Rob Hyodo

Troy Wolverton’s article in today’s Mercury News titled “Putting Off Blue-Ray” noted reasons why you should wait before diving in and purchasing a Blu-Ray player. According to Wolverton, waiting a few months could get you:

• a more affordable player
• a better selection of movies (of which there are currently only 500 on Blu-Ray)
• and better features

Some of the features Wolverton speaks of are faster load times, picture-in-picture for director commentaries (supported by a few devices now) and downloadable, interactive content.

My division of Technicolor is currently developing applications for Blu-Ray interactive features and demoed some of these features in the Blue-Ray Disc Association booth at CES this year. I was among those demoing these features at our own booth and must say that responses were very positive and encouraging for the development of the technology.

If you have an HD TV and absolutely cannot wait for a better picture but don’t want to spend the $360 for a Blu-Ray player, Wolverton suggests getting a DVD player that will “upscale” the image of a standard-definition DV, which you can pick up for under $100. He states that unless you’re doing a side-by-side comparison, you may not notice a difference (unless you’re like my video-processing cohorts in Anaheim).

He does add, though, for the ideal “upscaling” experience, your HD TV should be less than 50 inches and should be more than eight feet away from you. I have a 52 inch HD TV. From the front of the TV to the front of the couch is eight feet. Leaning back would put my eyeballs about ten feet from the TV. I think I’ll wait for better, more affordable Blu-Ray players.

Today marked VON’s last day of conferences. This was my first VON and I now have a better understanding of the VoiP industry than I could have imagined. This entire week, tough, I was hard pressed to find discussions that were relevant to the industry in which I belong; namely, the online content delivery industry.

Perhaps the most relevant session I attended was yesterday’s discussion on Business Models for Web TV. The VON website described the session as follows:

Whether it is providing innovative digital marketing through streaming video ads, applications that measure audiences for Internet TV or working with content partners to provide unique programming options to your web TV portfolio mix, Web TV is creating a new industry of vendors, applications and services for the delivery of Video on the Net. Hear about the unique new applications and services these panelists have brought to market and see why you might want to take advantage of the business opportunities in Web TV.

• Who is making money off of Web TV services?
• What are the applications that help to drive profits?
• What are the new technologies driving Web TV success?

Fellow attendee, Kfir Pravda, summed the session up very nicely in his blog posting, “VON Live blogging - Business model for Web TV.”

As Kfir stated, the only business model really discussed in was regarding advertising.

From all the new media conferences I’ve attended over the last few months, advertising seems to be the topic to discuss in terms of how to monetize from online content delivery. Regardless of the core topic, there seems to be a natural gravitation towards the discussion of advertising.

To encapsulate what’s being said about advertising in a nutshell, the overall consensus is that advertising works here in the U.S. (Europe is a slightly different story, where they are used subscription-based models). The time-shifted model is ever popular because of the convenience of being able to access the content you want and people don’t mind having to sit through a few ads if the content is free.

Of course, this summary can branch into a hundred different debatable threads of discussion, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Hulu, which launched last week, is a perfect example of this model. And when someone I know in a completely unrelated industry sends me an email that says, “You gotta check out this site! Free movies and TV!” I think that speaks volumes of a company that is on the right track.