Internet Threat to Satellite TV
Posted on January 31, 2012
Before “cord-cutting” became a popular term we predicted almost five years ago consumers would use the Internet to bypass conventional Cable TV. Later when Wall Street dismissed the practice as an urban myth in 2009, we concluded Cable operators may ultimately divest CATV service in order to concentrate on high-speed Internet.
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Presently, “cord-cutting” is the Pay TV industry’s foremost concern. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon.com are pioneering alternate ways to acquire popular programming over the Net as opposed to Cable systems. Equally important is “Long Tail” content on YouTube and other Internet video sites. “Long Tail” theory implies that while we share interest in popular content, we also have more narrowly defined interests shared with viewer-groups too small to justify mass market distribution. But the Internet shatters such limitations enabling video content to be made available for vanishingly small audiences. Arguably, cultural programming has already migrated to the Net. Read more…
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Watch iPhone-4s Internet-Video on Your TV
Posted on November 11, 2011
Any video on the new iPhone-4s, can simultaneously be displayed on your television. It’s a process known as “mirroring”, and it’s going to fundamentally change how we use our televisions. For example, through-out the day you may sample full length videos that you’d prefer to watch on a TV screen. Perhaps a friend told you about the video and showed you where to find it on the Internet. Perhaps she sent you a link via email. Whatever, the iPhone-4s lets you watch it on either the smartphone screen, or your television.
To download seven-minute instructional video click here, or watch stream above.
Here’s how it works.
First, you need an iPhone-4s. (Mirroring also works with an iPad-2 that has the IOS-5 operating system software.) Read more…
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Master-to-Slave Role Reversal for TVs
Posted on October 30, 2011
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Future televisions will be nothing more than wireless display stations. No longer will they be the control center for our home video entertainment. In a Slave-to-Master role reversal, hand-held units shall become the gateways.
Let met explain.
In the future, we’ll access content on portable devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, and choose to display programming on whatever screen is spontaneously most convenient. If we’re in a restaurant for lunch, we’ll likely select the smartphone screen. While sitting in a comfortable upholstered chair with a tablet computer, we’ll likely use the tablet screen. But if were in the TV room, we’ll simply instruct the applicable smartphone or tablet computer to display the video on the television screen.
It’s already happening for those with home Wi-Fi networks. Characteristically, Apple is leading the way. Read more…
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Bypassing CATV-Telco Internet Duopoly
Posted on August 10, 2011
Yesterday Online Video Insider published the article below which I wrote.
(Phil Leigh, August 9, 2011) Rising popularity of Internet video in combination with the advent of the smartphone and tablet computer places an obscure segment of the Internet Service Provider industry at the threshold of major opportunities. Although Internet access is dominated by a duopoly of CATV and Telco operators, a promising third category is the Wireless ISP (WISP). Not to be confused with cellular carriers, WISPs offer Internet service to subscribers from fixed base stations to radio transceivers typically mounted on the rooftops of customer premises.
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The first WISP was organized twenty years ago by a young computer consultant in Laramie, Wyoming after he discovered the only Internet access in the town was at the University. He approached a number of local businesses with a proposition to provide them Internet access wirelessly through unlicensed spectrum normally used by cordless phones. His connection to the Internet backbone was a T1 line (1.5 mb/s) which the local telephone company connected to his house for $6,000 a month. Essentially, all subscribers shared the bandwidth of that singe T1. Read more…
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Two Years Before a Cable TV Flop
Posted on July 19, 2011
Last week the Canoe Ventures CEO announced he would depart in August after completing a three year employment agreement. However, as a business concern, Canoe “barely left the dock”.
Canoe Ventures was organized and funded with $150 million three years ago by a consortium of six cable operators. Its mission was to develop interactive TV advertising for the CATV industry. To date it has launched only a single product meeting with little success.
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Inside Digital Media subscribers may recall our two year old post entitled “Why Project Canoe Will Fail”.
Among other points we explained, “…video advertising will evolve more quickly on the Internet than within closed networks of CATV systems. Technical standards on the Net are open and well understood by independent developers. Thus it is likely more of them will focus on Internet advertising innovations than on those governed by Project Canoe where standards have yet to be defined.”
As we explained in a March post, the faster innovative pace became evident when Shazam demonstrated how to use embedded signaling and Internet access to provide interactivity to conventional televisions via smartphones. Three months later Kleiner-Perkins apparently reached the same conclusion and invested $32 million to launch Shazam into the interactive TV advertising business.
At Inside Digital Media we aim to discover tomorrow’s industry leaders today.
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Three Months Before Kleiner Perkins
Posted on June 24, 2011
Earlier this week esteemed venture investors Kleiner-Perkins and Institutional Ventures participated in a $32 million financing for Shazam to fund development of a form of interactive television advertising based upon the company’s music recognition technology. Our March 4, 2011 Interactive TV Commercials Arrive detailed how Shazam pioneered the idea in an TV commercial with Old Navy.
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Specifically, Old Navy created this short music video to run as a TV commercial. Smartphone users activating Shazam while the track is playing, not only identify the song, but also get directed to pages at the Old Navy website where they can inspect merchandise. Hypothetically, they could also be provided with a time-sensitive discount coupon enabling them to impulsively buy clothing online without leaving their homes. The process works with conventional televisions whether broadcast, cable, or satellite.
Moreover, in a later post we explained that similar techniques utilizing digital watermarks could enable viewers to purchase merchandise representing “product placements” that are integral parts of the storyline in scripted TV shows. The method likewise works with conventional TV-sets and app-enabled smartphones or tablet computers.
Finally, we concluded that a variety of content identification technologies will ultimately result in a future in which All Media Shall Become Interactive, whether it be print, audio, or video.
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All Media Shall Become Interactive
Posted on June 13, 2011
Today we interact with Internet media nearly as routinely we checked our wristwatches to read time-of-day fifteen years ago. While the conversion might seem radical to consumers from 1996, the advent of portable connected devices such as smartphones and tablet computers implies an even more fundamental change in the future. In short, all media shall become interactive – not just Internet media.
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The underlying force is a previously latent demand from sponsors for more effective advertising. As John Wanamaker put it about a century ago “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Yet during the past decade, Google AdWords introduced a new paradigm. The service generates more than $25 billion annually by only charging sponsors for ads that are actually used by the consumer. At Google, advertising is targetable, accountable, and can be convincingly tracked. It is only a matter of time before sponsors will demand the same of all their advertising campaigns in whatever medium, whenever possible.
Significantly, app-enabled mobile devices are empowering traditional media to adapt to such a transformation because the portable units are evolving into cognitive prosthetics. Much as experienced amputees routinely use mechanical prosthetics as artificial limb extensions, habitual smartphone and tablet owners are starting to use the devices as convenient intelligence aids. They help users gain more information that would otherwise be unavailable, or difficult to obtain. For example smartphones can find price comparisons merely by scanning bar codes and other implanted signals off shelf merchandise labels. Specifically, a price-comparison app reads the barcode or embedded signal to (1) identify the merchandise and (2) display a website where up-to-date prices for the item from all merchants are complied. Read more…
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Fixing a Home Wi-Fi Problem
Posted on June 9, 2011
This past weekend I decided to rent a movie from Amazon-Video-on-Demand. The service is available via my TiVo, which makes it easy to watch the movies on my TV-set instead of a computer. I’ve done it about a dozen times before. Except when it was a new service, the experience has been generally satisfactory.
But, not this last time.
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Unfortunately my TiVo simply gave me an error message. So, like most of us, I shrugged my shoulders and repeated the selection process. TiVo threw-up on me a second time.
Frowning, I proceeded to TiVo’s troubleshooting instructions which suggested I check “Network and Settings”. After a few button-clicks, I learned that TiVo was receiving a “marginal” (35%) Wi-Fi signal from the router in my home office in the adjacent room. My current TiVo uses Wi-Fi to access the Internet to keep its program guide up-to-date and fetch movies from Amazon-Video-on-Demand. Older models typically used dial-up telephone lines which makes the Amazon service problematic. Read more…
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