Signiant’s Digital Media Galaxy

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 [13:08m]: 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…