H.264 encoding (also known as AVC) is poised to become the format of convergence in the digital video industry, regardless of which playback platform the viewer chooses. Big Internet players like Google/YouTube, Adobe, and Apple iTunes are behind this cross-platform format.

While VP6 based Flash video is a standard for the web, it is not the encoding format of choice for consumer electronics, as TVs, set-top-boxes, game consoles, mobile devices, and portable media players. One reason is because Adobe Flash it’s a proprietary, unpublished format.

But recently, Adobe announced full support for it as a native format for Flash, and Google plans to transcode all of its YouTube content to H.264. Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVB’s digital broadcast, mobile multimedia from 3GP and others are incorporating it. So with support from PCs and consumer products, we will see soon its expansion.

Compared to MPEG-2 (the format of traditional digital television and DVDs), H.264/AVC offers 2-3 times greater compression, making it much more attractive for network delivery ass well as for high definition video. It is an open, published specification, and anyone can implement it.

One of the few dissenters is Microsoft, who for the moment does not give its full support, since they have its VC-1 format.


Joost will add live TV shows in 2008

Joost will add in 2008 a lineup of live television channels to its P2P-based Internet TV service. They will replicate the live streams found on traditional terrestrial, cable and satellite stations, and will focus mainly on sports.

Following live transmission, they will include a combination catch-up option to watch on-demand shows. Also, it will be offered widgets allowing viewers to bookmark favorite sporting moments and keep scores.

Joost will compete more directly with Zattoo and LiveStation, two Internet TV services which have until now distinguished themselves from other P2P offerings by focusing on live rather than on-demand content.

If Joost rolls out live programming, it maybe that users only need one Internet application after all.

And rivals response?

However, three other Joost rivals are scaling up their services.

- Babelgum is opening up its platform to allow content makers to upload their own videos as well as set terms of advertising revenue sharing. They are targeting the many independent small-medium sized professional producers.

- Brightcove said it is offering broadcast quality publishing after upgrading its software to work with H.264 codec that Adobe recently added to the Flash player. For full-screen programming downloads, they will use Delivery Network Accelerator (DNA), the enhancement announced by BitTorrent.

- Vuze, who says it has passed 10 million downloads, is opening up its publishing platform so that content producers can upload their own content, either making it available for free, with ad support or at a download for a price, earning 50 %.


Google will allow advertisers to use YouTube videos

Google has introduced a service to allow websites in its ad network to embed relevant YouTube videos and share revenues with them and with content creators.

For example a website specializing in soccer, might choose to embed soccer videos from YouTube. For now Google has limited the content delivery to 100 media companies, among them, Expert Village, a producer of how-to-videos; and Extreme Elements, which creates videos about extreme sports.

Brightcove’s CEO Jeremy Allaire, whose company has been syndicating videos too, says that the sites that take it are typically very small sites with limited traffic, since large sites do not want arbitrary content showing up.

Video distributed through Google’s system will include small text ads that will be overlaid on the bottom of the video player or graphical banner ads, but not, for now, the video ads that the company began using on YouTube recently.


Blinkx.com users will be able to share ad revenues on embed players

Blinkx.com will allow consumers to make money from the videos they show in their own blogs, social network sites or websites if they agree to embed ads in the videos.

Founder and CEO, Suranga Chandratillake says that is their way to compete with YouTube, and Revver.com, which shares 50 percent of its ad revenue (pre rolls and post rolls) with people who post videos. Ads will be offered either in a small transparent window at the bottom of the video screen or in a box outside the top of the frame.

Blinkx is a London based video search engine that uses speech-to-text transcription and visual recognition technology. Last month started offering search capabilities in French, German and Spanish.