Professionals of TV and Hollywood get into the Internet video
The Internet is becoming the fifth major television network in the United States, after CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox. People are tuning in to an Internet channel like MySpace of YouTube to catch the season finales of shows like LonelyGirl15 and Prom Queen . Prom Queen, backed by Michael Eisner Disney ex-CEO, garnered nearly 15 million total views.
Now creative professionals of TV Land and Hollywood are getting into the Internet. MySpaceTV has teamed up with Seventeen, the teen-ager magazine to produce a new Web series, Freshman 15, a reality show that follows 15 girls as the experience college life for the first time.
Also on MySpaceTV, two big-time movie and TV producers will debut an original series, Quarterlife .
U.S. television networks boost their streaming video sites
As new season gets ready to start, networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW) are putting their shows on the Web for online viewing, just like they did last year. People who miss a show, or fail to record it, can still view the program the following day on the network’s website for free (with a few embedded ads). Here is a handy guide of what you can find.
In terms of user experience, ABC’s player is the best of any network. It is video quality, for full screen, big, normal and mini-mode is very good to excellent. ABC also offers high definition streaming.
In terms of marketing, CBS is the best, in our view, because of its syndication network. Its goal is to syndicate as much of its contents as possible through iTunes, AOL, Yahoo, YouTube, Joost, Veoh, Brightcove, and other video communities. “We can’t expect consumers to come to us. It’s arrogant for any media company to assume that,” CBS’s chief Internet strategist said.
NBC’s digital strategy is aimed in part to team up with News Corp, owner of Fox, to form what they hope is a YouTube killer, known a Hulu, scheduled in Octuber. Hulu will partner with other destination sites including AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.
Veoh adds heavyweight Hollywood executives
Veoh have announced a new set of founders joining Michael Eisner, Time Warner Investments, Shelter Capital Partners and Spark Capital. Veoh’s backers now include former Viacom and MTV Networks CEO Tom Freston, and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom Entertainment Group, Jonathan Dolgen. It means heavyweight media lineup with plenty of Hollywood/TV network connections.
And it could means, too, that Internet TV companies are thinking in securing major content deals with Hollywood. VeohTV competitor, Joost, is also working in that way, with backing from CBS and Viacom.
Next.TV, the last debut gunning for Joost, Babelgum, and Veoh
The P2P-based Internet TV space is getting more crowded. The last venture comes from Hewlett-Packard and Dave Networks (a white label IPTV provider), who are teaming up to launch Next.TV .
This app will debut later this month as a software update for HP’s consumer notebooks running Microsoft Vista, and by early 2008 all the company’s consumer notebooks will come pre-installed with the service. Eventually, the company plans to offer Next.TV to non-HP customers as a software download available from its website.
Next TV will offer fifty channels, both live TV and on demand, and the service will be supported by targeted advertising.
Next TV will gun for Joost, Babelgum, RealPlayer 11, Vuze, VeohTV, Zattoo, LiveStation, Jalipo, and Miro.
Thin-client machines start to take off
The vision of the 1990s of network computer –also called the thin-client computer, with no hard drive to store desktop applications- seems within reach. Those terminal-style machines, supported by Oracle and Sun Microsystems, never took off.
It happens that an estimated three-fourths of the annual cost of a corporate PC is attributable to technical support, software upgrades, security patches and other maintenance. Thin computing offers an alternative. Maintenance, security (viruses, spyware…) and software fixes can be handled more efficiently on central server computers. In addition, without a hard drive and less need for local processing, thin computer use far less power than PCs. The yearly savings in electric bills can be $150 or more for each desktop.
Thin-client shipments, IDC estimates, will more than double over the next five years to 7.2 million worldwide. Over the next decade, thin computers could replace as many as 30 percent of all business. People like graphic designers, engineers and financial analysts who need lots of computer horsepower are not candidates for thin computers.
Those thin-client machines start around $200 and can go up to $1,000, not much lower than inexpensive PCs. There are even notebook thin computers. Neoware is one of the companies selling those machines.
