Technorati : web20

How is Netflix’s new Watch Now service? So far so good. I really wish those critics that have written about it actually tried it out a little instead of projecting what they thing about it before even trying it. What is the point? The only experts here are those that have actually tried it out. Anyway, here are my notes on the service thus far:

1. movie selection is limited, but obviously more to come soon

2. I cannot get it to detect anything better than good, even though speed tests to San Francisco peg me at 4.5mpbs.

3. really hope they integrate the same queue concept for Watch Now. Would be nice to queue up movies for online viewing.

4. Along the lines of #3, above, the organization of the movies for sorting and searching is weak.

5. quality of the stream on basic is marginal, definitely artifacts and pixelation occuring, however on the “good” setting the quality is really good. I have my PC hooked up to a 42″ HD plasma and the picture is great. Some movies are in widescreen. No 5.1 surround sound, not sure they can ever accomplish that with streaming though.

6. overall it is terrific. I am on the 4-at-a-time plan, so having another 24 hours of viewing is really cool. Very psyched with this so far.

7. one thing that is annoying is the DRM license that you have to accept everytime you want to watch a movie. I am already signed in, why do I have to do this everytime I want to watch a movie?

4 stars!

Technorati : netflix, watch+now

Quality isn’t too bad…. I have a 6mpbs connection, although Time Warner sucks so badly that it really tops out at around 2-3mbps most of the time (read: almost always). Too much net traffic in NY kills it (I am in northern New England). Anyway, even though speed tests showed about 2.5mbps last night, Netflix decided my connection was only good enough for their basic stream… from what I’ve read the high end speed gets you near-DVD quality. Even on the basic setting the picture was good in wide screen on my 42″ plasma.

Movie selection is slim right now, but I expect that to pick up in the months ahead. Yes you need to be running windows vista or XP SP2 and you cannot use any other browser other than IE 6+, but the player plugin is small and slick and works well… not a huge price to pay to get an extra 24 hours (in my case) of movie and tv show viewing.

The offering is pretty good overall, they didn’t have to do it, and I think it is a good differentiator for Netflix who is in a battle with Blockbuster right now to own the online DVD rental space.

Nice work Netflix, now please figure out how to give me a better stream so I can watch in a higher quality.

Technorati : instant+watching, netflix, watch+now

If you aren’t willing to figure out a way to get your content and services on different devices (make it portable), someone else is going to do it for you. Take Slingbox for example. They are in the business of delivering all of your tv channels (and other content) directly to your mobile device (pretty much in real-time). Hanging out at your kids’ swim meet? Fire up ESPN and pass the time away. Browsers are getting more robust on most smartphones, delivering flash, video, audio and java experiences that rival what computer browsers a few versions ago could handle. And they are doing it at speeds that are not half-bad. Heck, you can take your Motorola Q and listen to XM or Sirius Satellite radio.

Pretty slick, and as the wireless carriers continue to beef up their highspeed offerings (EDGE, EVDO, etc), the consumer is going to win.

Who else is becoming a portability site?

Technorati : mobile20, portability+sites, portals, slingbox

YouTube (and other internet video watching) is not going to replace TV watching. Last I checked bandwidth is too slow and not available like cable and satellite. Plenty of people are ponying up for HDTV for xmas this year. It is the year of HD, finally. And people are telling us now that YouTube is going to replace normal TV watching? Not going to happen in the next 10 years. I like my HD quality. Heck, I don’t find myself watching any other channels. If it isn’t HD, I am not interested. I barely watch digital channels as the quality just isn’t there. And the sound on YouTube videos, when pumped out of a nice stereo receiver? Complete crap. Maybe it is good on a computer, but it isn’t crisp 5.1 that most good TV channels now provide.

YouTube on a cellphone? Not going to happen. It is bad enough quality on YouTube.com, why would I want to try to cram it on a tiny phone screen and wait for the download? It is hard enough to browse to web pages on a good quality smartphone with full bars.

Are people spending more time on the internet and less watching TV, sure. Same thing happened to radio listening when TV came along. Declare TV dead. Probably tongue-in-cheek a little, but wildly off-base.

People are jumping the gun, again.

Technorati : phone, tv, youtube

So what is going to work?

The YouTube model (C2C – consumer to consumer)

YouTube works for the masses and is the clear leader in that space. There is plenty to watch. Uploading is easy and the interface is familiar to most.

How do you monetize it? Well, they already are. Advertising is placed all around the site. It is not much different than what ESPN does with its online properties. They have content, they share it and then they advertise around it. ESPN even offers premium subscriptions for premium content (something that might work in the video world someday). The talk of placing adverts inside videos doesn’t seem real, and hasn’t happened yet mainly it won’t work (read: people will stop watching). What will be interesting is to see whether “joe-video-uploader-at-youtube” will ever get a cut of the action, Revver-style.

The Other model (B2C, B2B)

Enter the Brightcoves of the world. A different animal. One that provides an easy way for businesses to get their content out there in a customized and branded player. This allows a company that has some video content to easily make it available. Brightcove also has built-in ways to monetize the videos w/ banners that wrap into the player widget, and inline adverts that can be placed pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll. That part really isn’t going to work, as people have been pre-conditioned by YouTube not to be interrupted while viewing short videos online.

The B2C space is really heating up. Brightcove has been joined by a few others recently with offerings aimed at businesses. It shouldn’t be too long before Google repositions Google Video to do the same.

Technorati : brightcove, google, google+video, gootube, video, youtube

How many non-copyrighted videos do they actually have in their arsenal, anyone know?

Technorati : google, gootube, youtube

The copyright stuff that Cuban and others have been mockingly using to call YouTube a walking lawsuit ready to happen is blown out of proportion. Sure, the site is chock full of infringing stuff, but so is the rest of the internet. Google will clean it up and get it to an acceptable level that everyone will be satisfied with. I have a hard time believing that a company like Google that has been through stuff like this before (Google Books anyone) didn’t analyze every possible scenario imaginable associated with the risk that YouTube’s treasure trove of copyrighted material presents.

Also, everything that is on the site prior to Google’s takeover isn’t really their problem either, that should all be on the previous owners. As long as Google makes a strong effort to thwart it in the future (not an easy task in this consumer generated haven we now live in)– and clean up what is there now (not an easy task), all should be well.

The idea is that now our favorite place to find video of everything and anything, is in the hands of a company that can deal with the underlying infrastructure and continue to integrate it with the rest of their tools that more and more people are finding useful everyday.

Lets be happy that it happened, commend Google for making such a bold move, and move on. The more interesting story here is how Google will integrate YouTube, how they will monetize it (or not) and what it means for broader distribution and inflitration of online video to the masses. GoogleTV may really not be that far behind. All delivered via the internet. Cable and satellite be damned.

Let’s also not talk about Facebook anymore either. They will end up where they end up.

Technorati : facebook, google, myspace, youtube

I’d like to take credit for the reason behind the creation of Netflix Prize, but obviously it has been a known issue for quite some time.

Netflix’ recommendation engine just doesn’t work. I’ve written about it before.

The answer is to create the Movie Genome Project (sure its a direct rip-off of Pandora’s Music Genome Project , but still). Perhaps team up with IMDb clickstream data to really tap into what people are interested in. Tie that into the rental history data that they obviously already have and you create the backbone of what should be a pretty powerful recommendation engine.

From Netflix Prize:

The Netflix Prize seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences. Improve it enough and you win one (or more) Prizes. Winning the Netflix Prize improves our ability to connect people to the movies they love.

Ok, you have my attention. Interestingly, as the NY Times notes, the type of contest they are running here has its roots in jolly old England:

The prize was modeled on the Longitude Prize, offered by the British government in 1714 to the inventor who could determine a ship’s longitude during transoceanic travel.

Ahhh, web 2.0 meets 1714 England. I love it.

They are looking for a 10% improvement over their current “Cinematch” recommendation engine. Well, that isn’t too hard. Stop recommending that I will like all John Candy movies, just because I enjoyed Summer Rental. Stop telling me that I will like all of the concert videos by a certain band. I do not want to rent concert videos. They really could fix this pretty quickly if they allowed me to tell them a little more about my rental preferences. Allowing me to checkoff what I absolutely do not want to rent will go a long way towards letting the engine recommend actual movies that I want to see.

The problem that I see right off the bat, is they are giving recommendation data out in hopes that someone can build a better moustrap. The current mousetrap is not very good. They are missing the point here by not also giving out rental data. That is where the real work is being done. The recommendation setup of 1-5 stars is to broad and random. Plus, if more folks are like me, the data is meaningless. I try to game the system by purposely rating things in a way that I hope will stop them from recommending movies that I really have no interest in (John Candy example).

Help them out a little and get $50,000 (what they’ll award yearly if no one gets the 10%). Get them to the 10% mark and walk away $1 million richer.

The dawn of consumer-generated-math.

Technorati : netflix, videos, netflixprize

NYT is saying they have almost $1 million in backing:

Revision3 has close to $1 million in financing from a group of investors that includes Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, and Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm that has backed the start-ups Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as Digg.

Banking on the success off the hot-play that has become THE social news network mecca (Digg) and starting to push out the next hot thing (wait, doesn’t FOX have this market cornered), Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson are betting that the future of DIY shows is now. From the site’s ‘about us’ page:

Our mission is to deliver reliable, consistent, professional and fun tech content for Internet and TV distribution.

Rev3’s been around for a little while and mainly serves as one of many places that they post their popular Diggnation show. A show called “Ctrl-Alt-Chicken” is also a popular one on Rev3. With Apple’s announcement of iTV coming soon, this type of play begins to have legs.

Based on their success with making user-generated news actually work to a new bet on the booming sector that is user-generated video, I wouldn’t bet against the Digg boys.

Technorati : revision3, video