturally – just doesn’t work for the consumer.

Big Brother's DRM Nightmare It’s not from lack of trying on their part either, Microsoft have been plugging away at their DRM solution for many years and, we have to assume, this is their latest as to get to view the streams, there’s a requirement to ‘upgrade’ your Windows Media Player to the latest version.

We also have to assume that Channel4/Endemol and Microsoft worked together to get the Big Brother streaming working. Say what you want about Big Brother, but it’s a high profile TV ‘event’, so important for them to have it working correctly.

Even after all of this effort, the end user experience is truly atrocious, so bad, that you feel anger every time to access the stream, and let’s not forget, people are paying for the privilege of being insulted like this.

With the difficulty of this process, it’s no wonder that people still try to get their content from file sharing networks to avoid DRM.

Video On Demand Could Grind The Internet To A Crawl

Video On Demand Could Grind The Internet To A Crawl Although the home entertainment industry is more loved up than the Happy Mondays on a bagful of E about Video-on-Demand, a new report suggests there might be a bumpy ride ahead.

The media research bods at Deloitte reckon that video downloads are likely to “encounter some challenges in 2007” with customers expecting to suffer slow broadband downloading times, especially for customers downloading to their computers.

Igal Brightman, global managing partner at Deloitte commented that, “the unrelenting growth in Internet traffic during 2007 may overwhelm some of the Internet’s backbones: the terabit-capable pipes connecting continents.”

“The impact may be most noticeable in the form of falling quality of service,’ he added, warning the industry that it would only take an unexpected upsurge in video usage to turn the inconvenience caused by dropping access speeds into “full-scale consumer dissatisfaction.”

UK market still small
At the moment, the UK film download market in Britain is still relatively small, with media market and research analysis group Screen Digest, anticipating that the big moolah will eventually start rolling in, but not for a few years’ time,

Video On Demand Could Grind The Internet To A Crawl The company estimates that the UK market is set to be worth £2.6 million in 2007 (£400,000 up from last year), soaring up to £8.4 million in 2008, and hitting a badger’s nadger under £30 million by 2009.

The big payola, however, is unlikely to start being raked in until equipment and networks improve.

Slower than a sleepy sloth
Deloitte calculated that on a typical two Mbit/s DSL network, film downloads will crawl down the wire at a yawn-inducing one minute per minute for a film, so a three hour film would take 180 minutes or more to arrive.

When it comes to downloading high-definition video, punters can definitely put the popcorn on hold too, with an average film taking the best part of a day to slide down a one Mbit/s DSL connection.

Matters aren’t helped by the rise of other bandwidth-hogging applications like VoIP, e-mail and online gaming, and in high demand areas it may prove quicker to pop down to Blockbuster than wait for the film to download.

Joost: The Venice Project Renamed

The next-market-to-disrupt target of the Skype/Kazaa founders – TV – has it’s latest news. The Venice Project’s working name has been changed to Joost, continuing their penchant for picking weird names – always a benefit when you want the domains(!).

Joost: The Venice Project Reborn

As to the source/root of the name … ? Well it could be that their massive fans of ’80s video game Joust or perhaps it’s a reference to the German for a friendly ‘goodbye’, Tschüss. Who knows? FYI – It’s actually pronounced Juiced.

We’ve been fiddling with the ~~Venice Project~~, sorry, Joost for a couple of weeks now, since Christopher Wood very kindly sent us an invite to join up.

Joost: The Venice Project Reborn We whacked it on an older (1.5GHz) machine and found that it really didn’t have the horsepower to run it properly. It’s a pretty greedy little number, even running out of steam on a 2.5GHz. The buzz around us beta testers is that currently, it _loves_ taking power/resources.

Clearly the Joost crew are seeing this as a product for the future (not a bad assumption), that will need to have a current processor to run it on. Queue computer and chip makers cheering and clapping.

A couple of beta testers are pointing and declaring that Joost will be the first failure of the founders. We think that it’s waaaaay to early to be calling that. Be patient my headline grabbing-friend and see how it turns out.

Let’s not forget 1) this is still in Beta, 2) Windows Media Centre was a total dog throughout many of its incarnation, taking years to get to the point where it was even usable.

Joost

Sky Surf, Speak, See Triple Play Package Announced

Sky has rolled out a combined TV, broadband and telephony package, regaling under the snappy moniker of Surf, Speak and See.

Sky Rolls Out Surf, Speak And See Triple Play Package The deal serves up the usual “up to” 8Mbps connection, and comes with a free bundled wireless Sky router and a fairly generous 40GB monthly usage allowance, which should be enough to keep most multimedia fans happily gorging on new content.

Also bundled in the ‘triple play’ deal – for that’s how we industry types describe these all-in packages – is over 100 digital subscription-only TV channels (plus over 200 other free to air digital radio and TV channels) and free UK evening and weekend landline calls.

The whole caboodle comes as a minimum one year deal priced at £26 monthly (with a one-off £20 connection fee) but punters will still have to shell out £11 a month to BT for the line rental

Sky Rolls Out Surf, Speak And See Triple Play Package Before you get too excited and start flicking your cash in the direction of that lovely Mr Murdoch, bear in mind that the service is only available to customers close to exchanges already unbundled by Sky.

This currently works out at around 50 percent of the UK population, although Sky hopes to crank this up to 70 percent by July.

Commenting on their new offer, Sky boss James Murdoch shrugged off the growing competition from NTL and BT boasting, “I would say we are more confident every day with our short, medium and long term prospects.”

Sky

AppleTV – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Michael Greeson of the Diffusion Group picks up on a theme we’d also raised earlier in the week – the insanity around Apple’s recent announcements, here he focuses on AppleTV.

AppleTV Unwrapped
On January 9, Steve Jobs made good on his 2006 promise to release an Internet TV Adapter (iTVA) and rolled out AppleTV, a set-top box that allows you to stream video from your PC to your TV. This was an important move for Apple and for the entire broadband video industry; one TDG predicted several years ago would likely happen in 2007.

AppleTV - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

I don’t want to talk about the technology behind the AppleTV platform – you’ve all heard by now that it’s an 802.11n-based wireless media hub with a 40GB hard drive and Intel processing, and is capable of streaming video, music, and photos to up to 5 different PCs. You’ve also likely heard that it will hit the market in February and cost $299 (although those who simply can’t wait to say they’ve bought one can pre-order the devices as of last Tuesday).

So the real reason for this particular OpEd? The often nauseating level of presumption extended to Apple by the public media and (in many cases) the analytical community. It’s as if everything that Apple touches will not only turn to gold but fundamentally redefine how we experience media ^[1].

You Don’t Want This Kind of Hype
An AP article in this morning’s New York Times captured the dominant opinion regarding AppleTV, stating that it “could be as revolutionary to digital movies as Apple’s iPod music player was to digital music. ^[2] ”

In what world do these people live? Are they completely oblivious to the fact that Internet-enabled DVRs and set-top boxes, not to mention digital media adapters, have been around for a couple years? Are they aware that the latest generation of game consoles do pretty much the same thing as AppleTV (sans iTunes), including burning content to an embedded hard drive?

Why is Apple’s entry into this space considered “revolutionary” when so many others offering similar solutions were there first? Are they aware that, despite the fact that MacWorld may have been a more exciting show than CES, the number of PC-to-TV solutions, Internet-capable TVs, networked set-top boxes at CES was topped only by the number of attendees? Everyone’s in the game, so Apple’s entry could hardly be considered “revolutionary.” Again, this is convincing evidence of the press’s blind fascination with all things ‘Apple.’

But this should also be a concern for Apple itself. Could these pundits have possibly set the expectations for this device (and the whole concept of Internet-based digital video to the TV) any higher? There is no way Apple can live up to this kind of hype.

Second, these pundits are guilty of using an analogy which, however seductive, is so unrealistic it borders on being dangerous. Betting that the future of Internet video will simply mirror that of Internet music is foolish, and those spouting this nonsense should, well, have their iPods taken away for a week.

AppleTV - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Let’s Get Serious, If Only For A Moment
Here is a litany of knee-jerk, prima facie objections to the pundits (the other pundits, that is) blind proclamation.

First, AppleTV is not the iPod. (Really? Yes, really. And neither will AppleTV enjoy the success of the iPod – again, the bar is simply set to high and such placement shows a poor understanding of the marketplace.)

Second, the online video business is not a simple mirror image of the online music business. (Yes, the similarities are strong but they are not universal. For example, purchasing a song download at $.99 is quite different than purchasing a movie download for $150-$20. Just ask someone who doesn’t work in the business how appealing this sounds. TDG has done the research and less than 13% of consumers would respond positively to such an offering.) As Dawn Chmielewski noted in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times, no one knows whether the entire PC-to-TV or Internet-to-TV strategy will pay off, and if it does to what extent it will float all boats ^[3].

Third, iTunes on the TV is not the same as iTunes on the PC. (Nor should it be – Apple must avoid the temptation to simply duplicate the iTunes web store on the TV screen.)
Fourth, the ‘for-purchase only’ model of iTunes remains unproven. (Despite the fact iTunes has sold 50 million TV episodes and more than 1.3 million feature-length films, the real long-term winner may be movie rentals, not sell-thru.)

Fifth, the cable, satellite, and TelcoTV players will not sit still and let someone like Apple, Sony, or Microsoft simply step in and cannibalize their TV revenue. (Yes, the future of Internet TV is bright – TDG just released an analysis and forecast on the growth of Internet-enabled TVs. However, allowing consumers access to a wide variety of unique content that is not carried by the major players is not the same as offering a movie service that competes directly with the incumbent video offerings – especially movies.)

The list of objections can go on for pages. For TDG’s clients and frequent readers, you are aware that we remain as excited about Apple’s entry into the living room as the next pontificator. In the long term, this will have a positive impact upon both the ‘digital home’ and ‘connected consumer’ industries. However, this box is not ‘revolutionary’ in the slightest, nor is moving iTunes to the TV. This is just the latest move by a very important technology innovator, a market leader whose every move is in the professional and public eye.

Despite the widespread cry of ‘revolution,’ the public has yet to weigh in on Internet video-to-the-TV in general and Internet movie downloads in particular, so that best that can be said is that the jury is still out. Research indicates that those that have used iTunes for video downloads are but a small portion of total iTunes users and comprised primarily of tech enthusiasts. Apple knows it will take a lot longer for iTunes to sell two billion online movie downloads at $20 than it did to sell two billion individual music downloads at $.99.

So let’s turn down the hype surrounding AppleTV. No doubt the expansion of Internet video into the living room is real; however, its emergence as a force in our TV viewing lives will be evolutionary or incremental in nature, not revolutionary. In other words, the AppleTV revolution will not be televised.

For a more sober look at Internet video on the television, The Diffusion Group would be delighted if you took a look at their latest report , Broadband Video: Redefining the Television Experience.

[1] This morning’s Good Morning Silicon Valley began with a headline entitled “You know, if the analyst gig doesn’t work out, there’s always a job for you in Apple PR,” a reflection on the fact that virtually every analyst on the planet was under the control of some sort of Apple-esque reality distortion field.
[2] “Apple Unveils New Mobile Phone,” Rachel Konrad, Associated Press, January 9, 2007
[3] “TV May Be A Tougher Challenge,” Dawn Chmielewski, Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2007.

Michael Greeson, Founding Partner & Principal Analyst, The Diffusion Group

TiVo: Broadband Music Deals; TiVoToGo For Mac; Emmy Award: CES 2007

TiVo: Broadband Music Deals; TiVoToGo For Mac; Emmy Award: CES 2007 TiVo has been shipping their PVRs with an Ethernet port since their series 2 model, promising content delivered over broadband.

At CES this week they told the world a bit more about what they’re going to do about it.

TiVo have signed deals with both Music Choice and RealNetworks to deliver music videos and songs to their panting subscriber’s TVs starting “later in 2007.”

The Real Networks deal is self-described as a “first-of-its-kind integration of the Rhapsody digital music service with the TiVo service,” which will give TiVo subscribers access to over 3 million songs on-demand only using their TiVo remote.

TiVo: Broadband Music Deals; TiVoToGo For Mac; Emmy Award: CES 2007 TiVoToGo for the Macintosh
TiVoToGo – the Tivo add-on service that lets subscribers burn the content they have on their TiVo to DVD and transfer it to portable devices – is now available on the Mac, a year after it was introduced for the PC.

They achieved this through a joint venture with Roxio, utilizing their Toast 8 Titanium software, letting subscribers transfer programmes either one episode at a time or automatically as soon as the TiVo DVR has recorded them.

The standard charge will be $99, but for a limited period it can be bought through the Roxio site with the bonus of getting a FREE TiVo Glo remote.

Emmy Award
TiVo has had a pretty long path to where they are now, which at times has been a little bumpy, so we imagine there is much happiness when they heard that its Interactive Advertising Platform was presented with the Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology.

The collective ears of the advertising business must be ringing when TiVo’s CEO, Tom Rogers said, “We have proven that consumers will opt in to an advertising message if relevant and provided the ability to not miss their favorite shows.” The Ads-types will see grasp hold of this, praying that this will lead them out of the valley of (income)-death.

TiVoTVToGo

Broadband-Enabled Televisions to Reach 162 Million by 2011

Slotting in nicely with Microsoft’s Xbox/IPTV Announcement (You’ll be able to watch IPTV through your Xbox toward the end of the year), Just the Beginning, says The Diffusion Group.

Broadband-Enabled Televisions to Reach 162 Million by 2011

A surge in the availability of high-quality web-based video content and the proliferation of solutions that network-enabled TVs will usher in a ‘new wave’ of television viewing, one defined less by ‘walled garden’ PayTV operators and more by open access and a variety of highly-specialized niche content.

According to Broadband Video: Redefining the Television Experience, The Diffusion Group’s latest report on IP media, the number of broadband-enabled TVs – those capable of directly or indirectly receiving broadband video content – is expected to exceed 162 million households globally by 2011.

“It is fair to say that the democratization of video delivery is officially underway,” noted Colin Dixon, senior analyst and author of the report. “As the Internet finds its way to the primary home TV – and it will – incumbent PayTV operators and established broadcasters will gradually lose control over the types of video consumers can watch. In the next few years, a growing number of consumers will look to the Internet as means of expanding the variety of content to which they have access, much of which will be available on-demand and specifically suited to their tastes.”

Dixon mentions five factors which in combination are creating a ‘tipping point’ for broadband TV including:

Broadband-Enabled Televisions to Reach 162 Million by 2011

The widespread adoption of broadband Internet service;
The expanding variety of video content available on the Internet;
The introduction and push of solutions intended to enable Internet video viewing on the TV (such as Microsoft’s Xbox/IPTV platform and Apple’s pending iTV adapter);
The entry of top-tier content producers into the Internet marketplace, many of which are now pushing high-value franchise content onto the web; and
The move from short-form ‘snack’ Internet video content to full-length TV programming and movies.
The impact of these trends remains lost on the vast majority of video entities. As Dixon states, “While the subject of Internet video is on everyone’s tongue, very few have a full understanding of how Internet-based video will impact the traditional TV business.”

In many cases, consumers will simply use a proxy to enable an Internet-to-TV connection – that is, instead of having a modem embedded in the TV which connects directly to a broadband service, consumers will use an Internet television adapter, or iTVA, such as a Internet-enabled game console, media-centric PC, digital media adapter, or hybrid set-top box to access web-based video content.

Dixon notes that for those with a broadband Internet connection, it is becoming quite simple to both provide and access Internet-based video on the living room TV. “Not only is it now technologically feasible for most consumers, but economically attractive for content providers.” In other words, the value proposition is both supply- and demand-driven.

As well, the Internet video space is undergoing a shift away from short ‘video snacks’ and toward longer form narrative content more characteristic of TV in terms of production quality, video quality, and length.

Broadband Video: Redefining the Television Experience is TDG’s latest report on the digital home and IP media. In addition to expanding greatly on the themes illuminated in TDG’s free white paper, The Emergence of Broadband Television, the full report explores in detail how many broadband-enabled televisions will actually be connected to the Internet and used to receive broadband video. Further, the report discusses the types of video services that will be launched from the Internet targeting the television and includes specific revenue estimates for these servic es. The report also looks at the barriers to open access to Internet from the television and how these barriers will be overcome.

The Diffusion Group