Shuddup, Apple TV is NOT a Revolution

Appletv
The old Apple TV: $300, received video from your 'puter, had a cool screensaver, was 'sposed to sell 1 million units in its first year, sold 400k.

The new Apple TV: $229, downloads directly from iTunes, movies start playing w/in 30 seconds (Amazon UnBox takes hours), is the new hotness.

In all the hubbub, there's some rush to compare Apple TV to iTunes in terms of disruptive potential. Not going to be the same deal: iTunes video capability launched in 2005 in a market empty of competitors. Turned peeps on their ears. Apple TV entered last year -- and flopped(ish) -- because it didn't differentiate itself enough.

The new Apple TV also has a host of marketing vectors to contend with: competing with cable companies, competing with Netflix, set-top-box clutter, DVD machines, even net-connected televisions, all of which compete among convenience, volume, and pricing. Apple TV needs to fit into that mix. Starting with $4-5 rentals from the big studios -- including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, MGM, Disney, Lionsgate, Universal, and New Line Cinema -- is a great start.

So is it all good news for the consumer? While the idea of a complete end-to-end video solution is appealing to marketers and clutter-eschewing OCD'ers, it's not so fetching for anyone concerned with Apple owning their movie library. Or, of having yet another proprietary system for their movie content. In the future, when you move your video library, you'll basically have to move two to four boxes. It ain't just a stack of DVDs or VHS tapes. Apple's not going to change that.

What's amazing to me is that anybody approaches these news announcements as if there's one ring to rule them all. The future is a messy, multi-boxed, rent/buy world. The consumer's satisfaction won't be set by one singe provider, but by their success in navigating all the available options. And the market winner won't be the best service, it'll be the service that advertises best. Take that to the bank.

January 16, 2008 in Film, Steve Bryant, Storefronts, Television, Tools | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Free Fox Downloads

Lot of changes in online downloads this week. Today Fox announced they're offering season premiere episodes of seven shows for free on iTunes. Yesterday, ABC announced they'll begin offering shows through AOL, and Wednesday NBC announced ad-supported free downloads of shows via a desktop player.

September 21, 2007 in Storefronts, Television | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Brazilian prostitutes use Video iPod to advertise themselves

The more I hear about Brazil, the more I think it's a Joe Francis-sponsored Disneyland.

The lede in this article from Folha Online says it all: "The profession might be the oldest in the world, but the marketing being used is pretty new."  That marketing would be the Video iPod, which women on the Brazilian site mclass use to advertise their services. The site added MP4 downloads six months ago so that customers can compare videos or brag about their exploits.

January 26, 2007 in Advertising, Storefronts, Tools | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Netflix streaming won't get me to return to Netflix

What auspicious timing. No less than 24 hours after I cancelled my Netflix contract -- "wet Hot American Summer" and "The Deer Hunter" had been on my shelf for two months -- the online rental shop that could launched a "Watch Now" video streaming service. Even so, I won't be renewing my monthly contract.

The Netflix strategy is obvious: By offering streaming at no additional charge, the company hopes not only to compete with the iTunes, CinemaNow and MovieLinks of the world, but also hopes to eventually lower its postal fees. After all, there's only so many movies you can watch in a month, and if you're watching them online, you're watching less on your TV. Streaming movies is also a bridge strategy; as the DVD market shrinks, Netflix positions itself to address an emerging market that consumes media via the Internet.

In following this strategy, Netflix addressed the big demands first: The service works on Windows, it's free (at least for 18 hours of viewing per month), and it requires minimum setup. You can fast forward through movies easily. Most of all, if the media player works well, Netflix users will come to trust Netflix as an on-demand entertainment destination.

The big feature missing from Netflix now is a download-to-own or burn-to-DVD option. Either the studios were uncomfortable with DRM issues, or Netflix didn't want to compete with Vongo, Amazon UnBox and others (at least not yet). However, given the large amount of devices you can use to port your PC media to your TV, you could ostensibly still watch Netflix streaming movies on your TV.

But I won't join Netflix again just to get 18 hours of streaming movies. For one thing, this is a Mac household. For another, there are simply too many other options that are more compelling. I see Netflix's streaming player as non-essential right now. They've got a lot of work to do before they can transition into a digital player.

Below, a screencast of the "Watch Now" service.

January 16, 2007 in Storefronts | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Remember the good old days, when people knew stuff?

Reporting on the Streaming Media West conference is like being embedded with the 101st Greek chorus division, which only repeats one phrase: "I don't know."

What's the business model for online video? I dunno. What's the right way to advertise with video? I dunno. Who's on first? Dunno, dunno, dunno. The bottom line? There's no bottom line.

So for those of you hoping that Google's purchase of YouTube would bring some order to the online video marketplace, think again. The acquisition may justify the business value of video aggregation (at least to some), but it doesn't begin to answer the pressing questions about advertising, syndication, sales and search that the industry is grappling with now.

First, online video has a findability problem. Finding distributed video is much more difficult than finding Web pages. When you do a Web search, you're searching for text on a page. But when you search for video, you're searching for media described by text. If those descriptors -- known as metadata -- aren't there, or if the metadata is incomplete or innacurate, your search is going to return bad results.

Heck, even if the metadata is good, the search engine can't interpret whether you want professional, first source content or amateur analysis.

A simple search for NASCAR (what? I'm from Virginia) on Google Video returns an EA sports commercial, crash footage, and an amateur talk show. A similar search on Yahoo returns two music videos, some amateur footage, and an ABC news show.

In an effort to solve this problem, video search company Blinkx analyzes contextual information surrounding a video (the video en situ, as it were) and then apply descriptions to the video.

Another promising company is Podzinger, which arguably has the best speech recognition software. Then there's Motionbox, a video-sharing platform experimenting with "deep tagging" of video to help you find a precise moment in a long video.

Beyond search, there are other business needs in the online video value chain that need to be satisfied. National and global advertisers like Avenue A/Razorfish, for example, need to buy inventory in large chunks. And despite the success of YouTube, which serves 100M+ videos per day, there aren't a lot of sites which can offer a large audience.

"Agencies need to operate on scale," said Hunter Walk, product manager for Google Video, in response to a question about amateur video producers disintermediating large portals. "So small buys on small sites won't work."

Advertisers also face roadblocks from different advertising methods on different sites -- pre-roll, post-roll, adjacent banner, etc. Avenue A/Razorfish director of emerging platforms Jeremy Lockhorn says they're also hemmed in by both the lack of inventory online and questions regarding the frequency of repeated video ads. By way of example he mentioned the ABC media player, which can irk viewers by showing the same 30-second advertisement multiple times during a show.

Closely related to the unknowns in advertising are the unknowns on the sales side of the equation. Video syndication is a very popular form of content distribution these days, but most sales teams are compensated based on traffic to a destination site, not traffic to an external destination.

And then you've got the problem of user-generated content and Hollywood. It's a new romantic ideal that an unknown like Brookers or Ask A Ninja will be discovered online and handed a plush compensation package from a studio. But unfortunately, the question of who owns the content and who gets a cut of the profits is still unanswered. Every service which distributes a video obtains certain rights.

"The person who shot the content owns it, obviously," said Chris O'Brien, CEO of Motionbox. "We have some rights too, though, to store it and tag it." Motionbox also submits some of their content to NBC, "but NBC has their own set of rights that they claim on the content."

All these unknowns just skim the surface of questions facing the online video marketplace. The wild west days of video sharing may be ending, but there's still plenty of dust yet to settle.

November 01, 2006 in Advertising, Power and Pipes, Social Media, Storefronts, Television, Tools | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

How To Hack Apple's Video Business Model

The hacker notorious for decrypting the DVD content-scrambling system has replicated and plans to sell the code that makes Apple's music and video playable only on iTunes and iPods.

Jon Lech Johansen, known by most as DVD Jon, plans to license the technology to companies that want their content to play on Apple's devices. According to Liz Gannes at GigaOm, this could make the iPod even more popular.

Illegal? Jon doesn't think so, since he'll be adding DRM to content. But if Jon's company, DoubleTwist, isn't sued out of existence, he will succeed in disintermediating Apple from its own hardware.

October 02, 2006 in Storefronts | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Mid-Week Wrap-Up: Hollywood too protectionist, Google partnering with local news, more

GnuAnd now for something really gnew.

September 13, 2006 in Deals, Storefronts, Television | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Top 7 Criticisms of Amazon's Video Store

UnboxAmazon launched its online video store Unbox last night, allowing users to download "DVD quality" movies and TV shows and pre-empting Apple's expected video store announcement next week.

Amazon probably went through negotiation hell with studios and networks to make this service work. And the breadth of content choices is impressive.

But the immediate criticisms from the blogosphere show that half-measures aren't crowd pleasers. Amazon may have 59M customers, but the restrictions on downloading content mean Unbox may only appeal to a small segment of users. Below, a list of some of the major complaints.

  1. If you burn a movie/show onto a DVD, it can't be played on a regular DVD player, only on a computer. Which means it's still more satisfying to use Netflix or buy a DVD, rather than download a crippled file.
  2. Browse for movies in the browser, but view movies through a downloaded player. That's a disconnect for people used to having an all-in-one experience, a la iTunes.
  3. No Disney. Disney will no doubt launch downloads with Apple next week.
  4. Two files means longer download times. One of the files has to stay on your computer, one can be transferred to a mobile device. Not very elegant, and potentially confusing for lay users. (via Techdirt)
  5. Restricted viewing time. You keep the rental download for 30 days, but if you start watching it, you have to finish watching within 24 hours. Damn, why don't you just flick me off when I download your content?
  6. Apple users need not apply. Amazon says this is because Apple has a lock on the hardware and software required to make this work. MPEG4 is an open standard, last I checked, but Apple doesn't share the Fairplay DRM.
  7. The price, it ain't so cheap. Movies are $14.99 to $7.99, rentals are $3.99, and TV shows are $1.99. Why would I pay $15 for a movie that doesn't work on my DVD player, when I could buy the thing with a pretty box and not have any restrictions at all?

September 08, 2006 in Storefronts | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

A Brief History of Online Video (in Pictures)

Videotimeline1_3
What are daily headlines without a little bit of context?

Below, a timeline of major online video deals and news events from May 2005 until August 2006. I'm sure I missed a few here and there, so leave your suggestions in the comments.

And to the left, a graphic depicting a few of those events and where they occured on YouTube's page views graph. (FYI, I guesstimated the August 2006 traffic number b/c full data wasn't available from comScore at the time.)

May, 2005

June, 2005

July 2005

August 2005

September 2005

October 2005

November 2005

December 2005

January 2006

February 2006

March 2006

April 2006

May 2006

June 2006

July 2006

August 2006

September 04, 2006 in Advertising, Deals, Film, Social Media, Storefronts, Television | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (3)

About the author

  • Steve Bryant has been covering online media for five years. He lives in New York.

    Also contributing to Reel Pop: Andrew Wallenstein, deputy editor, Hollywood Reporter.

    Tip Jar: Got an idea or thought for Reel Pop? E-mail Steve

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