Tag: global-channels

Browing Around

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

After Joost, Blinkx is the latest provider to port its Internet TV application into the browser, showing people’s continuing reluctance to download and install applications (especially since morbid warnings of the immediate demise of their PC ensue whenever you try and do anything to a PC running Vista and/or anti-virus software).

Google’s introduction of Chrome and Microsoft’s rather lame IE8 beta show how important this space is becoming. The browser is the new desktop. Indeed, when you switch on your TV set top box  you may not realise it, but it is almost certainly running the interface in a web browser.
A number of smallish companies such as Ant, Oregan and Opera have made their names in supplying these browsers not only to STB producers, but increasingly to games manufacturers such as Sony.
Now, these browsers are being built into screens and are fast becoming a key component in the race to control the TV interface of the future
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Browing Around

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Browsing Around

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

After Joost, Blinkx is the latest provider to port its Internet TV application into the browser, showing people’s continuing reluctance to download and install applications (especially since morbid warnings of the immediate demise of their PC ensue whenever you try and do anything to a PC running Vista and/or anti-virus software).

Google’s introduction of Chrome and Microsoft’s rather lame IE8 beta show how important this space is becoming. The browser is the new desktop. Indeed, when you switch on your TV set top box  you may not realise it, but it is almost certainly running the interface in a web browser.
A number of smallish companies such as Ant, Oregan and Opera have made their names in supplying these browsers not only to STB producers, but increasingly to games manufacturers such as Sony.
Now, these browsers are being built into screens and are fast becoming a key component in the race to control the TV interface of the future
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Browsing Around

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About Face

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

The last few days has been a bit of a transmogrification for me. It has also taught me a lesson.

Down the years many people have come to me proposing to use Amazon’s hosting for the CDN delivery. I was dubious of this from a technical and delivery perspective, but even more so from a cost perspective. Paying charges higher than those demanded of CDNs for a non-CDN solution seemed nuts, especially when it didn’t offer streaming capabilities.
However, recently I’ve been taking a closer look at some of the webs services available for Internet TV and realised that the game has moved on and that some of these services are now becoming viable alternatives – under certain circumstances – to traditional self-hosted or outsourced services.
The rise of web services goes unabated and a huge amount of functions that used to demand installed processes are now available online and can be turned on or off like a tap; and you pay for what you use.
There are a  number of online encoding services available, from Google Video, which is free both for encoding and then for serving, but provides reasonably low quality, to services like HeyWatch, which is more configurable but relatively expensive 10c per encode credit) compared to using a free local application like SUPER.
This led me to return to Amazon’s S3 hosting services to find that the prices have become more reasonable, albeit still only offering http serving.
This market is changing so fast that I’ve been guilty of thinking off old information. So, it’s time to trawl the market again to see what’s new, what’s changed and what’s improved.
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About Face

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City Slicker

Saturday, September 13th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Asking the discredited former boss of a second rate telco to write a report on the future of broadband in the UK from the comfort of his city centre home shows how self-serving government in the UK has become. His whitewash makes the Hutton Report seem anti-establishment.

Francesco Caio, former CEO of C&W has concluded that there is no need for Government intervention to ensure the development of the UK’s broadband network, but that the onus should be with the regulator. And the regulator is OFCOM, that most self-serving of urban organisations pontificating uselessly from its glass palace on the Thames.
Ok, Frankie boy, come and live in rural Wales for a while and let’s see how insightful your report is. I just hope that the Welsh Assembly Government and its Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents will take this as a challenge, not an excuse not to intervene.
It’s a no brainer that major cities will very soon have fibred networks available, but in an age where knowledge and information are our everyday currency, and one of the major reasons for rural poverty, such a network should be as important as water or electricity.
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City Slicker

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Giving Away The Farm

Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

The news that Google is selling NBC/Universal TV ad inventory is hugely significant.
First of all, NBC are a bit better than Google at selling TV inventory after fifty years in the business, I suspect, but NBC has decided to be the bravest TV co in the market (and largely been vindicated to date).

So, why are they giving away a whole part of their business to Google?

On the one hand you could argue that they’ve seen the future and have decided not to fight against the inevitable, but rather to embrace it. On the other hand it could point to a bad upfront this year which has left them with more unsold inventory than in previous years.
Google have struggled with audio and video advertising – YouTube is far from being the money spinner it should be – so this is a real breakthrough.

The trouble is, NBC is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. But I have a niggly feeling that they have just given away the farm. A broadcast network exists to build and sell audiences. What happens when they give the selling part to someone else, even if it’s a small part of the inventory ?

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Giving Away The Farm

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