Video on the internet – A broadcast medium

Film and TV broadcasters have enjoyed a lot of control over the last century in the way we watch our content… There was no way anybody could produce content and then submit it to the B.B.C. and have it aired within minutes or even years for this matter. Actually, now I think about it, your submission in most cases would have been looked at, at once, if you were lucky! and then screwed up and chucked in the trash can!

Now with the rise of the broadband, this has opened up the channels for content producers to have a platform for one global audience. We love the ease of which you can create, encode and upload content on to the internet for everybody to see. This is great for the bedroom producer or maybe semi pro.. who wants to create an audience.. But we want to see the good stuff!

Here is where a major problem pops up and smacks the industry in the face. This is affecting our audiences and we are having to suffer billions of very poor quality content as a result…. Yep you guessed it “Rights issues”.. This means Hollywood and other major players around the world who produce the quality stuff, are only giving access to programs and films to internet companies that can pay for it and protect it. Most companies can’t protect the content yet, there are very few solutions which are good enough for Hollywood to let get of their content. Hulu.com is a major force and one that has done really well in the US, and we are about to see it come to the UK very shortly. The Kangoroo project that the UK broadcasters have been struggling to get off the ground, failed for these reason, rights! I believe anyway and not competitive clauses that the press fed us! (maybe I’m wrong, but it stands up)

How does a company solve these issues?, if they want their content to be seen over the web in particular territories, for example, Hollywood want French broadcasters to have the rights to show the content in France and not in Germany. So far the major players in the market are Flash & Microsoft. Lets face it, the flash player wins hands down, although Microsoft has a brilliant solution, but it does not look as pretty as flash. The problem with flash so far is that there has been no DRM standard for Flash and trust me Adobe is pushing for a DRM solution. Check out this article Adobe pushes DRM

This is a massive subject and there are two different sides to DRM, 1, which is protecting your video delivery over the internet via streaming or HTTP download. 2, Stopping people use your content without a license. We hear about Warner Brothers and other majors deleting videos off youtube.com. I hope to go into more detail in another blog..

I’m more concerned with the content and the production of it, but in this changing market you can’t help but get swallowed up in Digital delivery of video…

ROCK ON ADOBE FLASH!

Kangaroo’s online video project almost dead

This is not very good news for the UK broadcast market, here is a link to FT.com’s post this morning, I will go into more detail later, but please click on this link and read on …

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f1504f6a-f291-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Ff1504f6a-f291-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fhome%2Fuk

IPTV?

I often get asked what IPTV is.  For those of you who are web savvy it should be fairly simple to explain. For those who don’t know, it is basically Television over the internet. The short term IP means Internet Protocol. Since broadband has taken off like a rocket to space, we are clearly able to watch TV, films, video clips and commercials in real time, over the internet.

 OK, now that’s fairly easy to understand; but  there is a much wider discussion going on about the future of IPTV and the business models in order to get this right over the internet.

There are two main factors involved.

1 – Broadcasting Rights  
2 – Advertising Models 

Everyday, broadcasters and cable companies are losing their audiences to Internet Video Platforms, such as blip.tv, joost.com, hulu.com. They are trying their best to come up with a solution in the fight to keep their viewers. In the UK the BBC has introduced the iplayer. Channel 4 introduced 4oD and ITV launched a catchup service on itv.com.  The catchup services which all UK broadcasters provide have proved to be massively popular. The two main questions are, how do they monatize this service to keep it going? and how can they obtain the rights to distribute content over the internet?

The broadcasting rights to show content over the internet were not part of the deal when UK broadcasters purchased content to air on TV. Now the game change is shifting over the internet, the big US content providers are playing hardball and retaining these rights. With this in mind,  Hulu.com shouted out last month. They are opening up their platform to the UK.

It’s a massive subject. The US Content Owners don’t want to lose the revenue of IP (intellectual property) for one second! 

Signing off!

 

Realitypod.tv team