Apps, the future of a new TV experience, and the death of the old.

What if apps did for TV's and the entire viewing experience what apps did for phones?

It was not so long ago that the idea of loading an app on a phone was not possible. The first iPhone did not allow this and it took some time before the API and developer kit was opened up. Today, this is commonplace...and the same is now happening to our connected TV's.

This is significant, because it brings us closer to an à la carte, on demand, one on one engaged world...even in TV land.

New research from Parks Associates shows US smart (connected) TV owners who watch online video increased by over 30% in six months. 75% of US smart TV owners who connect their TV's to the web watch on-demand online movies monthly - up from 57% in 2011. 71% watch online TV shows monthly, up from 51% in 2011. From a daily perspective, 30% watch movies and 32% watch TV shows. Parks Associates projects that the number of internet-connected TVs shipped will jump from less than 1% in 2008 to over 45% in 2012, and that's a big jump in a relatively short amount of time folks.

Add all of the X-Boxes, Rokus, Google Nexus Q's and Apple TV's and you suddenly have a television viewing revolution as people start to download the apps of the networks or content partners they love as opposed to prescribing to hundreds of channels pre-packaged by the cable operators they don't.

For now, there is just one problem, content creators and the networks cannot afford to spite the hand that feeds them (cable and satellite companies) by selling directly. However there is no doubt that the pendulum will swing in that direction once a majority of folks start to connect to their programming in this way, and online advertising has the potential to exceed traditional and there is evidence of that. ComScore's monthly Video Metrix report shows more than 11 billion online video ads were viewed in June, up from over 10 billion in May. In addition, each of the top five online video advertising properties delivered more than 1 billion video ads in June. Google properties came in first (1.41 billion ads delivered), BrightRoll (1.39 billion ads), Hulu (1.33 billion), Adap.tv (1.15 billion), and TubeMogul (1.04) billion. ComScore finds that video ads reached 53% of the total US population an average of 68 times during the month. 

Another report argues that real-time buying of video ads may be a superior method for buying digital video, something cable cannot do to the same degree based upon habits and real-time detailed demographics information (

Forrester on behalf of TubeMogul)

 

. "Real-time buying puts marketers in the driver's seat, not only in terms of seeing exactly where an ad is running and for what price, but by reducing media waste by allowing for real-time adjustment based on impact and budget".

As for live TV, operators such as Aereo are offering connectivity via remote antenna rental. I'm also sure that digital antennas will start to pop up within TV's and digital boxes. If you have not tried a digital antenna yourself, the free signal that the major networks broadcast delivers a better picture than you get via most cable or satellite companies. Give it it try!

In addition to cheaper bills and better control, apps will give us innovation that cable has never been able to deliver in an efficient manner; such as the ability to purchase directly from in-program product placement or from advertising, which, by the way, will need to become much more adaptive in format to the new medium. Meaning the traditional :30 and :60 will change or disappeared entirely. One example of this is how TiVo has partnered with PayPal to develop interactive TV ads that would allow viewers to make purchases with their remotes while watching TV.

There is not doubt that this future is upon us. Watch for my next post on the opportunity of PR with social TV and the second screen.

Posted via email from Jared Hendler

Yahoo's rebirth may be on your TV.

In the struggle to differentiate itself, Yahoo tried to re-invent itself as a media company starting as a content search engine for years. This become much harder when Google bought YouTube, but Yahoo suddenly has an early foothold in an unexpected area...on our TV's.

2010 is the year that TV's will finally start to catch up to our PC's with online connectivity, on-demand programming, social interactivity and e-commerce widgets. Many players are already in the space such as Roku, Vudu, Apple and the like, but Yahoo was early.  Establishing a widget platform that seems to be included in most new set tops.

TV Manufacturers are also launching application platforms of their own as a way to add third party content and basic interactivity to broadband-connected sets. Samsung, Vizio, Panasonic and Toshiba are just a few of the brands setting up their own solutions for select flat screen televisions, despite the fact that some had already signed integration deals with Yahoo's Connected TV division, creator of the Yahoo Widgets platform. Digital video company DivX has introduced its own TV app platform, leveraging relationships with content producers such as Break, blip.tv, Revision3 and Rhapsody to offer a plug-and-play solution to CE companies. LG Electronics was named as the first manufacturer to license DivX TV for upcoming Blu-ray Disc players and home theater systems.  As you can see, the range of standards boggles the mind, with Yahoo being the only common thread baked within many of these hardware platforms.*

Yahoo also struck a deal with Brightcove to expand its content offerings for the Yahoo Widget platform. Media publishers using Brightcove's online video platform can now distribute their videos through Yahoo's Widget Engine.  The Yahoo Widget Development Kit has also finally been fully released to the public, enabling individual developers and larger content providers alike to develop apps for the TV Widget platform. Yahoo has partnerships in place with LG, Sony, Samsung and Vizio, the 4 top U.S. TV brands, to bring TV Widgets to their internet-connected televisions.*

All of this leads me to believe that Yahoo may be poised for a re-invention in the exact space that they have had a hard time committing to online.

If they play their cards right, while Google may be the platform of choice on our PC's Yahoo could be the platform of choice on our TV's.

*Many thanks to Wayne Karrfalt from Cynopsis: Digital for much of the industry intel that helped provide affirmation to my position.

Posted via web from Jared Hendler

Is this the death of the networks and CableTV as we know it?

As CES winds up in Vegas this week, it will become clear that the 'final 10 feet' between the PC and the TV will finally be bridged. This will all be made possible via the simple inclusion of direct ethernet or wifi connectivity along with software allowing for our new TV's to play compatible digital video such as flash, along with being able to 'speak' browser. No idea why it took manufacturers so long to do this but better late than never.

So what will this mean for the consumer, content creators, the networks, cable companies and the marketing services industry? You can almost guarantee that it will create more upheaval than we can possibly imagine.

For the consumer, long gone will the days be where they will need to navigate to a specific network to watch a show. As with PC's, consumers will search via a browser like interface directly on their TV's and the content will be served directly to them. The consumer will not care or be concerned about which networks serve the content. This will pretty much be the death of networks that do not own IP in the form of content or do not strike exclusive distribution deals directly with content creators. In order to save themselves the cable networks will need to consolidate or merge with the larger media industry or risk becoming dumb pipes that only serve as your ISP.

From the Daily Beast: Sharon Waxman writes: Hollywood is on the “cusp of a new chapter,” in which a smaller group of major entertainment companies, fortified by bigger libraries and deeper distribution channels, will hold a larger concentration of power. With Comcast set to acquire NBC-Universal and Time Warner and News Corp. fighting over MGM, power is being consolidated. Comcast, for example, will have the largest cable subscriber base in the country, plus control of a movie studio, a broadcast TV network, and several cable networks. The combined power of content and distribution, creates a new kind of player.

Either way, all content will be digitally served in an on-demand model and the opportunity for content creators and marketers to distribute directly to consumers via their TV is now a very real option.

On a personal note, I finally cut the cord with Time Warner in Manhattan simply based on the fact that I no longer watch appointment based TV. Between Netflix, Hulu and a few shows purchased via Apples iTunes I am pretty much covered - never having to watch another commercial again, while spending less than half of what I did with cable. Apple is also talking about a subscription based service. Others will do the same.

Net/Net...I would not want to be a network or cable company right now, but I would want to be a content creator or marketer.

Those of you that have followed this blog for a while will know that I have written about this before - in July of 2007: http://jaredhendler.posterous.com/iptv-is-finally-here).  So why repeat myself?.....become this is finally becoming a reality.

A few more articles relevant to this post that may be of interest are below.

Web-TV Divide Is Back in Focus With NBC Sale

Hulu's Massive Traffic Bump? Thank ABC, New TV Season

Posted via web from Jared Hendler

Will YouTube trump local news affiliates?

As featured in the NYTimes, YouTube is experimenting with a local news filter at: http://www.youtube.com/news. Viewers are able to pull local news-feeds down to a specific zip code. While much of the news-feeds are in-fact professionally produced content, many are not. Pro-sumer feeds often make up in value what they lack in content and I was surprised at how much I learned from/about my own neighborhood.

Short term, this is an experiment. Long term this could easily trump local news affiliates given at how nimble this could become.

Success rests on the quality, reliability and relevancy of local news sources which of course will be up to local reporting - professional and pro-sumer alike.

Either way, local news affiliates from the major networks will be given a run for their money once this matures.

Adoption vs. Invention

With digital being all about the law of attraction, we strive to create programs with rich media content that will attract our client's target. What has a better chance of success? Adoption; whereby we 'adopt' a trend or relationship that is already authentically connecting with both the target audience and closely aligned with the client beliefs, or Invention; whereby we invent, from scratch, an initiative, movement or trend in the hopes that what we think is brilliant will be just as well embraced by the consumer.

My vote is for adoption. We cannot be so naive as to think that we will have any better success at creating a winning concept over the entertaiment industry who have been fine tuning the process for years with limited success. True cultural hits are few and far between. We too are creative, but the risks of success are high and unlike the entertainment industry, our clients expect return every time.

I am not saying the days of creativity for us are over. What I am saying is that there is an abundance of cultural content waiting to be supported and the right partnership, can be a win for everyone.

The simplicity of Social Networking...

Social networking - it really is no surprise that the interconnectivity of the web has brought upon this virtual social phenomenon. What is a surprise is how we (individuals, groups, businesses & brands) are quick to betray the simplicity of the idea and wonder why we get burned as a result.

In all their simplicity these networks work best when they reflect the way in which we have always built our own personal communities which are made up of
People (who I am)...
...with Friends (who I know)
...engaged in Activities (what i am doing)
...that are always Growing (in a state of persistence)

Not a new idea, but an extension of our societies, utilizing technology which empowers us in new ways. The technology helps us organize our own social structure and space while expanding our 'circle' toward the potential of a worldwide network. This is evolution in the purest sense of the word...and the technology is just in its infancy. Today, in order for the network to work for us, we need to first work for (it). But this will change as technology improves and AI (artificial intelligence) develops, at which point (it) will start to work for us.

Enough philosophy for now, but my point is simple - veer from the rules above, and you break the model.

Facebook learned the hard way this week with its abuse of Beacon. The good news is that it learned quickly and retreated from its initial plans for a "Beacon" marketing model that would track and published users' off-site buying habits. The lessons for other publishers may be obvious, but lets spell them out.

First off, Brands are remiss if they think that their users are such fans that the very nature of the Brand itself will drive us consumers to join or visit their enclosed social experience. Brands need to forget about 'Brand' and tap into the unique consumer insights that link their consumers. If these insights unveil tangible and unique values that would inspire like minded individuals to congregate you may have something. If not, don't bother.

It's about creating something around a conversations that already exists, it's not about starting a new, soulless conversation...get it?

If you are lucky enough to be the owner of a brand that does inspire these values, don't make the mistake of abusing it. Tell users of major policy changes before you make them, and give them the opportunity to opt-out should you make major membership changes. Even if you don't think users care about privacy online, you should act as if they do. Just because word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing it does not mean that the consumer wants to be a brand evangelist.

"They love our Brands, they identify with our Brands, they can't wait to tell other people about our Brands, they will swap Branded widgets, they will write about us in their blogs...." We fantasize that consumers love our Brands so much that they will do our marketing for us. Beacon failed because there was no real benefit in if for the consumer and the consumer saw right through it.

We value real connections and this is why I believe that MySpace, unless it changes its ways, will ultimately lose against Facebook.

If you want your Brand to evolve and become part of the conversation, go deep, develop value and experiment with software that connects us in ways that contribute to our evolutionary cycle as social beings.

Big Media & Entertainment vs.The Ad Industry...who will triumph?

The question is who is in a better position to service the largest shift in how brands communicate? Traditional Advertising or the Entertainment and Media industries.

The convergence of the internet and traditional TV, social networking, blogs, vlogs, widgets & Googles have changed everything.  With the ability for anyone to publish, consumers no longer have the patience for traditional 'push' advertising messaging.  They have been given the controls, and are unlikely to give them back. The brands that connect in the future will be those that can do more than just get involved in the conversation with their audience, but those that produce something of value for them.  Whether that be in the form of information, education, software, games, social networking or via entertainment properties.

This has naturally started a race between the traditional advertising agencies and the media/entertainment industry to see who will best be able to service this shift.

The agencies own the brand relationships and know best how to engage the brands in order to deliver marketing solutions against product & brand strategies.  The agencies also know how to execute across multiple mediums, but media fragmentation has slowed them down and they can no longer execute efficiently.  What they cannot understand or execute, they buy, but fail to assimilate - which eventually cripples the integrated offerings they have struggled so hard to create. They are also losing the trust of their clients as they struggle to keep up with digital media along with creating a convincing & authentic narrative which ultimately delivers authentic audience engagement.

Media and Entertainment have the opposite problem. They know how to deliver engagement across media platforms but lack the experience of creating strategic, bespoke solutions for brands across multiple markets. They know they need to move away from being realtors of space and time, but they are hampered by their sales departments who are holding onto age old relationships with.....gasp.....the agencies!

As I look for my next opportunity, I also struggle for clarity on who will be the winner. Perhaps that is the wrong way to look at it. Perhaps there will be no winner, or loser. Perhaps the two sides need to realize what the other's strengths are and partner to service this revolutionary transformation. If so, what will this mean? Should agencies rid themselves of creative departments and focus on strategy, media and local market implementation, while entertainment focuses on content, a dialogue, transparency, personal expression, experience, reinvention, connection via audience participation and integration?

Whatever the solution it is certain to shake our industries to their core.

At every industry event I attend, questions along these lines addressed to the panelists in the spotlight spawn answers fraught with the political undertones of a presidential race that are about as clear as fog. A clear sign that change is afoot, leadership is scarce, and the shake-up is just getting started.

Software is a new form of media!

Widgets...those pesky little viral applications that spread...well...like a virus, hunting you down via email while simultaneously polluting your Facebook page. Gosh-darn-it, some of these applications are damn useful, like CareerBuilder that allows me to track the emerging job market in Asia, or Qloud that enables me to stream all of my friend's music for free. I mean, EVERYONE has Funwall! It won't be long before the Funwalls of the world are brought to us by brands like Staples or OfficeMax. Anyone send an Elf-Yourself greeting last year? Elf-Yourself widget anyone? Sure beats another vampire bite! Anyone know what I am talking about? Make sense?

So, what does this all mean? First off, the smart brands have finally acknowledged that they have to bring value to consumers in order to build the relationships they crave. But are they ready to move to the next step? Building software.

The notion of building value via software takes on a larger psychological & sociological shift in the way we view media and how we connect with consumers. Marketers have had to literally pay their way into the public space via the media buy, but what if they were invited in by the consumer - which would be nothing short of a sociological revolution! This is waaaay bigger than the 'Pull' vs. 'Push' strategy. Imagine if Brand communications were as valuable as the products and services that we, the consumer, are willing to pay for...a brand extension of sorts. A new 'soft' SKU?

Think about it? Brands have access to API's like any other developer. There is nothing stopping them from developing applications that will allow them unfettered and free distribution to the audiences of Facebook, Netvibes or the iPhone for example.

Now, I am sure that if Brands did start to go for this in a big way, that the Facebooks of the world would charge them a tariff of sorts. But in this world content is king and if a Brand is truly delivering something valuable to the platform's viewer base, it suddenly has bargaining power...much more than it has ever had in the past.

This is what Steve Ballmer means when he talks about the fact that the lines between media and software are blurring.

Confused?...log onto Facebook and make sure you get a vampire bite. The effects are immediate and the transformation is forever lasting.

The end of pre-roll ads...finally!

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

(Play the video above to see)

Finally, the players in online video are adapting to the fact that the way in which we interact with video online is completely different from our experience with linear TV. More specifically, most users are turning away from video with pre-roll advertising. It could be the fact that most pre-rolls are commercials made for TV placed in front of short form content, but I don't think so. This is a very different medium and our time is most often limited when viewing content.

The most recent solution seems to be pop-up type banners at the bottom of the video window while the content keeps playing. You can wait for the pop-up to go away, or you can close them right away. You also have the option to scroll through even more of them. Funnily enough I found myself doing this because the banners were relevant to what I had chosen to watch. Was it because I am in the industry? It may be, but I found myself doing it at points I was bored with the content of the video itself. The lesson here is if you give the user the power to interact, they will use it. In this case it works to the ADVANTAGE of the advertiser. WOW!

Maven.net and YouTube are the largest adopters of this approach, but others will quickly follow.

YouTube has also added to both its Custom and AdSense players. These are players that you can build with content of your choosing in order to post on any site or blog that you want, including content from the major networks. It is truly a revelation to see content from the major networks with NO pre-roll advertising, but pop-ups instead - knowing that this is likely to set a very real precedent. The small pop-ups offer a terrific alternative to traditional advertising, with the option of linking to a commercial or any other content that an advertiser wants to share with us if we WANT to see it.

...but wait a minute, does this really matter?....I mean, most people still watch TV right?

Yes, BUT this year almost 16% of American internet users watched full-length television shows online, according to a new report released by The Conference Board and TNS. This is double the amount recorded last year. Personal convenience and commercial avoidance were the two top motivating factors. Nearly 73 percent of online households said they use the internet for entertainment purposes on a daily basis and an additional 15 percent search for entertainment several times a week.

From all of this you can only draw a few simple conclusions. Once the convergence of TV and the internet is fully realized, commercials will most likely disappear in their current :30 & :60 forms. Why? Because our habits are being driven by our fast-changing relationship with interactivity, and the web is leading the way.

The transformation is happening sooner than you think; so agencies, brands and media owners who don't adapt...beware! Time to seriously start dismantling those big TV ad shops and figure out what content consumers will ask for...figure out how to get your clients to bring value to their customers through these much more valuable new forms of interactivity.

...and please STOP asking me if you can just place those :30's on the web...NO!

If you think this warning is dramatic or out of touch...know that I HAD to add the word 'ad' into the title of this blog as a senior executive from a major agency whom I was in a meeting with last week did NOT know what 'pre-roll' meant. SCARY!...but SADLY true...

New Opportunities In PR!

As we know, PR is essentially all about creating press coverage in one form or another for a client via established media relationships.

Measuring the value paid towards PR has always been a challenge with no guarantee of media coverage. And what about the effectiveness of coverage? For the most part this never happens in any accountable form.

PR does not have to be this way.

Armed with a good SEO strategy, marketers and content creators can reach the consumer directly provided value is being created. Is that not what PR is all about anyway? Today, digital media has broken down the walls protected by the major media companies allowing anyone to publish content. So why not PR?

As a PR professional you have the power to self-publish any message in ways that may ultimately prove to be way more target-able, powerful and measurable.   In an age of DVR's and VOD, no one likes to watch advertising and they don't.  The trick is in providing content that is valuable for your audience, much in the same way that good press coverage provides information that we all want to read and be informed about.  It's all about knowing your audience and being authentic.

If you are looking to seed content to mainstream digital media for use within their offerings, make sure you keep this new medium in mind. This is NOT TV. Keep content to 15 to 20 second snippets as journalists are not inclined to use video that requires extra editing for example.

If you are a non believer, here are a few stats for you:

One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of 2007, according to a new analysis from Emerging Media Dynamics. The report assesses the progress made by devices such as Apple TV, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and SlingMedia's SlingCatcher in solving the final "twenty foot" barrier. Over 72 million broadband homes – representing over two-thirds of the marketplace – are projected to have PC/TV devices by 2017.

IPTV subscription video revenue will grow exponentially from $779 million in 2006 to $26.3 billion by 2011 not including advertising and value-added TV services, according to a new report from market intelligence firm iSuppli.

A new Bivings Research survey of the U.S.'s top 100 newspaper sites found video to be more of a central component of its content. About 92% of paper sites now offer video (up from 61% in 2006). Within this group, 39 sites offer original video content, 26 use AP's video service and 13 offer video content from local news outlets.

Clearly times they are a changin'. So don't sit back waiting for mainstream media. Take your story into your own hands and self publish.

For additional insight, I recommend you read:
Video Rocks Traditional PR
http://www.prnewsonline.com/digitalpr/casestudies/videorocks.html

Healthy Video Snacks - Shelly Palmer
http://www.shellypalmerblog.com/?p=465

While I primarily focus on innovation in online video and IPTV within this blog, there are of course many new formats to be mastered and monitored in PR such as blogs (written & video), wikis & social media solutions to name a few.

Why the pro-sumer can now compete with the networks...

First a few facts...while most people still watch most programming on their TV, a four-year analysis of Internet use have found that 47% of time online is currently spent viewing content as opposed to 33% of that time spent for communication purposes. This is significant because 4 years ago, those numbers were reversed. This shows that viewers of content are more and more using the web as a respected delivery tool for online video.

Powerful production tools have been at the hands of the pro-sumer for quite some time, and quite a bit of talent is being discovered as a result. Distribution has been another story with every site requiring different specifications for upload, making the task a laborious one.

And lets not forget how everyone is trying to get paid for their efforts...via advertising. Advertisers & sponsors price the value of programming against the amount of viewers. Before now there was no easy way for a small publisher to aggregate all of their viewers across multiple distribution points on the web, other than counting them manually. This left advertisers to question the math behind the numbers. Now things are about to change.

Online video distribution and analytics tools that allow undiscovered talent to distribute and measure the success of their programming throughout the web are beginning to emerge. These types of tools will become the great equalizers, as small publishers are able to more easily distribute their content to all of the major online video portals, while tracking the numbers through an impartial 3rd party.

The new, online video publishing tools are now offering one stop shopping for distribution, bundled up with analytics tools to enable programmers to more easily track their fan base.

Tubemogul: http://www.tubemogul.com/
Vidmetrix: http://www.vidmetrix.com/

Or how about a budding local news journalist being able to broadcast live with little more than a laptop, web-cam and internet connection. Now they can with Mogulus: http://www.mogulus.com

To compete with the networks is no easy feat, given their infrastructure and the dollars they place behind advertising their own shows. But at the end of the day it is all about the quality of the idea, and new ideas tend to come from the ground up, not the top down.

All this makes it much more likely that the next 'Sopranos' will be an online show, and that that show has a high likelihood of being brought to you by someone other than a major network.

For those of you that think that watching video content over the internet is for the few or decades away...a few more facts.

IPTV subscription video revenue will grow exponentially from $779 million in 2006 to $26.3 billion by 2011 not including advertising and value-added TV services, and 1 in 5 broadband homes will have the technology to watch internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of 2007. Over 72 million broadband homes – representing over two-thirds of the marketplace – are projected to have PC/TV devices by 2017.

ComScore's Video streaming reports:
• Online viewers watched an average of 158 minutes of streaming video per streamer.
• The average video stream duration was 2.5 minutes.
• Nearly three out of four (74.3 percent) U.S. Internet users streamed video online.
• More than one out of three (35 percent) U.S. Internet users use YouTube.
• The average online video viewer consumed 63 video streams (more than two per day).

Adobe’s Flash Player, YouTube, Apple’s QuickTime are all planning on being fully H.264 (HD) compatible this year.

The bottom line is that this will all make for a much more competitive marketplace. One that will keep the networks on their toes, while giving the little guy a real chance to compete...

IPTV is finally here...

All of a sudden the technology and GUI experience of being able to watch TV via the internet is upon us. I'm not talking about YouTube or the multitude of UGC sites with a small video window and endless amounts of mindless (yet often entertaining) content.

I'm talking about the fact that most of the major networks hit shows are available to stream online whenever we want to see them. Most are also able to do so in a full screen format.

Accompanying the networks are technologies from both new and veteran technology companies. They are doing deals with all of the major networks and are able to stream this content via the web and serve it up in an on-demand model, full screen and over a standard internet connection. They are like virtual versions of the cable companies that we know of today.

...EXCEPT, they're FREE!

Now don't get too excited, because all that FREE stuff means we still have to watch commercials as someone has to pay for the content. But SO WHAT, we watch commercials now and that is not about to change. What will change is the shape and form in which these sponsorship messages arrive. Some of these new services come with DVR-like capabilities, allowing you to...skip commercials.

But all this is great news. It means we are getting closer to a true on-demand content model. One that may bypass out traditional cable operators, and one that will push brands and their marketing agencies to get off their asses and create compelling content that their clients customers actually want to watch.

Now, most of this content will also be pushed out to multiple devices which will also revolutionize the ad model as we know it. Technologies like Visible World will enable advertisers to push out different versions of a commercial on-the-fly depending on what device is being served at the time.
http://www.visibleworld.com/homepage.php

While things are moving faster than any one of us in the industry imagined, true adoption won't take place until the traditional networks can more easily push their content out to the web, and web content creators are able push to their content to the big screen.

There are also major hurdles for the IPTV delivery companies as they try to figure out what their business model moving forward will be. They face major competition from new entries into this marketplace as the barrier to entry is low given the fact that, unlike the traditional cable companies, there are no infrastructure costs into the home & no licenses to acquire. Basically, anyone with access to money can develop a similar solution and get it up in a fairly short period of time, as Joost found out after the release of Veoh's full-screen player. Many of these companies rely on hosted solutions as their bread and butter money, but peer to peer has proven that this is not the most efficient way to serve video and the costs soon outweigh what you can charge.

What will set these companies apart is content and their ability to quickly sign up the best of the networks in order to get the best following. The problem here is that the networks will NOT be giving exclusivity to anyone. The only option left for them at the end of the day will be to start to create and own their own content as the emerging, traditional networks had to do. Without this, they are purely a commodity play.

For more information or to sign up to be part of the Beta Testing programs of some of these IPTV companies:

Joost: On-DemandTV from major networks on your computer-full screen. (http://www.joost.com)
Veoh: On-DemandTV from major networks on your computer-full screen. (http://www.veoh.com/veohTV/veohTvIntro.html)
Microsoft's LiveStation: On-DemandTV from major networks with the added ability to actually display live TV on your computer-full screen. (http://beta.livestation.com/)

If you want a more in-depth view at how quickly this has been evolving, read two blogs that I wrote within the past year on related subjects:

The death of the networks...and what is a channel anyway?
http://web.mac.com/jaredhendler/iWeb/smashtube/smashblog/2DF1DDEB-1160-45DD-AE83-E0EBD17617B3.html
The New Syndicators...Googled again?
http://web.mac.com/jaredhendler/iWeb/smashtube/smashblog/F0E3EA09-4E3B-43F2-9AC0-393D1542422F.html