Moves in the news ...

This last week has seen lots of interesting articles around convergence ... I have just been able to quickly scan through them, so if you have a comment or an errata, just let me know and I change this. Let's start:

The Top 10 Things You Need to Know to Successfully Deploy IPTV: Myrio is one interesting piece in the IPTv puzzle, so these guys must know what they are talking about - almost, I only disagree on point 5 - there is no multicast vs unicast debate - broadcasting over a network (multicast) is expensive for a telecommunications company - 1 exchange with 3000 subscribers, 100 channels at 3.7 Mbps = 370 Mbps that you need to pre-allocate (lets not even go to HDTv); if you reduce the number of subscribers, if you have not many subs in an exchange, then the economics are not viable - as a consequence only Tier1 suppliers can (in theory) have the luxury of putting moer and more bandwidth to supply for more and more channels around the long tail. In the long run, broadcast should remain through the air (a-la BT Vision or Aggregator) timeshift/timeslip & vod, all come as unicast. A sentence that called my attention - due to a comment from an ex colleague around the subject - is: "You might encounter scalability limitations when your IPTV subscriber base numbers in the tens of thousands, and then again at hundreds of thousands". So remember - problems in the 10's of thousands appear to have been solved - don't bet your solution on horizontal scalability, if the architecture is inherently not scalable, adding more hardware won't make the problems go away !

Azureus' HD Vids Trump YouTube: same move as the guys from Skype & BitTorrent, I suppose that the more the merrier - but Peer2Peer has a lot (A LOT!!) of potential to sort out the problems of scalability around deployments.

Finally, it is official ! BTVision is online (1 & 2), so now that the biggest telecommunications company in the UK (8th biggest in the country) has launched their Freeview + broadband + telephony service (although a bit cheeky in their marketing ... a colleague now was thinking of buying the service as he cannot get freeview thinking the broadcast was over the broadband line !).

PS: Isn't Google video looking more and more like a proper TV service ?

Peer-TV-Peer

P2P is an important player for distribution. See BitTorrent, and how it partners with TV and Movie Companies in order to help distribute video-on-demand films and shows how investors see it as a potential (cheap!) delivery mechanism ("We’ve just got word that BitTorrent Inc is going to be getting a massive amount of funding from Accel Partners and Doll Capital Management to the tune of $15-25 million. This is still unconfirmed, but two separate and reliable sources have provided us with the same information. We contacted Ashwin Navin regarding the matter. He told us that there were no fundraising announcements at this point.").

Not to forget The Venice Project by the founders of Kazaa and Skype - now owned by eBay - ("We're working on a project that combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet - a project that gives viewers, advertisers and content owners more choice, control and creativity than ever before.")

Telecommunications providers can always mitigate costs; give the studios with service assurance; and provide better manageability of the traffic by using appliances like BlueCoat (cacheFlow) or CacheLogic.

Online video 'eroding TV viewing'

"Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the Internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result."

It is a 32% that didn't exist 36 months ago - the potential to "evangelise" the 67% is around simplicity and usability - the more the association with complexity around computer navigation, the harder the challenge to converge.

It is not difficult to see that the next generation (next 5-10 years) are already more online than the rest of the age groups:


"Comedian Ricky Gervais, whose audio and video podcasts have become hits on the web, said amateur video would never replace TV - but broadcasters would harness the power of the Internet." It is an interesting quote, no one would have thought 20 years ago how many "reality TV" (not like big brother but like home/CCTV/police videos) programs would populate the broadcasters channels - think of how 24 and Lost, sketched are the mixture between a "reality" and a "normal" show/series. Television is changing - quotes about computers, mobiles and the Internet have shown how it is difficult to tap the power of the next big thing ! Takes vision to achieve that. Amateur video will not replace "TV" (I assume he's referring to traditional schedules), it will transform it - programs will appear in linear (broadcast), non linear (on demand0, but specially in "adaptable" fashion (recommendations, etc) - a channel that is unique to what I have seen and what is my current mood and trend of view.

We'll have to wait and see if Ricky is not only comedian but a clairvoyant :)

Left, right and center

"In a risky experiment, Chevrolet asked Web users to make their own video spots for the Tahoe. A case study in customer generated advertising."

It is a move that shows how the trend has starting to gain momentum (read the article for previous attempts of using user generated content for advertising).

The adverts speak for themselves:

No wonder ...

"Almost every company with a foot in the world of personal computing aspires to break out of the den and into users' living rooms"

Is there any surprise around that statement? No, why, because that is what convergence is all about. The writer tests using some also good looking devices ! See the mDMS P60 (Dimensions: 230x197x42mm, available with Internal analogue TV Tuner or optional digital TV tuner) and the HI-GRADE DMS Xtc2_01, looking more like DVD or games consoles, they have lots of capacity built - and lots of potential for expansion - good for the average consumer to work and entertain themselves with one device. The assessment continues: "Since getting my hands on the Viiv, I haven't used my DVD player once, because the PC does everything my player does. The Viiv also made it a snap to use a remote control to set up slide shows using digital photos that sat idle for years on a separate PC. Loading and playing music playlists, again using the remote, was no problem."

Obviously, it is not all a bed of roses, read the article to discover what is the opinion of the author - far from perfection (although some of his statements add to the drama for the story's sake).

How the internet is bringing people to the center stage

In a previous entry I spoke about Amanda Congdon, I heard (on Radio 1) that the BBC is also now recruiting an "unknown" lady over her impressive performances on youtube for reviewing gadgets. See also, the example set by the now famous Lonelygirl15, the mixture of reality "fiction", amateur and behind the scenes lies have launched every member to almost stardom!

It is not only for good use, as anything, in the wrong hands can also help jihads and gangs find recruits.

This is a serious shift in the process of recruitment, easier to reach the target audience, easier to find samples of actual work. Maybe there is a market for "skills search" - more than your traditional monster, jobserve, yahoo, google ... maybe "laboor.com" crawls the sites and find relevant information about who is posting and what type of material, categorizes and publishes for recruiters to access, let's see if someone implements it as an idea.

News on the fronts of attack - mobile, consolidation and Bill Gates

I am just catching up with reading the news from yesterday - out all day -. A couple of "elreg" articles called my attention - "Slingbox maker Sling Media has completed the Symbian version of its SlingPlayer Mobile application, and today announced UK mobile phone network 3 will bundle the software with two 3G handsets when they ship on 1 December." That is a pretty ambitious announcement, but then again South Africa is already ahead in some respect "MTN South Africa has launched the country’s first commercially available 3G / DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld) capable cellular handset. The Samsung P910 cellphone is designed for mobile television with its swiveling LCD 262144 TFT Colour QVGA screen and double adjusting hinge that rotates into landscape mode for a pleasant television viewing experience."

In a previous post I talked about the XBox, well now Bill Gates has started announcing the strategy around it "In gaming, [the] TV, high-definition video [and] PC are all coming together now in the Xbox. Voice recognition will get better ... software and services with improved interfaces wrapped around them will be coming soon. Our new Zune [media player] has built-in Wi-Fi, so you can send your friends music and photos and messages ... we'll continue to see this kind of innovation building on top of what we have today. We're moving toward more connected entertainment everywhere."

Finally, seeing BT's moves is also of interest, puts into context the value of a regular ADSL subscriber - £335 pounds - (that, I assume is for a subscriber in an ISP that has lots of troubles).

Let the force be with you !

UK Market ...

I have received this interesting table:



Seems that the "free" kid is going to be really though competition for anyone, all you seem to need is a freeview box that connects to a DOCSIS or an ADSL and you can get VOD from the line and all the broadcast from the air ... seems that a lot of IPTV companies are moving into delivery in that direction but from the opposite end - try to build around ADSL or cable (DOCSIS) and then realize that it is not really that economic to broadcast over that network (maybe the latest versions of DOCSIS are, still you require a lot of bandwidth available when you could get it for free via the air).

We'll see how the contenders do !

And more facts about the long tail ...

The long tail will always contain the major traditional broadcasters - people like sequential and predisposed schedules (linear), easier, simpler and faster - that is why TV watchers are usually refer as "couch potatoes".

But then, it some of the programs will compete with user generated content - see Amanda Congdon and her video blog for her relocation - generating 211,000 daily views (8791 views per hour average) and her now star status ("The new ABC role may make Congdon the first video blogger to make the jump to a major network").

The user generated content is making enormous steps and it is quicker and quicker at catching up with traditional TV - think that most of the views are "word of mouth", requiring 0 advertising - but with the ability to generate !

To have a laugh - go and visit Rocketboom - Amanda's news parody.

So what are the news today ...

OK ... first we see a bit of a big announcement from MySpace and the creation of a viral video promotion ... seems like a proof of concept in the making!

Then comes VH1 allowing Syndication of their content via their player on consumers pages - so now we have integration from VH1 and the average joe ! This gives potential to a next stage for a "build your own playlist".

Portugal Telecom, T-Com, Telekomunikacja Polska are all launching IPTv services within a triple or quadruple play ...

One interesting piece of news - Korea’s HanaTV signs 50,000 early VOD subscribers: "In the first two months after its launch in late July, Hanaro Telecom, the South Korean telco, had already attracted 50,000 subscribers to its new VOD-based IPTV service. Thirty-five per cent of customers for the movie-driven service were new to the company, with the remainder coming from Hanaro’s existing base of residential broadband and telephony subscribers. Hanaro Telecom has acquired a massive 22,000 ondemand titles, totaling 16,000 hours from 50 content providers including Sony Pictures Television International, Walt Disney Television and CJ Entertainment."

Another interesting piece is the fact that "Software vendors use IBC to showcase new releases; most use standardised open interfaces", it is good to see that there is some standardisation in the IPTv arena - rather than all the proprietary interfaces that have plagued other types of solutions, IPTv products seem to be heading towards an approach based on building blocks.

More on the specifics about IPTv announcements can be found here.

XBox VOD downloads

Now that I am back in the office, I can go through my sent emails :)

"Microsoft hopes a new video downloading service will elevate the already popular game console to an entertainment center"
-- More on this article following this link.

So ... lets do some raw mathematics (don't come commenting on extraneous factors that could modify the formulas, this is just a guess, nothing more), 4 M xbox-live subscribers ... at 15 % penetration = 600K ... assume you cover 12 major time zones (US/Europe-Africa/East Asia-Australia) = 50K subscribers downloading per time zone @ 4Mbps per stream = 195 Gbps peak bandwidth capacity. I assume Microsoft content servers will peer with ISP's as penetration becomes higher in certain areas to reduce transit costs and download times. Noticeable is that this peak will probably be downloads of a couple of films that could be entirely cached by edge-proxies, reducing bandwidth utilization even further.

Now ... if you add the fact that with edgeware's technology you need only around 10 (based on 5,400 SDTV streams @3.7Mbps) x 1U servers (less than 1 rack of physical space and around 1KW of power) to supply all the content and bandwidth ! You are talking about very good economics for scaling a service, with low operational costs !

More about the long tail ... and convergence

A colleague sent me this link today, and it has some thoughts I have been ruminating for a blog for long, so what better time to write it than once someone has done it already?

Everyone seems to be writing about convergence these days. It is fair enough, sounds pretty similar as the pre-"dot com" era of the late 90's ... everyone has an opinion, every corporation has a plan of how to make it succeed - remember dog.com, cat.com, parrot.com ? everyone selling niche pet stores to investors? Well I believe we are on the verge of another singularity!

What is the difference this time? Not much, and a lot. Not much - because everyone is guessing what is the direction the consumers will follow, it is a total unknown. A lot - this time the winner(s) will alter significantly how people entertain using technology.

First of all, there are various areas of convergence - which are analysed in isolation by multiple authors -. As I can see, the convergence areas are:

• Television and PC.
• STB and Games consoles
• Internet, telecommunications and media (broadcast, unicast, games, etc)
• Fixed and mobile telecommunications.

Although some of you might have other opinions or different combinations around the list above, it covers pretty much all convergence and the combination of the areas is what will define the next generation in user experience.

The television manufacturers are making bigger and smarter televisions, devices such as cablecards indicate that there is a shift is towards a single entertainment device (a big screen with one remote control) that allows for plugging of the peripherals as part of the design - no external STB in this case. There is nothing stopping the television from having a slot for future upgrades of CPU, hard drives, graphics cards, basically transforming the TV into a PC - with today's technology easily done with a keyboard and mouse hooked via wi-fi or bluetooth.

The next in line for convergence - the STB and games console - and this one is just around the corner for Christmas shopping ! Microsoft & Sony are bringing the concept of single entertainment device closer and closer each generation, now you don't only play single-user games and watch dvds, you can play online, download game and software updates, music, chat with your pals, soon you will be able to download video-on-demand films without having to go out - if you are blessed with a low contention ratio from your supplier, you can download it almost as fast as you cook your popcorn. The price difference between devices is the first thing that pops to mind, but if you remember, convergence of STB & Television seems to be on its way - nothing stopping Sony from generating a "pluggable" PS4 into it's next generation televisions - it all comes down to the convergence of the above - also, i rather pay $300 for a device that gives me games, dvds, vod, chat (and hopefully broadcast) than $30 for a vod/broadcast device (because anyway ... I will buy the games console, so I can save 10% and spend it in popcorn !)

Now forgetting what devices you have at home, the next step is to focus on how all the information will get to you. This is where convergence between media, telecommunications and the internet comes - here we see the beginnings with the AOL and Times Warner merger, Sky purchasing Easynet; NTL, Telewest, Virgin and potentially ITV merging; and many many other examples in the making. You might think that the AOL/Times Warner is a bad example to put - talks about split and leaving markets are just the ripple effect of the misconstruction of a merger during the dot com era - it was obvious then to some of us that the Internet wasn't mature enough as a market to be considered an equal to a media company (Warner brothers was founded in 1923 and like a good wine, it is a business that has matured over wars and economic depressions - AOL was part of a "wave" that ended with the burst of the dot com bubble). But this time is different, everyone knows the true value of Internet, telecommunications and media services - mergers will be proportional to the real value each component will add to the venture - based on retrospectives, not wild guesses. In the UK there is a lot of momentum around media companies launching broadband services that you can access from your PC (Channel 4, ITV, Sky), this shows how media and internet are also seeking the path to convergence. Software and hardware companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco) have joined the race from the internet-end of the spectrum, information and technology are vital to enhance the user experience, it is possible that some of these enterprises will merge, acquire or partnership in order to compete in the convergence race. We can see Google in partnership with Earthlink for service provisioning, then the recent acquisition of YouTube for the video (plus its internal development of Google video) and finally the partnership between YouTube and Verizon for video content delivery over the mobile platform, seems here we can see all the bases covered for how entertainment and information will get to your house - all that seems missing is a GooBox, or a Playoogle console. I could continue further around this area of convergence, but it is certainly one most people have talked about, so there is plenty of information already out.

The next converging lines are in the fixed and mobile telecommunications, IMS being the most used acronym associated around this area of convergence. Everything related to telecommunications will converge by using an IMS platform (this has always confused me as IMS is more a framework that will enable the convergence, more than a solution to the problem of convergence, I guess that are just the ways of marketing), Nokia, AT&T, Siemens, BT, Sony, Lucent/Alcatel and Motorola are the biggest players so far - BT Vision is the closest attempt to convergence from a Tier 1 player, (we have to wait and see how it compares to Homechoice/Tiscali user experience when launched). The new value added services this platforms are delivering shows how entertainment and user-centric delivery is paramount to a successful proposition. This is the time to develop as many differentiators as possible - when the market starts boiling, some of these will be what determine who is successful and who isn't.

So where exactly are we converging ? it will be a total new world of consumer experience - the winner will be the one that gives the experiences in the most natural way, "seamlessly" and "ubiquitous" will be the adjectives used to describe the ultimate convergence. There is a long list of features that could be used to describe the converging point, some of them might what will encompass it, some might be attempts to define it ! There will be lots of efforts coming from different directions that will help shape this convergence, most of it still to be written by the consumers and how satisfied they are with the features.

More to come ...

PS. There is much more that could be written around this, as all the blogs, this is just a set of opinions to enable further discussion.

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