Archive for category Slingbox

TiVo And The Future Of Microcontent

Nov 15

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Media, Slingbox, Technology, TiVo, VOD | 1 Comment


Video: Streaming Media West 2006: Keynote by Evan Young, Dir. Broadband Services, TiVo

With TiVo announcing today, that they plan on ushering in a new era of broadband based television, I was left with more questions then answers when it came to how this impacted their long term strategy as a business. In a series of press releases that addressed everything from celebrity recommendations to additions to their TiVoCast service, I found myself almost dizzy trying to understand the broader implications of their recent broadband announcements.

While many details, involving the program were only announced today, late last week, Evan Young, the Director of broadband services for TiVo, gave a keynote address at the Streaming Media West 2006 conference where he offered a significant amount of insight into what TiVo’s future may hold, when it comes to broadband television. During his presentation, Young gave a startlingly honest assessment of the challenges that TiVo faces, as well as the opportunities that lie ahead.

After viewing his presentation, if there was one impression I was left with, it was the importance that broadband distribution will play to TiVo’s future. In the past there have been a lot of gate keepers that have prevented independent producers from bringing their content to television viewers and whether it was the cable companies, the Hollywood studios or the film distribution networks, the web now threatens to end the monopoly that they’ve held on television. While the internet has served as a great democratizer for publishers, it still can’t match the large scale distribution power of television and with their broadband strategy in hand, TiVo hopes to make a direct assault on the 22 minute half hour and 44 minute hour that that big media providers have built their businesses around.

While there will undoubtably be challenges in monetizing this revenue stream, TiVo intends to capitalize on the active nature of their service vs. the passive nature of traditional television by taking advantage of branded content at the browser level and by allowing consumers to opt into advertisments, instead of forcing irrelevant 30 second spots on them. While the major media companies have done a great job of addressing mass distribution for advertisers, they’ve done a terrible job of addressing the micro opportunities that exist today and TiVo hopes to fill the gap between short head content and longtail demand by opening up their subscriber base to the entire world wide web of video.

One of the things that I found so refreshing about Young’s presentation was that he clearly spoke from his heart. Instead of trying to censor everything he said, he showed conviction in the thoughts that he expressed. While some may consider his presentation to be a less polished approach then what members of the executive team may have given, I found his direct and honest assesment of TiVo’s broadband inititives to be a breath of fresh air, after listening to TiVo Executives dodge question after question after question over the last 12 months.

One of the more juicy tidbits that Young disclosed during his presentation was the actual number of TiVo subscribers that have connected their DVR’s to the internet, as well as the total number of DVRs that are eligible to be connected to the net. In the past TiVo has refused to disclose these numbers, but have said that they’ve seen a massive jump in customer satisfaction, between subscribers who have their TiVo DVRs connected via broadband vs. those who use a traditional phone line. As it turns out, of the approximately 4.5 million TiVo subscribers, a little over 2 million of them have the ability to connect their DVRs to the internet, but only 520,000 customers actually have access to broadband based services through their TiVo.

Other juicy details that Young revealed, were some of the more interesting background information on consumer adoption of these services. Despite only having 520,000 subscribers with the ability to use TiVo’s enhanced services, an astonishing 80% of them actually take advantage of it. Whether it’s listening to their favorite podcasts, tuning into Cnet’s weekly tech show or interacting with long form advertisements, broadband enabled TiVo subscribers are clearly making use of their connections. When asked specifically about advertisment acceptance rates, Young said that when it comes to general interest ads like movies and consumer products, the response rate is greater then 50%, but when it comes to luxury goods like financial services and high end vehicles, the number drops into the single digits.

When asked about how many people were taking advantage of TiVo to Go, surprisingly, Young responded that it was still a minority of TiVo subscribers that actually made use of the service. While I would have expected there to easily be a majority or users taking advantage of this service, to a certain extent, I can personally understand why this hasn’t been more popular. As someone who travels fairly infrequently, who has a very limited commute and who would prefer watching television on my gorgeous 60″ HDTV big screen TV, I can tell you that TiVo to Go has limited appeal to me. I am by far, much more excited about the possiblity of not only downloading video from the internet to my TiVo, but at the possiblity of uploading my own videos for my friends, family and readers to be able to watch from the comfort of their living rooms.

At the end of the presentation, Young was asked about two hot topic issues. The first was whether or not TiVo intended to introduce placeshifting to their service and the second was whether or not TiVo intended to allow PC functionality on their systems. In regards to placeshifting, Young said that TiVo wasn’t ready to address some of the DMCA concerns when it came to streaming live TV into other regions. While he stopped short of agreeing with the television industry’s position on this issue, I did get the sense that TiVo may have learned something when Replay TV was sued into oblivion over their commercial skipping functionality.

When it came to PC functionality, I was a little surprised at his answer. Earlier this year, when Davina Kent, TiVo’s VP of National advertising gave a presentation on TiVo’s advertising inititives, she said that TiVo subscribers had demonstrated, in consumer surveys, that they really didn’t want their DVR to function like a PC, yet Young seemed to indicate that it was less of a desire by TiVo to offer this functionality and more of a technological issue.

I’ve long wanted TiVo to introduce a linux based operating system that would allow internet browsing and PC functionality from my couch. While I don’t intend on doing any intense document editing from the comfort of my living room, it would be nice to be able to tap into a friendly poker game, email or any other web application that might be more interesting then watching TV. When this issue was raised Young responded that even though people may think of TiVo as a computer, deep down inside it really isn’t. Between their dual tuners, broadband downloading and their always on functionality, 99% of TiVo’s capacity is typically in use and it would be difficult for an operating system to run on top of this. He instead pointed to some of the open APIs that existed for developers who are interested in building home media engine applications for TiVo, but did admit that the video API would remain closed for now.

While he did say that TiVo expects to open their video API, at some point in the future, for the time being, TiVo is sensitive to the fact that their users expect a premium experience when using their box. By allowing people to download any content through the TiVoCast service, TiVo is concerned that poor video quality could taint the customer experience. Instead, they intend on allowing any non-copyrighted video to be played, but consumers must first download it from the web. By doing so, they hope that it will differentiate the content delivered via TiVoCast, from the content that users choose to bring to the service, even if it still ends up being poor quality.

Regardless of where the content comes from though, one thing that Young made absolutely clear, was that TiVo has no intention of discriminating against web based content. They intend not only to include your net downloads directly into your now playing list, but are currently working on ways that they can incorporate their TiVo suggestion technology into internet content as well.

During the presentation, Young discussed in great detail their experience with Rocketboom and the learning process that it’s been for the company. When they approached Rocketboom to take part in their TiVoCast program, one of the things that they asked Andrew Baron for, was higher resolution copies of the video files that they were posting online. By utilizing mpeg2 copies of the files, instead of flash videos online, it improved the experience from a television perspective and this is something that potential TiVoCast producers should consider, if they’d like to be added to the program.

When it comes to distribution costs, TiVo employs a BYOB strategy (bring your own broadband). By requiring producers to use their own broadband to distribute their fims, TiVo avoids becoming a hosting solution provider and instead acts as a distribution content portal. In exchange for providing your own broadband to TiVo subscribers, content owners are allowed to sell their own advertising in their video streams, very much in the same way that traditional television does today. Because TiVo is providing access to their subscribers through the TivoCast program, they do reserve the right to use advertising tags and long form opt-in commericials around the content, but it sounded like this hasn’t been very controversial for their existing content providers so far.

Monetizing video in a TiVo environment certainly has it’s challenges, but at some point TiVo hopes to create a system where microcasters will be able to charge subscription revenues and then split these fees with TiVo. While this is clearly a process that is still in development, as more compelling content becomes available we could see a world where a la carte television actually becomes a reality for TiVo subscribers.

While the video of Young’s presentation runs nearly an hour and it’s filled with side tangents between his love for the Ask A Ninja video blog to highly technical commentary, I would still strongly encourage readers, who are interested in TiVo, to watch the entire interview. Despite the presentation being a keynote address at a stuffy industry event, I found this to be one of the most fascinating TiVo presentations that I’ve seen in a very long time. Whether it was Young’s remarkable candor in admiting the challenges that Tivo faces, or his willingness to talk about issues that executives from the company have consistently dodged, his open dialouge was a breath of fresh air from the usual PR spin and it made me very excited about the upcoming changes that are in store for the company.

Slingshot Past Bad Hotel TV

Nov 1

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Microsoft, Slingbox, Technology, TiVo, VOD | 2 Comments

American Diners Since 1947American Diners Since 1947 Hosted on Zooomr

From time to time, I get a crazy idea in my head that I actually want to travel somewhere. Whether it be to some exotic destination or a business trip out of the town, the idea of spending time in a city other then San Francisco always seems appealing at the time. The problem though, is that in reality, I actually hate being more then 10 blocks from my home.

I don’t expect everyone to share this view and their are plenty of times when I don’t even share this view, but all it takes is a couple of days away from home and I remember why it is that I hate travelling so much. It’s easy to point to the hassles of flying, living off an itinerary or any other petty complaint, but it really all comes down to the lack of internet access and the loss of my TiVo.

For many business travellers a laptop and a Sling box works perfectly for overcoming this obstacle and theorhetically, I could always breakdown and buy a laptop to travel with, but I’ve been reluctant to do that until Microsoft comes out with their long overdue fancy Longhorn software that they keep promising me. I could also upgrade my Slingbox to the new High Def Sling so that it supports my TiVo series 3, but with as little as I travel, It’s hard for me to justify the expense.

While, I’m probably not the average traveller, staying in a hotel this weekend did make me think about how terrible the television and internet in hotels really is and ways that technology could be used to get around bad hotel TV.

Having been an early TiVo adopter, it’s been a long time since I’ve been forced to watch live TV, but just try taking a weekend off from your DVR and you’ll quickly remember why it’s such a transformative technology. I used to wonder why hotels didn’t just buy up massive quantities of TiVos for their guests to use, but one look at the outrageous pay per view charges and it’s very clear why they have no interest in offering a more compelling TV experience to their guests.

I was equally as shocked when it came to the internet charges. Sure I could spend a whole month’s worth of DSL for 24 hours of internet service, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. In the lobby of my hotel, they actually had an internet kiosk, but instead of paying $5 for an hour or two, they actually charged .49 cents for every single page you accessed on the net. You want to check your email, it’s .49 to access the login page, another .49 to get to your inbox and of course each message you read will set you back another .49. Who would pay such outrageous prices is way beyond me, but at the same time, trying to go a couple of days without getting on the net was a lot harder then I expected.

In thinking about my experience, it really convinced me that if I had to travel more, that I would definetely buy a laptop and a Slingbox, so that I could always maintain control over my media preferences. It also made me wonder why Sling hasn’t put out some type of an outgoing USB adapter that would allow consumers to plug in their laptops directly to the hotel television sets. I suspect that such a device probably does exist, but I’ve seen no marketing information on it and it seems like a natural peripheral product for Sling to sell.

By marketing a Sling branded adapter to get television from laptops to an actual TV, it would help increase the appeal of the product from niche travellers to a wider mainstream audience. A lot of people may not care about watching TV on their computers, but at the end of a long day, I don’t want to stare at some laptop screen, I want to sit back, relax and watch real TV.

Whether Sling chooses to sell this sort of product at a profit or to give it away to help differentiate their brand, I see an opportunity for them to take something that is currently too complex for most consumers and to make as simple as plugging in a cord from their laptop to an analog TV. While I suspect that the quality wouldn’t be the same as watching my HDTV 60″ Sony Wega, it would certainly beat having to watch bad politcal ads on someone else’s local news.

Hollywood and Technology Endure Awkward Blind Date

Oct 26

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, DRM, Media, Movies, Music, Netflix, Slingbox, Technology, TiVo, Web 2.0 | Comments off

Lets Get Ready To RumbleLets Get Ready To Rumble Hosted on Zooomr

One of the pranks I used to play in college was to dial the phone number of one of my friends, who typically was having relationship problems, and as soon as their phone would start ringing, I would immedietely put them on conference call and dial their recent ex and then sit back and watch as both people thought that the other person was calling them. In retrospect it probably wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but the results were always unpredictable and hilarious.

Sometimes they’d just start fighting, other times they would actually make up, but most times there would be a certain awkwardness as both parties thought the other had called, but couldn’t figure out why. While it may not have been the nicest practical joke, today Forbes magazine played a similar version of this gag when they invited some of the top technology firms to interact with Hollywood fat cats at their MEET (Media Electronic Entertainment Technology) 2006 conference.
The list of technology experts was a literal who’s who of the geek world. TiVo, Sling, Netflix, Apple, Google, YouTube, you name it, the list went on and on. While many of these technology companies came to court Hollywood into embracing them as business partners, they faced a tough crowd and a hard sell for an industry that hasn’t been forced to make significant changes in the last 30 years. In a nice overview of the conference, Paul Bonds with The Hollywood Reporter, gives a great run down on some of the more memorable recaps.

Blake Krikorian, CEO of Sling Media – Lamented what he called subscriber “fatigue” when it comes to sorting out new platforms and content availability. “The thing that’s not going to be successful is this notion of charging consumers multiple times for different subsets of content based on what display they’re on”

Tara Maitra, GM of Programming for TiVo – While many, including TiVo, are focused on moving TV fare to mobile phones, her company also is working hard on bringing Internet video to TV screens. TiVo does just that with about 10 Web site partners, but she hinted that much bolder plans are in the works

Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent President – Only a third of loyal fans watch their favorite TV shows live. As was the case with countless new technologies, Hollywood will harness it to its advantage, eventually. “P2P is the best thing that’s happened to the movie industry since the DVD,”

Barry James Folsom, GM of Connected Home Solutions for Motorola – Little more than a decade ago, VHS and DVD “were dirty words in these halls of this hotel.” Advocated a consistent system that would allow consumers to pay for content that contains no ads, or to view content with ads for free.

Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix – His company ships 45,000 different titles weekly, speaking to “how diverse people’s tastes really are.” Netflix has been recommending movies to its subscribers based on other movies they said they have enjoyed, helping the smallest of films gain popularity.

While most of these ideas aren’t necessarily radical concepts to those who have already embraced the technology, for Hollywood fat cats these companies represent a radical shift away from what they are used to. Even the old media guard couldn’t agree on what the future of Hollywood should be and the highlight of the conference was a very entertaining heated debate between Michael Eisner and Barry Diller over the issue of net neutrality.

Without being at the conference, it’s hard to fully appreciate what the atmosphere must have been like, but given their past responses to technological shifts, I can’t imagine that Hollywood would have been all that receptive to ideas as radical as not having to pay for your content multiple times or giving indie films greater leverage by matching niche demand with niche supply. One of the more surprising responses though, came from Forbes reporter Rachel Rosmarin, who must have taken exception to something negative that TiVo had said about Apple, because after the conference she blasted TiVo on Forbes’ blog for the event.

“Note to TiVo General Manager of Programming Tara Maitra: While its great that you’re pushing video content from The New York Times and CNET out to DVRs, that’s not exactly the kind of content people dream about watching on their TVs. We want YouTube vids, movies and TV shows on demand through TiVo. You said today that while other companies boast that they’ll soon be putting Web video on TV sets, TiVo is already doing it and is serious about it. I’ll believe it when I see the content”

She later then went on to add

“Whatever happened to the TiVo-Netflix movies-on-demand tie-up you announced back in 2004? Yeah, these deals are hard to work out, but you’ve got to do it. I hope you found Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings in the buffet line at lunch today and worked things out. If not, stick around for the post-lunch panel where he’ll be speaking about “Reinventing the Movies.”

Meow talk about cat fight. I would have loved to have looked around the room and seen the faces of industry execs as these technology leaders tried to convince them to trust something that threatens the billions that they’ve worked so hard to protect. Earlier in the event, when Chad Hurley of YouTube talked about their initial reluctance to carry ads, Rosmarin reports that

“The recently-acquired video-sharing site’s still a little self-righteous about the advertising model, so [Dennis] Kneale knocked 29-year old chief executive Chad Hurley down a few pegs. “Now that you’ll be just a trinket on Google’s charm bracelet, your aversion to advertising has to change at some point.” Zing!”

Since I wasn’t at the event, I can only imagine the awkwardness that these companies must have been felt over the last two days. While at some point Hollywood and Silicon Valley needs to figure out a way to get along, with so much at stake, it’s not surprising to see the more traditional media companies drag their feet, while the start up technologies continue to move forward at a dizzying speed. Where both sides will intersect is anyone’s guess, but in the meantime, it certainly is fun watching them work it out.

Slingbox Takes On Geek.com

Sep 10

Posted by Davis in Slingbox | Comments off

Jason Krikorian & Brian Jaquet with Slingbox did an interview with Geek.com about the recent launch of their SlingPlayer Mobile software. In the interview Sling does a good job of talking about their product and their marketing approach, but the part that was of the most interest to me was their take on the cellular companies. When asked if there was concern by the cell phone industry about data usuage, Sling responded,

“Actually, carriers could use Slingbox as a way to market wireless data plans and inform customers that they can watch their own TV on their mobile device. Data consumption shouldn’t be too bad unless someone watches hours and hours of Sling content on his or her device, which isn’t the normal usage pattern for the mobile client.”

Now if you look at the quote, they actually dodge the question by slipping a “could” in there to qualify their response. The cellular industry has their own content plans and Sling is definetely a threat, but they do bring up a great argument for why the celluar companies should be looking at Sling as a partner and not as a competitor. If the cellular networks could just look past their irrational belief that consumers will be willing to pay for the same media multiple times, they would see an opportunity and not a competitor. Just like the telco industry owns the broadband access into the home, the cellular networks own the access to those cellular lines. Instead of trying to sell content, they should instead be focused on the potential to promote higher data usuage by their customers.

Right now the internet cell phone plans are terrible. The web pages are impossible to navigate and the text is too small. There is limited value added to the subscriber. It’s certainly not worth paying $10 a month for. On the other hand, if I could get my favorite TV on my cell phone, I do think it would be worth paying something for. I don’t mind if the cellular providers want to charge their customers to use more bandwidth, but I think that by locking them out in lieu of limited media alternatives is not the solution. Whether Sling ends up creating agreements with the wireless network still remains a question mark, but by focusing on the data usuage, Sling makes a powerful argument for how they are a value enhancer and not a competitive threat.

Don’t Tell Sling, But Sony (Re)Launches Placeshifting Revolution

Sep 6

Posted by Davis in Slingbox | Comments off

There was a time, when Sony’s brand represented quality and innovation, but over the last decade, the company has stopped innovating and has instead launched one product failure after another. Now after seeing consumers begin to adopt Sling Media’s place shifting technology, the company has set their sites on “revolutionizing” the place shifting industry by relaunching their LocationFree technology. This technology has been around for over two years, yet Sony hasn’t spent a lot of money marketing the service. Sensing that they are losing important ground to Orb and to Sling Media, the company is making a new push to highlight this product.

While I am a fan of placeshifting, there are a lot of reasons why I won’t be buying into Sony’s latest marketing hype. First and foremost is that I don’t trust them. This is a company that secretly sold root kits when consumers paid honest money for their music and which is now forcing a dangerous format war in the HDTV DVD universe because they want to monopolize the HDTV DVD industry. Sony is not about opening up their content so that consumers can use it, they are more interested in selling Sony products. Case in point, if I were to purchase a LocationFree TV, I can’t stream the shows on my Audioxvox SMT 5600 cell phone. I can stream Sling or Orb on it, but not Sony. I need to buy a PSP with no voice technology built into it, if I actually want to catch a Lakers game on the go.

I guess if I had a PSP this wouldn’t be as significant an issue, but if I had a PSP I wouldn’t need placeshifting to begin with because I’d have video games to keep me entertained while I’m carrying that brick around with me. Another problem with Sony’s approach to placeshifting is the reported price that they want to charge consumers. Ten years ago, Sony may have stood for quality, but after losing their cultural relevance to the iPod, they will continue to lose market share to Samsung, if they think that they can price their products at the high end of the consumer electronics food chain. With an estimated price of $200 – $250. Location”Free” TV isn’t going to be cheap. Considering that you can stream Orb for free or you can buy a Slingbox at Best Buy for $150, Sony’s decision to lead the placeshifting revolution at a higher price point isn’t going to gain them any market share, although it will certainly make sure that product stays profitable for the company.

While I think it’s neat that Sony is embracing placeshifting instead of trying to sue the technology, I think that they still have a long ways to go if they want to earn my consumer electronic buck. Until the company can demonstrate that they are committed to using to technology to open up content to the world instead of restricting it, there is no way that I’m placeshifting this revolution.

Oak Investment Partners Throws Away $70 Million on MobiTV

Jul 12

Posted by Davis in Slingbox | Comments off

Over the last few years, I’ve watched the development of the Slingbox and Orb with great interest. Being able to watch TV on the go through a cell phone, laptop or PDA is really cool, but in all honesty I don’t spend enough time on the go to justify paying the wireless access charges on my phone for the service, especially considering that my Audiovox phone already supports a video library that I can snyc on my phone in my downtime.

While I’m probably not your typical placeshifter, I do still find the technology very exciting and I’m glad that there are companies out there that aren’t afraid to risk the wrath of the Hollywood fat cats to provide consumers with access to programming that we’ve already legitimately paid for.

At some point, as the popularity of placeshifting grows, I expect that we’ll see the content and cellular providers go head to head with Sling Media and Orb on the functionality they allow, but for the time being these companies have set the gold standard when it comes to expanding consumer’s fair use rights and would be my first choice if I was going to adopt placeshifting.

With as much money at stake, I guess it shouldn’t be any surprise to see that the cell phone providers aren’t accepting placeshifting lying down, but I continue to scratch my head at the dilluted offerings that are being presented to consumers.

MobiTV is one of these offerings that has received broad support from the cellular industries as well as a number of wealthy venture capitalists. According to GigaOm, the company has actually just received another staggering $70 million dollars from Oak Investment Partners to support their version of what they think consumers want.

Basically MobiTV allows you to receive East coast broadcast television feeds live on your cell phone. While on the surface this sounds like something that consumers might like, it’s a huge downgrade for those used to being able to access any channel, not just the ones MobiTV has partnered with or for those who want to actually time shift their programming instead of watching it live. Given that MobiTV is trying to charge $10 per month, on top of the $20 per month that the cellular company is going to charge for unlimited data transfers, this seems like a really weak service to be offering to consumers compared to the anything at anytime business model of Sling Media and Orb. While it’s nice that MobiTV is trying to work with content providers to provide TV on the go, there is no way I’d ever pay that much money to not have time shifting capabilities despite how much content partners seem to hate the PVR.