Amazon: Video on Demand

[ image courtesy of moneboh / Flickr ]

Our friends at Amazon.com this week announced a Beta of their video on demand service. It has been described by the EVP of Amazon, Bill Carr, as an outgrowth of their Unbox video download service. People were bummed they had to wait for the video to download to begin viewing.

Netflix just announced that their streaming video service, originally offered on their website and then through a dedicated set-top box, will now be available via the XBox 360 this fall. This of course means that Netflix and Microsoft are now in partnership. That seems like kind of a big deal.

These two items in the same week? Good thing it wasn't last week, amid the destroyer-class hysterics of the iPhone. Which brings up a good point -- people are still going to go home to sit in front of a screen. Granted, wireless personal devices are going to be the major focus from here on out, as this article from Information Week indicates. But, not everything will be consumed on a personal device. From Apple.

The Internets are bound for the sewer.

[ image courtesy of Joe M500 / Flickr ]

The Internets are bound for the sewer. Literally.

The BBC has a story today about an Ofcom pronouncement that indicates the new home of the mega-fast internets could be in the sewer.

Basically, this is not that big of a deal. France is doing it already. It is more sophisticated than running a fatty LAN cable through the storm drains; it is an extension of 'conduit sharing' that is already taking place. Providers are also looking at literally sharing conduits with other utilities as well.

As the next generation of broadband leaves the once-fast cable modems in the dust, we move closer to instant access. The article states:

Connections of up to 100Mbp will allow for a host of new services including on-demand high definition (HD) TV, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging, CCTV home surveillance and HD gaming services.

I have high-speed internet, and video-on-demand in my home, and it is abundantly clear that it operates at the fringe of effectiveness much of the time. Compression artifacts in video distract from viewing, audio on some on-demand material is less-than-mp3 quality, and overall navigation time of the system is snail-paced.

Frankly, I am still sometimes amazed that Comcast is able to shove as much stuff through that standard 75-Ohm coaxial as they do. Imagine if it were fiber optic, at 8-10x the capacity. Now we are talking.
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BBC & Yahoo work with The King

[ image courtesy of freekorps / Flickr ]

Content giants Yahoo and the BBC have just inked a deal where Yahoo will get 30 BBC news clips each day to be placed on their portal. This is no groundbreaking endeavor, as they have made similar arrangements in the past.

What this again points out is that even if your content is King, it can only be King to those who have a chance to see it.

The other way is to do it like CNBC.com, with a full re-launch. They are doing it completely on their own, without external placement on a mega-portal like Yahoo. To get the real goodies [more live streams, plus ad-free content], viewers must cough up a relatively steep $9.95/month.

CNN's online video offering, Pipeline, splits the options, by housing free material on their site, and through Yahoo, as well as charging a [smaller] premium for the premium goodies. We looked at that in October.

It will be interesting to see which approach works best for these major players, all with different strengths. It is different ways of getting that King, content, in front of the viewer.
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