Internet video is going to take over the world. We want unlimited choice. We want user generated content. We want our TV shows streamed to us. Give us the long tail. Please.
Because we want all of this magnificent video, we want, no we need to be able to hook up our computers to our brand new HDTVs. Of course its not that easy for non techies to get the internet video from the net, through your PC or router to your TV. But thats what we want.
Its exactly why Apple and others are coming out with product after product that transports that magical 100mbs of Youtube, AOL, Revver, Yahoo or whoever's video from your PC to your TV.
So the contrarian in me asked the question: "Should we look at taking the video in the other direction? ". Should we be sourcing video from traditional TV delivery options. Can user generated content be uploaded to cable or satellite companies and then delivered as regular TV to be played back from a settop box or DVR.
Your DVR, whether you know it or not is a PC. It has a hard drive that is probably as big as the hard drive in your PC. The one huge difference between your PC and your DVR is that the DVR has a user interface that is optimized to sort, select and display video content on your TV. In other words, dozens of companies are trying to create add on devices that will somehow make your PC act more like a DVR.
So why not just use the DVR ?
There is absolutely no reason why you couldnt subscribe from your DVR to a CBS "User Generated Content" feed that has the same content as what they offer to their Youtube Subscribers. The difference of course being its in TV or HDTV quality. The content would be delivered through your cable or satellite provider. There is no limit to the number of content providers , large or small that could offer subscriptions.
What about pure user generated content ? What about people's cat, kids and response videos ? Simple.
Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Time Warner, Charter, Insight, Cox, any cable or satellite provider could easily offer a website that allows users to upload content the same way they upload to Youtube. One key difference is that they wouldnt have to limit the length or encoding quality of the content. Youtube and other sites that make their money selling ads around content, have to limit quality and length of video to minimize file sizes, which inturn minimize their bandwidth costs. Bandwidth costs are so expensive at the volumes Youtube streams, many have questioned their ability to cover those costs even with the constraints.
Traditional TV delivery methods however are multicast , as opposed to internet videos unicast approach to video delivery. In English, that means that the cable and satellite companies could take the uploaded videos and push them out to all DVRs of anyone who has subscribed receive those videos in a single stream. internet video requires 1 stream per person per video.
The user side would be incredibly simple.
If you subscribed to all of CBS videos, you get them. If you subscribed to all of NBCs video, you get them. If you subscribed to all of Universal Music's videos. You get them.
Or you could subscibe to all user uploaded videos that are in the comedy category. Or all user uploaded videos that are in the news category. Or you could subscribe to all the videos uploaded by Mark Cuban, or whoever. Or if your hard drive in your DVR was big enough, you could just subscribe to everything.,
If you subscribe to everything, it would be easy to have software that updated your DVR with just new offerings.
Basically, what would happen is that your DVR would act as your local server and rather than searching for videos on the net, you would search for them on your local DVR.
Of course there are challenges to this approach. It wont be easy to get users who upload things to go to cable and/or satellite sites to upload there instead or in addition to Youtube. So Youtube will probably have more content. This approach works best with content from the major media companies.
Plus there are general advantages to the Youtube approach. One of the cool things about Youtube is that it has so many videos that you can find almost anything. Youtube's current large inventory of videos would be a big advantage
One key advantage the cable/satellite guys would have is with advertising. Whatever advertising DELIVERY methods Youtube, etc used to sell advertising could easily be implemented on a DVR. Like internet video, delivery of ads from a DVR is easily quantifiable and reportable, but of course the quality of the video and the ability to offer long form click through options (if a user clicked for more information, its easier to deliver a quality 1, 2, 5 minute or longer video thats already hosted on a DVR than it is from the net)
Each approach would have its plus and minuses, but if cable and/or satellite decided to dive into the user generated content businessgiving users a choice, things could get interesting.
Computer to TV ? .Shouldn't it be the Other Way ?
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Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. This won't work and isn't a feasible option. People want choice. You have a problem and you're trying to solve that problem by making people operate within the box that you provide for them. Your forcing the user to get the content from where you provide it and how you let them. You can never offer the flexiblity of a PC, where the user can get it wherever and however they want.
With the recent rulings, maybe there will be DVR's consumers can purchase that you can get the cable or satelite provider's feed, and also plug it into the network so you can also access video from any pc on the network. The xbox is very cool how you can do this but it limits you to WMV, which is why it's not as big, it restricts the user.
It seems like the best route are these devices that hook up to your tv and you hook it up to the network. Ideally it would be to not have this extra box, and have this functionality built into the DVR.
Posted at 12:14PM on Jan 19th 2007 by MetaGunny
3. Hey MARC!
Have you heard about the government limiting freedom of speech in BLOGS?!? You have to get on this topic! It's outrageous! I posted it on my blog, which I linked to.
Love your stuff!
Peace
Jeremiah Christopher
Posted at 12:37PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Jeremiah Christopher
4. I think that the DVR should be included in this. I feel so limited with my expensive HD Tivo. I should be able to get streaming content to it whenever I want. I should be able to get instant movies from Netflix on it (hear that Netflix? Renew your agreement with TiVo!). That box has so much potential, but currently it's being used as a glorified VCR and that irritates me. I want more stuff on it, and I think you're on the right track.
Posted at 12:43PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Lamarr Wilson
5. The fundamental problem is the difference between advertising method. TV uses push advertising to promote its shows. While you're watching content you already enjoy they mention to you other content you might enjoy (bumpers). These work well because the number of shows isn't that high (500 channels x 20 shows per day per channel) = 10000 shows to choose from.
User generated content comes in much larger doses and uses pull advertising (you only see it when someone you like tells you about it as in a blog). The TV guide system just doesn't scale to the millions of shorts for user generated content. The PC with its Internet infrastructure, bookmarking and discovery options is a much better platform for low-quality hit-and-miss programming.
Posted at 12:48PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Orion Adrian
7. Can I just be the first to say this is a really great idea? I'm an independent filmmaker and I've put my shorts all over the internet, but it drives me crazy that people have to watch them at such low quality. If I could upload my videos at full resolution and people could watch them on TV, that would be fantastic. It would save me from making and handing out DVDs. But why would this have to be a feed-based push thing? What about the on-demand cable systems already in place? Would that kind of personalized cablecasting take up too many resources to make it worthwhile?
Posted at 1:11PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Kyle Gilman
8. I would add that it wouldn't need to be exclusive to Cable and Satellite. Broadcasters could use their multicast channels to do the same thing, wirelessly. Most of those channels are going fallow with nothing more than weather radar.
All user generated content still scares me from an advertising standpoint. Most conventional content is "safe" but alot of user stuff isn't. If I were P&G I wouldn't want to be associated with supporting video like the infamous girlfight.
Posted at 1:30PM on Jan 19th 2007 by S Hammer
9. User-Generated content is overhyped, it's meant for computer consumption, a 30 second to minute clip viewed in a small window. Grab anything off YouTube and watch on a TV (hell even click to full-screen button), it's awful and unwatchable, flash cannot do high resolution video.
BskyB actually has been trialling your idea for a few months now in the UK; user's upload their videos to Revver, Sky has a set channel to air user's content and they split the ad revenue. But most content shot by user's is from a cameraphone, that kind of image in 16:9 is not pretty.
YouTube is not TV, it's highlights and clips. TV is and will always be cable/ISP because they're the only one's with the bandwidth.
Now, niche professionally shot content - there's a market with a bright future.
Posted at 1:30PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Adam Cains
11. People want to watch certain things on their computers and certain things on their TV.
Apple has done a good job providing this. I still think there are many things missing such as the ability to simply surf the web with Apple TV, but it's gettin there. I personally just hook up my macbook to my widescreen HDTV and viola it works without having to spend $299 on an Apple TV. Plus, it's only two simple cords so the thought that you have to be a tech person is not true.
I can then watch anything online on a big screen tv (which looks fine) and then use my Apple remote to watch movies from DVD or that I've downloaded from iTunes. The only benefit of Apple TV is that it does this wirelessly.
I guess I can't understand why you're saying "it should be the other way" when it comes to getting content. I really don't see the benefit of getting my programs from Comcast and then putting them on my computer. I sure don't want to watch those TV programs on my computer and if I want them on my iPod I just download them from itms.
I really think we already have on demand at all times. We can get our internet video whenever we want and also get our movies (most of them) whenever we want and also DVR our shows whenever we want, so I guess I'm unclear on what you're saying.
People want their shows and movies to look good and the current combo of DVR and iTunes already does this. I really don't think people care about the quality of youtube videos. The quality seems adequate enough already. I sure don't need to see some 12 year old kid in Ohio dance to some Shakira song in high def.
Bryan
12. I used to think exactly that way - TV to computer/web and back. Imagine someone providing tools and service for that feedback loop system. He would know a lot more of their users and their social cirlce(thanks to social networking), that service provider has aggregated a group around content that is ripe for either an upsell/targeted ads. In fact you are recycling content and gathering more ad dollars. Just like Sienfeld on tbs, fox etc.,
Half of youtubes most of the content is pirated. They are snippets of TV program that are uploaded. You end up watching it because someone told u in u r social network or b'cos that content had too many eyeballs.
Give users tools for "whatever u want whenever u want on whatever device" market, let them host/publish on a standard platform. In fact I am looking for some angel funding to build a s/w prototype for this.
Posted at 4:06PM on Jan 19th 2007 by calerius
13. Now Google doesn't look so dumb for paying so much for YouTube. The content is there. After more infrastructure is added and bandwidth picks up, the limitations (specs) for uploading content to YouTube will go up, and they can offer YouTube content as you've described. It will take a while for other places to catch up, because YouTube already has so much content.
Ultimately all content is still downloaded in order to be viewed. That has to come from somewhere and the quality of the download requires more bandwidth.
Posted at 5:57PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Toby Getsch
15. I don't really want to see anything I have on my computer on my TV except maybe some pictures and video clips. But it's not that big of a deal to me. At some point in the future it will be...when everything should meld togther (iPod, TV, computer, etc.). But for now, the programming and content and applications aren't really driving me to demand or desire it yet.
Posted at 8:35PM on Jan 19th 2007 by basketball training
16. I think its a great idea.. that can be expanded...
for example.. why not have a box set..& (DVR) that can connect to multiple networks.. dish, direct tv, zoom, local, and Cable.. you pay for the shows you select from the line up that is generated on the Box menu.. .. (could be done.. web services...)
Box manufacter would make money on commissions sold from the use of picked shows from the channel lineups.
I like it.. doable plan.. all you need is startup capital..
good topic Mark.
Posted at 10:21PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Mike Verinder
17. The possibilities are endless with the internet and the technology that is coming out of it. I'm amazed by the HD quality video's I've watched on the internet as of late.
Posted at 10:30PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Browie.com
19. YouTube cannot deliver high quality videos yet. But peer-to-Peer delivery can.
This works especially well with "channels" like CBS or NBC which can be distributed as BitTorrent podcasts.
These P2P shows can be downloaded by a PC but also by a set-top-box. That is the future.
Posted at 2:51AM on Jan 20th 2007 by Louis Choquel
20. There is so much more to video on the internet than television can ever provide. I think the word here is convergence. Videos are becoming an integral part of many websites. Websites are becoming niche TV stations. But unlike television, these websites are also interactive. Take for example Myloanchoices, they provide a series of interactive videos on a quite boring subject of secured loans. That's what I call long tail. Give it a year and websites like this will be everywhere. Video publishing is cheap, the distribution channel is cheap. I think rocketboom, youtube and podcasting is just the very beginning.
Posted at 3:33AM on Jan 20th 2007 by Nigel Bassett
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1. Mark, your bias is going to hurt you in the long tail, oops... i mean long run. people want both quality and control but what so many are drawn to now is the control aspect. content put out by traditional gatekeepers is consistently getting trashier and trashier. not too mention the propaganda that is forced upon the people 24/7 like "24".
that show is neocon garbage and many are sick and tired of it, who cares if the picture is incredible. i rarely watch mainstream anything these days because i have too much content to choose from that isn't mind numbing. personally the cable companies can go to h***, they are the problem not the solution.
Posted at 11:35AM on Jan 19th 2007 by Rat