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Startup Marries Flash Video with P2P
PPLive, a Singapore Shanghai-based start-up that has a P2P video platform for distributing television in Asia has developed a way to accelerate and distribute Flash videos over peer-to-peer networks. The application called PPVA, sits in your task bar and when it detects a Flash video stream, it tries to find folks using the PPVA network who may have cached the same clip. This is good for solving the problems with very-popular files, since there is a likelihood that many more people would have watched the clip.
While this seems like a good idea, the guys at NewTeeVee who uncovered the story are being cautious, mostly because of the beta nature of PPVA. The other issue with this technology - it could make the video aggregators like YouTube crazy. Why? Because the first few seconds of the video are streamed from say YouTube and rest from the PPVA network. “This becomes an even bigger issue when advertisers start requesting more detailed statistics about online video usage,” NewTeeVee writes. Nevertheless, it could have some interesting implications for P2P CDN offerings.
For NBC, Others an Olympian Online Bonanza
Liz Miller says that these days all people are talking about is Michael Phelps, the winningest Olympian, and a former presidential candidate’s lover. Eric Schmidt, director of media and advertising evangelism at Microsoft, tells Beet.tv that nearly 2 million people tuned in to watch the Beijing Olympic Games on NBC’s web site, making it one of the much-watched online events. The interest is peaking elsewhere as special Olympics-oriented sites created by Yahoo, AOL and others are experiencing a big bump. I am not one of those 2 million, and probably won’t be. I am giving the Olympics the pass (not that anyone cares or should care), as a silent personal protest against China and its policies against Tibet.
My silent protest is also against the impotency of the global corporations that kowtow to China in the hope of someday making money off the booming Chinese market, or the world media that seems to be playing along with whatever limitations China seems to have imposed. I am glad to find that there is at least one other person who shares my feelings.
Today, for instance, YouTube took off a video of a protest held outside the Chinese consulate in New York City at the request of International Olympics Committee, because the video shows the five interlocking rings. Is beaming five interlocked rings on the screen a copyright infringement? Is the IOC looking for royalty payments or did the Chinese make them put some pressure on YouTube? Has the IOC become a collection of shylocks, looking for their next pound of flesh and having sold their Olympian ideals in the process? In comparison, somehow the dalliances of former presidential candidates seem less dirty.
Content Offerings Only Reach a Few Million TVs
Over the past few weeks, there have been a flurry of announcements from Microsoft, Netflix, TiVo, YouTube, Roku and others detailing how their devices can be used to play movies and other video-based content, delivered via the Internet, on the TV. Industry insiders are speculating that with these announcements the tide is finally turning, that Internet-delivered video will soon make a big impact in the consumer living room.
When looking at any new technology offering, however, market penetration rates are crucial. As we’ve seen in the past, the best technology is not what always wins — all that matters is what consumers adopt. With that in mind, here is a breakout of the numbers for these TV-connected devices and content offerings:
- Xbox 360: 10.5 million units sold in the U.S. (source: NPD)
- Netflix: 8.2 million members (source: Netflix)
- PS3: 4.9 million units sold in the U.S. (source: NPD)
- TiVo Series 3: 250,00 units sold (estimate). While TiVo won’t say how many have been sold, they did say that 750,000 Series 2 and Series 3 units are connected via broadband. Estimate assumes that two-thirds of them were Series 2.
- Apple TV: Roughly 350,000 units sold (estimate). While Apple won’t say exactly how many have been sold, published reports put the figure at less than 400,000, missing Apple’s goal of 1 million units.
- VUDU: 15,000 units sold (estimate). While VUDU won’t confirm a number, they did say that sales are in the “five figures.”
- Netflix Player by Roku: 10,000 units sold (estimate). Roku isn’t saying how many they’ve sold, but realistically speaking, how many could they have sold in just a couple weeks before they ran out?
By adding up the above numbers we’re left with 19.3 million units sold. On paper, that seems like a half-way decent number. But if we break down these numbers even further, the real number of consumers capable of getting these content offerings is much smaller — so small, in fact, that they barely register.
Take for instance the recent Microsoft and Netflix announcement. While neither side will say just how many consumers have both an Xbox Live account and a Netflix account, it’s clearly less than half of Netflix’s 8.2 million members. So if we estimate on the high side and assume that a third of Netflix’s members have an Xbox 360 console and an Xbox Live account, we come up with a mere 2.7 million consumers.
As for the PS3, Sony only launched their online video service late last week, so it’s hard to estimate any numbers. But of the 4.9 million PS3s sold in the U.S. to date, not all of them are online. Estimating that 20 percent of them are not connected via broadband, we’ll use an install number of 4 million consumers.
When it comes to TiVo, you have to estimate how many of the 750,000 broadband-connected TiVo units are Series 3. Estimating that a third of the units are Series 3 would give us 250,000 consumers. But how many consumers have more than one TiVo? I have two Series 3 TiVos in my house, so while I am counted as two units, I’m only one consumer. TiVo won’t say how many customers have more than one unit, but taking that into account, the number of real consumers that TiVo is reaching with the Series 3 is probably more like 200,000.
That leaves us with the Apple TV, the Netflix player by Roku and VUDU. Using the numbers above, I estimate they reach 375,000 consumers combined.
Adding up all of the new numbers gives us just over 7.2 million consumers, far lower than the original 19.3 million hardware units that have been sold. And this 7.2 million number is even more skewed in that it does not take into account unique consumers. How many of the 7.2 million consumers have an Xbox 360 and a TiVo or an Xbox 360 and a PS3? If you estimate that 20 percent of them have multiple devices, you’re left with 5.7 million unique users. That’s a very small number. And then you have to estimate what percentage of those consumers will adopt and use the new services, and over what period of time?
Even if you had 50 percent penetration from day one, which you won’t, that would still be less than 3 million consumers using these devices to get Internet-based video to their TVs. While it is good to see more content options coming to consumers, adding up all of the install numbers for these devices gives a stark picture of just how small the install base really is. The market is still too fragmented, with too many different devices, all limited by a lack of premium content.
In the long run, the cable operators still have the best shot at bringing Internet-based video to the TV. Set-top boxes still have the most penetration with consumers and provide them with multiple ways of getting content. Unless of course you’re like me and only have TiVo, in which case the single-stream cable cards that most cable operators use don’t allow for any of the functionality of cable TV set-top boxes.
Dan Rayburn is EVP of StreamingMedia.com and has his own blog at BusinessOfVideo.com.
Now Playing On YouTube: Hulu
Updated: We all know there’s no love lost between Hulu, the Hollywood-backed online video service, and Google-owned YouTube. The two companies have taken snipes at each other. For instance, at the NAB trade show, Hulu was trash-talking YouTube. Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, said that you can’t make money by posting unauthorized and copyrighted videos — with a YouTube page behind him.
Hating your rival is part of the game, which is why it’s hard to ignore the irony of a Hulu Channel on YouTube. YES! What you just read is right. The LA Times discovered the channel and posted about it on their blog. Seems a little disingenuous! The reason for the Hulu-on-YouTube channel is pretty basic — YouTube has what Hulu hopes for: traffic and an audience. Hulu has content from its backers. It makes perfect sense for the two of them to start working together. Kilar should remember that you can’t make money by posting to a site that doesn’t have a lot of traffic.
NewTeeVee talked to Hulu and got a confirmation from them that indeed they are the ones who set up the channel for promotional purposes.
YouTube head of premium content partnerships Jordan Hoffner says: “It’s fantastic that Hulu is providing content to our global community and using our platform to grow and drive traffic to their business. Media companies large and small can set up channels or even partner with us to interact with the world’s largest and most active community. “
Featured Firefox Extension: Take Online Media Offline with UnPlug
Does HD On a PC Screen Matter?
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen during an onstage chat at our NewTeeVee Live conference responded to our questions about video quality by saying that YouTube will boost the quality of the videos, but not at the expense of user experience. Buffering and video playback delays were an anathema to the popular destination site, and YouTube would be careful about how it tackled the issue of video quality.
The company was experimenting with ways to gauge the speed of broadband connections and improve the video quality accordingly, he said. He told C/Net WebWare that this technology would be available widely over the next three months. Somehow it all got misconstrued into YouTube offering high-definition videos on their site, an erroneous message that was repeated quite a few times, and eventually settling into a debate about high-definition vs. high-quality videos.
What matters more? It all depends on the screen the video is destined for, opined panelists on my Network Makeover panel preceding our conversation with Steve. They were almost unanimous in pointing out that that HD video on a PC screen doesn’t matter.
Verizon’s Jeff Harris summed it up best when he said that resolution is dependent on the destination screen. A big plasma screen should get HD video, but most laptop screens don’t need HD and you can’t really tell the difference between higher quality and HD videos on, say, a 14- or 15-inch screen. Cisco’s Kip Compton rightfully pointed out that the trend is towards higher quality. I think that is something we can all agree upon.
What do you think? What is the minimum acceptable quality you want from your web video?
Related Posts:
- Does HD Online Matter? AOL and CBS Say No.
- Akamai’s new HD strategy: Show, Don’t Tell
- Is web video ready for an HD upgrade?
DownloadHelper - Media download Firefox extension
Hulu Hands-On Review in One Word: Brilliant
This morning, between fielding phone calls, answering emails and writing blog posts, I have been watching TV, a lot of TV…on Hulu, the new online video portal backed by NBC (GE), News Corp. (NWS) and $100 million in funding from Providence Equity Partners.
Before I go any further, a mea culpa: I mocked the service, and its backers, all through the summer. From the moment I learned about the new company, I was skeptical. And now, after spending three hours or so on the service, I am ready to eat crow. And not just any crow, but rotten, six-month-old crow: I have never been more wrong.
Now to my first impressions: This is an awesome service, one that worked flawlessly on my Macbook Pro and ThinkPad T61 without a hitch. The quality of the video shows is good enough to enjoy without straining the eyes, and even in the full-screen mode, the Flash video looks pretty amazing.
As Liz had noted yesterday, the site is clean, sparse and well laid out, taking a cue from the on-the-air (old TV) roots of its parents. And I can use this service to catch up on all the episodes of “Scrubs” I’ve missed.
Hulu doesn’t seem like a YouTube (GOOG) competitor. (This is yet another thing I was wrong about.) What it really is trying to do is time shift — and place shift — television on a massive scale. It’s basically an attempt to counterbalance the tight control that cable and satellite networks have over distribution.
It’s the kind of service that should scare startups trying to develop their own distribution platforms, such as Joost. It is also the kind of service, if it can attract enough viewers, that could succeed in relegating YouTube and others like YouTube to the “user-generated content” world, at least in the U.S. market. The social media features alone, such as sharing, are good enough to get Hulu some traction. I loved the ease with which you can create short, embeddable clips from full-length TV episodes, and the slider-based clip-and-share feature is pretty awesome.
Hulu has a long way to go before it can claim an audience as large as YouTube’s, and no one knows how much pressure it will face from its distribution partners, such as the cable companies. There are already rumblings about the draconian terms of service, and it’s unfortunate that its big media parents are restricting the site to web-based streaming and expiration dates for fresh episodes of new shows. But I think that when the beta becomes publicly available, you are going to be pleasantly surprised. For once, I am happy to be wrong.
Hulu, NBC-News Corp Online Service Launches
The long-awaited and much-derided NBC (GE) and News Corp (NWS) joint venture Hulu will make a somewhat public debut this week, opening up a private beta tonight of its web video service and initiating distribution of its movies, TV shows, and mashups on AOL (TWX), Comcast (CMCSA), MSN (MSFT), MySpace, and Yahoo (YHOO). Full report on NewTeeVee.com. Will it be able to beat YouTube and other players in the online video portal game? Take our poll (below the fold)
Related & Previous Coverage of Hulu: Big Media vs YouTube & Google: Smart or Not. Also: NBC confirms pulling YouTube content for Hulu and No more NBC shows on iTunes Mad Money & Battle For The 10th Spot NewCo now has new CEO Is NewCo really worth a billion dollars? NewCo: Nuts & Bolts from an Insider.
