NBC will not be offering live online feeds of any events that will be broadcast on TV. The ones broadcast on TV will, of course, include the most popular events and the ones that people are most likely to tune into. The video of the events will be on NBC's site only after the events have been completed. With this in mind, it is clear that NBC views its online offering as a supplement to their TV broadcast and not as any sort of a replacement.
Many have been really quick to heavily criticize this move by NBC, but I'm not jumping on that bandwagon just yet. I am usually not one to defend old media (see my post on Why Broadcast TV Sucks), but I have some sympathy for NBC here. I applaud NBC for taking this major leap into the online distribution of this major event in the first place. It's an unfamiliar road and a departure from a model that has worked for NBC for a very long time.
Of course, we would love to see every live stream available to us, with videos and highlights that we could embed on other sites, but this may be too radical of a first step for NBC. Think of this year's Olympic webcast as testing the waters. If NBC's web offerings prove to be profitable this year, then maybe they will expand their offerings in years to come. The Olympics only happen every two years (the more popular Summer version every four) and I can understand NBC not wanting to gamble too much on this very costly venture.
An online feed of an event like the Olympics (or any sporting event for that matter) can offer all sorts of rich functionality, including realtime statistics, scores, and leaderboards. There is no doubt in my mind that rich functionality will eventually win out, whether it is viewed on your computer or through a new interface on your TV. If it doesn't look like they get it now, NBC and the other networks will eventually see the light, but these big companies may just need a little more time to make the switch at their own pace.
To view NBC's online Olympic offering, you must install Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in.
Don't believe the haters, NBC's online offering of the Olympics is a step in the right direction, just not two steps as a lot had hoped.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Tiger Woods' playoff performance at the U.S. Open drew traffic big enough to look like a massive denial-of-service attack to Internet service providers.
According to Internet security company Arbor Networks, the playoff between Woods and Rocco Mediate "generated one of the larger Internet-wide flash crowds this year." The country's golf fans who were at work, turned to Web video to watch the duel at Torrey Pines.
The security firm reported that several ISP's saw between 15 and 25 percent spikes in traffic. One ISP reported that traffic nearly doubled. Engineers at the ISPs stopped worrying when they saw the ballooning Internet usage wasn't directed at any individual customer.
"Traffic dipped and peaked corresponding to Tiger's initial misses and subsequent spectacular comeback as millions of office-bound fans tuned in to the live NBC and ESPN coverage," Arbor Networks wrote.
NBC said that Monday's playoff drew the biggest audience the Web site has ever seen, with 2 million users generating 9 million page views. The United States Golf Association and ESPN also covered the game but their numbers weren't available.
Tom McInerney, the Web video-sharing pioneer who left the sector 18 months ago, is making a comeback.
Guba co-founder Tom McInerney
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET News.com)This time, however, the co-founder of video site Guba is an investor. He's one of the backers of Shopflick, a company trying to become the Web equivalent of the Home Shopping Network. The site enables apparel merchants to showcase the clothing they offer by uploading video clips. Many sellers use the opportunity to channel their inner Francis Ford Coppola.
For example, the style mavens at designer Ric Rac shot a scene of two women wearing nearly identical versions of the company's $145 Kangaroo Dress meeting on the street. The audience hears the trash talking going on in each woman's head.
McInerney, who spoke at the OnHollywood conference on Wednesday, said Shopflick's founders got the idea for the site by meeting a woman who had made jewelry and had appeared on the cable show the Home Shopping Network.
The three-minute appearance brought the woman more sales than in the prior seven years, according to McInerney. Shopflick's executives want to bring that same magic to the Web.
Helping merchants sell clothes online is a practical use for Web video, McInerney said. He added that enabling people to share homemade videos online may not be as practical--unless, of course, you're YouTube.
McInerney stepped down as Guba's CEO in December 2006. By then YouTube had already amassed a huge audience and lead in video sharing. Three months earlier, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion.
"I think we can all acknowledge that YouTube has won the big prize," McInerney said then. "The billion-dollar opportunity has kind of passed."
Before that, Guba was among the first video-sharing companies to sign licensing deals with Hollywood studios. McInerney said that Guba was too small to compete against some of the bigger players that entered not long after, such as Amazon.com and Apple. Guba no longer offers feature films for download.
"We pretty much lined up every studio," McInerney said. "Later, we couldn't justify paying the guarantees that all the studios asked for...frankly, movie downloads on the Web haven't really taken off."
McInerney predicted that consumers will one day soon watch movies downloaded from the Web and that a handful of distributors will prevail over the sector. But he doesn't plan to give it another try.
"I like being an investor," he said. "You can still be involved by just writing a check, but you don't have to work 22 hours a day."
Web video search company Mefeedia has just debuted its new news video search feature.
The company, which launched its video search feature in March, explained in a blog post on Wednesday that it now has more than 500 news video sources, searchable by keyword. News sources currently being tracked by Mefeedia include the following:
- Networks: ABC News, MSNBC, CBS News, Fox News, CNN
- Online publishers: The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, CNET Networks, The Washington Post
- Shows: 20/20, 60 Minutes, Nightline, Today
- Magazines: BusinessWeek, Newsweek
- Podcast producers: TalkCrunch, ReadWriteTalk, The Wall Street Journal
- Blogs and vlogs: WebbAlert, TMZ, Political Lunch, The Ointment, Beet.tv
In an e-mail, Mefeedia's Frank Sinton said the company expects to hit 5 million unique visitors this month. This is great growth for this company, which launched its video search engine in March.
Editors' note: The Web Services Report is published by CNET Networks, which is expected to become a part of CBS in an acquisition set to close in the third quarter.
(Credit:
South Park Studios)
South Park fans rejoice, every episode of your favorite show is now available online, legally, via South Park Studios.
This central location for all things South Park is host to every single full episode of the show and around 3,000 embeddable video clips. It's not really clear why you are not able to embed the full episodes as of right now and their reach may suffer as a result. I'm not going to knock South Park Studios too hard for this since it is offering up its whole catalog for viewing, which is a major step. But embeddable full episodes seems like a logical feature and one that would be easy to implement since you can already embed clips.
(Credit:
South Park Studios)
South Park Studios is doing a lot of things right, like offering up its entire catalog for viewing, unlike some of the other big names (Heroes, The Office), who only offer a few of their most recent episodes. This is bad news for less-than-legal sites, like Alluc, which lists South Park as its most-viewed TV show.
This is a really exciting time for Web video and, with more big names like South Park embracing it, we are really moving toward a world where it's not frustrating to get your entertainment.
Check out one of my favorite South Park clips after the jump.
... Read more
This is going to be a great move for Meebo. They are expanding their reach and providing their services to new users. A lot of sites can benefit from real-time user interaction like this, and Meebo is right here to fulfill that need.
UPDATE: Netflix made its official announcement on Monday morning.
In an attempt to counteract whatever announcements Apple will make at Macworld this week, Netflix has decided to let subscribers stream unlimited movies and TV shows, with almost every basic plan, the Associated Press is reporting.
Currently, subscribers can watch anywhere from 5 to 48 hours a month, depending on their plan, although I don't see how anyone could be on the "eight-at-a-time" plan. (My two-at-a time plan came with 14 hours.)
The new, unlimited plan will be available to all subscribers, except for those on the two-rentals-per-month plan.
Even though we knew this was coming, it is still big news. We are so close to the large-scale broadband video revolution, I can almost taste it. With download speeds increasing and the promise of Netflix-enabled set-top boxes, we are almost there. I can't envision many better scenarios than having Netflix's entire catalog available for watching on my TV instantly.
Apple is expected to announce its own movie rental service on Monday--but with a pay-per-movie model as opposed to a subscription-based one like Netflix's.
I personally like Netflix's model better. But then again, Apple used the same strategy in music, and it has worked out pretty well so far. With all of these recent developments looking so promising, someone is going to have to break the news to Sony that all of this fuss over Blu-ray isn't going to matter in a year or two.
WeGame, a user-generated content site for video games, announced the launch of the beta 1 version of their site today. At the risk of sounding like a marketing robot, the best way that I can explain the site is "YouTube for game videos." WeGame provides a free downloadable application that allows you to record in any of their currently supported games, which includes just about all of the hottest PC titles of the moment. After you record your video, the client allows you to easily upload to the site.
The actual site is fairly similar to other offerings from GameTrailers and GameVideos, but what will give them the edge is their recording client. The client can record either in regular Web video format, or in HD for the machinima enthusiasts. It has always been a huge pain to capture an in-game video, format it correctly, and upload it to a video site. WeGame simply solves that complication.
LAS VEGAS--Studios know how to make money in the traditional way--in the theater, via broadcast television. But the Internet still has them slightly flummoxed.
True, most of the major film and television studios are embracing the Web. But the exact formula for distributing their content while still making money remains somewhat up in the air.
Here at CES during a panel sponsored by Hollywood trade pub Variety, the heads of digitial distribution for Disney/ABC, Fox, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros. discussed what is and isn't working for them.
All present were adamant that there is no one good way to make money online yet. "We're using every model because consumers will ultimately decide how they want to consume (content)," said Tom Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. For Paramount, that means downloads of its films via iTunes, Xbox Live, Netflix Watch it Now, and the Vudu set-top box.
The head of Fox Entertainment's digital media group, Dan Fawcett, said the best way is to give content to people the way they're used to. "People online want things for free. They can get it for free on piracy sites," he said. "They are inclined to watch it with a reasonable amount of advertising, but downloading a movie that takes a couple of hours just to own it doesn't seem to be a very compelling consumer experience."
This, of course, gave Fawcett the opportunity to plug Hulu.com, the online video partnership between Fox and NBC Universal where some of the two companies' most popular shows are viewable for free with some ads.
Paramount's Lesinski agreed that studios have to "give (content) to people anyway they want," he said.
Digital content heads of major Hollywood studios at CES.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)And so did everyone else: a constant familiar refrain from all of them was "letting consumers consume content when and how they want." But isn't the way they want it instant and free?
Other tidbits: All of them profess to like Steve Jobs. Some think Apple and its iTunes Store hold too much sway over the download business, but those on the panel didn't seem to agree. Warner Bros. called Apple "a great partner," and Paramount is really, really happy that 5- and 10-year-old film titles are selling in volumes of hundreds of thousands today on iTunes. Disney, perhaps unsurprisingly, was almost defensive of Apple. (Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder.)
"Apple wanted to legitimize the marketplace," said Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for Disney-ABC Television. "They compete with so many other different options, including piracy. To say Apple has so much control is looking at a very narrow slice of pie."
All had plenty to say on the impact of the Web on professional content. But despite talk of successes with viral video, streaming branded sites, and partnership deals across different platforms, none had an articulate response when an audience member asked when online revenue would surpass traditional revenue sources for each.
After some amused stares with each other, finally Fox's Fawcett was able to stammer: "Nowhere in the forseeable future."
View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
The SlingProjector feature mirrors anything on your PC screen including streaming video
(Credit: CNET)Watch the SlingCatcher video on CNET TV.
But this is the year, the company insists, that the long-awaited product will indeed be on sale. No specific date has been set, but the word is sometime in the second quarter. Though it originally planned to have it out in time for holiday sales, "sometimes these things take time," said Sling CEO Blake Krikorian, in a statement.
(Credit:
Sling Media)
The SlingCatcher is a separate set-top that can be used to bring content from a Slingbox to another TV in the house, or from an external hard drive. Though it works fine on both HDTVs and standard-definition sets, connecting the SlingCatcher to the new Slingbox Pro-HD is the only way to transmit high-definition video around the home.
The SlingCatcher also lets users project Web content to a TV screen, either wired or wirelessly, through an application called SlingProjector. Navigation can be done with either the included remote or through a PC.
SlingProjector software has been updated since last we saw it. When browsing Web video on a PC, the software automatically detects windows with video and projects it to the TV screen it is connected to.
Also updated: the official price of $249.View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
