IPTV Revolution Put on Hold

prostoalex writes "Business Week says the IPTV revolution might be postponed. As telecoms are launching the new service, they are facing the problem of lack of content: "But improvements like these can happen only if content providers - media companies and movie studios like Disney - play along. So far, it seems, they're not. Disney didn't return calls from BusinessWeek Online seeking comment, and it hasn't signed with any outside distributor to provide its movies for video-on-demand. Most studios have agreed to only limited video-on-demand distribution, fearing it could cut into revenues from rentals and DVD sales - now generating bigger income streams than the box office itself." The solution just might be buying out content companies, like Mark Cuban does. In the retrospect the Comcast bid for Disney and AOL buying Time Warner start making sense."

Comments

you could have fooled me

[croddy]

all my tv content already comes through the internet...

Then start with niche content

[Joe U]

Start offering things like Anime or SciFi, they can use the expanded market. Once companies realise this is for real, more content will show up.

Re:Then start with niche content

[madfgurtbn]

Start offering things like Anime or SciFi, they can use the expanded market. Once companies realise this is for real, more content will show up.

Exactly. The studios will keep their heads in the sand until guys in their basements are making better content for peanuts.

From TFA: The Internet technology could transform home entertainment. Problem is, what's the point of unlimited channels if studios won't provide content?

The point is the major studios are looking over the precipice of irrelevance. Who cares if major studios take their ball and go home?

We're now in an age when the average home theatre built for a couple thousand bucks provide a better entertainmnent experience than going to a "real" theatre, and somebody is going to provide content to the home via the internet. If the major studios don't do it, someone else will. Likely it will be a distributed effort of many small businesses rather than a few large studios.

It does not take $millions to produce amazing animation or produce, edit, and distribute high quality content anymore. Therefore, the studios are also losing their monopoly on producing high quality content.

The only thing left for the studios will be the $200M blockbusters, but those blockbusters will be competing directly against equally (or more)compelling content created for $200k by small independents or $2k by guys working in their basements.

too useful to go to waste

[Peter La Casse]

The technology behind Video on Demand is useful enough that even if the "on Demand" part isn't exposed to the customer, eventually it will become the backbone of the cable infrastructure. The idea of streaming shows off of a hard drive sitting at the head end and digitally inserting local commercials, etc. is a good one, and interactive commercials ("click here to purchase!" or "here let me run this ActiveX control on your TV") are the wave of the future, for better or for worse.

Why not?

[SuperKendall]

I don't understand why the channels that shop themselves out to cable companies (like the SCiFi channel) do not join up with some IPTV provider and do the natural thing of selling TV episodes over the internet.

It's a market that is uttery ripe for the plucking.

Same complaint, new medium...

[binaryspiral]

65535 channels and nothing on...

Re:Interesting

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Of course, TV on demand has absolutely no benefits. Like the chance of offering content that wouldn't normally show up on even conventional cable channels. Not all of it will be good, but I think it offers opportunities for independents to distribute their videos without having to suck up to cable giants for limited air time at a time slot that no one watches.

And since it's a web server dynamically serving one channel at a time to you, it would be extremely easy for the IPTV provider to record what one watches.

That is a good point, but lots of webservers are already recording what they can of what you do. I suppose you could flush your cookies and never log into any site and such, but that's extreme.

Don't tell me that Tivo doesn't record what you do, and they offer the ability to timeshift in a way that is similar to what IPTV might offer. They say they don't record such information if you ask them not to, but I don't trust them not to do so. I expect the cable-company provided PVR boxes to be even shadier.

Yeah, right

[wyldeone]

The solution just might be buying out content companies, like Mark Cuban does. In the retrospect the Comcast bid for Disney and AOL buying Time Warner start making sense.

Yeah, because when a company has electronics/software components and media components they always work. What about Sony, who potentially lost its stronghold on the portable music player market because the media division wouldn't let the hardware division support the mp3 format on their players, fearing that their devices would just be used for the listening of their own pirated content. The content companies will come around eventually, just as they did for vhs, and as the music industry is starting to for digital distrubution. Buying them out will only cause problems (as it has for AOL/TimeWarner) and will serve little purpose.

Cartels strike again

[GrouchoMarx]

But improvements like these can happen only if content providers - media companies and movie studios like Disney - play along.

Once again, we see the problem of media consolidation. We don't even consider the possibility that *gasp* someone other than Disney could provide content worth watching. There are only 4 media conglomerates left, and they're all in bed with each other. None of them is going to try and get a jump on the new IPTV (or other) market, because they've all agreed that they don't feel like it. That's what being a cartel means.

They, because they have been allowed vertical monopolies (AOL/Time Warner) and government-supported monopolies on content (copyright) are able to SINGLE HANDEDLY HOLD BACK TECHNOLOGY.

This is not Promoting the Progress of Science or the Useful Arts.

I didn't used to be opposed to copyright, but the more I see, the more I wonder if it causes more problems than it's worth.

Re:-$135 BILLION "starts to make sense"??

[mabhatter654]

That was only because AOL's "play money" changed "value" versus TW's "play money". In the end, I'd stand by that decision too... the trouble with AOL/TW is that the TW suits didn't take the right steps for AOL to be independant in it's new niche. AOL was looking at the opportunity to span the spectrum of print/radio/TV/internet/movie offerings all properly paid for and offered... AOLs move is much the same as Apple's move to iTMS. AOL want's out of the "internet connection" business... it's thankless commodity work not worth doing.. honestly, the telcos can do it better. As long as there's an "equivelant evil" sized company to keep the information seperate from the hardware.

Even Microsoft is trying to do the same thing, just by ramming standards down and making everybody pay them for it. That's the whole point of M$ making such a big deal of MSN search... Google and Yahoo are ahead of the game because they are entirely independant, but don't have the media allies to back it up. AOL was just taking the "next step" about 5 years too soon.

Near VOD (NVOD) can be good too

[cheekyboy]

True, but sometimes people DO NOT want to choose down to that detail, they have had enough of 'choosing' all day at work with countless decisions, they want to relax and be supprised.

So, instead of a traditional ONE station of variety TV, you could have 1000 stations.

Station 1: Series 1 Simpsons Episodes looped
Station 2: All IMAX docos looped
Station 3: Stargate Atlantis looped

You can have NEAR VOD. eg as per foxtel.com.au , where it can have 4 channels dedicated to one movied with 30 min offsets to start times. Sure its a limitation of satelites, but once you get 100000 viewers on AOL, its better to multicast it otherwise your routers are going to burn. (couldnt be bothered with the maths but its huge)

I really doubt you could scale 1.3m users at 512kbits each, its just not worth it.

Eventually things will scale well, but when they dont, you have to choose the next best thing thats technically possible.

Now re PAUSING, you can still achieve that via multicast, your 'client software' can keep downloading but 'cache it up' on disk. You could pause the whole show and have a 'copy' on your local cache, that might 'expire' in 24hrs, but still thats just as good as 'live real VOD', you just cache it before you wish to view it on the multicast network.

I want my GTV (google tv)

Bypass the bottleneck

[Anonymous Coward]

The telecoms can't get content from the distributors, while most foreign or independent films can't get carried by American distributors at all. Something is fundamentally wrong here.

Solution: Create a new market. Go directly to the original content creators. Start with a mix of independent and foreign films, independent and foreign networks (including news), and round it out with free-to-air satellite channels, public access productions, and pay-per-view programming.

Normally I don't watch any TV, as it is 99% junk. I attend quite a few art films. So if an IPTV service came along with the above features, I would definitely subscribe.

There is no shortage of available content. However there does seem to be a bottlneck which needs to be bypassed. If the legacy media giants don't want to play, then just leave them behind in the dust.

There is so much content outside of the US

[MemoryDragon]

media MAFIA (Movie and Film Industry Association) the companies just have to look into other countries. I am not talking about bollywood here (which produces more movie than anyone else, but most of them have questionable quality) France also is a huge television and movie producer, germany produces most of its tv content itself, and italy also does, at least France and Italy have very high quality standards, whereals germany has high output (mostly soaps, soap related stuff and sometimes gems and good comedies in between and excellent cartoon movies which are on the rough side of humor)

If those companies start to look outside of the US for content, they at least have some, and since most of this stuff produced outside of the US is sold only to one or two countries besides the country of origin they might be eager to hear about online distribution in the US or on a worldwide scale.

But is it...

[ImaLamer]

So do I, except it's legal.

Seriously, I tried this service a while back and it works really well. So far I belive it only works on Windows, although Real has released a DRM-enabled client for Linux for quite some time ago. I know you hear DRM and groan - the service is worth the cost however. I believe it's $13/month with unlimited viewing of as many movies as you can download. The movies "expire" but that is expected - but they offer a live feed of the Starz channel along with it.

Almost as good as Netflix or Blockbuster online. Don't even have to send anything back. When it expires, you just can't play it. I think HBO should offer the same type of service, but they are owned by Time Warner (my local cable provider). Shame too, they have the most content and offer the most channels.

Re:But is it...

[ImaLamer]

Let me add this:

We've got a lot of television content online as it is. Not only does Real have a premium service, but AOL for broadband does the same. I tried AOL for free (thanks a lot Gratis Networks!) a while ago and was really amazed at the videos you get. All kinds of stand-up, nature, music and so forth.

When I canceled AOL the guy asked me how I liked it. He claimed that he was a Linux user so he couldn't use AOL - I told him I was suprised with all of the stuff they offered for free (you know, with the monthly service). It is almost worth it just for that.

Oh, and don't forget that under Winamp you can watch all types of "Internet TV". Family Guy, Sealab, pr0n, Seinfeld, all kinds of stuff. Look for the Salt Water Chimp stations.

[Sarcasm]

[Tom]

Oh, really? Whowoulddhavethought?[/sarcasm]

I work for a company that launched an IPTV service about 4 years ago. Aside form lots of porn (come on, what is the #1 advantage of not having to go to a rental and face live clerks?) content was mostly B movies and stuff.

Funny thing is, it wasn't security or piracy the content providers were concerned about. They simply didn't think it would be a market large enough to "waste" their blockbusters on.

Remember, that was four years ago. Thinks have changed a little, and we're about to re-launch the service. Let's see how it goes this time around.