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Viodi View Newsletter - April 5th, 2006

Click here to learn more about Viodi's Local Content Workshop

By Ken Pyle, [email protected], Managing Editor, Viodi View

• 1,500 Square Miles of Wireless?
• Open Standards IPTV?
• IPTV Big Theme at Digital Hollywood
• Gathering in Greece
• And the Winner Is……
• Conversation on Net Neutrality……
• What Not To Do……
• Thanks for all of the help
• Downloading DVDs – Is It Really Here?
• The Korner - Kickin’ and Screamin’ into the 21st Century

Community is a word that is frequently used to describe groups of people who are effectively an audience/content source for many of the so-called “web 2.0” web sites. Most of these communities exist only in the virtual world, although some have a presence that spills over into the physical presence. The fun thing about working with independent telcos is that they are the center of real-world communities. The people that own and work for the independent telcos are often the ones that bring together the various local institutions, spurring rural economic development in the process.

1,500 Square Miles of Wireless?

In Silicon Valley, we are fortunate to have an organization that is comprised of industry, government, academia and other local institutions that, in short, is trying to keep this region competitive in today’s world where intellectual and investment capital flow free and a region can go from being the leader in technology to an also-ran in a virtual instant. Alan Weissberger had a chance to catch up with Silicon Valley Joint Venture's Seth Fearey at a recent WCA (Wireless Communications Association) meeting where he described their plans for Wireless Silicon Valley, which promises wireless connectivity to 2.5 million people and 1,500 square miles (larger than Rhode Island).

Click here to read Weissberger’s exclusive coverage of this meeting. Click here to read archives of Weissberger's other articles written exclusively for the Viodi View.

Open Standards IPTV?

Approximately 5,500 miles away from Silicon Valley is the self-proclaimed “Fiber Optic Valley”. This Swedish region north of Stockholm is home to the Acreo FiberLab. According to their web site, the Acreo FiberLab is a “Testbed for new products and services with test pilots in a real-world environment.” They are about to go live with some of their “Alpha Cities”. Acreo is an interesting organization, as its partners include government, education and industry. They help to serve as the bridge between basic research and commercialization for technologies such as optics, microelectronics and communications.

Acreo’s Open Broadband-TV working group should be of interest to anyone interested in IPTV. On its web site, Acreo has an amusing cartoon that depicts today’s problem of too many set-top boxes, too many remotes and too many user interfaces. Acreo has embarked on a quest to create standard interfaces to tie together conditional access, billing, customer relationship management and set-tops; they are effectively creating an open standards middleware solution. Jari Aho, who left set-top maker Kreatel (since purchased by Motorola) about a year and a half ago, is the editor of a description and specification for this open standards-based effort.

IPTV Big Theme at Digital Hollywood

One of the best conferences for getting a pulse on the convergence of technology and entertainment is Digital Hollywood produced by Victor Harwood. Unfortunately, I did not get to last week’s event in Santa Monica, but Chip Venters of Digital Containers reports that Digital Hollywood was well attended and that it, “Seems like IPTV is now almost mainstream, with several vendors there providing technical services.” This is a far cry from a few years ago when IPTV and anything telco-related was on the fringe of a Hollywood’s interest. I am looking forward to Victor’s new conference, Building Blocks 2006, which will be here in San Jose in August.

Gathering in Greece

And the Winner Is……

Central to Viodi’s Content Pavilion at TelecomNEXT was an awards contest for locally produced content. We screened 22 clips and gave out awards to five companies, including diversiCOM, New Ulm Telephone, Germantown Telephone/KTM Productions, Ellijay Telephone and Ringgold Telephone. Using cell phones, the audience voted for the winning content. It was a fun event and served as a prototype for what a telco could do in their community. The following videos provide an idea of the content that was submitted to this festival.

Click Buttons on Left to Select Videos (FlashPlayer 8)

Net Neutrality Video Interview with Paul Feldman

What Not To Do……

There is quite a bit of “buzz” about this video, but it is mostly background conversations from people in the booth. Please click here [club viodi members only], to learn more about this and some of the other embarrassing lessons we learned in producing the Content Pavilion.

Still, we probably haven't learned our lesson and will do some variation of the Content Pavilion again - maybe as soon as July. So, anyone who is interested in sponsoring or submitting to our next event, please contact us at:

[email protected]

Thanks for all of the help

One lesson learned from the Content Pavilion is that pulling off this sort of thing is a team effort. It was pretty much an ad-hoc effort that led to everything coming together. Thanks to USTA and all of the staff, Lori, Tanisha, Allison R., and Allison F. who helped in so many ways to make this a success. The support of the sponsors was great and we would not have been able to pull this off without their help. Thanks especially to Kyle for bird-dogging the elusive Internet, Cheryl for the seemingly endless copies of the Content Pavilion overview, Hank for tear-down, Sylvia for stuffing the countless goodie bags, Joan for taking the lead on the voting, and Melora for making sure everyone had a chance to win one of the cool prizes.

And thanks to Adobe (Premiere Elements), Sony Media Software (Vegas+DVD software), and ViewNow (director’s chair) for supplying the cool prizes. Thanks to Packet8 for supplying the mechanism that allowed us to vote via the cell phone. And thanks to all of the other sponsors as well as the telcos that participated in this event.

Lastly, I want to extend a special thank you to my friend and colleague, Roger Bindl, who spent countless hours working on the Content Pavilion web site and the associated videos. His perseverance and passion for making things right is inspiring to me. I am always impressed with his ability to learn new things and his willingness to try something new. Thanks Roger.

Interestingly, Roger ran into an interesting content creator on his flight to Las Vegas. More about how that could be a positive thing for independent telcos in the next issue.

Downloading DVDs – Is It Really Here?

The announcements by Movielink and CinemaNow that movies are now available to “download to own” are significant in that their offerings are in the home video window and not the pay per view window and that major studios are making their content available. We aren’t there yet, if “there” means the total elimination of physical distribution, but this is a significant step towards that day.

It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that Movielink or CinemaNow might essentially serve as the distribution mechanism for other online shops, like Target.com or Walmart.com. It’s conceivable that Movielink or CinemaNow could extend their presence by electronically supplying content “on-demand” to DVD-burning kiosks in physical stores. Yes Video already has “DVD on-demand” kiosks set up in thousands of drug stores around the country for home video, so it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that these could be converted to kiosks for delivery of on-demand content.

The other sign of progress is that Movielink has specific areas on their web site that showcases each studio’s content. This was something that had been requested by the major studios for years. The CinemaNow site has the right idea of giving away “free content” to get people used to buying. For these sites to achieve widespread success, however, they will need to find a way on to consumers’ televisions with minimal or no customer intervention – whether it be downloaded DVDs to set-tops or titles that magically appear on a VOD menu - Movielink or CinemaNow should just appear as another channel on the television.

The Korner - Kickin’ and Screamin’ into the 21st Century

My trip to Las Vegas to TelecomNEXT opened up a window wide enough for my wife to procure a TiVo. For years I had been delaying this purchase by suggesting that something better was always around the corner. For years, this strategy worked, but while I was working out details of the Content Pavilion, Jane was working a deal with a friend to bring this 21st-century version of the opiate of the masses to our “museum” dedicated to the preservation of 20th century home electronics.

Truth be known, I am afraid that TiVo is like giving heroin to a recovering addict. I think about all of the hours I wasted as a youth in front of the television, (while now I waste time in front of a computer monitor) and I don’t want to repeat that experience. Still, I have hope that maybe Jimmy Shaeffler of the Carmel Group was right when he suggested in a February 8th Viodi View article that, “TiVo Makes Me (And My Family) Smarter.” Fortunately, I haven’t noticed an increase in my content consumption, but I have noticed it in my family’s viewing – of course, part of that increase may be due to the continual rain we have been experiencing in this part of the world.

Interestingly, the only thing I have subscribed to on the TiVo service is the Internet-delivered VLOG, Rocket Boom. What is impressive is that Rocket Boom magically appeared as an option after I hooked up the broadband connection. I did have to subscribe, but that was a painless one or two-button click. The other thing that was impressive was that my Yahoo! account came up after entering my account information and suddenly, I had access to local weather, traffic, and my own pictures stored on the Yahoo! servers. There was no need for adjustments to the network configuration or any other arcane setting, which was truly different than my previous experience with Internet-connected, set-top boxes.

Starting a slide show and seeing pictures from any of our Yahoo! accounts was as simple as adding an email address. This approach lends itself to the sharing of pictures and other media among friends. My seven year old observed that the slide show would be a lot better with music. From a technical standpoint, it seems like it would be really easy to overlay music from one of the TiVo-delivered, Internet radio stations onto the Yahoo! slide show. It is probably a business and legal issue, having to do with securing the proper rights, that prevent this from being a reality today.

I don’t understand why TiVo didn’t integrate an Ethernet interface directly into the box, as the broadband connection seems to be the ultimate way to move content in and out of this box. The customer has to procure a USB to Ethernet (wired or wireless) adaptor in order to be connected to broadband. TiVo should make this as seamless as possible for the broadband user. Perhaps they are going to jump ahead of Ethernet and provide some sort of home network solution using integrated wireless or broadband over electrical solution. The broadband connection is definitely the pipe that will bring in the niche content that will bind TiVo customers into communities, making them more loyal customers.

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