Most of the conditions around the Comcast merger seem to deal with content, but the one piece that actually “sounds” like it could help consumers is the requirement that Comcast provide $49.95 stand alone internet access to their customers for the next three years.

On the surface, I like the idea of a price cap, but when you do the math, it’s clear that the FCC has left plenty of room for profits in Comcast’s future.

Because Comcast currently offers stand alone internet access at $40.95 per month (or at they do in the SF bay area), it means that their prices can go up by $9 over the next three years, before they’ll have to worry about hitting the cap. This means that they get to increase rates by 21% to comply with the program.

Ouch, I’m sure that it will be painful to comply with this condition When you also consider that the price cap is only for 3 years (despite all the other conditions being for 7 years), it means that Comcast could effectively increase rates by 7.3% each year. With the historical rate of inflation around 3.25%, it’s clear that consumers are getting bamboozled on this one.

The more things change, the more things seem to stay the same. Over the last ten years, the internet has redefined nearly every aspect of our lives. Whether it’s how we communicate with old friends, how we get our news or how we do our shopping, I could give you countless examples of how this technology has changed the way we interact with the world.

Thinking back to when dial up was first getting started, it’s not too hard to imagine an entirely different future. You see, when internet service providers first got into the business, they didn’t want to provide unrestricted access to their subscribers. Instead, they wanted to create a massive intranet where they could charge businesses fees to reach their customers.

In this bold new world that they envisioned, people wouldn’t be buying search terms on Yahoo!, they’d buy keywords on AOL. Instead of being able to use any email provider you wanted, they would only allow you to log into Compuserve accounts. This balkanization of the internet almost succeeded and for a time, Compuserve actually ran one of the top airline ticketing services, but eventually consumers saw the forest for the trees and instead of paying $19.99 a month for a stripped down version of the world wide web, they insisted on unfiltered access to the internet.

Once a few consumers started to move, the rest of the industry followed and as a result we now have third party sites like Facebook, YouTube and blogs, that have been able to build an audience on the free and open web.

With online video still coming of age, it’s interesting to see how the same Compuservation is occurring again, except this time it’s around the television. NewTeeVee has a provocative post out where they argue that the smart television providers are becoming the new gatekeepers for content. This is better than having the cable companies control your television, but it’s is still a watered down version of what you deserve.

I don’t care whether we’re talking about TiVo, Boxee, Roku, AppleTV or any of the latest digital video solutions, all of them have placed restrictions (albeit sometimes unwillingly) over how much their customers can do with their hardware.

Some of these restrictions are because of frightened content owners. For example, customers who rent their TiVo from a cable company aren’t allowed to access Netflix because of agreements Netflix made with the studios. Some of these restrictions are because of plain old fashioned greed. Hulu has already had more than their fair share of conflicts from disabling access to their videos on devices that are designed to sit next to your TV and would love to charge hardware companies for access. Some of these restrictions are self imposed. There’s nothing stopping Apple from offering flash on their iPad, except for their own selfish desire to control 100% of their media eco-system.

Whatever the reason, no matter how you slice it, these “internet” enabled devices have all failed to actually bring the internet to your TV. Looking over the headlines from CES, it’s clear that tablets and “smart TVs” were all the rage in Las Vegas this year and while it’s neat to see content companies start warming up to these devices, if consumers are forced to continue at big media’s pace, it will take another 10 years before you’ll be able to access even 90% of the content that’s out there today.

Because of these restrictions, it’s become increasingly difficult for me to endorse these options as adequate solutions. Over the years, I’ve managed to sample and collect a large number of different media streaming devices, but by far, the most powerful digital media device that I’ve ever used was the cheapest laptop that I could buy from Walmart. Maybe I’m crazy and other people don’t actually want access to the internet on their TV, but from the very first moment that I plugged it into my television, it was just as liberating as the first time I used TiVo to free my TV.

Since almost all new laptops include an HDMI port, getting it connected to the big screen was as easy as plugging it into an HDMI cable. Not only will this setup let you access sites like Hulu without big media interfering, but I can also do PC related tasks on a big screen environment. For example, over the holidays I was able to connect to Skype and do a video chat with the entire family on the big screen. I’ve always been a fan of comic books, but the comic book experience is very different when you’re looking at the action at 40+ inches. Do you ever play video games like Axis and Allies? Being able to see the entire war map actually changes your strategy compared to when you have to view troop movements region by region.

The point that I’m trying to make is no matter how progressive and advanced these technology companies are, no matter how many “apps” developers create, until the CE industry and the content industry abandon their gateway plans, you’ll never get to experience everything that the world wide web is capable of.

Instead of navigating this minefield of short sighted media companies and a CE industry that has lost sight of who their real customers are, take my advice and buy an HDMI enabled laptop before you buy the latest and greatest half baked technology product. A cheap laptop won’t necessarily make it easy to record your broadcast television, but if you’re only going to own one media device for your TV, an HDMI enabled laptop will beat the pants off of any digital device on the market today.

Looking for more proof that the pay television industry still doesn’t believe that cord cutting is really a threat? Analysts are predicting that those of you who haven’t cut the cord yet are likely to see price hikes across the board in 2011. Given all of the cool digital distractions that are out there, one might argue that this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the reality is that the telcos will continue their rate increases until the higher prices don’t offset the subscriber losses.

Last year may have been a watershed year for the cord cutting movement, but a closer look at the data reveals that most consumers haven’t been as price sensitive as those who quit pay television. As of October 2nd 2010, ESPN had approximately 100 million subscribers. I use this as a proxy for the pay tv industry since most basic cable, satellite and fiber customers receive the channel by default. A year earlier, ESPN had approximately 99 million customer. If we assume that the telcos averaged $75 for a TV subscription in 2009 and that they increased rates by 5% last year, then this means that not only were they able to net an extra $5.4 billion in fees last year, but they’ll get to collect again on these fees in 2011 and into the future.

So what happens when consumers finally start to resist these fee increases and the trend reverses, the cable companies still get fat and happy until they have a full scale revolution on their hands. Even if we assume that 2% of all telco customers will quit pay TV over every 5% increase in price, then we’re still guaranteed to see fee increases into the foreseeable future.

Don’t get me wrong, losing 2 million subscribers would hurt the pay TV industry, but at the new $78.75 average price, it would only cost them $1.8 billion in lost revenue each year, while they would be gaining an extra $4.125 billion with the higher subscription fees. While the pay TV industry may realize that their golden years for growth are now over, that doesn’t mean they can’t do basic math and engineer higher revenue while they have you over a barrel. Until a significant number of people say enough’s enough, they’re never going to take the threat of cord cutting seriously, so if you are still paying for your television, then you’re part of the problem, instead of the solution.

Over the long run, defections will accelerate and eventually they’ll be forced to abandon their annual price increases, but until then it’s clear that the pay tv industry is going to milk consumers for as much as you will let them. The only silver lining that I see in all of this, is that a 5% increase for the pay television industry is equivalent to a 50% increase in what Netflix’s charges for a digital subscription. This should give Netflix a lot of room to remain competitive while poaching the digital living room.

For the last several years, the entertainment industry has been doing their darndest to put The Pirate Bay out of business. Whether it’s been suing TPB’s users, going after TPB’s hosting providers or trying to make the site’s founders criminally liable for the behavior of their customers, it’s clear that TPB doesn’t have many friends in Hollywood. More recently, we’ve seen a legal settlement industry spring up where mass lawsuits are threatened against consumers for allegedly participating in P2P activities. Whether or not the entertainment industry has been successful in these endeavours is open to interpretation, but in their zeal to put an end to filesharing, they may have created an even more dangerous monster.

One could argue that it all started with YouTube, but over the past few years we’ve seen a shift in consumer behavior away from P2P and towards streaming and downloading services. To see proof of this trend, all one has to do is compare the traffic of TPB with the streaming/downloading search engine FilesTube.

According to Compete.com, over the last year FilesTube.com has been able to consistently attract 50% more visitors than TPB. Not too shaby of a feat considering that Filestube.com didn’t even exist 3 years ago.

Given their animosity towards TPB, one would think that entertainment executives would be celebrating the cultural decline of TPB with a round of cold beers and high fives, but the reality is that instead of curbing piracy, they’re merely redirecting that illicit traffic towards safe harbors where consumers don’t appear to be at risk. In the immortal words of Princess Leia, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”

By continuing to squeeze P2P users with countless numbers of lawsuits, the entertainment industry may have been able to establish a precedent that uploading content to the internet is a copyright violation, but what’s less clear is whether or not simply downloading that same content is actually illegal?

According to the Copyright.Gov FAQ website, “Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. ” [Emphasis added by me]

Setting aside the ethical question of whether or not it’s moral to download grey area content, it is clear that US Copyright law places some restrictions on infringing downloads vs. legitimate ones. From the same FAQ page,

“Whether or not a particular work is being made available under the authority of the copyright owner is a question of fact. But since any original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium (including a computer file) is protected by federal copyright law upon creation, in the absence of clear information to the contrary, most works may be assumed to be protected by federal copyright law.” [Emphasis added by me]

Now I’m not a legal beagle, but I believe that this means that consumers can’t be prosecuted for downloading a movie, if the service they are using claims to be offering content with the blessing of the legal copyright owner. For example when I’m streaming (making a cached copy) of old episodes of Battlestar Galactica from Netflix, I’m not actually breaking the law because I have a reasonable belief that Netflix has licensed this movie for their subscribers.

Since many streaming sites are largely controlled by the company that is paying for the bandwidth, it would be relatively easy for the studios to hold these companies accountable if they did stray off of the straight and narrow path. Where the legal waters become more murky though is when service providers (streaming companies) allow others to upload content instead of taking charge of this themselves.

With YouTube receiving 35 hours of content per second, it would be impossible for them to screen every second of footage that is uploaded to their site. Because of this the DMCA offers YouTube a safe harbor as long as they respond to DMCA takedown requests and don’t encourage piracy. To date we’ve seen several lawsuits that have tried to challenge this exemption, but so far they’ve all been a bust for the entertainment industry.

So on one side of this digital triangle you have consumers who are exempt from legal liability as long as the service provider requires uploaders to claim ownership of everything that they upload, on the other side of the triangle you have the service providers who are exempt from liability as long as they respond to DMCA request and don’t uploading anything themselves and on the final side of the triangle you have the content owners themselves who must choose between trying to police an endless stream of piracy or to quietly embrace the millions of consumers who are now streaming their television instead of paying for cable.

In a perfect world, only the actual copyright owners would be uploading their content to these digital locker services, but because sites like Megavideo.com pay users based upon the number of plays their videos get, there is an economic incentive for rouge operatives to cheat the system by claiming content as their own. To Megavideo’s credit, they have a history of refusing to pay copyright violators, but from a practical standpoint there are many who’ve been able to collect royalties on other people’s content.

Also to Megavideo’s credit, the entertainment industry has a long history of embracing “piracy” while staying in the closet about this. For example, when Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement, some of the clips they sued over were uploaded by Viacom employee’s themselves. It would hardly seem fair to hold either YouTube or consumers who watched those clips liable for copyright infringement when Viacom was creating a honeypot to tempt web surfers with.

Some will argue that content owners would never do this, but there are many reasons why someone would choose to embrace piracy and the popularity that it can bring a film. Whether you’re trying to jumpstart a struggling TV series or you’re trying to increase licensing opportunities, just because someone doesn’t pay to view a video doesn’t necessarily mean that the creator won’t benefit from that attention.

One of the things I’ve noticed when browsing through the FileTube.com search results is that often times studios will be unrelentingly aggressive about filing DMCA takedown requests the minute infringing files are uploaded while other files will remain online for over a year without even being “noticed.” While it would be tough to argue that 100% of these files are being monetized by the original copyright holders, I do believe that many copyright holders have chosen to secretly monetize their content in this way, but aren’t able to publicly disclose this because of how it might impact their negotiations with more traditional video distributors.

While the uploaders who falsely claim ownership of copyrighted material certainly put themselves at legal risk, with most of the uploading activity occurring outside of US borders, it’s unlikely that many infringers will find themselves being dragged into US court.

Some will cry foul over this latest trend, but I do find it fascinating how alternative business models can thrive when copyright issues aren’t strangling internet startups.

For example, one of the unique ways that Megavideo is able to sell memberships for their service is by letting consumers watch a certain amount of video each day for free before being interrupted with a time out. By running their business this way, they are able to use each and every video as an advertisement for their paid service. Since you may be 80% of the way through a movie when the time limit hits, a consumer is given the opportunity to ask themselves whether or not the content is really worth paying for to see right away or if it is a piece of garbage that you don’t care about finishing anyway.

Can you imagine if you were able to go to a movie theater and didn’t have to pay for your ticket until you had already watched 80% of the film? It would probably hurt ticket sales for a lot of the big budget flops, but the really well made movies would be incredibly successful because they’d be able to convert a larger percentage of those free eyeballs into paying customers.

Whether or not content owners are embracing this business model may be unclear, but by aggressively pursuing P2P users, the entertainment industry has made it clear that downloading without uploading is a much safer alternative for consumers then participating in the P2P movement. As technology marches forward, we’ll find out whether or not this Bermudian Copyright triangle gets sorted out, but in the meantime the efforts to prosecute P2P users, only seems to be driving consumers from a clunky bandwidth intensive technological solution to offshore providers who are offering a more elegant experience.

It’s probably worth pointing out that the MPAA has claimed that movie streaming is still considered a form of theft, but instead of backing up their position by citing the appropriate copyright laws, they instead try to equate digital streaming with physical theft.

The problem with this position is that companies like Sony (one of the MPAA founding partners) is apparently offering a shoplifters paradise in the form of all you can stream free movies on their Crackle.com website. Other MPAA partners like 20th Century Fox have not only made their movies available online at their official sites, but have also licensed their content to a number of different distributors like Comcast’s Fancast.com. Since it would be impossible for the end consumer to know the contractual details of every one of these down stream relationships, it would hardly seem fair to hold the consumer liable if someone uploaded a clip that actually infringed.

While I’m entirely open to exploring other opinions that downloading (without uploading) is still a copyright violation, I’ve yet to see any legal evidence indicating that this is actually the case. What do you think, when you hit play on a Simpson’s clip on YouTube have you actually committed a crime?

Most notably, they’ve been trying to strike agreements with studios to delay when they offer new release DVD rentals to their customers. In exchange for lower prices, they’ve agreed to put all of the new movies by Warner Brothers on very long wait status for their customers. In exchange, they get lower prices that will help them to drive brick and mortar competitors out of business. So far most studios are only watching these experiments from the sidelines, but Warner Brothers has embraced this scheme with gusto and has followed up their agreement with Netflix by striking a similar deal with Redbox.

Ironically, Redbox actually dismissed an anti-trust claim against Warner Brothers, in exchange for being invited into this exclusive club. Now some will argue that the beauty of Netflix is their deep archived content and while 487 or the 488 movies in my queue currently show availability of now, they’re customers who do like to rent new releases. By making them wait, Netflix is creating an artificial rental window that allows Warner Brothers to charge higher prices for new release DVDs and causes the price for rentals to rise at rental firms like Blockbuster. In fact since striking these agreements, Blockbuster has raised prices on their DVD by mail program and reinstated late fees to their customers. This is a reversal of the price wars that consumers enjoyed over the last decade.

While Netflix and Redbox haven’t seen much in the way of customer defections from implementing this hostile policy, they may find their activities under closer scrutiny thanks to Susan Uman from Manhattan. In a lawsuit against Netflix, she argues that this latest rental window is nothing but anti-competitive collusion. Already, Netflix has been sued over a different arrangement with Walmart to carve up the sales and the rental markets, so it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

According to USLegal.com, “collusion occurs when two persons or representatives of an entity or organization make an agreement to deceive or mislead another. Such agreements are usually secretive, and involve fraud or gaining an unfair advantage over a third party, competitors, consumers or others with whom they are negotiating. The collusion, therefore, makes the bargaining process inherently unfair. Collusion can involve price or wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship betweeen the colluding parties.”

While there is a fine line between collusion and standard industry business agreements, the deal that Netflix made cheats customers out of new releases and I think it crosses that line. They have in effect sold their first sale rights, in exchange for financial terms that give them an economic advantage over smaller competitors in their industry. According to this primer by the Justice Department, collusion tends to occur when we see some of the following conditions.

“-Collusion is more likely to occur if there are few sellers. The fewer the number of sellers, the easier it is for them to get together and agree on prices, bids, customers, or territories. Collusion may also occur when the number of firms is fairly large, but there is a small group of major sellers and the rest are “fringe” sellers who control only a small fraction of the market.

-Bidders who congregate in the same building or town to submit their bids have an easy opportunity for last-minute communications.”

Looking over this list, it would appear that Netflix is very much in a position to abuse their market leadership status. With Movie Gallery in bankruptcy for the 2nd time and Blockbuster getting close to a date with the grim reaper themselves, Netflix and Redbox represent the future of the DVD rental industry. This limited competition has made it easy for them to enter into agreements that wouldn’t have been tolerated by customers five years ago. If Blockbuster had the finances to actually keep new releases in stock, one might argue otherwise, but their company is in survival mode and are now having to pay Warner Brothers more for each new release then their two biggest threats.

While Netflix and Redbox may not have their headquarters located in the same town, both have been aggressively courting Hollywood for access to their movies. Since the studios are largely controlled by a small handful of companies, it gives them the ability to collude with the limited DVD renters that are left.

Prior to their agreement with Warner Brothers, Redbox was on the outside of this club and was being forced to acquire their DVDs from outlets like Walmart because Warner Brothers refused to even do business with them. Now that they’ve stopped sticking up for the consumer, they have access to all the DVDs that they want to buy. If this doesn’t qualify as collusion, I’m not sure what does.

It’s hard to say how much legal merit this lawsuit will have, but from my viewpoint, I believe that Netflix, Redbox and Warner Brothers have created an illegal cartel to try and carve up the DVD market. Warner Brother’s gets to force consumers to buy new release DVDs, instead of being able to rent at lower prices and the rental companies get cheaper supply which helps to boost their profits. While I’m sad that Redbox gave up on fighting for consumers, I am glad that consumers aren’t afraid to fight back. Hopefully, Ms. Uman takes this case all the way, instead of settling at the last minute for a million dollar windfall.

While many media companies would like to see the first sale doctrine done away with, ever since the supreme court established the doctrine in 1908, consumers have enjoyed tremendous benefits from it. The concept, which was later codified into law in 1976, allows businesses and individuals to resell goods that they’ve legally purchased. Without it, companies like Ebay, Craigslist and Blockbuster Video wouldn’t even be possible.

Having the right to resell goods benefits consumers in two major ways. First, it reduces the risks that consumers have to take when making purchases. This ultimately makes things cheaper for all of us, because companies are forced to compete with their own products and consumers have a way of recouping part of their initial expense.

When I first purchased my TiVo series 3 for example, I spent over $800 on the product. While this may seem like an insane amount to spend for television, I was able to justify the cost in part, because I sold my original TiVo on eBay for $200 and knew that one day I would be able to resell my Series 3 (currently worth approximately $400 on Ebay) to recover part of my expense. As a result, I’ve been able to enjoy a premium DVR experience for about 1/3rd what it would have cost me to rent an inferior DVR from my cable company.

The second benefit to the consumer is that by having a robust resell market, it allows more businesses/middlemen to participate. This ultimately increases demand, stimulates innovation, and drives down prices. Redbox for example is able to rent you a DVDs at 1/20th of the cost or what it would cost you to buy the actual DVD thanks in large part to the first sale doctrine. Because Redbox knows that they can get more than 20 people to share the same product, it enables consumers to save money, the media companies to sell more DVDs and for Redbox to still earn a tidy profit in the process.

While the first sale doctrine has been a huge benefit for consumers over the last 100 years, these benefits are rapidly being eroded as media moves digital. Because the first sale doctrine was based on physical goods, it hasn’t aged very well in the digital realm. As a result, consumers have been forced to endure awkward DRM implementations, limited availability of digital content and higher prices for media services.

As the top media conglomerates have sought to seize more and more control over the distribution of their products, they’ve shifted from a world where you have the ability to “own” your media, to one where you only have the option to “license” your content.

For a lot of consumers, this distinction may not seem important, but it has profound implications on the future of digital entertainment. Since firms aren’t allowed to buy products at a wholesale price and rent them to multiple consumers, they’ve been forced to negotiate agreements one by one. This is a costly and time intensive process that has limited how quickly media can migrate online. It has also given the media conglomerates monopolistic control over prices. Instead of being forced to compete in an open environment, they are able to take their ball and go home, when they haven’t liked the terms and conditions that innovators offer them.

The result of this transition from ownership to licensing has increased costs for consumers even beyond the price of media. Take for example, the various hardware devices that we’ve seen released over the last five years. If you want to watch digital copies of old movies and TV shows, you can do it through Netflix, but only if it’s on a device that has a business relationship with them. When Sony decided to release a digital copy of Cloudy with a chance of meatballs at the same time the movie was in the theaters, consumers could only participate on select Sony TVs.

If you prefer to watch new releases from Apple’s iTunes store, you’ll need to buy an AppleTV to easily watch that content on your TV. If you want to watch a DivX file that you purchased from CinemaNow, you’ll need to illegally hack your AppleTV or purchase a DivX certified device instead. It’s fantastic that consumers have the ability to record HD cable TV through TiVo, but if you subscribe to AT&T or Dish Networks, you’ll need additional (proprietary) hardware to decode their signals.

While many of these businesses have come a long way towards opening up their systems and fulfilling the digital dream, they’ve all been limited by what content holders allow. As a result, consumers must face a digital minefield where DRM and file formats are used to limit what you can do with the content that you’ve paid for.

As we continue to move forward into the digital world, I think it’s important that consumers shouldn’t have to abandon the first sale protections that have served us so well over the last century. What I propose is a new set of rules that would allow media companies to control their prices, but would also give consumers (and businesses) a way to move past some of these restrictions.

While the DMCA has been a mixed blessing for tech companies and consumers, it is in desperate need of an update (and one that isn’t written by the lobbyists.) For example, currently, it’s illegal for consumers (or businesses) to circumvent DRM, even if consumers are being harmed by the DRM. This has led to situations where people who have purchased media, later lost access to those rights because a provider went out of business. Situations, where companies are unable to offer lifetime licenses in the cloud, because of exclusivity clauses in contracts with pay TV channels.

What I purpose is that if media companies want DMCA protection for their content, it should come with strings attached. In crafting new rules for a modern first sale doctrine, I would require content owners to set a wholesale price that all businesses would be allowed to buy content at. They could still require minimum purchases sizes and would have complete control over what they wanted to charge for that content, but they shouldn’t be allowed to sell a license at one price to one company and then exploit another company for political reasons.

What this would do is create a level playing field for all of the digital retailers. If UMG wants to charge $50 for a download, they would have the right to do this, but they couldn’t favor one vendor over another and they couldn’t punish innovators for being successful or passing on value to the consumer. This would also bring welcome competition to the pay TV market because media companies wouldn’t be able to play MSO’s off of each other.

For example, I’d love to be able to see every NFL game each season, but I can’t unless I’m willing to subscribe to DirecTV for service. Instead of making consumers fight and choose over exclusive content, everyone should be given fair access to that content. If cable companies don’t want to pay the price of admission, they would be less competitive with consumers. The end result would be more demand for NFL content by consumers and more competition for their dollars. If we allow media companies to continue with exclusive content in the digital realm, it will only makes it more expensive for everyone.

I also think that if the media wants to continue to have DMCA restrictions on their DRM, that they shouldn’t be allowed to use that DRM to discriminate between hardware partners. It’s great that I’ve got the ability to record HDTV on my TiVo, but since cablecards don’t work with satellite or U-verse, it essentially gives Comcast a monopoly on pay television for TiVo households.

As a result, Comcast is able to provide abusive cablecard support without having to worry about competition. If they knew that they had to actually compete for the $50 – $200 a month that they charge, it would encourage them to provide better service and to continue to innovate, (even if consumers decide not to use Comcast’s equipment.) Instead we’ve seen cable companies limit the ability for consumers to take their programs on the go and prevent consumers from accessing VOD services on DVRs that aren’t rented from them, all without having to worry about repercussions.

The same is true for digital downloads. If Apple wants to use DRM to help protect their content partners, they should be allowed to, but not at the expense of consumers. If other hardware manufacturers want to build support for iTunes’ product they should be allowed to license the DRM (at cost) from Apple. This would prevent Apple from offering exclusive downloads that lock consumers into their own hardware ecosystem. The end result would be more devices that could play Apple content and more competition among set top box manufacturers. This competition would cause prices to drop and would encourage Apple and others to be innovative with the features and services that they offer to their customers.

While some may be content to let the media industry continue to grow inside of these walled gardens, I’d like to see a world where someone can legally purchase media and play it on any device that they want to. By creating new laws to help better regulate the abuses of our current licensing system, consumers, businesses and the online video industry as a whole, would be allowed to flourish across many different platforms. Instead of being forced to buy the same content over and over and over again, consumers would be allowed to license their media under fair and reasonable conditions.

With consumers clearly wanting to access content online, one would think that HBO would be the first in line to embrace this trend, but because of their status quo, they’ve chosen to fight progress instead of helping to usher in the digital age.

Over the last two years, a group of digital and traditional media companies have formed an impressive collective known as the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). This diverse group of firms includes firms ranging in diversity from Sony to DivX. While each company has their own agenda, the goal of the group is to try and create a media framework that allows consumers to purchase downloadable media and to play it on a wide range of consumer electronic devices.

While I do think that there are some problems with their proposed implementation, I’m also pragmatic enough to see this consortium as our best chance of furthering the internet video revolution. To date, media companies have fought digitization tooth and nail, but this co-op between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley could create an environment where more new release content is made available to the public.

Anyone whose used Netflix’s Watch Instantly program knows that there is a ton of content from the 1980′s, but very few titles from the last decade. One of the biggest reasons for this, is that companies like HBO have used their vast financial resources to outbid them and other digital players for these films. With studios scared to death of upsetting deep pocket partners like HBO, it’s created an environment where consumers must either pirate recent content, set an appointment to see TV or stick to watching it on a disc.

While, HBO has made some of their content available through Comcast’s TV anywhere initiative, it’s only includes their weakest titles and you must be a cable subscriber to get access to the content. Contrast this to Showtime’s digital experiments and it’s clear that HBO is standing in the way of progress.

Like Netflix’s Watch Instantly platform, DECE has proposed a system where consumers can store their media content in the cloud and then stream it whenever (and more importantly wherever) they want to view the film. Yet, according to the industry trade publication, The Wrap (via Inside Redbox), HBO isn’t a fan of this system and is actively trying to block it’s implementation. Since they insist on legal language in their contracts that prevent consumers from accessing digital content while it’s playing on their channel, it’s possible that you could purchase a film and then be blocked from seeing it while it’s playing on HBO.

Imagine paying a steep premium to see a recently released film and then being told that you can’t watch it on certain dates, just because HBO is afraid that you might not subscribe to their channel. Clearly, this isn’t in the interests of consumers and yet HBO is using their financial resources to try and create this very scenario.

“Paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year for output deals with Warner, Fox and Universal, HBO currently restricts these studios from distributing their films digitally during its exclusive pay-TV window. Typically, that window starts six months after a film debuts on DVD and extends for 18 months. It already has presented itself as a challenge for established download sellers including iTunes and Netflix.”

HBO is free to run their business anyway that they like, but I believe that policies that are downright hostile to consumers should not go unpunished. Because of this, I’m asking HBO subscribers to call your cable company and cancel the channel. I know that this may mean giving up some great content, but if HBO starts to feel the sting from a consumer backlash, perhaps they’ll rethink their position and start to embrace the digital revolution. Currently, only 3% of the entertainment industry’s revenue come from online, but if just 3% of HBO’s subscribers were to cancel service, it would have a profound effect on the company’s profitability.

For too long, consumers have been abused by these exclusivity agreements and if you sit back and allow them to walk all over you, then you’re only part of the problem. Instead of rewarding an outdated analog business model, we need to be demanding that studios and their partners join the 21st century and make their content available online.

I may have less brand loyalty to any one particular publication, but thanks to the magic of Google, it’s a lot easier to find a diverse set of opinions on topics that I care about. For the most part, I think that Google is the best thing since sliced bread, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t improve their product.

As the media landscape has gotten more competitive, I’ve noticed that publications are becoming increasingly aggressive at trying to monetize the eyeballs that they do get. This really started with the pop-up ad, but after the web browsers figured out how to turn this control over to the users, news companies seem to have switched tactics.

The latest trend is to insert an interstitial ad between you and the content. Usually, there’s some tiny link where you can bypass it or it auto-forwards after 30 seconds, but anytime I’m forced to watch an ad before knowing how good or bad the content actually is, it creates a lot of frustration with my web experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a strong supporter of smart and innovative ways that advertisers can bring their messages to the public and I’m happier than most to support newspapers who are creating great content, but with so much bad content out there, I don’t feel that consumers should be forced to roll the dice, when there’s no payoff on the other end.

I could probably list a dozen major companies who are offenders, but my biggest beef is actually with Google. If I know that someone uses this type of aggressive advertising, it’s easy to quit visiting their site, but because Google is indexing billions of web pages, there’s no way to know which link is going to take me to real content and which link will take me to an ad.

As an example, if you search for the phrase “hardware spec for Microsoft’s pink phone” the first result is a story by ZDnet showing the first line of the blog post, but if you actually click on that link, it takes you to a page that is missing the content and only displays an ad instead. If you wait long enough you will be forwarded to the right destination, but isn’t this false advertising on behalf of Google?

If they know that someone’s browser is going to be hijacked, then why are they taking you to a different page instead. It’d be one thing if Google was trying to actively stop the process, but they’re actually helping publishers create more of these roadblocks on the web.

While Google is free to advertise (or link to anyone) that that they see fit, they should realize that this harms their own user experience while benefiting no one but spammy news publications. If a company like Bing or Ask.com were to come out with an interstitial ban, it would take me about a half a second to change my default search engine. It may be that this isn’t seen as a big enough annoyance to do anything about or it could be too late and is considered an industry standard now, but to show one search result and then take a user to an entirely different page (albeit temporarily) feels an awful lot like a bait and switch tactic to me. What do you think, would Google be better off banning these ads from their search results or is content from newspapers so valuable that it would do more harm than good to blackball offenders like Forbes and ZDNet?

Ten years ago, Blockbuster video was on top of the world. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was the golden age for the video store. After years of reminders to be kind and rewind, consumers were adopting DVD players en masse and needed a source for their entertainment needs. For better or worse that source was Blockbuster.

With the internet buzz hitting a fevered pitch, Blockbuster was already hard at work creating a digital strategy. Given their dominate position in the video store industry, they even flirted with the idea of buying a small internet start up named Netflix for a mere $50 million.

With the entertainment world seemingly in the palm of their hand, Blockbuster was positioned to make the jump to digital better than anyone, but over the last decade they’ve made a series of blunders that now threatens to bankrupt them today.

Yet, in looking at their rise and fall, it’s easy to make the quick assumption that their problems were a result of technological innovation, but the truth of the matter is that they have no one but themselves to blame for the weak position that they find themselves in today.

Of all their missteps, the biggest blunder was assuming $1 billion in debt, so that Viacom could collect an obscene dividend payment when they sold the company to a naive public. That debt now hangs over them like an albatross across their their neck and has caused them to lose pace with their unencumbered competitors.

With revenues in steep decline, it will only get harder and harder for Blockbuster to continue to meet their obligations under this debt. Without the firepower to compete on a level playing field, their situation will only get worse

With the precariousness of their position becoming increasingly clear, Blockbuster has done everything from paying a high price to refinance their debt to hiring a bankruptcy specialist to help salvage what is left of their business.

Yet, despite the clear and present danger of their situation, Blockbuster has continued to keep their head buried in the sand. Over the years, I’ve offered my fair share of suggestions criticism for how they could improve their business model, but we’re now at a point where a tourniquet won’t save them, they must do massive surgery and Stat!

In an effort to try and preserve a dying part of the entertainment industry, I present to you, my plan to save Blockbuster.

With the future looking pretty bleak for just about any video store, how can a company like Blockbuster save themselves? By sacrificing their media business in exchange for an opportunity to reinvent their retail business.

What I’m proposing would be tricky and the devil really would be in the details, but with the right execution, Blockbuster could shed their legacy of debt, future proof their business and position themselves to take market share, instead of losing it.

Essentially what they’d need to do is create a “good Blockbuster” and a “bad Blockbuster” to isolate their problems.

On one side you would have their DVD by mail program, their DVD kiosks and their digital business. On the other side, you would have Blockbuster’s traditional video store business that so many are quick to write off.

Together, the two businesses are slowly strangling Blockbuster, but split apart, they could free them from the impact of years of stagnation and ineptitude on their part. What I’m proposing is that they spin off their good assets and use that money to pay off their debt.

In the past, Blockbuster tried to launch an aggressive initiative to boost their DVD by mail program, but by doing so, they only ended up cannibalizing their in store customers. As a result, they’ve all but abandoned the program and have allowed their future to slip away.

If an independent Blockbuster.com doesn’t have to worry about that cannibalization, they could focus on going head to head against Netflix. They could create a subscription program for their kiosks that could offer value that Redbox couldn’t match. They could be price competitive without having to worry about their legacy stores. The result would be a smaller Blockbuster with less meaningful revenue, but it would represent profitable revenue instead of losses.

Neither Netflix nor Redbox would be able to offer DVD exchanges at the kiosk level and through the mail, but Blockbuster could capitalize on both strengths. Yes, the company would be a mere sapling in the larger entertainment industry, but Netflix was once a sapling and they’ve been able to grow into a very large oak.

From the video store side of the equation, Blockbuster could focus on what they do best, maximize cash flow while transitioning their stores into a new business. Whether that means turning their stores into modern day Starbucks or a replacement for the now defunct Circuit City, there are still plenty of opportunities for smart and nimble retailers.

To date, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes has made this transition a priority for the company, but when they are forced to forgo tens of millions in capital expenditures, just so that they can service their debt, it limits how quickly they can make this jump. As a result, they continue to face pressure to close stores instead of turning them into cash flow producing machines.

Given all of the negative media attention, it may be hard to believe, but Blockbuster still does a ton of business. For the first 9 months of 2009, Blockbuster brought in over $1.9 BILLION in revenue. By comparison, Netflix brought in $1.22 billion during the same period. Yet, when you look at the differences in market capitalization, Netflix is over 20 times more valuable than Blockbuster.

Perhaps even more surprising is that Blockbuster would have turned a profit of $38.4 million during that 9 month period, had they been able to ignore their debt. Instead, that $38.4 million profit turned into a loss of $131.6 million for the company. Now you don’t need to have a Phd in math to know that losing over $100+ million per year starts to get expensive fast and perhaps even more damaging than the loss of the cash is the effect that these interest payments are having on their competitive ability.

Instead of being able to invest in their future, they’ve been forced to make cut backs. Instead of retrofitting their stores, they’ve been closing them instead. Instead of stepping up the marketing, they’ve been forced to dial back. The result is that more revenue shifts to Redbox and Netflix and their cost to acquire customers has plummeted. If this trend continues, you don’t need Dr. Doom to tell you that it will be curtains for Blockbuster. They must stop the bleeding and they must stop it now.

Now I know what you are thinking, if Blockbuster is a penny stock today, how are they going to come up with $1.6 billion to pay off their long and short term debt. Part of it comes from the assets that they are holding today. With $980 million in current assets, they should be able to keep a good chunk of their leverage in check. The remaining $620 million worth of debt would be paid off by spinning off their new media divisions.

According to the most recent data, Blockbuster currently has 1.6 million online subscribers. As of last September, they had deployed 1,000 kiosks, but were anticipating that they would have over 10,000 deployed by the end of 2010. While Blockbuster doesn’t break down their digital revenues, I think that it’s reasonable to suggest that this division would be worth anywhere between $25 – $75 million based on their market position and intellectual assets.

If you look at Netflix’s current valuation, it works out to be approximately $255 per subscriber. Assuming that you discount Blockbuster subscribers by 30%, it would value Blockbuster’s DVD by mail business at $285 million.

In February of 09′ Coinstar completed their purchase of Redbox at a valuation of approximately $350 million. At the time, Redbox had 12,500 kiosks suggesting a value of approximately $28,000 per kiosk. Assuming that Blockbuster can get to 10,000 kiosks, even at a 50% discount to what Coinstar paid at the bottom of the market, one could assume that this stake would be worth approximately $140 million without Blockbuster’s legacy stores or debt.

What these numbers suggest is that if Blockbuster were to do a spinoff, it’s easily conceivable that they could raise at least $500 million in the offering. Assuming that they start to market their DVD by mail and get it up to 2.5 million subscribers, it would value their new media business at approximately $660 million.

If they did the spin off in the form of a convertible bond, I believe that this number goes even higher, because bond investors could be given the option to return to their current position, if the spin off flopped.

While this sort of transaction would create a new competitor for Blockbuster Video, by getting rid of their debt, it would enable their stores to become profitable once again, which in turn would make it easier for Mr. Keyes to raise money for the marketing and store improvements that Blockbuster so desperately needs.

While I believe that this rescue plan could make Blockbuster competitive again, I don’t believe that their current management is willing to sell off their future, even if it means saving themselves. Despite all evidence of a dying industry, Keyes continues to insist that the video store is the cornerstone of what they do and has consistently defined Blockbuster’s competitive advantage as being able to offer entertainment across multiple channels. While it’s easy to point to Netflix and Redbox as the source of Blockbuster’s kryptonite, I believe that it is their own unwillingness to let go of the past that is preventing them from being a video superhero of the future. Only time will tell how indestructible they really are, but if they continue down the same path, they’ll end up as a mere footnote in the history of the entertainment industry.

When I called Comcast to inquire about the increase, they told me that instead of extending their “promo” deals like they have in the past, they would rather lose my business than extend my discounted rate. After much hand wringing, I finally decided to cut the cord and figured I could always go back.

Sure enough, less than one week after discontinuing my cable TV service, Comcast had a change of heart and sent out a 12 month promo offer bundled with internet. While the deal looked tempting, I didn’t want to keep trying to play musical chairs when it came to how much I paid for television and I didn’t particularly appreciate Comcast’s policy of screwing existing customers until you actually quit. At first, I tried going cold turkey and figured I’d have withdrawals, but much to my surprise, I found that I didn’t really miss cable TV all that much.

Thanks to sites like Netflix, Megavideo, Amazon and Hulu, it was easy to stay up to date via the laptop and with less distractions, I found that I was actually accomplishing a lot more in my life.

Over the holidays, it became clear that cable TV simply wasn’t offering a very good value for what they were providing. In the past, there’s been talk of allowing consumers to subscribe to channels a la carte, but Comcast has consistently resisted offering this to consumers. As much as my laptop provided a reasonable solution for finding content though, I still felt like I was missing out on the high definition experience that I had grown to love, so after the holidays were over, I purchased an Audiovox HDTVo antenna to see what kind of free OTA signals I could get.

In the past, I’ve seen plenty of negative reviews on HD antenna’s, so I half expected that I’d be taking the product back, but despite a few difficulties in getting it set up, I couldn’t be more pleased with the reception that I’m getting.

When I was a kid, we had a giant antenna mounted on top of our house. Not only was it ugly, but every time a storm blew in, we’d lose all reception. On the good days, we were lucky to get three channels and even then it was intermittent with static. While the price for OTA signals hasn’t changed any, technology sure has.

Not only did my Audiovox antenna allow me to pick up signals that were over 50 miles away from my house, but they provided the signals with incredible clarity. No static, no glitches, just pure high definition goodness. When you throw in the ability to time shift my programs with my TiVo, it creates a remarkable user experience.

In comparing my season passes from cable to post-cable, I found out that there are approximately 15 programs that I’m missing out on. Of those programs, 10 of them are available through Hulu or Netflix. While I do miss some of the Laker games that are broadcast on ESPN and some of the original programing on USA and TBS, with over 45 programs being recording each week, there is more than enough high quality content to keep me busy. If you throw in Netflix’s watch instantly integration via the TiVo, there are another 250 movies or shows that I’ve got waiting in my queue.

While my overall impression of the AudioVox HDTVo antenna was positive, there were a few drawbacks. While the antenna is fairly small, it does look a little obnoxious sitting on my roof. Because of the location of the broadcast towers, in order to capture the signals I could only install it on one side of my house. This makes it hard to camouflage from the neighbors and could present problems to those who live next to tall trees or buildings.

Another difficulty that I had was that the installation instructions were very poorly written. They referred you to web addresses that didn’t exist, didn’t provide the names of each part, but referenced the parts like you were supposed to already know what they were and when I first hooked it up to my TV, I couldn’t get any signals because by five year old HDTV did not include an HD receiver inside of it. Luckily, My HDTiVo did and was able to translate the signals perfectly. I also thought that the name HDTVo was a little bit deceptive and made it seem like this was a product designed specifically for TiVo. While I’m not sure that it would amount to a trademark violation, I do think that the way they’ve chosen to market the antenna could lead to a bit of confusion on the part of consumers.

Despite my frustration setting it up though, the final experience exceeded my expectations and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the product to anyone who are looking for a way to save money on their television. At $65, it takes about 5 weeks before it becomes cheaper than paying Comcast for lackluster service and when you consider that you can save over $600 in the first year that you use it, the savings can add up pretty quick.

That $600 could be spent on two movies a night from Redbox or a Blockbuster rental every other day and I’d still end up ahead. While antennas in the past may have been a disappointment, the new generation of digital antennas make it easy to cut the cord and make it awfully hard to justify the expense of pay television. I don’t expect that we’ll see everybody cancel their cable bill, but if enough people begin to take advantage of this type of equipment, hopefully we’ll see some of the cable companies begin to rethink their fee increases.

Recently, Paramount announced that they were going to be distributing content on USB sticks. At the time, they didn’t say what format it would be in and even on DivX’s conference call there was no mention of this realization of their strategic vision, but Electric Pig is reporting that the Paramount movies will in fact be encoded in DivX.

With only 20,000 memory sticks for sale and at a price of approximately $33 US, Paramount is still clearly in the testing phase, but the fact that they choose DivX demonstrates the clear advantage that DivX has over all of their other digital competitors. They have the only real solution for brick and mortar retailers.

If Paramount tried to do this with a proprietary solution, it wouldn’t work because it wouldn’t give them a way to get that movie to the television. They could try to do it with Apple, but Apple doesn’t have the same reach to the TV, especially in Europe where this is being launched.

To date, most of my thoughts on DivX’s courtship of Hollywood have centered on the futility of trying to win enough support, so that online retailers could adopt their technology for digital distribution. If you can’t get a Disney or UMG to license DivX’s format, it makes it tough for someone like Netflix or Blockbuster to use their codec even with the other 80% of the content owners on board.

The beauty of the USB distribution strategy is that they won’t need 100% industry support in order to move their plans forward. Shelf space is limited as is, all they need is for a single studio to want to take advantage of this and there will be more than enough titles to tempt you with while you are waiting in line at the cash register.

Now I know what many of you are thinking, movies on USB are pretty lame. When Paramount made their announcement, there were more than a few commenters who zinged them for being out of touch with current trends. While there’s no doubt that the world will go digital, I also realize that the major studios aren’t going to abandon the retail partners that deliver the majority of their profits each and every year. It may end up becoming super easy to buy movies straight from your home, but if you have millions of consumers visiting a store each day, you can bet that the studios will want to reach those customers where they are hanging out. The shelf space is too valuable to be abandoned.

DivX on USB also opens up new business models for the studios. Instead of selling three DVDs, they could package all the Godfather films on one stick to justify a higher price tag or they could offer an entire season of television on an 8GB stick instead. If a retailer can sell something for twice the price, they will take smaller margins from the studios for the larger transaction. With the studios under pressure to develop new revenue streams, this will be too tempting for them not to exploit.

There’s no doubt that DVD is moving to Blu-Ray, but DivX memory sticks allow their Hollywood partners to reach consumers who may not have upgraded to high def just yet. With the industry in a state of flux, being able to sell a device that can be read by any computer and over 200 million devices gives DivX broad reach when it comes to the world of disconnected playback.

Paramount may be approaching this market cautiously, but I think people have greatly underestimated the size and the impact that USB films will have. It may not be cutting edge technology, but there are too many powerful companies who need it to succeed for it to fail. At the birth of this industry, it’s encouraging to see Paramount actively supporting their partnership with DivX, instead of just taking a licensing payment and then ignoring what their technology can offer.

USB movies won’t necessarily solve DivX problems with their shifting business model, but it does underscore the significance of the platform that DivX has built. As much as DivX is threatened by the obsolescence of the DVD, they can also benefit from the format shift. So far, they haven’t done a very good job of managing this transition, but this deal proves that even an old dog can learn new tricks. If retailers start asking for DivX as a weapon against Blockbuster and Netflix, other studios might also understand the benefits of using open and popular technology to make more money.

For the most part, the television world has been forced to accept reasonable restrictions in exchange for the public bandwidth they use to deliver their content. In the internet world though, the content rules are more like the old west because consumers are opting into the service by paying for it. As long as you have the quickest draw, your behavior doesn’t matter as much and so far companies like Netflix have been more concerned about digital market share, then doing what’s right.

Maybe this is because internet audiences are still small compared to television or it could be that it takes time for rules and standards to develop and emerging markets don’t tend to care about these things. Whatever the reason though, there are parts of the television experience that aren’t making the jump to the internet.

Specifically, I’m talking about closed caption data. For years, television studios have been legally required to provide this information, so that people who are hard of hearing can also enjoy the content. While there are some technical issues associated with adding this kind of data to a movie file, technology is at a point where it could easily support this. The Matroska container for example, is able to include optional sub-title information along with video and audio data. Alternatively, because online delivery can microstream to people, files with the embedded sub-titles could made available to viewers who opted into them. This would involve keeping multiple copies of the same movies though and so far the digital movie industry hasn’t wanted to bear this cost.

While I’m loathe to suggest new regulations on a burgeoning industry, I also feel like we have a responsibility to consider the needs of everyone. It costs companies extra money to include wheel chair ramps at their physical locations, but we pay for that as a society because we want to treat everyone as equally as we can. As the traditional line between telecommunications and entertainment becomes blurred, it’s important that we don’t leave behind those less fortunate in life. Having a law that requires subtitles in order to qualify for DRM legal protections wouldn’t be popular with the entertainment industry, but it would fill a void that the market isn’t interested in addressing. Personally, I don’t know whether or not I’d actually support a legal mandate for firms like Netflix, Amazon and Apple to require this data, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the issue.

Update – Interestingly enough, I found out that the FTC is actually hosting a hearing (not sure if there was a pun intended) on this topic on Friday Nov. 6. It sounds like the entertainment industry’s position may not be represented, but they will have several prominent members of the deaf community weigh in on the topic. The event will run from 9am – 1pm EST and will be broadcast on the web at the FTC’s website.

“I need not fear my enemies because the most they can do is attack me. I need not fear my friends because the most they can do is betray me. But I have much to fear from people who are indifferent.” – Russian Proverb

Now I know that most people don’t really care about the mechanics behind playing video files and I can’t say that I blame you for caring more about your content than the technology behind it, but while this post will get into some of the more mundane mechanics of the codec industry, I ask that you stick with me because behind the scenes a war is being fought for control of your very television.

This particular battle has been going on for over 10 years now and centers around something called a codec.

When J.D. Rockefeller set out to monopolize the oil industry, there were several crucial areas where he attacked. He knew that he couldn’t control all of the oil fields because it was literally bubbling out of the ground, but what he could control was the distribution method for getting oil to the end customer.

In building his monopoly he seized assets used to transport oil from raw material to the end consumer. Whether it was owning all of the oil pipelines, so that he could control what oil cost him, owning the railroads so he could dictate how far his competitors could reach or owning the distribution points where consumers bought kerosene to light their homes, he made sure that he had control over every aspect of it. This was good for Standard Oil investors, but wasn’t very good for competitors or consumers.

Online video may not seem like it has a lot to do with the oil industry, but if you look at it’s early development, there are many similarities. So much content is bubbling up that the real challenge isn’t finding video oil, it’s getting it to consumers. Instead of pipes, now we have internet access, instead of railroads there are CDN networks, instead of gas stations, there are operating systems ready to serve us 24 hours a day.

In all of these industries, competition has been limited to a handful of big companies, but the industry that I’m most interested is much smaller than any of these. In the grand scheme of things, codecs (and the filters that go along with them) are the refineries of the video world. They take digital signals and convert them into the flickering magic that appears on our screens. Consumers may not understand the technical details behind it, but they are a crucial chokepoint in your digital video experience.

This battle has been fought on many fronts, but in the end it always comes down to one issue. Those who think consumers should have a choice and those who think they know better. It’s about control over your entertainment experience. Who, What, Where, When, and How you are allowed to consume YOUR media. On one side, well funded corporations with huge financial stakes, on the other, an unorganized patchwork of misfit companies and an army of guerrilla volunteers desperately fighting for a better entertainment experience for all of us.

The war over how video is transmitted may not make it to the front pages, but how it turns out will be important for the success of digital video. In order to better understand how this battle is going, I reached out to interview one of the Colonels in this digital revolution.

Dan Marlin is the CEO and Co-Founder of CoreCodec. His company has built many of the tools necessary to play video files. Before starting his company, he worked for DivX and over the years has contributed extensively to the open source codec movement. He also sits on the board of the Matroska Foundation, an organization dedicated to enabling high definition digital video support for as many consumers as they can.

In our interview, we discussed the growing momentum behind the MKV format, his thoughts on DivX and the competitive landscape of the codec industry and had a passionate discussion around a controversial decision by Microsoft to prevent outside developers from using alternative filters in Window’s Media Player.

In regards to MKV, Marlin had many positives things to say about the momentum that they are seeing. When I asked him about interest in the format, he said that over the last 8 months, they’ve seen a “20 fold increase in the inquiries in regards to more details, about usage about enhancing the current feature set.”

This interest should mean good news for consumers. As more and more customers ask “where’s the MKV?“, hardware companies are starting to respond. When I asked Marlin about how long it would take before we see MKV reach critical mass he said,

“If you look at the adoption scale, you’d probably have to say that we’re at the Ubber Geek stage right now. It will probably take 2 – 3 years. We’re just starting to see the penetration now and it’s been three years since our last release. I would probably have to say two years. Not this Christmas, but the following Christmas you’ll probably start to see more devices.”

One of the more interesting things that came up during our conversations was some of the trends that Marlin is seeing in the MKV adoption curve. It’s no surprise that the anime community was one of the first ones to start using the technology, but I was surprised to learn that countries in Asia and Europe have been more enthusiastic in adopting MKV then in North America. In fact, the trends for MKV adoption mirror the original DivX adoption curve exactly. It’s almost as if the people who’ve been long time DivX users are the first ones to upgrade to an HD experience.

“Absolutely, as a matter of fact it’s mirrored exactly. You could look at DivX in the early days when I was there going back to 2001 and you can actually see the same adoption happening, the anime, the ripped releases from the AV heads, it’s mirroring it, but you have to ask why they are doing it? They are doing it because of the flexibility that it brings to what they’re doing. They can add, especially when it comes to some of the guys that rip DVD and the like and Blu-Ray, they kind of make it their own. They can add menus, there are menus out there that even though they are text, they do very basic things, but there can also be a ton of files inside the container itself, there are info files and pictures you can group.”

While Matroska was technically created by CoreCodec, Marlin told me that he has plans to spin it off into a foundation similar to Mozilla. They plan to offer sponsorships to companies that want to tap into their early adopter customer base. One of the things that I found fascinating throughout the interview was the openness behind such a transformative piece of technology. Instead of monetizing their creation, CoreCodec is building a business around the open source eco-system. Big media companies that believe you can’t build a business around “free”, would be well served in looking at how Core Codec has been able to position themselves by giving a good portion of their technology away.

“we looked at it not looking to make money and that wasn’t really the intention, but even what has been proven now and maybe not so much back then, open source and the ecosystem around open source, there can be profit. Even in a non-profit foundation or a not for profit foundation I should say, which the Matroska Foundation will eventually become, you know is pretty much the same thing. You still can be profitable and make money to support what you developed.”

When I ask Marlin about his thoughts on DivX and how they are positioned in the codec industry, his thoughts were bittersweet, “it’s a love-hate thing.” On one hand, having DivX adopt the MKV container does a lot towards making it a standard. It also helps to speed up the amount of time it will take to get into hardware devices. On the other hand, not a lot has changed since DivX and XviD split paths and now that the open source movement has taken the upper hand, he doesn’t like to see confusion between X.264/MKV and DivXHD.

“Obviously they’ve rethought what they had to do with H.264 which is a migration, but they’re not providing anything of value to what’s already out there. As a matter of fact, it brings more confusion than anything else and that’s the frustrating part because they have their own eco-system with certification and us as a solution provider like with CorePlayer or the CorePlayer platform itself is working with third party OEMs and they are asking questions in regards to DivX and DivXHD and we say the same thing we’ve been saying all along. DivX is Mpeg video and DivXHD is AVC video.”

Of all the topics that we discussed though, the most controversial was the decision by Microsoft to restrict how third party filters work within Windows media player.

To fully understand the issue, you need to know how your computer reads media files. When you click on your file, filters take a look at that data and tries to figure out what to do with it. If it’s audio, they’ll send the data to an audio decoder so your soundboard can play it. If it’s video, then it gets sent to a splitter where the audio stream and video stream are separated. From there a decoder looks at the video data, decodes it and sends it to a renderer for display on your screen.

The controversy revolves around how Microsoft prioritizes filters when you play back content. Currently, if you have several filters installed that can all handle the same job, WMP will look at the merit value of each filter and give preference to the highest one. Since you have the ability to prioritize which filters you want your computer to use, it allows you to create the ideal settings based on your hardware.

This comes in handy if you’re trying to play H.264 video in WMP and it happens to conflict with your video card. Since the user has control over the priorities, you’re able to create a better (more credible) configuration.

With the Windows 7 RC, Microsoft has taken away your ability to prioritize which filter you can use. From their perspective, they get a ton of complaints about filter problems and by making it a closed system it improves the experience for their customers. For the codec industry though, it will reduce the incentive for engineers to continue to work on filters because Microsoft has just essentially seized the entire filter market.

Microsoft will argue that because they allow people to install whatever filters they want on their own media players, that this restriction is somehow reasonable. After all, they’re not preventing customers from downloading another media player and configuring the settings anyway you like, they’re controlling their own product.

The problem with this argument though, is that while consumers have shown that they’re willing to download a codec, by and large, they’ve been very reluctant to download an entire media player. It’s a big commitment to mess with the default settings on Windows and because Microsoft bundles a copy of Window’s media player into every operating system they sell, it drastically minimizes the potential market that companies like CoreCodec, DivX and Nero can serve. This ultimately leads to less investment in codec technology and lower quality video for consumers in the long run.

Take a look for yourself at a real life comparison between video played using Media Foundation’s preferred filters and an open source combination. While the differences may be subtle, there is clearly better focus and definition in the open source solution. It might not be much, but it makes a huge difference when you put it on a 60″ screen. Today, you’d have the option of recreating the ideal settings in WMP, but with Windows 7 Microsoft is now in control.

While Marlin wouldn’t go as far as to accuse Microsoft of using their dominance over the operating system as a way of stifle third party codec competition, he did agree with me when I suggested that this may have more to do with preventing competition then securing their media player for consumers.

“You said it I didn’t, but essentially when it comes down to it, that’s what it is. It’s just frustrating that we all have to go through what we have to do and they could have provided an integrated solution without having to lock out third parties. Period.”

Now we can argue over whether or not Microsoft had an evil intent when they choose to shut down part of the codec industry, but regardless of the motives, competition is hurt by their decision to close media player to third party vendors. When I asked Marlin whether this would hurt his company or whether it was a dam in the river that would fork around the issue, he had conflicting thoughts.

““I think it’s going to be both. Microsoft will probably tell you that there is no problem and then the Core people will fork around it, but you’ve got to question the value of it though. You could still have embedded DirectShow filters, why have them under media foundation?”

Later on in the interview he extrapolates,

“I would say that as long as the default decoders are not set as the default and can be overwritten, I think we’re OK. The question is what steps will you have to go through and will Microsoft allow those steps. Right now you can edit it, they posted the solution online, but Microsoft could bypass that solution with the next RC. So that’s kind of like a wait and see thing. It does affect our business though, it does affect DivX’s business, it affects everyone’s business. “

Now Microsoft is free to run their business in anyway that they see fit and while the issue over filter compatibility within WMP may be an inch in the grand scheme of things, with each inch consumers lose a little bit more control. What’s so surprising to me about Microsoft’s behavior though, is how bold their actions are given the current regulatory climate.

Someone should nominate them for Alpha Dog of the Week because it takes giant brass balls to use your ability to bundle software, in order to shut down an entire industry, while you’re being accused accused of abusing your monopoly by bundling software within the operating system. If the EU understands even a little bit about codecs, I would expect them to be up in arms over this issue because it essentially proves the argument that they’ve been trying to make. Microsoft’s dominance in the operating system is having a detrimental effect on competition in other areas of the software industry.

It could very well be that Microsoft has good intentions here, but given their long history of doing whatever it takes to gain control of the codec industry, I can’t believe that this is by happy accident. This is a company that just spent a ton of money to exclusively webcast the Olympics in their Silverlight codec. The lack of MKV support in Windows 7 prompted the Hack 7 MC blog to write that “Microsoft’s support of the format is borderline neglectful.”

The decision to interfere with the priority filter settings is so Machiavellian I still don’t know what to make of it. My cold banker heart says yes! yes! yes!, but the consumer in me says dear God no. While I understand that these issues are hard to figure out and that there are many ways to look at them, I hope, for the sake of the entire codec community, that Microsoft will rethink their decision to exclude third parties from Windows media player.

For a complete transcript of my interview with Dan Marlin, please click here.

If you ask the big content owners, they’ll argue that the only content on YouTube has either been stolen from them or is some kind of a lame cat video uploaded by your crazy neighbor. Unfortunately, in my seemingly endless quest to collect and document the best cat videos on YouTube, I keep getting distracted by some pretty amazing independent content producers. Here are ten of the artists who’ve impressed me the most, over the past few months.

Wicked Awesome Films – Kevin & Bobby create movie trailers of pop culture events. Whether they are remaking the latest films, riffing on popular internet memes or teaching underaged kids how to get alcohol, their quick 2 minute clips will keep you entertained and laughing. They tend to be a little over the top and crude at times, but that’s a big part of their charm. They are usually NSFW so be forewarned, but if you enjoy listening to shock jocks on the radio, you’ll love their videos.

Jack the Danger Bunny – Filmed in a style that is part documentary, part sitcom, and pure genius, Cait and Dan share moments of their dysfunctional relationship with the rest of the YouTube community. If their relationship in real life is anything like the show, I’m not sure how long the series will be around, but take advantage why you can because their silly antics make for some of the best videos on Youtube.

The Big Time Show – Gabe and Dave moved to Hollywood with a dream to make it big. Along the way, they’ve been documenting their progress towards trying to break into the world of show business. They’ve got the looks, are willing to work hard, sell themselves out and have no shortage of motivation. The only problem is that they seem to be lacking talent. Filmed as a reality TV show, their videos take a satirical look at the movie business and features a wacky cast of characters including their sleeze ball agent, a clueless photographer and a student director who isn’t even willing to cast these guys in a student project unless they’re willing to pay him. If you’ve ever wondered how bad b-movies end up making it to the big screen, this mockumentary provides all of the answers. Spinal Tap fans will especially love this series.

Scenic Videos – I tend to prefer watching Youtube online vs. taking advantage of it on my TiVo, but the Scenic Video channel was made to be displayed on a big screen television. They film relaxing nature scenes and let viewers play them in the background. If you play their clips while you sleep, you’ll have fantastic dreams. Most channels get attention by flashing lights or using loud buzzer sounds, but the low key nature of their videos is what makes this channel really stand out.

Rejected Jokes – This sketch comedy channel is produced by Ben Schwartz, a writer who has worked for Letterman, SNL and Robot Chicken. While not every one of his jokes ends up on television, his unique blend of dark humor fused with pop culture leaves you laughing even if his YouTube jokes are the leftovers. Sometimes Schwartz will do a stand up routine, while other times the skits are a little bit more complex, but either way they’ll make you smile.

Daneboe – Whether your watching his award winning expose on the Kool Aid serial killer or his LegoMan job inquiry, Daneboe’s Gagfilms will keep you entertained with his seemingly random videos. He doesn’t produce a ton of content, but when he does it tends to be very high quality. It’s one of my favorite channels for when I need to quick bite of comedy.

Visible Mode – Watching the Visible Mode channel is kind of like watching a car accident in motion. You know it’s terrible, but you just can’t stop your self from watching the destruction. Visible Mode has some pretty crazy ideas, but his demented sense of humor is a good fit on YouTube. After watching his experiments at bringing the combover back in style, I feel much more comfortable about my own receding hairline.

Timbotantrum – This channel is producing the excellent LA I.C.E. web series. It’s about a couple of immigration agents trying to clean up the streets of LA. In addition to the series, Timbotantrum also produces some very funny clips that tend to mock the pop culture we live in.

Sloncekandrej – Sloncek is a legend in the P2P community, but is relatively unknown on YouTube. At one point, his website SuprNova was the most popular torrent site on the net. Sadly, it all had to end after he started to receive a little too much attention in the local Slovenian press. After shutting down the site, he gave the domain to the Pirate Bay and started focusing on making videos instead. Recently, he’s been working on an excellent P2P news vidcast with Torrent Freak. The program is very professional and is a bit like watching the local news for people who care about P2P.

Beet.tv – Beet.tv is a good example of what modern TV studios must do if they want to succeed amidst the fragmentation of the internet. Most of their videos are interviews with influential people in the tech community, but they’ve also begun to cover other industries like healthcare. After filming and editing unique niche content, they then hyperblast it through a distribution system that includes sites ranging from MySpace to the New York Times. The combination of high quality unique content and fragmented mass distribution has worked out pretty well for them so far and I’m optimistic that the model will prove to be successful. Viral stories don’t always have the same immediate punch that you get from live TV, but if they end up being seen by just as many people, it can be even more powerful than traditional television.

If you don’t actively engage in P2P sharing, you probably don’t think you need to worry about this, but I think there are already reasons to be alarmed. Even before the program’s launch, we are seeing reports of innocent customers being targeted by Comcast’s DMCA enforcement division.

Recently, John Aprigliano received a letter from Comcast asking him to take down a torrent that he was allegedly seeding. As if hitting him with a bogus DMCA takedown request wasn’t bad enough, Comcast had to insult his taste in movies by accusing him of sharing Cadillac Records, a movie that he had never heard of BTW.

When he called Comcast to figure it out, he got the usual run around. After 4 different telephone calls and an hour of hold time, he was finally able to determine that Comcast sent him the notice because of an old modem that was now being used by someone else.

I find this scary because I tend to move around a lot. Over the course of my life, I’ve easily used ten different modems. Considering how popular Bit Torrent is, there is more than a good chance that one of my former modems is being used pirate media. Why should I now have to worry about getting kicked off the net, just because Comcast can’t tell the difference between an IP and MAC address?

In John’s case, he was fortunate to be tech savvy enough to catch this, but what happens when some little old lady loses her broadband just because of a Comcast screw up? Are most people really going to know that they need to ask Comcast, what they have down for their Mac address? Somehow, I doubt that my Mom would have been able to prove herself innocent in the same situation.

During the RIAA’s lawsuit blitz, there have been plenty of examples where they filed lawsuits against innocent “infringers”. Now the media industry wants to exploit government granted monopolies, in order to take away high speed internet from those same victims. Forgive me, if I’m more then a little pessimistic. Why Comcast or AT&T would even consider such an anti-consumer proposal is beyond me, but the whole scheme is doomed for failure.

The pirates will eventually figure out even better ways to encrypt their traffic and the end result will just be a bunch of ticked off consumers feeling like big brother is breathing down their neck. It’s hard to get excited about having Comcast monitor P2P activity, when they already have a history for screwing these things up.

For those of you who are still not satisfied with the current crop of movie recommendation services, you’ll soon have a new choice available to you. Last week, I signed up for the private beta of Jinni and have been pretty impressed so far. Jinni is a new interactive movie rating website that is trying to do for movies, what Pandora has done for music.

While the site doesn’t stream any of the films that they recommend, they do offer convenient links to places where you can find the films online (Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu, etc.) Apparently, the company has been live for a few months now, but I only just found out about them last week after seeing a review of the service on Read Write Web.

The site includes reviews, photos and even trailers for each film in their database, but their movie filtering software is the real bread and butter. Most of the content you’ll find on their movie description pages is pretty much available on any of the other movie sites, but their “movie genome” information is exclusive to them.

Through a process of human and computer intervention, they’ve categorized every film in their library using information from the movie’s plot, mood, genre, time period, critic reviews, story type, and attitudes. Viewers are then able to filter their search results by using these definitions.

For example, a search for the term bank brings up 134 movies, but if I filter this list by looking only at the “witty” films that include a heist in their plot and are set in the 21st century, I’m able to narrow my search down to just three films, Criminal, Inside Man and High Heel’s and Low Lifes. Since I haven’t seen any of these movies, it’s hard for me to tell how effective this really is, but by narrowing down broad based searches, it does enable me to discover movies that would have gotten lost in the volume of other search results.

On Jinni’s website you can find more information on the actual genome mapping process.

“The starting point of the Movie Genome is manual tagging by our team of film professionals. Each title has around fifty genes, among thousands of possibilities. Then, using advanced machine-learning technology, Jinni’s system learns from the manual tagging to begin automated tagging. This creates a level of consistency that creative human taggers can’t reach – especially important for similarity matches and recommendations, which won’t work unless you compare apples to apples and battles to battles as often as possible. Users who vote on genes, as well as the Jinni team, constantly check and improve the machine tagging.”

After playing around with the site, I was really impressed with the user experience, but I’m still on the fence about whether or not Jinni’s approach is the right way to go. On one hand, by creating “genome” fields around each film’s “DNA”, they’re able to accomplish a lot more with the data, but on the other hand, by restricting rating population to just their staff, it also limits the number of films that they are able to catalog. As an example, if I do a search for the plot Psycho, I get 270 results, but the same search on the user driven site Spout, gives me 509 movies. Now I’d be willing to bet that Jinni’s quality is better then Spout, but by not allowing their users to tag films, they may be giving up quantity through their process. Some people prefer quality over quantity, but I can’t help feeling like they are missing out on the wisdom of the crowds by excluding users from participating in the genome mapping process.

In addition to their movie filtering technology, Jinni also allows you to share more information about your own movie tastes and they provide personalized recommendations. While I haven’t tested the quality of their movie recommendation service yet, I do plan on putting them through my own blind taste test to find out how accurate their ratings really are. In the meantime, if you’re interested in trying the service, feel free to apply to their private beta or you can leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to share one of my invites with the first 10 readers to respond.

Yet, despite all of the advances in technology, the rollout of fiber access has been painfully slow. AT&T likes to brag that they now offer Uverse to over 17 million households, but after two years, they’ve still only managed to sign up 1 million subscribers. While 17 million households sounds like a pretty significant footprint, if you’re not in one of the higher tax brackets, you are probably still waiting for super fast internet access.

A Tale of Two Cities

A little over a year ago, I left my swanky downtown loft in San Francisco for a much more humble apartment in the heart of Oakland. A big part of the move was because I wanted to save money for a new business that I was starting. At first I was ashamed to tell people that I was living in the 510, but after spending a year in Oakland, I’ve grown quite fond of the neighborhood. We certainly have more then our fair share of violent crime, but if you take the time to get involved in the community, you’ll meet a lot of amazing people. Leaving San Francisco for Oakland meant that I had to give up my fiber connection, but at the time, I was hopeful that it wouldn’t take long before AT&T finished their rollout of Uverse in the Bay Area. Sadly, after researching Uverse’s availability, I don’t expect this to happen anytime soon.

According to ZipSkinny.com residents who live in my zip code make a median salary of $32,273 per year. 23.7% of the population lives below the poverty line and there are nearly 18,000 people per square mile living in my neighborhood.

While Oakland can be a rough place, smack dab in the center of Oakland is a small town named Piedmont. Piedmont may be less then 2 miles from my home, but their community is night and day compared to my own. Despite being surrounded by Oakland, Piedmont was able to create a separate town for their residents and as a result they have their own school district, police department and fire services. While people in Oakland are struggling to survive, the median salary in Piedmont comes in at $77,952 (over twice what my neighbors are making.) The percentage of people living below the poverty line is a more reasonable 4.9%, and the average density per square mile is a measly 5,700 people.

Now I can’t fault Piedmont residents for wanting to live in a good neighborhood, but when you compare both cities, the difference between them is pretty startling. While one city is known for it’s high drop out rate among teenagers, the other is known for their high SAT scores. One city has an extraordinarily large population of single mothers, the other has an extraordinarily large population of personal nannies. One city has limited internet options, the other has access to Uverse.

We can argue over whether or not it’s fundamentally fair that Piedmont has so many advantages, but it’s their access to Uverse that I take exception with. As someone who has first hand experience with the benefits of a super fast internet connection, I’ve been harassing trying to get AT&T to expand Uverse into my neighborhood since I first moved. So far they’ve been pretty unresponsive and downright uncooperative to work with, yet 2 miles away in Piedmont, they are going door to door signing up residents for their service.

If you ask AT&T (either their phone reps or their PR dept.) for a list of neighborhoods where they provide service, they’ll refuse to break down the data citing competitive threats. Since I knew that Piedmont was juiced up for Uverse, but that Oakland had been largely denied service, I wanted to take a closer look at the numbers, to determine whether or not this was part of a larger pattern by AT&T.

In order to test my theory that AT&T is discriminating against the poor by only choosing high net worth areas to rollout Uverse service, I painstakingly researched bay area availability by looking up individual addresses one at a time. To help track this data, I created a public spreadsheet showing all of the bay area zip codes where you’ll find (and not find) Uverse service. While my spreadsheet does not prove that AT&T is using demographic data to discriminate over who gets access to Uverse company wide, it does suggest that their selection criteria in the Bay Area could be favoring the rich neighborhoods over the poor. When asked for more data on their company wide rollout, AT&T’s public relations department more or less told me to kick rocks and refused to comment on their selection criteria for Uverse availability. While they are well within their rights to withhold this data from the public, when you consider all of the government assistance that they receive, it seems only fair that they be required to provide some transparency over how they are choosing who gets Uverse and who gets denied.

According to my research, the average median salary of Bay Area Uverse neighborhoods comes in at $75,486 vs the average median salary of $67,405 for neighborhoods without access. In neighborhoods where AT&T offers Uverse, 6.65% of the citizens live beneath the poverty line compared to 11.04% in non-Uverse neighborhoods. While you would think that it would be in AT&T’s best interest to offer service in some of the densest areas first, a quick glance at the data shows that the average Uverse neighborhood represents approximately 3,500 people per square mile compared to density of over 7,000 people in Non Uverse neighborhoods.

Encyclopedia Davis and the Case of the Missing Uverse

Perhaps even more perplexing then the discrepancy between the haves and the have nots, was the fact that I could not find a single address in San Francisco which has access to Uverse. While my phone calls to AT&T reps and their public relations department generated plenty of assurances that they were offering service in the city of San Francisco, after more then 200 address searches, I still could not identify a single San Francisco residence that had access to Uverse. Despite AT&T’s claims that Uverse is currently available in the city of San Francisco, their representatives were also unable/unwilling to provide me with a single address that is currently using Uverse. As a result, I’ve excluded demographic data from the city of San Francisco when running the calculations listed above.

What makes this issue such a controversial topic is that if you are one of the traditional cable providers and want to expand service to a local neighborhood, there are typically very strict guidelines on which neighborhoods you have to serve. Because cable agreements have been traditionally negotiated community by community, local city governments have been able to negotiate equal access for all citizens. There are plenty of examples where cable companies have tried to only service high net worth neighborhoods, but because of the local franchise agreements, local politicians have had the muscle to pressure the cable companies to treat all of their citizens fairly.

When it comes to the telephone companies, the rules are a little different. Two years ago, California approved statewide franchise agreements that allow the phone companies to pick and choose which neighborhoods they want to offer service. The result is a broadband system that rewards the rich while discriminating against the poor.

Normally, I’m content to let businesses operate in the best way that they see fit, but when it comes to the internet, I’m a strong proponent of open access for all. The net is a great equalizer for society. It doesn’t matter whether you are black or white, rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight, young or old. When push comes to shove, it’s the power of your ideas that matter online. Yet, when it comes to the speed of your connection, it would appear that the tax returns of your neighbor, play a large role in deciding whether or not you have access to the highest tiered speeds on the net.

Internet providers have a unique business model that tends to encourage natural monopolies. Because the barriers to entry are so high, incumbent providers have a big advantage over new companies trying to get into the game. When you consider that President Elect Obama has proposed some pretty large checks to the phone companies, it becomes even more important to ensure that AT&T’s rollout policy treats everyone the same.

While I recognize the need for AT&T to turn a profit on their investment, I fear that by discriminating against the poor, it will only increase the digital divide. If AT&T isn’t using demographic information in their decision making process, then they should be more open about the criteria they are using to decide who does and does not get access to fiber internet. If my data is correct and they are only rolling out Uverse to the wealthy neighborhoods, then this is an issue that should be addressed before giving them access to more public funds.

While I believe that the statewide franchise agreements were a positive step for consumers and the telecommunications industry, if we’re not careful we run the risk of creating a system that makes it even more difficult for the poor to succeed online. While there may not be the same adoption rates in Oakland as there are in Piedmont, it doesn’t mean that their citizens should have less opportunities. Instead of continuing to discriminate against the poor, I’d like to see AT&T provide more balanced access to all.

Earlier this week, Ubergizmo broke the news that DivX has officially updated their Connected software to include support for flash video. With 98% of the world’s computers already using flash, this may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that 0% of the world’s televisions support flash, this really is groundbreaking.

Along with the update, DivX also released several plugins for their Connected device. These plugins add support for Vimeo, Daily Motion, YouTube and for the first time ever, Hulu all on your TV set. After playing around with the update, I created a video of the software in action. In the clip, I detail the basic features of DivX Connected and give you the very first look at Hulu Connected in action.

I hope to provide an even more detailed review in the future, but this news was simply too exciting to ignore. If you haven’t already checked out DivX Connected, I would encourage you to take a closer look. There are a lot of media bridge devices out there, but few of them have seen the kind of support that DivX has been able to generate from the open source community. Between the work that the community is doing with the Connected SDK and the work that DivX continues to do behind the scenes, they’ve managed to turn a very niche product into one of the most robust consumer electronic devices on the market without Connected customers having to buy new equipment. Considering that Connected has been out for less then a year, it’s remarkable to see how far the product has come in such a short time. I hope that you enjoy the video and that you’ll stay tuned for a more detailed analysis later on.

I knew it was coming, but I finally received my 9.4 software update. The update includes a couple of UI improvements, but TiVo’s support for YouTube is what I’ve been drooling over.

The way it’s currently set up, you need to hit a lot of buttons to get at your favorite content, but thankfully, TiVo has said that that they are working on a way to sync it with your personal YouTube account.

One of the complaints that I often read about YouTube is that it’s just a bunch a cat videos. While it is true that the feline community has found their special crazy place on the site, I feel that this statement does an injustice to all of the hard working innovative filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of the web. Don’t get me wrong there is a ton of junk on YouTube, but there are also some really talented people who are redefining the relationship between an artist and their audience.

The beauty of YouTube is that it provides a platform where all kinds of niche communities can develop. Cat videos may not be important to you, but to some people they are more compelling than anything on Prime time TV. The challenge is matching the niche demand with the niche producers.

When I was growing up, I only had access to three TV channels. Cable eventually gave me 100 channels to choose from, but even then there was nothing ever on. When TiVo came out it completely changed how I thought about “channels” and shifted the equation from 100 programs to choose from to 10′s of thousands. Now, by adding YouTube support, TiVo is once again exponentially increasing my access to content. Filtering through the noise will be a challenge, but this partnership will help personalize your television to an even greater level.

To celebrate TiVo’s support of YouTube, I’ve put together a list of 20 of my favorite web video creators. You won’t find many cat videos, but you will get a glimpse of the future of the entertainment industry.

1.) You Suck At Photoshop – The series is dark and twisted, but is very very funny. You get the feeling that sometimes Donnie is pulling his “hypothetical” examples from real life experiences, but his obsession only adds to the comedy. Even if you don’t like photoshop, this is worth watching.

2.) PurePwnage – I discovered PurePwnage about two years ago and was instantly hooked. The show follows a pro-gamer around and films him embarrassing himself and others. While it’s shot in an amateur documentary style, it’s clear that Kyle has a ton of talent. The series is cleverly edited and offers a humorous glimpse at the video game sub-culture.

3.) Pretend We Don’t Exist – Most of the videos on YouTube are filmed for the web, they are quick and funny, but they also tend to be unpolished and gimmicky. The videos that PWDE creates are a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of YouTube. Their clips tend to be much longer and are focused on deep and dark subjects. The humor is much more subtle and is driven by the characters in their films. The filming and editing looks amazing and represents cinematography at it’s finest. There are more popular artists on YouTube, but more than any of the other videos, PWDE’s content deserves to be seen on a big screen television.

4.) ./ Shutdown – If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on in your IT department, ./ Shutdown is the series for you. They celebrate all things geeky and offer an entertaining and humorous look at anything nerd related. Their videos can go from quirky to awkward, to just plain mind boggling, all in a single episode. I don’t know how their videos would do with a mass market TV audience, but I’m not surprise that they’ve built a following online.

5.) Mondo Mini-Shows – Not everyone will appreciate the humor in Mondo Media’s videos, but if you like the itchy and scratchy episodes from the Simpsons, you’ll love these animations. By combining the right amount of cuteness with hair raising violence, they’ve stumbled onto a winning formula for the web.

6. ) Sub Pop – Sub Pop is the only channel on my list that I would consider to be professional content. Most record labels have been slow to evolve to the new media landscape, but Sub Pop hasn’t been afraid to adapt. During the 90′s, they discovered many of the top grunge bands and continue to introduce amazing new artists today. Their videos are better than anything you’ll find on MTV, even if the bands aren’t as popular (yet.)

7.) Kevin Nalts – Love him or hate him, there is no denying that Nalts really is a viral video genius. Between his job and his family, I don’t know how he finds time to create his videos, but his gems are some of the funniest clips on the web. The man knows no shame and isn’t afraid to exploit helpless kittens to get the fame that he deserves.

8.) Gradual Report – When Ze Frank gave up internet video it left a big void on the web, luckily other talented comedians have step forward to help keep you entertained. Daniel Grozdich’s style reminds me a lot of Ze, but his comedy tends to be edgier and more dangerous. His rantings borderline on craziness and brilliance, but it’s a tension that provides a ton of entertainment.

9.) Tom Green – Ten years ago, TV was sorted into neat and tidy channels, but today it’s a fragmented mess. When you tell Netflix what movies you want to see, does it really matter what studio made it? Likewise, who cares what network a show is on, if you are just going to TiVo it? Tom Green was one of the first celebrities to recognize this trend and instead of bitching and moaning about it, he started his own TV channel and now has a successful online talk show that he broadcasts on TomGreen.com His channel isn’t carried on any of the cable networks, but thanks to the magic of the internet, fans can still tune into his bizarre and zany antics.

10.) Charbax – Whenever there is a tech boondoggle in Las Vegas, the press will trip over themselves to cover it, but if the event is held in Europe, you’re lucky to find any coverage. Fortunately, Charbax covers many of these European tech events and provides a unique view into the consumer electronic industry. His questions are focused with laser precision and produce very stimulating discussions on current digital trends. His reporting goes way beyond the sound bites and consistently brings new and relevant information to his audience.

11.) Rabbit Bites – You may have never heard of them, but Buns and Chou are two of the most famous rabbits on the internet. By combining sharp humor with rabbit commentary, they’ve managed to win the hearts of their fans. Their show is a cross between Access Hollywood and Animal planet. They typically skewer pop culture from the rabbit perspective. As their popularity has grown, they’ve been able to use their fame to bring several big name guests on the show.

12.) Videoholic – Videoholic was a betamax blogger, even before blogging existed. Over the years he’s met with other Beta fans, traveled to CES and has even written for Betamax newsgroups. During that time he’s also managed to collect a treasure trove of tapes that literally cover walls and walls of his home. Whether it’s Ray Bradbury selling out to the prune industry or old “cell” phone ads that should not be forgotten, you never quite now what will be coming next. By sharing his life long passion with the larger community, Videoholic is helping to keep history alive.

13.) Noodle Scar – Bonnie hasn’t updated her site in six months, but I’m still hanging onto hope that Noodle Scar will come back. Once a day, she would create a quick 30 second clip filled with random awesomeness. The fast tempo format always left me wanting more. If you haven’t already seen her clips, her archives are definitely worth exploring.

14.) Jeremy Cathey – Jeremy is only 17 years old, but he’s already learned a lot about how to make great films. He doesn’t have access to a big budget, but his clips still look professional. One of the great things about YouTube is that it gives filmmakers like Jeremy, the opportunity to experiment and try new things, without the pressure of needing instant success. As he continues to perfect his art, I have no doubt that he’ll end up making films for even larger audiences.

15.) Improv Everywhere – Most of the practical joke shows on TV tend to make their victims look really stupid, but Improv Everywhere adds a bit of class to the practical joke genre. Through the power of the internet, they assemble random people together, in order to stage elaborate public demonstrations. The events are designed to be so ridiculous that people can’t help but be confused by what’s happening. Just watching the pranks unfold can be fun, but watching the reactions make it priceless. I’m hoping that they’ll come to San Francisco, so that I can take part in the fun.

16.) Vancouver Film School – Even before the internet, I was always a fan of college films. They tend to take risks that big budgets won’t and I like the roughness that they bring to their films. The Vancouver Film School consistently puts out some pretty impressive clips. Their videos do contain an occasional miss, but they’re not infected with the commercialism that is embedded in today’s professional content.

17.) Muggle Sam – Normally, I’m not the sentimental type, but you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be touched by Sophia and Isabella. They are two young girls who are growing up on YouTube. Every episode reminds me of how great it was to be a child. Each day you learn something new about the world. What really makes the series stand out is the quality of it’s editing. Muggles Sam has a special talent for taking small clips and using them to tell a bigger story.

18.) The Gigaom Show – Most of the interviews that I see on TV are usually by a reporter who really doesn’t know all that much about the person they’re talking to. The result is a quick 30 second clip of PR spin. When it comes to the Giga Om show, you can expect a much deeper level of analysis. Because Om Malick and Joyce Kim follow the tech industry so closely, they know the right questions to ask their guests. The show is currently on hiatus for the summer, but I’m looking forward to seeing more episodes in the future.

19.) Reel Geezers – Who needs professional movie critics when you can watch Marcia and Lorenzo share their take on the latest Blockbuster films? This Octogenarian Duo has been broadcasting their own movies reviews for a little less than a year and have already built a respectable following. I don’t always agree with their take on the movies, but, but I still enjoy hearing them.

20.) aniBOOM – aniBOOM helps cartoon and animation creators monetize their content. They use YouTube to showcase some of their best stuff. As a big fan of cartoons for grownups, this subscription is one of my favorites.

My tastes can be a little eclectic, but hopefully you’ll be able to find at least one or two new shows that are of interest. If you know of any good web series that I left out or if you happen to make your own web videos, feel free to leave a link in the comments.