Shift to Web delivery

Democracy Player: Upgrade to Free TV
As if you don’t already spend enough time looking at your computer, the folks at Democracy would like to introduce you to the delights of free Internet TV.
Democracy have just launched the latest upgrade to their open-source TV application, Democracy Player. The player offers downloads from over 300 channels of Internet video and provides RSS support, an auto-download feature and integration with Bittorrent. Democracy Player is available for Windows, Mac and 3 different flavours of Linux (Ubunu, Debian and Fedora).
The player is a breeze to use. We tested the Mac version and it looks and feels just like a well written Mac app. Functions are intuitive and smooth and there’s more than a hint of iTunes about the interface. Locating videos is easy. You can browse the 300 channels via the channel guide, select from the latest popular material, run a search or add your own videos. Having located your video just double click the item to download to your computer and sit back as Democracy Player runs it in full screen mode.
For those interested in making their own videos, Democracy also offers Broadcast Machine, an application allowing you to set-up channels and RSS feeds as well as enabling video uploads, all from your own Website.
Democracy is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the principal of free, open access to media through the use of open-source software.
While Democracy focuses on free content, moves towards commercial Internet TV services are proceeding apace. Last week Channel Four announced its intention to launch a video-on-demand service based on ‘closed’ channels such as cable, BT Broadband and the Internet. The service will include a film download service offering movies typical of the channel’s soon-to-be free FilmFour movie channel. There will also be a wide range of other material including Channel 4 shows and pay-for content from the archives. In addition Channel Four is expected to start online streaming of its own content (films and US exports expected) in the very near future.
Not to be out done, the BBC proposes to launch its iPlayer (previously named iMP – Interactive Media Player) service in two versions; a free service offering a seven-day catch-up for all its TV and radio output and a commercial version offering archived versions of programmes.
Elsewhere Apple continues to develop iTunes with Steve Jobs in serious talks with Hollywood studios about making movies available over the service. This may well prove to be an insurmountable challenge, given the movie industry’s scattershot approach to electronic licensing, distribution and DRM.
26 June, 2006
Disney to Sell Movies Over Internet
Purveyor of fluffy, family-friendly feature films, Walt Disney has become the latest Hollywood studio to offer movies for sale on the Internet, with a new service offering films via the CinemaNow online service.
CinemaNow, based in sunny Santa Monica, California, has announced that Buena Vista Home Entertainment – Disney’s home video division – will be offering movies on a download-to-own basis for PCs/portable devices on the same day they are available on DVD.
Starting from today, Disney will be offering both new and back catalogue fillums via CinemaNow, with pricing set around the same price as DVDs (roughly $20 for a new release, and $10 for older films.)
Of course, studios tend to have a different concept of ‘ownership’ than the rest of us when it comes to all things digital, and in this case punters still won’t be able to do what they actually want to do, and that’s to burn their downloaded copies onto DVDs.
Instead, the movies can only be copied to a total of three other devices (including laptop PCs and handheld electronic devices) supporting CinemaNow’s copyright-protection technology.
Disney’s shuffle into the world of online film flogging follows a 3rd April announcement by rival studios to offer movies for sale via Movielink, a joint venture owned by big-league competitors Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures.
Visibly purring with satisfaction, Bruce Eisen, president of CinemaNow, rubbed up against the mic, saying, “The main thing is Disney chose us to be first for them to go out with electronic sell-through.”
“We take that as a real nice vote of confidence,” he added, before trotting off to the litter tray.
A Disney spokesman said their deal with CinemaNow is a non-exclusive one, so they’re free to make similar deals with other online services in the future.
CinemaNow
Disney
6 June, 2006
CNN VoD On Homechoice In UK
Homechoice have just done a Video on Demand (VoD) deal with CNN to carry their content. It’s the first VoD deal that CNN International have done, meaning the first outside the US.
CNN’s popular feature programmes, Quest, Living Golf, CNN Business Traveller, Global Office and Art of Life, as well as CNN documentaries, will be available on the service, with new episodes added regularly.
CNN, like many other content creators are starting to ramp up their alternative channels for output, thinking beyond the POTV (Plain Old TeleVision). Last week they announced a deal with Telewest to deliver an interactive text-based version of the CNN news service.
We love Homechoice, they’re triers and they’re dogged with it too. They’ve been plugging away since well before people understood that TV could come via any other means than through the air. They’re been really ramping up their content selection since their new team came on board – like their recently announced super-niche African Movie Channel.
Homechoice
CNN Pipeline
16 May, 2006
News Corp To Sell 24 Episodes on MySpace
It comes as no surprise to the more cynical amongst us, but MySpace is set to offer downloadable digital content for sale from its sister company, Fox.
This move is very significant clearly showing the direction that Murdoch is taking MySpace in. It’s going to become a great shop window to its 75 million users, of all of his other diverse types on content.
Episodes from series one to five of the hugely popular ’24’ series by Fox will be made available for download for $1.99 a programme, courtesy of a Burger King-sponsored deal which comes branded with the fast food giant’s tagline “Have it Your Way.”
(We know which way we’d like a Murdoch/Burger King deal, but it’s unprintable here).
MySpace, which is owned by media ubermensch Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has more than 75m registered users worldwide, and according to Nielsen/NetRatings recorded 19.4 billion page views in March – dwarfing the 13.7 billion page impressions at Google for the same month.
To entice users to fork out for the full service, Burger King will be offering free downloads of each of the first episodes from series one and five of ’24’
Building up a formidable synergetic head of steam, Gillian Smith, senior director of media at Burger King, effused: “We know our customers spend a lot of time [on MySpace]. The important thing for us as an advertiser was to make sure we were providing content that resembles entertainment more than advertising.”
The Burger King/Fox/MySpace love-in reflects the growing power of MySpace as a new distribution platform and advertising magnet, leading Bambi Francisco of MarketWatch to wonder what might happen if MySpace developed a search engine of its own
MySpace
15 May, 2006
Sky High Vlog: The Army On Everest!
Sky News are very proud of what they’re billing as the Highest Ever Video News Podcast (or HEVNP to all of you acronym manufacturers out there).
We genuinely do admire reporter Gerard Tubb and producer Jon Gripton who are doing the video pieces from the slopes of Everest. They’re joining the 21 UK Army mountaineers from the regular UK and territorial armies (Special forces of some sort, we’d wager) who are aiming to get to the top via one of the toughest routes, The West Ridge – also worthy of huge admiration.
Tubb and Gripton have been in training for three months and have been using oxygen-reducing respirators to alter their blood so it can cope with life at high altitude. Tubb has also been to the Alps to be taught ice-climbing and crevasse rescue techniques by legendary mountaineer and mountain guide, Twid Turner (great name), who trained the expedition team.
From the report we’ve already seen, it’s rather cold there, especially at night where temperatures are dropping to -1c. Even if you don’t happen to freeze to death, we don’t envy finding yourself waking up every 10 mins during the night with the feeling that you’re drowning. As Tubb’s says on the blog “the depressed CO2 levels can make you stop breathing until it builds up and triggers a fit of hyperventilation.” Nice.
We’re not ones to pick nit (well, OK we are), and we’re certainly not deriding the amazing accomplishment of what they’re doing, but as to whether they’re the highest? Rumours are abound that people have seen higher vodcasts shot on location in Amsterdam, and others insist that they’ve seen other shot in planes (but that’s not on the Earth is it).
What kit to take to Everest?
OK … We’d imagine that after reading this, you all planning your own assent of Everest, right?
Question number one, before you get to pick a splendid new jacket, is what tech kit you need to take with you? Clearly it’s pretty specialist.
You’d imagine that it would be something with a huge keyboard, so you can type while wearing huge mittens. Well you’d be wrong clever sticks.
The laptop of choice is the Panasonic Toughbook. We’d been really impressed when we’d had this at Digital-Lifestyles towers. It’s got great features like the hard drives sit in a bath of oil that gets pre-heated to a temperature it can work at. In this case they’re not using those drives. They also chose them as reliability is top priority, as there aren’t too many laptop repair shops on the Everest slopes.
The video is being shot on two cameras, both Sony’s, the HVR-Z1, or Z1 as it’s know in the trade and the HVR-A1 (A1), having the advantage that it’s really small – pretty useful when you’re having to lug it up Everest.
Once shot, the video has some light editing done on the Toughbooks using Avid Express. The video is then fired back via a satellite dish at Base Camp to Sky HQ.
Cool bits from the Army
The army’s really gone to tech town on this one, with great stuff like providing Google Earth place holders showing things like the teams routes and amazingly cool, dynamically updated team positions.
The army aren’t just leaving the videocasts to Sky, they’ve got a lot of their own sitting on the podcast section of their site. Some of them are pretty interesting.
Good to see that even the army uses the tried and tested ‘hold your comms device in the air to get reception’ trick that we’ve all used at one time or another.
Also pleasing to see that the Junior team contains a fair number of women in it.
To top it off, they’re also doing exclusive videos to your mobile for free.
12 May, 2006
Internet Useful For Shopping (Non) Shock Report
Yahoo have released a report with communications company OMD today that looks into how the Internet influences peoples shopping habits. Not surprisingly it covers online purchases, but far more interesting is how people are using the Internet and other technology to inform their ‘real-world’ purchases.
They describe it as follthows
The Internet offers a collaborative environment where consumers turn for advice and the experience of others in weighing brands, discovering alternatives and distilling prices, as they weigh their purchase decisions
We think what they mean to say is people have a look around online and read stuff, helping them to make up their minds.
They found three things that are looked up online before people cough up the cash
- Trusted information. Consumers say the Internet is the most trusted shopping information source (54 percent), followed by magazines (34 percent) and TV (23 percent). Seventy-four percent of people use trusted, familiar Web sites when purchasing online, and 55 percent opt-in for e-mail marketing messages from companies they trust.
- Choices. On average, consumers consider three brands before making a purchasing decision. Many “comparison shop” using the Internet, but 38 percent of consumers still want to be able to see and touch products before they buy. The Internet helps narrow down options before they purchase either online or offline. In addition, 61 percent agree that Internet search engines are one of their favourite tools for finding product information.
- Price. The research shows that 61 percent of people consider themselves to be serious bargain shoppers. The Internet is changing the concept of fixed pricing by enabling consumers to search for the same product at myriad prices, as well as actively monitoring a product for price discounts or finding coupons and rebate offers.
Other tools in the consumers tech-arsenal
Interestingly they’ve found that camera phones and text messages are powerful tools in the consumers tech-arsenal. Shoppers are now text messaging each other, sending pictures of merchandise and using Internet-enabled phones to compare prices, all from the point of sale (shop to you).
One of the ‘old fashioned’ methods that we’ve often used, is to call up a mate who you know will be in front of a Browser and ‘speak to them’, asking if they can check something online for you while you wait. Perhaps they didn’t mention it because it wasn’t hi-tech enough.
They also found that this has ‘given consumers a new kind of “social empowerment”‘ Oh, but of course.
Internet now first point of reference
The surprising shift is towards the Internet being the first point of reference to find out stuff. Surprising because it’s above friends and family which were always the golden choice. Less surprising is that offline reviews and traditional media sources are losing out, perhaps because people generally don’t even believe the news that they print.
Having come from a communications agency, this report, “Long and Winding Road: The Route to the Cash Register”, won’t surprise you in using all sorts of language in a way that hasn’t ever been seen in English before. They’ll also grab hold of words that you have heard before and use them to create comfortable categories. Oh and tell you things that really are patently obvious but wrap them up in a different way ….
Consumers Travel Four Distinct Paths
The findings from the Long and Winding Road research can help advertisers connect with consumers online at crucial stages of the decision-making process. The study uncovers four distinct paths that consumers take on their way towards making a purchase:
- QUICK: This path involves little consideration. Consumer packaged goods are often quick paths.
- WINDING: Comparison shopping between different channels, including online and offline retailers, typifies this path. Retail goods are often winding paths.
- LONG: This path involves researching various options over an extended period of time. Technology purchases are often long paths, particularly if the price tag is high.
- LONG AND WINDING: This path requires investing a considerable amount of time researching across several channels. Many big ticket items — including automobiles and financial services — follow a long and winding path. These paths offer marketeers the most opportunity to impact and possibly sway a purchase decision in their favour, because consumers of these products are the hungriest for information.
That’s funny
We found it pretty funny that a ‘worldwide media communications specialist’ that OMD proclaim themselves to be, is the third search result for omd on Google, behind ’80s UK pop phenomenon Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and the On-line Medical Dictionary.
Soak yourself in the delicious detail.
11 May, 2006
Macintosh Users Excluded From Channel 4 ‘Lost’ Downloads
Channel 4 is offering a UK online exclusive of the entire first series of the cult hit show, Lost.
From today, fans of the slightly unhinged drama can download full episodes of Lost on to their PCs.
Every episode from first season has been made available, with brand new episodes from Season Two being made available one week after transmission on Channel 4’s website.
You’ll have to be quick to watch the new series online though, as episodes one and two will only be free to view for two weeks (until May 11th 2006.)
Once that deadline has passed, viewers will have to whip out their credit cards and purchase each episode for 99p via a secure registration system.
Obsessive fans hoping to work out the dark complexities of the series by analysing each show in infinite detail will be disappointed to learn that it’s only possible to watch episodes for a 24 hour period on a single PC before the pesky thing goes into auto-destruct,
Mac users already miffed to find that the series isn’t available on iTunes will be even more annoyed to discover that the Lost downloads are only available to PC users with Microsoft Window Media Player 10.
System requirements
Lost video is only available to UK users using Windows Media Player 10 or above.
Windows 2000 or XP
Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6
A broadband Internet connection of at least 500 kbps
Flash Player 6.0 or higher
Internet Explorer’s “Privacy” settings set to the default “Medium” setting
Firewalls and pop-up blockers disabled
Channel 4: Lost
2 May, 2006
UKTV Sports Live Broadband Euroleague Basketball First
UKTV Sports have announced that they will be premiering Euroleague Basketball live on Broadband, rather than their more normal means, on the goggle box (TV).
PremierTV, a sports rights agency, are working with UKTV to provide clearance of the content and are providing the technical aspects of the delivery. They have built a broadband subscription site, UKTVSlam.tv, and plan to deliver live streaming of two key Euroleague Basketball games each week.
We spoke to Martin Henlan, Sports development manager at UKTV Sports to dig a bit deeper into the story.
Henlan raised a very valid point. Currently there’s no research available for how, or even if, people will consume niche sports over broadband in the UK. If UKTV were to commission a study it would cost them considerably more money than them just getting down and carrying out the trial themselves. We love this let’s-just-do-it approach, but suspect media consultancies all over the world will be meeting is little huddles trying to figure out how they can counter this plain common-sense.
Interestingly, and quite against normal conventions, UKTV will be using the TV shows to promote the broadband, pay-for content. Henlan said they were “looking to build a community and a service, where we can learn valuable lessons, with the potential to take this knowledge to coverage of other sports.”
We find the pricing slightly confusing – either a one-off annual payment, £39.99 (E57, $70) ; annual direct debit payment, £34.99; or a monthly direct debit payment, £3.99.
In our book, at those prices you’ve got to be a pretty devoted basketball fan (and it’s claimed that there are over a million in the UK), to be happy to pay £35 and up to. For the cash they will see only two basketball games a week, delivered as it will be for most of the viewers, to a PC. Clearly the whole offering becomes more attractive if you have your home media centre attached in your cinema room – but the number who currently have this is an insignificant number.
PremierTV will also provide the video-on-demand technology for basketball fans to access video highlights of every other Euroleague Basketball match played each week, as well as Euroleague Basketball news and features.
Due to content licensing deals, the content will be geo-blocked – in an effort to try and ensure the content is not seen outside the UK and Eire.
This coming Friday there will be free access to the the live game, so what are you waiting for? Give it a go.
UKTVSlam.tv
UKTV Sports
25 April, 2006
Disney To Offer Free TV Shows On The Web
Entertainment behemoths Walt Disney are planning on making hit TV shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” available as free Internet downloads in an initiative to haul in new advertising revenues.
A report in the Wall Street Journal says that the freebie will come with a sting: episodes of the ABC shows will contain commercial breaks that viewers will be forced to watch (until someone comes up with a ‘fast forward past this crap’ hack, of course.)
Episodes of the shows being offered will become available on the Web the morning after they’ve aired on TV.
With the Journal reporting that ten advertisers have already leapt on board – including heavyweights like Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble and Unilever – Disney hopes that the delivery of programs over the Web will turn into a right little earner.
With digital video recorders like TiVo letting slogan-weary viewers fast-forward past the endless onslaught of adverts seen in the US, TV broadcasters are desperately trying to find ways to keep the advertising revenues rolling in.
Disney are hoping that their ad-stuffed free service – expected to be announced later today by the president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, Anne Sweeney – will prove a hit with both consumers and advertisers.
Punch ups in Disneyland
In a vaguely connected story elsewhere, we can report that Mickey Mouse’s chums are deeply unchuffed.
Or rather, the ~~poor exploited workers~~ lucky individuals on conveniently short contracts who get to wear the oversized heads and hands of Disney’s lesser characters at Hong Kong’s Disneyland.
It seems that they’re disgruntled with superstars like Mickey and Daffy earning extra wages despite them doing the same job (i.e. wearing a ridiculous costume and waving a lot).
The disgruntled employees have brought the union in, but we’re hoping it ends up in a fully costumed fight.
Disney
10 April, 2006
Microsoft to launch European single music track download service
Microsoft will be partnering with On Demand Distribution (OD2) to launch a European rival to the US-only Apple iTunes service. OD2 currently has 200,000 tracks available from five major record companies, which they hope to expand to 300,000 in the next few weeks.The proposed pricing of single tracks is 75 pence (Euro 1.06, $1.21) with albums being £7.99 (Euro 11.37, $12.86). The Apple service pound equivalent is about 62p and £6.20.The higher pricing of the proposed UK service will re-ignite the debate over the pricing of electronically delivered good compared with their physical CD equivalent. The argument from those that say the download versions are priced to highly is that these aren’t physical good that need to be manufactured, packaged, shipped and justify their place on a retailers shelf – they’re electrons, that once encoded take up a tiny amount of low cost disk space and then have a low cost of distribution. The companies justify the prices saying they have large investments in server hardware. As more providers enter the market, competition lowers prices – in the US, rival pay-and-download services have started dropping their prices, with some offering tracks at 79 cents.It’s widely acknowledged that the Apple iTunes service has been a great success. The problem for the world at-large is that currently it only runs on Apple hardware, which only accounts for around 5% of all computers, and it is currently only available in the USA. Among the reasons that the Apple service has been embraced so heartily, is that is it fantastically easy to use, it recommends related music to you and the licensing terms gives the purchaser a lot of freedom to move their purchased music to different computers and portable music players. Details have yet to emerge as to what the Microsoft/OD2 offering will be like.
14 August, 2003