Rob Hyodo

Did you catch any of the Olympics over the weekend? If you did, chances are many of you were among the millions that watched it on NBCOlympics.com.

NBC secured exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic games in the U.S. That’s satellite, cable and online. NBC paid the International Olympic Committee nearly $900 million for this exculsivity. Staggering? Yes. But not a bad deal once you consider the numbers and the advertising dollars to be made from this.

NBC reports 4.8 million unique users were on the site Saturday, generating 62.7 million page views for that day alone. My 7-year old daughter quickly became annoyed with the ads, however, without even knowing what they were.

We searched for the “Live” games and ads preceded the stream of the games. My daughter exclaimed, “I thought we were gonna watch swimming!” “We are,” I replied, to which she asked, “Then why is it,… this?”

I explained to her that these were “commercials.” And we saw plenty of them from G.E. Once she knew they were commercials, any time we switched to another live stream and saw an ad, she would say, “Ugh! Why do they keep showing this? It’s the same thing!” lol

Annoyance to a 7-year old aside, I enjoyed the experience. If you can get through a pre-roll the video itself is not bad. The value is the option to watch any live event you want. Too bad we’re a little behind on broadband speeds here in the U.S. Full-screen HD of this kind of video would have been sweet!

Something else I want to point out is the fact that they used Silverlight! Given the ubiquity of Flash, I thought this was a brave move on NBC’s part. There have been a few complaints (i.e. older Macs that aren’t Intel-based), but it seems as a whole, the Silverlight integration has been successful. I see this as a huge win for Microsoft/Silverlight.

I’d love to see the statistics of this online venture when this is all done. So far, it seems largely successful for NBC, Microsoft and Limelight who’s providing the streaming.

Update: I do have to point out a metadata flaw my daugher noticed. She wanted to watch archived video of  “Athens 2004: Russia Group - 5 Ribbons” but cliking on it played the video that preceded it in the UI (”Athens 2004 - Russia Group - 3 hoops, 2 balls”). The thumbnail image was corretly displayed; just not the text.

Ever hear a song that you know should exist somewhere other than in your dusty collection of LPs or tapes stashed in storage? I mean should exist somewhere in digital format?

Perhaps you’ll find something on Lost Tunes. (If you live in the UK –> International launches to ensue in coming months)

Universal Music Group has just launched a site where you can find some old favorites. Lost Tunes, powered by digital media company, 7digital, provides some of those old, overlooked or hard-to-find tunes as both albums ($11.85+) or as individual downloads ($1.96). Apparently, 134 of the 829 albums currently available on the site can’t be found elsewhere (except maybe in your private stash).

The 320kpbs track MP3s are DRM-free so they should work with any MP3-compatible device.

Question is, how successful will this be? This is not top 40 stuff. Will the mass consumer find value in old tunes? Perhaps. Depending on the album, I might purchase a digital copy here rather than dig through storage to uncover a decrepid version of an old favorite.

For example, in browsing the categories, I went to Rock –> Heavy Metal (yes, I once listened to heavy metal) and found none other than Dio, The Last in Line! I only have a tape of that. Would I buy this tonight? Eh, probably not, but I bet there are some willing to.

So I think success will be marginal. It’s definitely an additional revenue stream for repurposed content and will perhaps cater more to the parents of Ge-Xers. that said, Lost Tunes is not trying to be an iTunes. They’re simply providing us with digital versions of what we may no longer be able to find, which sounds good to me.

This just posted on Contentinople… “Technicolor Teams With Highwinds for Streaming.” I can’t get into the specifics of this, but I’m very excited about what Technicolor and Highwinds will be able to do together. I’m working on some marketing material and data sheets on what we will accomplish as a team, and I think Technicolor’s development and Highwinds capbailities will yield a great offering!

Update: Another article available on Streaming Media: www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10543

I’ve neglected posting for a while now. I’ve been out on business trips, conferences and have been taking a lot of time getting my hands dirty in my new duties. I’ve talked to many people and have had great conversations with CinemaNow, Highwinds and others as part of my new role at Technicolor. As such, my next post (coming up in minutes!) will regard Highwinds.

Part of what I do for my job entails design work. I don’t pretend to be masterful at either graphic or web design, and often find that I need a boost of inspiration to spark ideas and integrate them with my own thinking. Here’s great a resource I came across that links to many website design-related sites for ideas and inspiration:

12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration

Last month legendary rock band,Motely Crue, debuted their latest single, “Saints of Los Angeles” through a new channel for delivery of music: Rock Band.

Originally available exclusively through the Rock Band video game, the song has sold over 80 thousand copies with the game itself as the channel of delivery. This is more than twice the number sold through other online methods such as iTunes or Amazon.

At $3 a download through Rock Band, that’s quite a chunk for Motely Crue for a single of an unreleased album (full-length album due out in June).

Would you pay $3 to download a song? Perhaps not through the traditional online methods, but through a game, consumers are willing to pay that amount. Why? It’s immersive. The consumer is engaged and it’s not just a song. It’s an experience. It’s fun and exciting. You get to be a part of the Motley Crue experience.

This consumer engagement and immersion into the media itself has been identified as a significant factor that will shape new, profitable business models. Content delivery through games is ideal because the consumer is already immersed. Games are engaging by nature and $3 will then be a small price to be a part of something larger… like Motley Crue’s additional rocker. Would you pay $3 for that?

Ok, it doesn’t have to be Motely Crue, but the point is, there will likely be more artists using games as a channel for delivering their music.

One Step Closer #2 - Netflix Announces Direct-to-TV Device

Here’s another service/device pairing helping to usher online content delivery to the convenience level we are all striving and hoping for.

Netflix’s DVD-by-mail rental service won’t last forever. In preparation for DVD’s eventual extinction, Netflix unveiled its solution to have movie and TV titles from their library streamed directly to the TV via Roku Inc.’s internet-connected device.

The device is a 5×5 inch box and reasonably priced at $99.99. (You can preorder from Roku now.) The service itself is provided at no additional cost to most of Netflix’s 8.2 million subscribers.

The device is not anticipated to sell in large numbers. At least not for now. Netflix’s DVD catalog consists of over 100,000 movies and TV shows. Only about 10,000 will be available for streaming on the new service and you can bet it won’t be the latest and greatest titles. I think they’ll need to have most of their library and especially new releases for this to really take off.

This may not happen for some time and DVD rentals will likely be around for a while because movie studios still seem a bit hesitant about diving into digital distribution with full commitment. We will know soon enough how profitable this endeavor will be.

But for now, we’re one step closer to the instant gratification of online media. Personally, I like this model because I’m an impulse kind of guy when it comes to what I want to watch. If I’m in the mood for a particular movie, I don’t order from Netflix because by the time it arrives, I’m no longer in the mood to watch that movie.

Check out this Onion News Network spoof of a “historic view” of physical media movie rentals.

I got a kick out of that! I shared this video to some friends and got responses such as,

“That was pretty funny. The last thing I ‘rented’ was some Amazon Unbox stuff… Amazon Unbox for TiVo is quite nice… because you can’t unthinkingly change the CPU on your TiVo and screw up your DRM keys.”

Another response I received was,

“I haven’t rented a movie since I left Australia. And that includes online/netflix type stuff. Although I have borrowed some discs from the Apartment Complex library…”

I responded and said that I go to the video rental store every weekend to get something for my daughter to which someone replied,

“See, I think there’ll always be that market. Kids need to travel and see and touch. Looking at a computer screen just isn’t the same…”

Physical media still has its place for now. It’s true that my 7-year old loves to look at and pick up the DVD boxes. It just seems the physical world is easier for her to navigate at this point.

That’s not to say she can’t use a computer. She loves to get onto PBS Kids and navigate through all the different activities. She still very much looks forward to trips to the video rental store. Of course going there also means picking up donuts on the way home.

Interesting post on Hulu’s Blog on how the name “Hulu” came to be. I love how certain foreign words can serendipitously fulfill a void, such as in naming a service. The name itself is short, easy to type, easy to remember and just sounds cool… what more can you ask for?

One Step Closer #1 - Popcorn Hour A-100

I’m starting a series of posts that I’ll call, “One Step Closer.” That is, one step closer to the elusive solution of getting video how, where and when we want it (ideally for free). Online video is still a rather nascent technology and there will be many innovations and ideas tested out in the coming months/years until the consumer’s appetite for online content is somewhat satisfied.

“Popcorn Hour A-100 allows you to pull in digital video, audio and photos from various sources for your enjoyment on your HDTV or Home Theater setup.”

The first in this series is a device that just arrived here that a colleague purchased. It’s the Popcorn Hour A-100 network-connected “media tank.” I won’t regurgitate all its specs, but you can read up on them here. It’s essentially a housing for a hard drive (HDD not included) which you can load up with any kind of media to play back on your home theater setup. You can even plug any USB drive straight into the A-100 and play through that.

It supports a ridiculous variety of formats, including AVCHD which my colleague was quite excited about.

The middleware included with the device supports the following web services:

• Video: YouTube, Metacafe. Veoh, Videocast, DLTV, Cranky Geeks, Bliptv, PodfinderUK, Vuze, Break Podcast
• Audio: Live365 Radio, iPodcast, Radiobox, ABC News, BBC Podcast, CNN News
• Photo: Flickr, Picasaweb
• RSS feed: Bloglines, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo Traffic Alerts, Traffic Condition, Cinecast, Yahoo! News, MSNBC News.
• Peer-to-peer TV: SayaTV
• Internet Radio: Shoutcast

YouTube, people! As if the movies you play through the device aren’t enough!

So here’s where Popcorn Hour takes a hit. According to Home Theater Systems Advice, the A-100 “is not for the casual TV viewer as configuration, setup and usage is a bit advanced for the ‘average Joe’.” Yes, immediately after the device arrived, my colleague updated the firmware on it for the latest support. That would be a hurdle for your “average Joe.”

We are still at the beginning of a long journey of trial, error and discovery of online video technologies. The A-100 is a great device from what I’ve seen of it (I’m considering getting one myself). However, when a device like this can be purchased and installed by mom and dad, and they can get their desired content to appear on their HDTV without having to worry about firmware updates, that’s when we know the industry has progressed to another level of innovation.