IPTV

“Can I email it to ya when I figure it out?” Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), Something’s Gotta Give (2003)

Feeling a little tired lately? Spending less time watching TV? Wonder how you’re going to absorb it all? Well...Yes...Yes...we’ll email you on that.
If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone. The beauty of today’s content sources is that they are always on, always available, always sending stuff to you.

According to a study by Yahoo! that’s also the ugly underbelly of today’s rapidly changing technology. Their findings, based on responses from people around the globe, are that we are either mastering the demands of multitasking or we have changed the time/space continuum. Read more

"Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly...stupid." – Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Sparrow was right! Honest people do/say stupid things. Reviewers said the sequel - Dead Man's Chest - would be a bomb. It racked up record ticket sales in its first 10 days... $258.2 million. MPAA said pirates stole more than $70 million from them in the same period.  Their solution -- put the biggest, baddest safe around their treasures imaginable with double, nay triple locks to keep the low-lifes out.

At the same time, honest people are telling us: Read more

• content will soon be virtual and on demand, when and where you want it
  
• the better the DRM control the more people will enjoy the content because they will be protected from themselves
  
• the disagreement on formats is killing the next generation technology so no one will buy it anyway

I can’t seem to get that through to you. I’m not just talking about one person. I’m talking about everybody. I’m talking about form. I’m talking about content. I’m talking bout interrelationships. I’m talking about God, the devil, Heaven, Hell. Do you understand… -- Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Trying to second guess consumer buying habits can put you in the funny farm. We were positive that the World Cup would get people crowding stores to grab up new LCD, plasma and projection HDTV sets.

If it weren’t for the retailers and manufacturers we would have sworn the games had been cancelled.

How could we have underestimated the draw? Let’s look beyond “conventional” wisdom… Read more

A month ago the wife and I attended a semi-private premier of the movie -- A Bug and a Bag of Weed. It was posted on a web site of some folks in Canada who had worked for six months to script, shoot, edit and post produce are their film. Then they announced the premier to friends, interested parties and thousands of folks on the web.

The entertainment? Pretty darned good. So good that we gave them a credit card donation of $10.

For $5 more we downloaded the film and burned it to DVD. Yes it had copy protection – a line that asked that you not share our copy because the group had invested so much time, effort and money that they would like to see as much financial rewards as possible for their creative work. Read more

Sometimes the stars are in perfect alignment. Sometimes it’s just dumb luck.

After a lot of work and help, we had turned our home office computer into a home entertainment system complete with a NAS and wireless network. Everyone had their choice of music in their rooms. Everyone could go on line and the kids had developed a great list of parent approved IPTV shows.

We were now ready to update our huge projection TV to a sleek 42-inch flat screen complete with brilliant images and surround sound. Our choice was an eye-popping screen that looked great in the showroom. For some reason the viewing seemed a lot different when it was installed in our family room. Read more

HD camcorders were beautiful and prices were heading in the right direction at NAB. Monitors were gorgeous and prices were heading in the right direction. Post production products … ditto. Storage for products in the works was hard drive based. For the finished product it was …aahh either a flavor of blue or flying through the air.

Amid it all, Chicken Little was running in and out of sessions and pecking all over the floor saying the sky was falling. Read more

Imagine our space odyssey! Right now we have maybe 10 million broadband households worldwide. By 2010 it should be 70 million. We’re projected to have a 10X growth in IP-enabled consumer electronics products. It’s all about the network baby, a living breathing, self-producing, self-healing wonder that puts everyone in touch. Cellular subscribers will be about 945 million this year and by 2009 probably 1.5 billion. We already have 10s of millions of people who are downloading music for their phones, whatever. We have millions downloading video to their devices and the demand is huge!!! The need for home spinning media storage is doomed. All of this stuff. All of this capability is just too important to be left in the hands of mere mortals who huddle in their homes. Hold the phone HAL !!! Something is wrong with your view of the universe. Read more

March 8, 2006 - DAVE.TV, a global IPTV digital entertainment distribution network, and Collegiate Images today announces the new College Sports Channel that will premiere on the DAVE.TV Service featuring exclusive coverage of a variety of College Sports. DAVE.TV (Distributed Audio Video Entertainment Television) is the first Cross Platform Digital Delivery Ecosystem that consolidates channels of video entertainment from sources around the world into a comprehensive service that delivers them to the PC, TV, portable and mobile devices. DAVE.TV develops IPTV platforms for service providers such as Telcos, CLECs, MSOs and ISPs.

It's hard to believe that it has been nearly nine years since George Lucas sprung Star Wars on us. Today we are entering a content delivery war and it isn't in a galaxy far, far away. Tellywood is feeling a disturbance in the Force as if millions of voices suddenly cried out! Their money model is broken and they struggle to regain control of their ship. It's becoming apparent that it will be impossible. The Sundance Festival proves great video doesn't have to cost tens of millions to produce. With as little as $10,000 and a lot of sweat labor, material can be produced people actually want to see.

When Howard Stern is elevated to the position of point man for new media content delivery you know you're in for an "interesting," bumpy ride.

Suddenly media business as usual is anything but usual. Broadcast, Hollywood, music and radio companies are learning that going digital has its ugly side because content can be streamed, copied anywhere, everywhere. And tweens view grabbing, using and sharing this content as a universal right.

Media and content owners finally had a wide range of options to deliver their material audio and video to the consumer. Their challenges are which ones can they make a buck from and which can they protect for their continued revenue stream. Broadcasters and cable guys are trying to get a bigger chunk of the consumer market while satellite people grab more subscribers. While cable companies are fighting back with delivering added services - cable-based phone service and high-speed data - the telcos see IPTV as their salvation in putting a new Hemi in the old car.