Viodi View - November 1st, 2006 Issue

In this on-line publication, we share our analysis, opinions and direction on the interactive television news and views that we believe will be of interest and use to our friends associated directly or indirectly with independent telephone companies. For more information as to the various ways Viodi works with independent telephone companies, please go to http://www.viodi.com/alliance/

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Viodi View Newsletter - November 1st, 2006

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By Ken Pyle, ken.pyle at viodi.com, Managing Editor, Viodi View

The Content Conundrum - What I Meant to Say
It’s a Virtual, Product Placed World After All
Real People – Digital Hollywood
Advanced Wireless Architectures to Facilitate Convergence of Services – Part 1
Local Celebrity for Local Content by Roger Bindl
Happy Halloween and Congratulations Roger
Some Upcoming Conferences
Too Late If You Didn't See the Last Issue
AT&T – BellSouth Merger – Food for the FCC’s Thought
Video over IP Gives African Content a New Outlet
The Korner – Sometimes You Just Have to Be There….

The Content Conundrum - What I Meant to Say

Imagine being alone in a dark closet, talking to a few hundred people not knowing whether or not they are listening. Combine that with not being able to see the slides that are being presented and you can imagine the feeling I had last Tuesday when I spoke on the webinar, Where Television Meets the Internet: Trends & Technology of IPTV Deployment. Webinars are different than events where an audience is in the same room because, as a presenter, no one can see me reading my notes. Still, reading from a script is a bit foreign to me and my tendency to jump off script probably confused the message. So, for those who had to suffer through my verbal comments the other day, click here to read what I really meant to say.

To actually hear what I said and to hear Mark Crandon, Vice President of Marketing of Kasenna, discuss the direction of IPTV, click here.

It’s a Virtual, Product Placed World After All

The one part of the webinar experience that was really enjoyable was its interactive nature as exemplified by the 30 plus questions we received. What would really improve webinars is if the presenters could see the audience. Maybe through the use of webcams and software, it will be possible to someday create a virtual audience, where the moderator could literally see who had questions, just like the real world. This seems to be the direction Cisco is going with their recently announced TelePresence meeting solution.

A friend of mine from Cisco said he has seen this system in action and he says it really does make for a more realistic meeting experience, as compared to traditional conferencing. Thanks to the magic of product placement, everyone who watches this week’s episode of Vanished (Friday, November 3rd at 8 PM/7 PM CST on Fox) will get a chance to see Cisco's TelePresence in action. If you don’t want to watch the entire episode, you can see the preview on Cisco’s web site at http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/telepresence/fox/.

The Cisco logo is displayed for about 25 seconds on one of the screens. One of the characters even says, “Patch us in via Cisco.” It does fit into the plot, but it is a pretty obvious product placement. As much as anything, this demonstrates how product placement is becoming critical to mainstream television and how it is going to be one of the tools content owners use to fight the diminishing value of the traditional 30 and 60 second television spot.

Real People – Digital Hollywood

Victor Harwood, producer of the Digital Hollywood conference series, told me years ago that the Digital Hollywood experience is about the people. It’s about the people he brings together and the opportunities to meet with leaders in the technology and entertainment industries. The Digital Hollywood event last week in Santa Monica was no exception as it featured hundreds of speakers and several hundred attendees. Judging by the number of exhibitors – probably double previous shows - the industry is definitely starting to exhibit the excitement of the pre-bust days. Hopefully, this isn’t bubble excitement again.

I felt honored to moderate the panel, Telcos, IPTV & the Technology Food Chain, which featured Josette Bonte of Ovum, Gianluca Ferremi of Sun Microsystems, Hemang Mehta of Microsoft TV, Sam Pemberton of Softel-USA (who was just promoted to CEO of the Softtel Group – congratulations Sam!) and Gary Sasaki of digdia. Mehta of Microsoft TV emphasized that IPTV is first and foremost about delivering television and giving consumers a choice of providers. The other panelists were quick to point out of the potential that the interactive nature of IPTV provides. To hear some of the insight on this panel and why one panelist suggested that “channel change time doesn’t matter”, click here (Club Viodi Members Only).

Some of other interesting insight at this event:

Akimbo announced their service is now available on the Thomson/RCA set-top box. This seems to be a variation on the set-top Thomson supplies for IPTV deployments. Movielink is also part of the service, so top-run studio movies are available.
Frame Freedemonstrated a unique way to create low-cost high definition content which requires less than 5% of the bandwidth of a traditionally encoding.
Some interesting mobile plays, including Veeker and 3Jam, which both could help drive cellular messaging traffic.
Lots of Internet Video middleware (my term) players were at this show, including Vital Stream, Narrowstep and Entriq.
Kula Media Group showed an encoding system that promises up to 30% better quality or 30% reduction in bandwidth. It works with standard coding methods, such as MPEG-2 or 4. They will be making their telco debut at next week’s TelcoTV conference.

For detailed coverage on the above bullet points and to learn which independent telco’s territory the inventors of the Kula Media Group’s technology hail from, please click here.

Advanced Wireless Architectures to Facilitate Convergence of Services – Part 1
By Alan J. Weissberger

Two very stimulating and enlightening presentations on advanced wireless architectures for metropolitan and wide area networks were the highlights of the Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) October 17, 2006 meeting. New wireless backhaul architectures are being built with off-the-shelf WiFi components and modules and are attracting the participation of industry heavyweights, such as Cisco, IBM and Motorola. In part one of this two part article, Alan J. Weissberger reports on some interesting new wireless projects that include rural areas, such as a 3,700 square mile swath of New Mexico that is currently blanketed with WiFi. Click here to read more.

Local Celebrity for Local Content by Roger Bindl

Watch this Art Paul video for a local flavor from Madison. Art Paul Schlosser a local celebrity in Madison Wisconsin. He’s a State Street Busker, or street musician as most people know. Art Paul is a musician, performer, artist, poet, and comic all mixed into one.

There is a touch of satire and parody in the comic ways of Art Paul, and perhaps a touch of Weird Al Yankovic. Emmie Magazine described his style as one of his own, and a style to be witnessed to full understand. The Badger Herald wrote that Art Paul is one of Madison’s most popular and recognizable cultural figures.

Here’s an intro with links to more from a DVD project Roger Bindl is working on with Art Paul Schlosser. Stay Tuned.

Happy Halloween and Congratulations Roger

Roger received “video of the day” yesterday for his Halloween video, The Merchant’s Pumpkin. He was also one Revver’s Editor’s picks yesterday for his video, Electric Bike II and Rural Roads with Roger.

Some Upcoming Conferences

I won’t be at TelcoTV next week. I will have some eyes and ears at this important show, however, and I will be interested to hear tales from Texas.
I will be at Dow Jones’ Opportunities in Digital Entertainment here in San Jose, which features speakers such as Bob Klasen of Starz Entertainment Group and Kaz Hirai, President & CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America.
The Voice Peering Forum is having a conference in Los Angeles on December 11th. Promises to be an interesting conference for anyone involved with Voice Over IP.

Too Late If You Didn’t See the Last Issue

In the last issue, Viodi reported on a Stephen Colbert video that appeared on YouTube, where he made an argument for how much money he should receive (something like $750 million) for his contribution to YouTube’s success. Well, as many of you may have seen, Comedy Central recently asked YouTube to remove Comedy Central videos from the YouTube site. This is probably a prelude to a Google/Comedy Central licensing deal.

Mark Cuban has some interesting speculation about the Google-YouTube acquisition on his blog that is definitely worth reading, especially if you like the elements of conspiracy; definitely food for thought.

AT&T – BellSouth Merger – Food for the FCC’s Thought

One strategic reason for the proposed AT&T/BellSouth merger is the cellular properties represented by Cingular. Another benefit, alluded to by AT&T in their recent financial report, is the presence of thousands of Cingular retail outlets which would be a way for them to market and sell their HomeZone and uVerse products (click here to see the uVerse packages). Of course, a tightly coupled cellular operation will also allow for new services that only can come from the integration of wireless and IPTV.

The dark side of cellular is the closed nature of the network. Unlike the Internet, it is not so easy for third party content to be added to the network or accessed by consumers. Heck, consumers sometimes cannot even use the full features of the end points, if the carriers don’t allow (e.g. removing pictures directly from a camera phone with a PC connection). Does this merger combined with the precedent of the closed cellular network portend a future where the Internet applications and end points are controlled by the last mile provider? I guess the FCC will decide at Friday's meeting.

Video over IP Gives African Content a New Outlet

This story caught my eye because of its relevance to what I had already written in today’s Korner. Africast and NeuLion announced a partnership yesterday at the streaming media west conference whereby Africast will distribute live and on-demand programming using NeuLion’s technology. Individuals may subscribe to individual channels from countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. Although its target audience is African immigrants, it aims to bring the depth and breadth of African content to new audiences as well.

And from my quick look at the site, the content could have some universal appeal. NeuLion will be supplying their video over IP solution, which delivers video to either a PC or a NeuLion supplied Ethernet connected set-top box. All a subscriber needs is a broadband connection with a minimum of 700 kbs downstream. I am currently viewing the Africast network via a WiFi connected link at the San Jose McHenry Convention Center and find the viewing experience to be quite good. The Africast site is more than video and is an integrated multimedia site that includes other features, such as online games, audio and news, which will keep people on their site.

Africast is marketing this through retail outlets that cater to African immigrants. Interestingly, Africast offers prepaid video cards, much like the prepaid long distance phone cards targeted toward immigrants.

The Korner – Sometimes You Just Have to Be There….

Will, surround sound, high definition images and gobs of bandwidth ever really replace being there? Cisco touts the benefits of increased collaboration, reduced travel costs and more efficient use of executives’ time as reasons why its TelePresence solution makes sense. Still, it seems like it will be a long time before the electronic medium can fully replace the impact of meeting someone one on one.

I write this in the context of a recent experience I had with a band from Tanzania. This band, the Mission to Youth and New Life Band (NLB), is on a limited tour of the United States trying to raise awareness and funds for their mission and the school they are building in a rural part of Tanzania. Seeing this talented group of self-taught musicians and composers on television or live in concert is great, but neither of these ways is the same as meeting with them personally.

I was very fortunate to be able to spend a bit of time with their founder, Fortunatus Mabondo [Ondo], a few weeks ago, as we attempted to put together a video that described the situation Tanzanian’s face and what the NLB are doing to improve things. They provided the raw footage and the background music. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t capture all of the challenges they face; like a power grid that only allows for electricity every other day.

And these challenges make for a different kind of life; a life that harkens back to what it was like in America before we had a constant assault of media. Ondo made the observation that Americans do not seem to have the attention span of the Tanzanians (could this be because of the 16,000+ images per days that our kids purportedly see). Hence, we created this American-sized, sound bite video to communicate what they are trying to accomplish. It’s not quite the same as being there, but hopefully it provides a flavor for these truly original and unique content creators.

And if you watch the all of the video and click on the ad that appears at the end, the advertising proceeds will be sent to the New Life Band and aid their school building efforts. We can't control what ad will be served up at the end of this video - that's a topic for another article.

Dot This

Note: I highly recommend checking out the New Life Band in concert. They will be in the Bay Area, Iowa and Southern California over the next six weeks. Go to

http://www.newlifeband.net

for their latest tour information.

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Viodi’s report, Video Business Case provides results to a survey of independent telcos and their business case for video. Most of the telcos that responded to the survey have figured out a way to deploy video services. This survey provides insight from the independent telcos as well as several of their Engineering firms.

Local Content Workshop
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