Internet on TV 2.0

Well, well, well....fancy seeing me back here again, eh? Well, I keep seeing people getting signed up to get notifications of updates and I thought I'd give them something to talk about. So here's what's been going on.

I have moved on from Microsoft and now work at a little company called Zing that makes connected portable devices. What does this have to do with Internet on TV? Well, nothing really. But I do still tinker with web browsing on the TV and have tried a bunch of ways. I'm going to round up a few of the ways you can access the Internet using your TV and rate each way out of 10.

MSNTV2 via dialup (3/10): What can I say....this will work, but dialup is seriously done. Some of the most compelling content can't really be fully enjoyed over dialup speed. If you're an email fiend, this is the way to go...but honestly you could get much more for the same amount of cash. Heck, even my cellphone has broadband!. Anyone, I hate to rag on you, but if you still gots the dialup, now is the time to look around for broadband. After all, it is the same price or less than dialup now.

MSNTV2 via broadband (6/10): Better, but still troublesome in some cases. I mean there are issues with flash and the like...playing flash video sometimes works but can be a pain to control. Overall, a better experience than dialup. One downside is that it can be more pricey than MSNTV2 with dialup since you have to pay $10/month on top of your internet access fee every month.

Windows Media Center (5/10): What? Why would I rate a full fledge PC down a level from MSNTV2? Well, even though there issues on MSNTV2, it at least is specialized for viewing on TV. IE can be a nightmare to read on TV. Also, I've found the Media Center experience a bit "hackish" at times. It'll flip you out of TV mode to load IE and install stuff and back and forth. That being said, I do LOVE the media center side of things. The nice part is that there are not service fees on top of your internet access.

Anything else? Well...now that you mention it, Yes.

Nintendo Wii (7/10): A video game console? Yeah you heard me. I got my hands on the Wii by waking up at 4am one morning and casually checking the wii stock checker gizmo on my PC. There were some in stock at Sears, I jumped on it and one arrived on my doorstep a while later (a long while later since Sears has a funky distribution channel that marked the item in stock even though it was on a boat from China). Anyway, after grabbing my Wii and downloading some updates, I noticed that the shop had an "Internet Channel". "Hmmmm" I thought. Well, so far, it has been a pretty neat part of the Wii experience to use. The typing is a little slow, but the using the Wiimote is not too bad. I wouldn't recommend writing long emails with it, but it's perfectly serviceable for typing in URLs and the like. I've yet to try this, but there is also wiiminder that adds a very wii-ish looking bit of featues including tabbed browsing and a few other niceties. The Wii Internet Channel is currently in trial, but a full version should be available in April and will probably cost something like 5 bucks.

The Wii also has email capabilities but requires that you do a funky handshaking thing first. Your Wii can send email to any email address, but those you send email to will first get a handshake request sort of email saying that your Wii is requesting permission to exchange emails with you. Once the other person replies, you can exchange emails. The downside of the Wii email system is that it picks some arbitrarily long and ugly email name for you. I haven't found a way to change it yet, but I haven't looked to hard either.

The Wii also has a neat news channel that is easy to use and keeps you posted on the top news of th day. There is of course the weather channel as well. And of course you get Wii Sports with your Wii. My favorite is Tennis, but I also like to play bowling and golf on the Wii too.

Some other niceties of the Wii are that it has wireless built in so you won't need to buy a wifi adapter like with the MSNTV2 or the Media Center PC. Also there is no monthly fee for the Wii. So if you wait a little while, the Wiis will be in stock everywhere for around $250, it'll be a much better deal than MSNTV2 over the long run (and you can have a bit of fun playing bowling in your living room when you get tired of surfing the web).

Oh TV, I love thee

Oh TV, how can I watch thee...let me count the ways:

1. Live TV in the living room (so 1983)
2. Tivo'd shows in the living room (goodbye commercials)
3. Media Center PC in the living room (Tivo + $1000 - $13/mo.)
4. Tivo'd or Media Center'd shows on the Portable Media Center or Windows Mobile device (slow transcoding sucks)
5. Tivo'd or Media Center'd shows on the PSP (via some series of
decryptng and transcoding)
6. Video Ipod ($1.99/show is mighty pricey and they look ugly on any screen bigger than credit card)
7. Some off brand portable running Linux or BSD straight out of Taiwan or Korea (LOTS of formats supported, but usually bad UI, and bad PC software)
8. Windows Media Center Online Spotlight - Comedy Central Motherload from your sofa with a remote control...'nuff said (man we need some folks to fix the naming of our products)
and so on and so forth, forever and ever

You get the point...there are a LOT of ways to get your daily fill of Days of our Lives and guess what, there are going to be a LOT more ways coming up.

Yahoo Go! links Web services to phones, TVs - Wireless World - MSNBC.com
Microsoft partners with Murdoch in video pact (I guess no one remembers how DirecTV screwed Microsoft in the heyday of UltimateTV...here we go again)
Google sets up the Video Lemonade Stand

And soooo much more. Yes folks, TV 2.0 is finally upon us. I, like you, have been waiting for this for a long time. Man, I'm kicking myself for missing CES this year...CES TV junkies, I envy you.

Internet Video Rodeo

Are you confused about what video service works on which browser and portable device? I'm not really confused about it, but it does get a little screwy to keep track of it all, am I right or am I right? Well, despair no more because Tristan Louis over at TNL.net gives up his Portals and Video Overview.

Thank you Tristan for the nicely formatted summary of the end of TV as we know it.

Tivo Ups the Ante

It seems that our buddies down the 237 freeway (Tivo) are on a roll with teaching their old box some new tricks (thankfully). I think they're starting to realize that their little box not only allows you to get a handle on TV content, but can actually help you discover and move away from commercial TV content. Whoa! There's a scary thought (for the TV distribution companies)...people using Tivo to AVOID their crappy shows (can you say UPN and WB?).

[via Zatz Not Funny]

Imagine the Square Footage

It's only a matter of time now....Apple lands another big fish in the small pond of commercial content. NBC lends 12 of their shows including hits like Monk, Law & Order, Conan, Leno and others to the iTunes Music Store. Would I buy each episode for $1.99? Hell no. Would I buy every
Conan episode with Triumph in it? Probably...

Now lets delve a little deeper here...in the beforetime:

People bought giant TVs that filled their living rooms (ie Projection TVs) just so they could get a large screen, theater like experience. This behemoth took about 20 to 30 sq ft of living space in your home. Not to mention dwarfed everything around it making everything feel like it was going to be eaten by the TV (don't believe me? you should see my dad's living room).

in the hereafter:

You can buy something that barely qualifies as a bump off of your wall to watch TV on. DVD players are flat just like your TV. Game consoles are flat (Xbox 360 almost gets it right, PS3 may). Tivos are flat...everything is flat. Everything comes in a vertical case that can be mounted to your wall. Better yet, they can be mounted BEHIND your flat TV so that it only extends about 2 inches more into your living space. Now you have extra space in your house.

Now take into account that TV will shift from big wall hanging thing to pocket thing and we'll need to start thinking about larger seats on the bus to accomodate our gear rather than bigger living rooms.

Maybe it will be the end fo the McMansions...but knowing America, probably not.

TV 2.0 catch up

So it's been a while since my last real post and here's a recap of transgressions in the TV world since then:

• Apple drops the bomb with iPod Video and iTunes with Pay Per Download Video (PPDV?). By the way, if you want a FREE IPOD VIDEO, just click. These are the same guys that had the freebie deal before, but now they're giving away the latest and greatest iPod nanos and videos. The best part is that some of the deals are quite good. For example, the Citi Dividend card is AWESOME. Hongyun and I have one and we use it for our groceries and gas purchases. It gives us 5% back (up to $300 per year) on these kinds of purchases and since gas and groceries are always getting more expensive, it really does work out nicely...consider it a $300 bonus at the end of the year to buy some Xbox 360 games to go with the new Xbox 360 dropping next week (you did preorder one didn't you? If not, good luck explaining it to your kid).
• Steve Jobs uses Pixar's rock and hard place relationship with Disney to finagle episodes of LOST for the iTunes Store.
• Netflix drops the ball and gives up on trying to fulfill rental requests through streaming video. Reason: movie studios are bone heads and prefer people pirating their content than makign a few bucks through rentals each time the content is viewed. Imagine this: a movie distributed via P2P, but is wrapped in a special file format that locks it for certain folks or randomly unlocks it (have Windows Media Player check a server to unlock the content, the server will randomly handout freeviews to 1 in 10 folks...the others have to pay $2 to watch the movie). Talk about viral....maybe they'll figure it out before it's too late...maybe not.
• NBC and CBS announce plans to give people shows without commercials on demand for 99 cents. So lame. Let me count the reasons why:
  1. Bitter that they couldn't pull a deal with Apple to get into iTunes
  2. Can I download them to a portable device or laptop to watch them on the go? No.
  3. Why wouldn't I just pay for a Tivo for $13/month and get all the shows I want commercial free? Sure I have to push buttons, but it's easy. Also Tivo lets me transfer them to my laptop (although I loathe the Tivo Desktop software...that's some scary piece of code they released-Mac users, considers yourselves lucky for not having to deal with the crap fest).
• AOL and Time Warner FINALLY figured out what to do with their alliance. Took them long enough. When they first merged 5 years ago, the idea that went through my brain was wow-that's a natural fit. AOL's got the eyeballs, TW's got the content AND the broadband. It took them 5 whole years to get their heads out of their asses and figure it out. Anyway, it looks like it's going to be too late for them to make a big splash since Microsoft may buy AOL. The dialup Internet Acess business is definitely the slow boat to nowhere in the tech world. We haven't heard anything official on the inside so who knows what's going on.

PBS Video

This is really cool... PBS has put their entire 3 hour Nova miniseries about String Theory online for your viewing pleasure. The only problem they are using Quicktime and RealVideo (ugh!) formats so it won't work with MSNTV2. But, if you're a PC user and dig physics and paradigm shifts, this is your ticket.

NOVA | The Elegant Universe | Watch the Program | PBS

Participatory Culture

It's not so much the technology as what it enables. The Participatory Culture Foundation puts it all into perspective. Our world is chock full of large media conglomorates that try to shove crap summer films down our throats in order to make their stocks go up 1/16 of a point. It messed a lot of us up and continues to (just watch Nickelodeon for half an hour and note how many ads there are for nutritious food. Now note how many there are for fruit flavored snacks of some sort).

The Internet Video revolution isn't so much about delivering TV shows to your PC, but rather about letting YOU deliver TV shows (or music, or books, or pr0n, or what have you) to OTHER's PCs. It's not really about conglomerates any more. It's about homebrew entertainment and informative shows that have a following of just a few people to hundreds of thousands (possibly more). It's really about a chance to participate in creating content for others to consume. Anyway, enough of me waxing poetic about the philosophical side of things...

See for Yourself (note there's only a MAC beta right now, but a Windows beta is on the way...if you just can't wait check out the Open Media Network).

Tivo Testing Content Downloads

Tivo and many others have been hankering for the supposed large slice of the Internet Video to TV pie in the sky. MSNTV has been working on delivering CinemaNow movies to the MSN TV 2 box. Akimbo has been signing up some cool content providers but has yet to catch on (maybe because people already get this content over their cable or satellite feeds). And now Tivo wants in on the game. There a couple of keys as to why Tivo may be a the 800 lbs. gorilla in the Internet Video to TV market:

1. Installed subscriber base: (3 to 4+ million?)
2. User Interface: The best
3. PVR functionality: The cornerstone which keeps churn low and customers happy

But the downside is that users need additional hardware to get broadband. Yes, I know it's not that big of a deal for most techies that don't mind dropping another $20-$70 on a USB to wired/wireless ethernet adapter, but to tech laymen of the world, this may just be too much to ask.

See for Yourself.

Open Media Network

Here's an interesting way to public television broadcasts, podcasts, music, and video blogs. I've just installed it and have found a BOAT load of content already. They're using Kontiki to deliver their content (basically a not-so-illegal BitTorrent clone.

Good: A lot of content, organized well

Bad: Requires client side ActiveX installation. Client is slow to connect when searching. Downloads are slow (I bet this will become faster after more users join the network and start sharing bandwidth).

See for Yourself.

HDTV via RSS

Mark Cuban (aka the billionaire blogger) has launched HDNet that will allow users to download HDTV content for free. Currently they're offering up the Shuttle launch in HD which I'm excited to check out.

However, there are questions (which could lead to problems):
1. It requires a 3rd party app (Red Swoosh) to get the files. Why not BitTorrent?
2. BetaFeed is free. What happens when it goes live?

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to give it a shot, but I don't like the "you need to run special software" aspect of it.

[via: Blogola]

NetFlix close to launching online movie downloads

It seems that the whole movie download scene is about to explode. CinemaNow and MovieLink are the front runners in this space, but so far no one's made it easy to watch their downloaded movies on the TV without the PC whirring away. MSN TV has been working with CinemaNow for most of the year on getting the service ready. But still, the market is a small one...for now. I think what is keeping CinemaNow and MovieLink from exploding is that they're not making much use of the long tail theory which has kept iTunes humming along. A good example is the foreign movies (one of my favorite genres because most of the movies made in the US are pretty much cater to the day worker set these days). CinemaNow lists 74 movies in this category while Netflix has a whopping 6,700! So you can see the dilemma. And don't get me wrong, it's not CinemaNow's or MovieLink's fault. It's the (you guessed it) movie studios who continually do stupid things (like make movies like The Dukes of Hazzard). But I digress...

The online movie space is going to heat up very soon as Netflix is close to offering online movie downloads and Apple is rumored to be getting into the video download business as well. I personally can't wait and hope that MSN TV 2 works with Netflix's interpretation of the content delivery over the net, but we'll have to wait and see for that one.

Cable wants IPTV too.

While IPTV has been seen mostly as an invasion of the Telcos into your living room (and a friendly knock on the door to cable and sattelite TV companies), Time Warner, provider of Cable TV services thinks they may like to have IPTV too. They've launched an IPTV Trial in San Diego using PCs with RealPlayer as the delivery mechanism (if all goes well, they plan to switch to set top boxes).

I'm not sure why Time Warner is thinking of moving away from their established cable TV services, but I think it may be so they can actually go beyond the living room with their content. As broadband speeds improve (not just wired, but WiMax, EVDO, as well), TV may be coming to you just about anywhere you go (for better or worse). SBC's initially challenge is to bring TV to your living room over their pipes, but they have to figure that "hey, cable and sattelite operators already do that, why would someone choose our TV service over the established players?" The answer of course is the flexibility afforded to the consumer that comes with delievery over IP. It'd make it even easier to bring TV content along in different formats as you roam the globe. It also provides a way to break away from the established media giants completely and latch on to shows produced by your local professional underwater basketweaving team. The cable and sattelite companies, seeing and probably fearing this shift away from their coveted "exclusive, pre-filtered" content have begun searching in the dark for the golden hammer that will slay the telco monster invading their territory. See? Who said competition is bad?

Anyway, this is all heresay and conjecture on my behalf...if you have a theory, please share!

may have a little something to say about that. The way they see it is people want to watch TV on their PCBlogola » Time Warner Launches IPTV Trial in San Diego

Bloomberg Live TV online

An email discussion group at work pointed me to a free, live stream for Bloomberg TV. Not only is it live, but it works on MSN TV 2 (they even have a 56Kbps stream for those stuck in dialup land). This growing trend of releasing content online leads me to wonder if the coming IPTV revolution won't be much of a revolution after all.

IPTV is a new means of content delivery and adds some neat features, but maybe that's not where the TV revolution is heading. It's starting to look like IPTV is just another delivery medium with the same old content. Sure, it'll have snazzier menus, the ability to preview different channels at the same time, and other incremental evolutions in the TV watching experience, but is it really going to revolutionize TV? Maybe, but I have a different theory.

The medium itself is truly going to become irrelevant. Cable, Sattelite, DSL (IPTV)...it's all going to be irrelevant sooner or later. The content is simply going to go online. Content creators and publishers will be able to bypass the gatekeepers that are the cable, sattelite, IPTV networks and reach their niche markets directly. The Long Tail theory that is about to downsize the music business and pretty much shut down brick and mortar music stores is about to breakdown the walls between those that create content and those that consume it.

Another interesting phenomennon will occur if TV really starts making inroads to the Internet: we'll remove a restrictive dimension of TV content consumption: location. The other restrictive dimension is, of course, time (which Tivo and other PVRs have done away with already. We'll no longer watch TV just at home, the traditional TV watching venue. This phenomenon has been around for ages with portable analog TVs, but adoption has been very marginal due to lack of compelling programming (no cable/sattelite feeds), and cheesy technology that is diffcult to use (ever try to get and keep a signal with one of those things?). What about Portable Media Center devices that came out a couple of years ago? Weren't those supposed to remove the location restriction for TV? Yes, but that didn't work out for similar reasons...the barrier to get from content locked on my PC to roaming free with me on my Portable Media Center was too high in time and cost.

What if we removed those barriers? TV is just there, online. Anyone with a PC and broadband connection can watch whatever, whenever. Those with dialup, well...maybe they can download shows overnight, but I'd have to say that's not going to be an attractive solution for them. Better yet, what if cell phones and other handheld devices could watch these shows? Don't laugh, it's happening in Europe and Asia right now. There are even competing technologies in the space mobile TV space. It's starting to happen here as well, but slowly (as usual). I've tried the Sprint tv broadcasts with some limited success, but overall, it's sucked (the content was just canned 30 second news clips...I want to watch an episode of the Simpsons on my cell phone gosh darnit!).

Combined with wifi, EVDO, and other enabling technologies, we may be on the cusp of something bigger than even the almighty iPod...a truly location-free TV (sorry Sony).

Anyway, to reel it back in, check out all the free Bloomberg goodness streaming live now.

Apple to sell video downloads

While my time with the Creative Zen was short and sweet, I realized that a technically great device was hampered by the lack of a great content acquisition model. It was damned near impossible to get a DVD that I owned onto the device; I had to use a few illegal products to break the encryption of the DVD and then wait hours for it to encode the file properly. Also, the content available from MovieLink and CinemaNow offer an array of mind-boggling license terms that were difficult to keep straight (some were downloadable, some weren't; some were active for 3 days, some were active for 24 hours after beginning to watch it; etc etc). Not only that, these companies rarely provided any really good movie choices.

I know the idea of the Portable Media Center was to acquire content from your Windows Media Center PC, but you still had to wait a major amount of time for the video to transcode to the proper format for the PMC. There really was no concept of instant portable gratification like that found with the iTunes Music Store. While Microsoft is planning on a second coming of the Portable Media Center, unless the content model is hashed out, I think it may be another extremely niche product, catering to a subset of those Windows Media Center users with money to burn and TV on their minds just about everywhere they go.

Enter Apple. The company that, dare I say, perfected the music download model (while others have tried to immitate, none have gained the adoption of the masses that Apple as thus far garnered) is planning to bring music videos to your hand. It's an obvious leap to see that Apple will be offering movie and TV show downloads (assuming their lawyers can play nice with the TV and movie industry lawyers) in the near future. Why will this win too? Because Apple knows how to create a viable content model. They'll make it work right. I'm hoping for native Xvid, Divx, MPEG-2, OGM, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink support, but will settle for some sort of super speedy conversion or wrapping technology that obviates the need for the Windows Media Player model of hours-long transcode sessions.

Hannibal of ArsTechnica speculates on Apple's upcoming video download service (quite an interesting if not most-likely accurate portrayal of things to be):

The iTMS video section will initially be limited to music videos in QuickTime format, as well as some Pixar content (shorts, and maybe a few films). All downloadable video will come wrapped in proprietary Apple DRM, and (as is the case with AAC) this QT + DRM format will be the only DRM-enabled video format that the video iPod will be capable of playing. Video iPod owners will be able to use the device to play a few non-DRM types of video, like MP4, DIVX, etc., and they may be able to rip DVDs and play them on the iPod, but they won't be able to play DRM'd video downloaded from competing online video services. In this respect, Apple will attempt to replicate in the video download space the successful business model that they innovated in the music download space. They'll also be going into direct competition with Microsoft's Windows Media format.

Link.

BBC to offer show downloads

I knew I heard about this somewhere before...but not in this form. I originally thought the BBC was going to open up their entire archives for free (outlandish, I know, but I'm pretty sure I heard that a couple of years ago from a BBC official). Anyway, with this incarnation, the BBC will sell (that's right, you have to pay) access to a week's worth of shows. Details are scarce right now, but it looks like the service will be international (originally it thought this service would be limited to UK IP's). Link.

Netflix-To-Tivo Soon?

We've all known about the Netflix/Tivo shackup for almost a year now, but Hacking Netflix breaks news of a "glitch" (read: accidentally exposed web page) that gave up the goods on how soon this marriage of movie watching nirvana will come to fruition. Anyway, my two Tivos can't wait to see these overly anticipated new features since we're getting tired of Friends reruns (although Hongyun has been digging them lately). Link.

PBS Leading the Way

In yet another wave in the coming sea of change for television and other content, PBS will unveil a TV series called NerdTV obtainable ONLY via the web. You'll be able to download and watch it at your own convenience. Far out! They claim to be the first major broadcaster to do this. I think it's true. The BBC was going to do something akin to this a while back, but I don't think it's materialized yet. The BBC does have their VideoNation site which has tons of little clips (in RealPlayer format, yuck!) so that's kinda nice. But we want the downloadable stuff!

The guys at Rev3 have it absolutely right with their awesome geekery and downloadable shows. The best guys from the old days of TechTV (now gobbled up by G4TV) have banded together to make some cool shows like Systm and thebroken.

At any rate, kudos to PBS for making the leap. Link.

TV Moves to the Internet

In not-so-subtle moves, traditional television content providers are moving to the Internet to distribute their content. It seems that CBS News is going to clips from their newscasts and even plans to break news on the Internet as opposed to waiting for their TV time slot. This is no doubt in lieu of trying to create a 24 hour news channel like CNN, MSNBC, or FOX News (if that can even be called "news"). There was also information about Amazon planning to offer streaming concert videos! Woohoo! I guess even less people will be going to concerts if they can see it for free (or get them free with purchase) at Amazon. Link

blinkx and iFilm partner to offer web clip searches

blinkx was a little known company to most but is fast becoming a leader in video and TV search. Now that they're partnering with iFilm, I see a decent content portal (don't you just hate that word?) in the works.

blinkx Partners With IFILM to Bring Premium Video Entertainment to blinkx.tv Users