Digital Media Galaxy

This year’s NAB show was the 19th in a row for me. Over the last few years, it’s been quite a lackluster show: more of the same with little innovation and little in the way of addressing the multitude of developments occurring in the media and entertainment industry. And by that I mean that there’s a whirlwind of change for broadcast, film, etc. This year, however, I think most manufacturers “got it” and finally brought to market stories and in some cases (grin) products that actually address file-based ingest, manipulation, and distribution. We’re finally starting to see a concerted effort to create and embrace applications that straddle IT-centric infrastructure: servers, networks, and storage devices.

And, like all of us, adaptation is key. This is why I saw more software on the show floor than hardware. And when I did see hardware, there was much more emphasis on added-value software to differentiate the hardware. Software, software, software. Or, as they say in Vegas, “Software-baby” (yes, that’s what they say in Vegas, in case you were wondering).

NAB was a fantastic show for Signiant. We are very grateful to our existing customers with whom we had another chance to visit and to all of the kind people who came to our booth to talk about their requirements. We are honored to have received a Broadcast Engineering NAB “pick hit” award.

You may recall Signiant’s cartoon that premiered at last year’s NAB…Digital Media Revolution…a hilarious spoof on a subject matter that’s increasingly growing in importance and affects your organization’s bottom line - digital media distribution management.

If you missed it, don’t fret. The sequel is on the way and it’s arguably better than the original. There’s a new challenge for our digital media protagonist Tom, you’ll have to come by the booth for a good laugh and to learn more about how Signiant can make you a hero too.

In addition to the cartoon debut, schedule a personal demonstration with Signiant’s management team to learn how Signiant is helping many of the world’s leading media and telco companies fulfill their digital media distribution needs.

Book your personal demo with Signiant at NAB
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Signiant will be exhibiting in booth SL13-213 of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. For free admission to the show April 14-17, visit nabshow.com and enter VIP Pass Code: AE1094.

Both cartoons have been created by Hatchling Studios.

I sit outside, it’s 65 degrees in sunny silicon valley – a brief reprieve from the New England weather. I have 30 minutes to kill before my next meeting. I am at a Starbucks, drinking some iced drink that is too expensive and I can’t even remember its name. Something about sitting at a Starbucks, drinking some coffee drink makes me feel smart – well maybe at least reflective. Maybe it is the people huddled around, studying, reading the books or newspapers that are too dry for my liking – whatever – I am feeling reflective.

So in 27 minutes, I have a meeting with a “physical media distribution company”. Anyone who knows a lick about Signiant knows that it is our mission to Make Media Move. Move unencumbered over networks, bits flowing without boundary. The distribution of physical media is like a rodent to us – something to be exterminated. Won’t life be better when all files move across networks and CDs, DVDs and tapes are things that kids will look at with curiosity like 8 tracks and LPs?

So – why blog about something that is so core and fundamental to Signiant’s business? Well, my reflection carries me to the challenges facing companies that distribute physical media – video rental stores, DVD retailers, DVD-by-mail. This weekend I was driving through my childhood neighborhood and had a Lost flash-forward moment. The chain Video Rental store had a big “Going Out of Business” sign out front. Can we see this scene repeating itself thousands of times over the next several years as more and more content is moved online, more and more people smoke the hookah and get on board with the digital media revolution? Imagine if you are making the decisions for one of these companies — they probably feel like Jack on the bridge.

Well – the good news is that crisis always presents opportunity for someone – the blacksmith that became a tire store, Williams Oil becoming Williams Communications are a couple that come to mind. So the opportunity exists for these companies to transform their business and capture an even bigger share of the entertainment dollar. My meeting in 20 minutes is with one such company that is adapting their business model and plans to flip their business model to digital media distribution over the next several years. There’s a good chance they can pull it off — they have a cultist loyal following and have progressive thinking. The challengers are fierce — IPTV, Project Infinity from Comcast, movie rentals from Apple iTunes and all the other companies adopting the Any Content, Any Time, Any Where, Any Device (A4) mantra.

Clearly, if you do not have a Digital Media strategy – it is a lost opportunity. Time is passing and while some people are predicting that it will be 5 years before the demise of the disk, I am not buying it. Unlike adoption of other technology – there are no barriers to delivering digital media with a high quality experience. Last week, after a DVR hiccup (I am the biggest DVR fan out there – had Tivo on day 1 – but the DVR’s day is coming too) cut off the last 10 minutes of an episode of Lost – my wife and I ran up to the study and caught it in full HD on abc.com.

So instead of making predictions about the longevity of the DVD, companies should be trying to figure out how to capitalize on what makes my wife and I stand around a 22” monitor in a cramped study as opposed to on the big HD downstairs. I can tell you, at the end of that Lost episode, there was some $$ figure that I would have paid - $10? $20? to watch the next episode right there! Why not take that money out of my pocket?

Coffee drink finished, blog post finished, soaking in the sun – 10 minutes until meeting. What to do…ponder what business the shells of old video rentals stores could be transformed into – there will be a surplus of them in the next few years (check out “Pump It Up” – gold mine I tell ya)… maybe go get a real drink – a diet coke …

Maybe we can turn them all into Super-Starbucks … where you can watch and listen to digital media … off to find a diet coke.

Postscript:

In true Lost fashion, on my way to the meeting, I opened the trunk of my rental … the only thing in my trunk was one little plastic card: My Blockbuster card… what does that mean? What symbolism is hidden here? Did The Others have something to do with it?

Earlier this week, The NY Times published an article about the head of the Federal Communications Commission and other senior officials considering taking steps to discourage cable and telephone companies from delaying the downloads and uploads of heavy Internet users.

Here are my thoughts on the subject…

The practice of limiting bandwidth utilization on a sustained bandwidth basis is extremely invasive to the media and entertainment industry. Imagine you are a professional journalist or a citizen journalist. You PAID and you PAY for a monthly contract with your Internet service provider for a guaranteed upload speed and download speed. And you just happen to have some footage that you’ve captured of a news-worthy event. And you start uploading that content to a news organization. Let’s say that you shot this on mini-DV tape which captures content at 25 mbits/sec (megabits/sec). And you have a “premium upload/download” package that “guarantees” you 5mbits/sec upload and 10 mbits/sec download. Now, in theory, you’re uploading 25 mbits/sec content and you can do this at a sustained 5 mbits/sec. (in other words, a 5:1 ratio. 1 second of video you want to send will take you 5 seconds). Well, that means your 50 seconds of video should take 250 seconds. So, you start uploading it and it seems to be going at the rate that’s part of your service level contract. But, say, 40 seconds into the upload you start to see a pronounced slow down of the upload. And, as time goes by, the upload progress bar is moving even slower. You are a victim of your provider throttling down your upload speed. And the ramifications? It’s great that you got the only footage of a newsworthy event. Now, why don’t you forget about uploading it and get in your car and drive the tape to the television station?

Great news this week for college sports fans via the joint announcement from CSTV and USATODAY. Let’s face it, there is a huge demand for college sports information and there are only so many minutes (uh… well, heavy sigh—unfortunately, mostly seconds…) devoted to college sports on network television broadcasts. The expansion of outlets for content that has such a large audience is yet another benefit to the sports fan and viewer. Where people consume the content that they are most interested in and when they do it is only going to grow. This is yet another indication that there are new file-based workflows, more and more venues for digital media, and that fueling that supply chain is not a trivial amount of work. And, what happens when those file sizes eventually grow from SD to HD? Imagine digital content going from camera to web page and multiply it by all those games, all those teams, all those additional items of interest (highlights, coaches’ shows, etc.) and you start to get an inkling of the intricate problems that have to be solved for that supply chain to not go dry.

Signiant’s Tom Ohanian and Tony Lapolito discuss their observations while at CES in Vegas.

Though Tony focuses on Panasonic’s 150″ Plasma TV, Tom’s biggest takeaway from the show is that companies are focused on servicing the consumer, now, more than ever. There’s also a lot of discussion about the many devices that are available today to deliver quality content to the consumer.

As always, there’s a lot of interesting banter and observations in this Podcast, have a listen.

 

 CES: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Podcast, Signiant’s Tom Ohanian and Tony Lapolito are joined by Joe Maidenberg, the VP of Post Production Services, and Dave Simon, the Director of Broadcast Engineering at Current (www.current.com), the industry’s first Emmy® Award winning peer-to-peer news and information network.

Joe and Dave discuss the many unique facets of Current including the fact that viewers create all of the short-form, non-fiction content and how Current manages its completely tapeless, file-based workflow.

They also explain the challenges, but more importantly, the benefits of their tapeless environment. The Podcast offers many interesting technical details, have a listen.

 Current: Download

Tom Ohanian recently had an article published in MediaPost’s Online Video Insider entitled: Piracy and Securing the Digital Media Supply Chain. It’s an interesting read. There’s an excerpt below and you can find the full article on MediaPost’s site.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) estimates that U.S. studios lose more than $3 billion annual to piracy. Consider recent issues:

• “American Gangster” is pirated and available on DVD for $5 two weeks prior to its theatrical release.
• The Writers Guild of America and studios negotiate for important slices of the digital media pie.

And, in the midst of all this, consider how digital media is being consumed. Are we listening to songs on compact disc or on .mp3 players? The truth, of course, is that we’re doing both. But, will (and that’s the important tense — future) .mp3 listeners overtake CD listeners? This is one example of just how one form of digital media — “the song” — has the power to change everything, upset the business model, force it to change and to morph and raise countless discussions and opinions on piracy.

Read the rest of the article…

Hmmmmm … writers strike? Lack of good programming? History in the making? This ranks up there with the Kennedy assassination, lunar landing, presidential elections and 911 in terms of ubiquitous coverage. Presidential State of the Union addresses do not get this type of programming.

In New England on Saturday night… the Patriots game will be on ABC, NBC, CBS and the NFL Network. In addition, ESPN - both the station and on-line, have transitioned to Patriots All Access – All the Time. The backlash to the overexposure of the Patriots (America’s team just a few short years ago) has lead to questions like “How much do you hate the Patriots?”.

Aside from us Patriots fans and season ticket holders, I am not sure this is what they mean by Any Content Any Where Any Time — as long as it’s the Patriots – the new Kings of New Media.

This week Google’s YouTube announced that they would begin sharing ad revenue with their partners – popular content providers. This news was buried in among all my daily media and entertainment nuggets like “Vivid Sues PornTube”, “Cisco Launches Entertainment OS” and “Mobile Game to Reach $6B by 2011”. While all Google news is News, this little tiny gunshot in the war that is the Digital Media Revolution should be heard loud and clear. This is the next step in their battle plan to move from the dominant player in the $40B on-line advertising market to the dominant player in the $400B entertainment / TV ad market and maybe the $1.4T Media and Entertainment world.

It is pretty clear to me that Google is executing a finely tuned strategic plan, one with little incremental skirmishes aimed at winning the war. Their motivation is obvious and I admit that I have not been inside any strategic planning sessions at Google but it is pretty clear to me how this plan plays out:

Step 1: The Trojan Horse: Acquire a popular Video Portal company with large audience using their stock as cheap capital. CHECK.
Step 2: The End Around: Roll out an ad model that expands on their dominance in on-line advertising to capture additional revenue from YouTube. CHECK.
Step 3: The Axis: Cut deals to make YouTube a prominent application on devices other than computers (mobile devices like iPhone). CHECK. Expect more to come – set top boxes, DVRs, televisions.
Step 4: The Secret Weapon: Start sharing revenue with content providers to motivate them to continue to supply content and make higher quality more compelling content. CHECK. Hmmm … now you have the model for Google setting the ad rates and revenue sharing model that is crucial to winning the war. This is the traditional Media and Entertainment company’s worst nightmare.
Step 5: The Blitzkrieg: Continue to drive people to YouTube so you become the Kleenex of content aggregation. Do for content aggregation what you did for search – become the first stop for entertainment. Become the “home page” of people’s IPTV applications – whether on the computer, phone, set top box, on the planes, trains and automobiles! Working On It.
Step 6: The Grassy Knoll: Orchestrate a writer’s strike where the battle line is over the very business model that you enable so that quality content dries up. Gratuitous Conspiracy Theory I Had to Throw In (but could it really be possible, is Google handing out stock on every street corner in LA to the writers?). Actually, I am flying back from London as I write this and I found an article about how the strike is going to lead to a “bleak winter in programming” and how it will have a ripple impact on television and movies for seasons to come.
Step 7: The Atomic Bomb: Begin “paying” for compelling content with either tiered-based advertising sharing or direct payments that cut out much of the entertainment supply chain. Accelerates the shift of traditional television advertising dollars to on line including YouTube. Coming soon to a press release near you.
Step 8: The Treaty of Versailles: Force the traditional content companies to syndicate on YouTube or risk total obsolesce. Google now dominates all entertainment advertising and controls all ad rates based on the auction model that it uses for on line advertising.
Step 9: The coup d’état: Force the cable and satellite operators to the table and dictate terms that force them to offer ala-carte pricing to their customers or risk becoming obsolete. Hmm – wonder why Google is interested in spectrum?

Watch for the following product or technology releases that cements their place:
• Contextual video search. The Holy Grail - if there are not a team of rocket scientists working on this in the Google labs, I would be shocked.
• Demographic / Ad tracking software that helps target content and ads – I know of a number of start-ups working on this and I would not be shocked if this is not in the labs as well.
• On-line Video Editing with a vast library of stock content that can be mashed up into custom advertisements at a low cost.

Not possible? Well, we’ll see, but something is going on that is bigger than those little gun shots you hear in the distance. The Digital Media Revolution is on and it’s being fought every day. Google’s motivation is clear to me, I am guessing Google has a plan that reads beyond 9 simple steps but I am sure it’s guarded with more security than the formula for Coca Cola. Wait – is there a man across the street on a grassy knoll looking in my window?

In this podcast, Tom Ohanian discusses collaborative post production and the trends that are affecting (shrinking) the production schedule. Tom explains that certain variables, including distributed sets of individuals working on a 24/7 schedule and the cost of storage decreasing all the time, are just a couple of the factors that are contributing to the need for digital media supply chains. Further, Tom details how Signiant’s technology powers Avid-to-Avid transfer across WANs.

 

 Avid to Avid Collaborative Post Production: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Listen in as Inside Digital Media ’s Phil Leigh interviews Tom Ohanian. Tom discusses how Signiant makes media move throughout the digital media supply chain.

Inside Digital Media is a place where you can see and hear interviews with thought leaders in the Digital Media industries.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well, how amazing is that? Beowulf comes out and does $28.1M on its opening weekend. What’s even more impressive is that the Imax® 3D version contributed $3.6M of that, or 13%, this according to the usual entities that track these figures (the Wall Street Journal reported). Regardless of where you sit on the “Is 3D a fad or is it here to stay” debate, what is not debatable is the revenue generator that 3D can be. For example, “Chicken Little” (2005) did 2.5X the box office than that of the 2D version.

And what does that mean for technology adoption and transition? Digital cinemas, digital projectors, digital cinema mastering and, yep, you guessed it, eventually those files aren’t going to be delivered on a set of redundant disk platters, but will be electronically delivered. The digital cinema supply chain issue is rapidly approaching and will require solutions for the managed movement of content. It will be necessary to administrate the clean-up and maintenance of those drives (ahem…perhaps I should say: solid state…); the transmission will have to be secured; there will be strict verification that the content arrived, and, ultimately, the content will need to be deleted. All automatically, according to contractually mandated schedules.

We’re getting there…break out the 3D glasses and look behind you. There ain’t no film up there, Ma…!

I found out the latest news on the writers’ strike as I was multitasking - scanning the news, reading email and watching an episode of Friday Night Lights on hulu. While doing this – my eyeballs were awash in impressions and somewhere in some deep dark datacenter the ad-o-meter was spinning – I was generating revenue for someone (I even bought a re-certified GPS system at a great price). When the Dillon Panthers scored the winning touchdown and the credits rolled … the scoreboard said: The Man $ The Writers 0 (and 123 less emails in my inbox and 1 GPS coming via DHL second day mail).

Should the writers be allowed to double dip and get paid on internet based programming after they have already been paid to produce the content once? Should they be forced to work overtime in the coal mines on these vignettes or clips to promote their main body of work?

Should the producers and networks be able to open up all sorts of new syndication models and revenue streams without sharing with the writers? Should they be able to package up their content in all sorts of new ways and not share?

These are all relevant questions. I will admit that I have not followed the negotiations to the point that I know the exact positions of each party but there are some very relevant truths:

1) Viewing habits have changed — this is not at the traditional broadcast, cable, VHS or even VHS dollars. Those methods of distribution are as dead as train travel was once the Wright brothers took flight. While many people looked at that strange bird and said it was not practical and would never have mass appeal – just like today when the naysayers say 50 million television downloads on iTunes is not mass adoption. Don’t tell me that I did not fly on a plane this week or take an episode of Survivor with me (one that my damn DVR decided it did not want to record the last 10 minutes and I had to pay Apple the $1.99 for).

2) People need to get paid. If you attract a crowd – you will get paid. Just ask Tony and Paul who after 3.8M YouTube viewers watched their stopmotion video they found a home on IMDB, are linked all over the blogosphere and ultimately jumped the fence to Hollywood (I wonder if they are ready to go on strike now too?). I am sure that all those people working at the train stations migrated over time to the airport terminals and their lives went on.

3) Strike at your own risk … let them strike at your own risk. Holy crap – if the writers strike – what am I going to do with my time! No more Scrubs! Brotherhood! No more Grey’s Anatomy – my wife may want to talk ;). I need to run to the video store and fill my basement with VHS tapes and DVDs. In all reality, there are so many entertainment sources vying for our time (not to mention soccer games) – do the writers and networks really want to risk alienating their customers? Do you both want them to become more comfortable watching things in non-traditional methods? When I could not stay up (due to all the celebratory partying after the Sox won the World Series) to see Jonathan Papelbon on Letterman, I simply went to YouTube with no commercial interruptions. Look to the future, Pabelbon is being interviewed by the hot new VLogger and that YouTube page has a pre-roll, post roll ads as well as click on the ad for Steiner Sports to buy Red Sox memorabilia and click on the copy of SI to get a subscription (we can debate how much longer you will pay for a print copy of SI). Is this the world that you both want?

The world has changed and there are billions of dollars ($170+ to be close) at stake. Seems like one that is worth fighting over but also one that you share the same vested interest. I have to go … I have to see if I can exchange these shares of Union Pacific Railroad stock for Pan Am.

… Tools & Technologies to Liberate the Imagination

Tom Ohanian joined this panel discussion at Digital Hollywood this week and was joined by several industry experts including:

Stephen Jacobs, Vice President, Sony Corporation of America
Kenneth Yas, Market Development Manager, Cameras, NA, Grass Valley
Thomas A. Ohanian, Chief Strategy Officer, Signiant
Bernie Laramie, CEO, MOS Sync, Inc.
John Dietsch, CEO and Founder at Hook.TV
Ben Weinberger, CEO at Dgitialsmiths

The discussion was fantastically moderated by Joel Ordesky who has been kind enough to host a video of the panel discsussion on his blog - please visit his blog to have a listen in.

Last Thursday evening, the folks at Creative Planet’s Digital Production Buzz interviewed William Henshall (a photographer/videography) and Signiant’s Tom Ohanian.

Each week Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ keeps listeners in touch with trends and technologies, people and practices in order to keep their audeince up to date with digital production, postproduction and evolving distribution opportunities.

You can download Creative Planet’s interview with Tom Ohanian here.

 

 Digital Media Prodction Buzz with Tom Ohanian: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the Boston Avid Users Group, held at National Video Boston. It was great to see many of the colleagues that I worked with at Avid and also to meet new members. The topic of discussion was “Accelerating Avid-to-Avid Transfers” which showcased the Signiant-enabled Avid Transfer Manager integration that we’ve completed. Directly from the Avid interface, the user can initiate a transfer manager send and that content is then secured and WAN-accelerated to its destination. Meanwhile, the Signiant administrator can log into the Signiant central manager (see screenshot), see all the transfers, and interact with those transfers by adjusting their network bandwidth utilization to get content to its destination when it needs to be there.

After the presentation, there were a lot of great questions so it’s clear that moving digital media content over networks is of concern and that, if anything, being part of the digital media supply chain whether you’re an editor, graphics designer, sound mixer, etc. will continue to place demands on working in distributed, collaborative environments.

But, of course, because it was an Avid event, prior to my formal Signiant presentation, I told a few stories about the early days at Avid (I was employee #8). While preparing for the event, I had done some rummaging through my Avid archives and started off the night by playing back what I believe is the earliest known video of “The Avid/1 Editing System”. This was done in August 1987 and prior to the system being given its formal name: “The Avid/1 Media Composer” (that came much later, in 1989). The video that you see below is the early prototype that ran on an Apollo workstation. Notice that the editing model is quite different than the eventual source/record model that defined the product in its first release. In this video, however, the filmstrip model is much more similar to early Quantel products. In any case, enjoy. It’s a piece of digital nonlinear editing history.

You can also find the video on YouTube. May the force be with you.

 

 Avid Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Interesting question but isn’t the question much bigger than this little skirmish in the Digital Media Revolution and isn’t the cable operator that doesn’t respond in a timely manner just helping the media companies regain turf?

How people consume content is changing …

Just last Sunday morning, I sat on the couch with my two kids with “some” TV show on (I really don’t remember what show and I am in tune to what they watch). I was able to steal my kids’ attention away from the big tube to old Underdog cartoons on my iPhone – score one for YouTube vs. transitional viewing habits. Why? Well, because, I was able to watch what I want when I wanted it without having to move.

Just this week I was at a business dinner and the topic turned to Boston Sports (after all this is the “Golden Era of Boston Sports” or the good old days as our grandparents used to say). Well we brought up Fitzy from www.townienews.com (rated M for maturity) since many of the people were from out of town and he represents the stereotypically Boston fan. To the joy of everyone at the table, I was again able to access Fitzy videos on YouTube. Score two for YouTube.

Why is this relevant – well, people are going to get paid – whether it is pay-per-view / download, ad supported viewing, product placements, subscription, etc. In order to create high value content, there needs to be a business model in place to support it, that is, an undeniable truth. The difference is – people want to consume content on their own terms and not be held hostage to the old distribution models.

So – if the cable companies or any of the other traditional delivery companies do not want to respond to the consumers’ demands, they are going to become just a dumb broadband pipe. Imagine the impact on your stock value if you strip out the revenue associated with the delivery of high value content and just become a commodity connectivity company. This is the precise reason that Verizon is investing so heavily in FIOS. This trend has a name “over the top”, where Media companies and other upstart Video/Content aggregation portals are able to bypass the content middlemen (read: cable and satellite providers) and deliver their content right to the consumer.

What does this enable them to do? Since cable got a foothold in our homes in the 1970s, media companies have had to share their advertising revenue with the cable operators. If you are sitting in the board room of a broadcaster, this was a necessary but unholy alliance. You were basically forced to share your revenue with the cable company because they provided the entry into the home.

Since broadcasters controlled ad rates since the days of Sarnoff and radio, they did not like this sharing model. Fast forward to October 6, 2006 and Google buys YouTube — wow $1.65B for a cute little video portal. The reverberation you hear today is the tremors that were heard in the board rooms of both the broadcasters and cable operators. Why? Because Google is attempting to muscle their way into their unholy alliance and do what it has done for Internet advertising (projected to be a $40b market this year WW) to every form of advertising worldwide (projected to be a $430b market this year). Google’s intention to capture market share away from the broadcaster/cable alliance is built into their $639 share price and imagine what will happen to the share prices of broadcasters and cable companies if Google succeeds in controlling ad rates and forces itself onto the content providers as their new partners?So what is going on is the Digital Media Revolution and there are at least 3 camps (I have not mentioned Apple, Tivo, Cisco, Microsoft yet and they all want to be heard from and to get their fair share of the pie) all vying to control how content is consumed and ultimately how we pay for it. Is all lost for the broadcasters? Well, no. Actually, the “Interweb” has armed the content providers with a weapon against their unholy “partners”. NBC has two weapons in this revolution - Hulu and NBCDirect – both aimed at delivering their content to the consumer without having to share revenue – either PPV or Ad generated with their “partners”. If content truly is King, then these two services are the queens or at least the Rooks and Knights.

So, if your cable company wants to send you their 800 number so you can cancel your service, they are merely setting themselves up to be just like one of the many failed dot-com companies of the late 1990s (anyone remember Pets.com?). You will find another way to get the content you want, when you want it on the device you want to view it on. The revolution is ongoing and if you prefer Fox Business over CNBC or you demand both - you will be able to consume them on your own terms. There are some very powerful companies with their eyes on dominating the media and entertainment markets - and thus ad revenue. All they have to do is meet your terms.

BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif wrote a story today about retailers being fined for failing to post special labels on their analog-only TVs to notify consumers that, come next year, their TVs will stop working.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a non-event! People’s appetite for larger and cooler flat panels will continue as prices continue to fall and new features are added. Just look at Craigslist to see all the 42″ plasmas for sale with the comment “upgraded to a bigger set”. Look at all the CRT sets that people are begging others to take.

Strong sales of new TVs have nothing to do with the FCC’s magic date of 2/19/09. This problem will get solved by the cable providers (and to a lesser degree by IPTV and SAT providers). In fact - no one could be happier about this problem than the cable companies! Why? Well, two reasons…

1) Analog channels are sucking up valuable cable spectrum! The cable companies only offer analog channels because they are required to - based on legacy contracts that they made with the individual towns years ago. Each analog channel consumes 6 Mhz of bandwidth, whereas you can fit around 10 channels in the same bandwidth using Quadrangle Amplitude Modulation (QAM). Why is this important? More bandwidth for the cable companies means more channels, more phone services, faster data rates. There are approximately 78 channels of analog that now can be replaced with 780 (yes 780 channels of digital) or some smaller number of HD channels. The cable companies have been dying to orphan Granny and her old analog TV set and rent her a cable box for $10 per month and overwhelm her with new tiers of service. The only thing that has been preventing her from doing so - the FCC and the local cable commission. Well, now, the FCC has given them the license and the cable companies can’t wait!

2) With approximately 70% penetration of the 111 million US households - cable and SAT are looking for a catalyst for the rest of the market to buy their services. But people act for two reason: fear and greed. HDTV is one. After years of admiring my DLP, my father-in-law called to get me to install his 50″ plasma above the mantle in his retirement pad. We have crossed some chasm. Greed - check. Granny fears that Alex Trebeck, Katie Couric and that nice Regis guy with that perky girl could be leaving their lives soon. Well — here comes the bombardment of ads on how big cable or SAT company can make the world safe again and make sure that your friends enter your house every day (all for the low introductory price of $29.99 per month). Fear - check.

Will there be lawsuits, of course. Like soldiers holding out on an island at the end of WWII - there will be people that feel the public trust has been violated. Why should they have to go to their closest big box store and shell out $19.95 for a converter to extend the life of that 1982 Sylvania set? But ultimately, this will get all get sorted out. Why, because there is lots of money in it.

Let’s just hope Granny gets taken care of and that the lawyers don’t get too much of it.

Customers and prospects keep asking the question…Does Digital Media Distribution helps the Media and Entertainment industry go green? You’re damn right it does. Tapes, dubbing, electricity, couriers (unless they’re on bicycles), traffic, exhaust, more tapes, DVDs, you know stuff that winds up in landfills….packages, bubble wrap, those disgusting packing peanuts that wind up everywhere…

Put a fork in it. Put digital media on networks. Move that content around. Schedule it and get it to where it needs to be. We have a customer who we spoke to yesterday who said that they needed to get a half-gig file from LA to Santa Monica and to a really creative guy who works out of his house. No gas, no traffic, no crazy lost productivity time. Cable modem, baby, open Internet!

WAN-accelerated software that secures and maximizes that open Internet connection. Voila! Happy customer, happier environment.

Paul Kedrosky has a post on the Fox Business/CNBC showdown (or as he calls it “smackdown”) that sets the stage nicely for what should be an interesting storyline heading into 2008 as major networks figure out how to capitalize on their digital media assets.

Whether or not Fox or CNBC becomes the first to put live, free, and streaming video on the web, there is an underlying thought that I think all of this is prefaced on. And that is that people want choice: choice of what content they’re going to watch, where they’re going to watch it, and when they’re going to watch it. And sites like YouTube only force us to understand that “choice” isn’t just the notion of programs online. The bottom line is that these “channels” enable you to see content from people who, for the most part, have no chance in hell of ever being on “broadcast television”. And what about the sheer nature of video on the web serving as either a fix for what ails you or research for something you’re working on? Wanna see close-ups of cataract eye operations? Yep, they’re right there. Wanna give your kid a quick introduction to Alvin and the Chipmunks? Yep, those frenetic furries are there too.

There was a point not too long ago when I watched Geoffrey Rush’s Oscar® winning performance in the 1996 film, “Shine”. I had seen the film when it first came out but watching the film again made me seek out “The Rach”, which for those of you who’ve seen the film know that this refers to Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3—third movement. For a week or so, I was intensely interested in seeing as many performances of this piece. And “in the past”—oh you know—a year or so ago—I’d have gone to the library and hoped that there, in a fat chance, there would be an old, tired VHS tape of a performance. But, naturally, I didn’t do that. Instead, I went to that beautiful World Wide Web of interconnected computers and found some amazing performances, one of which is the unbelievable Horowitz who doesn’t even look as if he’s broken a sweat after 15 minutes and 13 seconds of playing.

The point: I entertained myself, found as much as I could handle and did it without turning on “the television” once. For that need, that Internet connection was beautiful….

And to Kedrosky’s point, would I have put up with ad-supported? Did it have to be free for me to partake? All I can say is that when you want to find something that’s meaningful to you, and immerse yourself in that subject, as long as it’s not an egregiously large output (money, banner ads, etc.), you’ll do it.

Listen in as NBC Universal’s Nader Kazemi, Deployment Manager for Digital Media Delivery, explains the challenges he faced before having Signiant in place and how Signiant solved his problems. It’s less than 10 minutes long and worth the listen! Nader specifically discusses having:

• A globally distributed environment with high latency

• Many different workflows with a number of variations, requirements

• The need for a central management of aggregated systems

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode of the Digital Media Galaxy podcast, Tom Ohanian and Tony Lapolito discuss what’s been happening at Signiant these last few months. The pair discuss the recent success of IBC and Tom offers the details of a couple of new Signiant customers and the problems that Signiant solved. The two also dish on ravioli in Italy…you’ll have to listen in!

We hope you enjoy this podcast. If you have any comments or feedback, please email editor@digitalmediagalaxy.com.

 

 Signiant Update [39:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ahh… the good old days when we all understood it. What it was, what it did, and what it offered. And today? When asked to define “television” do most of us even know where to start? Are we watching? Who’s watching? Which version of the show did YOU watch last night? Did you watch on that screen that is typically in your living room that either has an antenna or a coaxial cable attached to it? Or, did you watch “the show” after it aired as part of a five-day ad-supported download to your PC? Or, did you watch the show on you iPod after buying it online without commercials intact?

The alternatives for consuming content just continue to grow and grow. And they are doing so with dramatic acceleration. NBC-Direct, the newly announced initiative to offer ad-supported long form content of such shows as “Heroes” and “Bionic Woman” equates to yet another option for consuming media and entertainment programming.

Creating content and moving it to the appropriate locations, in the appropriate format and making it available not before, and up until, specific time periods involve a dizzying set of requirements to actually pull it off.

Moving content FHTTH (from Hollywood to the Home) means connecting to a server where content is ingested. It means moving that content from raw form to systems that are used to edit it and finalize it. It means moving it to and from the audio editorial and mixing stage. It means encoding that final content into the various forms that are needed for the final deliverables. Then it means adding the ad-supported commercials, banners, promos, etc. and adding DRM (digital rights management). And, of course, it all has to be populated on the viewer-facing website and moved to the CDN (the content delivery network).

To accomplish this at the dizzying rate that the Media & Entertainment industry is moving is no simple accomplishment.

I’m afraid I can’t help myself: I watch “television” on a piece of glass connected to a coax cable in my family room and on a computer screen and on an iPod. I’m not there on a mobile, but as a Red Sox fan, as we get closer to the playoffs, you never know….

In this video clip, Signiant’s VP of Marketing, Tony Lapolito, talks about the excitement of IBC 2007. Signiant was the platinum sponsor of the IPTV Zone and demonstrated the latest version of its Digital Media Distribution Management Suite.

Signiant also made announcements regarding the company’s recently formed relationships with BT, Marquis and IBM.