The six gold medals won by Dutch competitors (so far) isn’t the only big Olympics-related news coming out of the Netherlands. According to Egon Verharen from Netherlands Public Broadcasting (Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, or NPO), the broadcaster delivered 17 million streams of Olympics video during the first week of the games. Not bad for a country with a population of just over 16.5 million, and terrific when compared to the 30 million claimed by NBC for the same time period in the U.S. (population 301 million — you do the math.)

Also, unlike NBC, NPO is streaming almost everything it is broadcasting on television, from 12 SD satellite feeds and 2 HD satellite feeds, Verharen says. The 12 SD feeds are delivered at 800Kbps Windows Media Video 9 in both Silverlight and the standard Windows Media Player, along with a feed from Netherlands-1, so viewers can choose between 13 streams in the player. On Netherlands-1, Verharen says, “we use the HD feed as much as possible. Only if Dutch sporters are active in a sport that is not available on the HD sat feed do we use the SD feed.” The HD stream is 7.1Mbps VC-1. “The demand for the HD stream is low, but purposely kept that way,” says Verharen. “We see this as an experiment and in no way can it interfere with the regular internet streaming.”

To provide enough capacity for all that streaming, NPO is using private peers and is peering at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (IX) with Dutch providers to deliver its traffic. That approach is something of a test run for NPO’s plans for the future to use the Dutch Open CDN Project via the Amsterdam IX, which sees about 450Gbps of traffic at peak, according to Stef van der Ziel of Jet Stream; Jet Stream originally initiated the idea for the Dutch Open CDN Project, which is a non-profit consortium of ISPs and broadcasters including NPO, RTL, KPN, Jet Stream, Crossmedia Ventures, and SURFnet. According to van der Ziel, the ISPs involved agree to help offload traffic when it goes over the peak that the Amsterdam IX can handle. For the Olympics, Jet Stream is supporting some of the ISPs and is offering overflow capacity.

NPO’s offloading approach is part of a project Verharen calls the “sports summer” pilot, since it was used for not only the Olympics but also the UEFA Champions League and Tour de France. “The ultimate goal of the Dutch Open CDN Project is to lower costs, increase volume and quality of service, and to let ISPs offer better management of the traffic. In the future, there needs to be discussion about covering the costs that the ISPs make to handle the traffic,” says van der Ziel.

The HD streams are “a pilot within the pilot,” van der Ziel say, since some of them are multicast within the SURFnet network. “If a wi-fi staton or router at any point near an end user isn’t multicast-enabled, it rolls over to SD,” he says. According to him, about 5% of broadband subscribers are capable of viewing HD streams over ADSL or fiber optic.

Other NPO partners, according to Verharen, are Digital Rapids (for the HD encoding), Technicolor (for hosting the HD encoding and encoding the regular satellite feeds), SURFnet (for distributing the HD stream in unicast and multicast within their network), and Crossmedia Ventures (for serving the HD stream and Silverlight app to the general internet).

Last week, the British Prime Minister’s Office launched Number10TV, a new video channel as part of its Number10.gov.uk website. They’re using Brightcove’s Flash player to deliver the clips; right now it’s mostly “feel-good” PR stuff from Gordon Brown’s office, but it sets the stage for the PM’s office to have a direct video line to citizens for more important announcements. 

Brightcove is just one of several internet TV platforms that will be represented at Streaming Media Europe in a session called, fittingly, “Comparing Internet TV Platforms.” In addition to Brightcove VP of International Partherships Raghav Gupta, Ooyala CEO Bismarck Lepe and BestTV Founder and VP of Business Development Oded Felled will debate and discuss what content owners should look for when selecting a platform to help them deliver their content. The session will be at 13:45 on Thursday, 16 October; to register, visit the Streaming Media Europe site, where the full programme will be announced next week.

We were certainly disappointed when Kate Burns left Dailymotion and had to back out of the keynote slot for the show, but we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll have Digby Lewis, who is creative director for Dailymotion UK, on Friday, 17 October. He’s in charge of the acquisition of UK-relevant content and sourcing and devloping “unsigned” directors through the platform’s Motionmaker programme.

He also directs the platform’s editorial strategy, and brings a wealth of experience to Dailymotion, including 12 years in print, TV, and online journalism, including five years at MTV producing interviews and coverage at European music festivals. Prior to that, he was a diary writer for Daily Telegraph and features editor at the youth music bible Ministry. His career highlights include interviewing David Bowie (three times!) and producing documentaries for the Rolling Stones.

Watch this space for an interview with Digby soon!

We’re looking for Europe-based presenters for the following sessions at Streaming Media Europe, both on Wednesday 15 October:

Comparing Video Formats and Encoding Tools, 10.00-13.00: This updated workshop is a crash course to help you evaluate and select the right delivery format for your content. Attendees will see direct comparisons of the latest streaming media formats and codecs, including Flash, QuickTime/MPEG-4, RealMedia, and Windows Media, and objectively evaluate and quantify the pros and cons of each format. A comparison of encoding applications will also be discussed to help you choose the tools to get the best-quality results for your content.

Webcasting Essentials, 14.00-17.00: Work through the five phases of a webcast—planning, production, encoding, authoring, and distribution. To add to your real experience, the workshop itself is treated as a webcast, with the goal to webcast live from the workshop. This workshop covers production techniques and encoding hardware and software including the Windows Media Encoder and RealProducer. Workshop attendees are encouraged to participate in the webcast production to get the full “live” rush.

If you’re interested, please send an email to erics@streamingmedia.com along with a CV or list of your credentials. We’re looking for someone with solid presentation skills as well as hands-on experience in the subject areas. 

Going back to the hints we included in the Advance Programme for the conference, we’re very pleased to confirm that the multinational music and entertainment powerhouse we were referring to is none other than MTV Networks, and we have the pleasure of Alec Hendry delivering another of our keynotes.

Alec is director of digital media operations and development for MTV Networks UK and Ireland, which means he looks across all of the different platforms that consumers interact with MTV on, including online/websites, mobile services, interactive TV and also broadcast TV where MTV employs SMS and interactive TV technologies. Accordingly, it’s Alec who engaged with Garland Partners Limited — a supplier he met in the Streaming Media Europe 2007 Exhibition Hall no less! — to live stream the award-winning 2007 MTV Europe Music Awards. The event and live stream delivered 3.2 million video streams online which reflected 10% of the TV broadcast audience, obviously an enormous success, as validated by its receipt of the “Best Streaming Event of 2007″ by the IWA (International Webcasting Association).

We certainly look forward to learning more about this case study during Alec’s keynote as well as other remarks he’ll make regarding mobile streaming/video services, monetisation, user engagement and other elements which continue to motivate MTV Networks’ investments into streaming.

And as always, let us know if you have questions you want to queue up for Alec in the meantime!

I’m thrilled to announce that along with expanding our online presence via this blog and the Streaming Media Global site, we’re finally going to have a print presence in the UK and Europe beginning in September, with the first printing of the UK and Europe Edition of Streaming Media magazine. (It’s a once-a-year publication for now, but we’ll examine the frequency after we see what response is.)

In addition to in-depth Q&As with each of the keynote speakers for the Streaming Media Europe show, the magazine will include a look at the content delivery space in Europe and the UK as well as hands-on articles about Flash Video, webcasting with Windows Media and Silverlight, and producing content for mobile devices.

This is great news for our UK and Europe readers who, until now, have only had access to the digital version of Streaming Media magazine. And it’s free to qualified readers in the UK and Europe. You can subscribe here, and if you do so before the end of July, you’ll be entered into a random drawing to win a new 3G iPhone.

Have a look at these big numbers… US market research and consultancy firm, MultiMedia Intelligence, released a report yesterday estimating that global mobile video revenue will exceed $3.5 billion this year and $15 billion by 2012 (which includes direct pay and advertising streams). The Mobile TV and Video: Premium Content and Advertising Elevate the Phone Away From Just Voice report also highlights that:

• Mobile TV ARPUs are much higher in North America and Europe than Asia due to the lack of free-to-air alternatives
• Total Mobile TV and Video advertising revenue, including “Call to Action” advertising, will exceed $1 billion by 2012
• With the combination of a large wireless subscriber base and free-to-air alternatives, Asia has the vast majority of mobile TV subscribers. By 2012, Asia will have two thirds of all mobile TV subscribers

Pretty amazing, isn’t it? While we leave the predictions and actual figures to the experts, here at Streaming Media Europe we have no doubt that mobile is a massive platform for streaming media, which is why we’re especially pleased to announce that our third keynote speaker is Mr Volker Glaeser, Director Internet Services & Global Head of Online at Vodafone.

Based in Munich, Volker is responsible for building Vodafone’s eCommerce platform, distributing the company’s products via the Internet, and creating transaction-based online partnerships. He oversees the “Vodafone live!” content business including music, advertising and digital innovation initiatives like MobileTV and IPTV. In January 2007, he was appointed Global Online Program Head to lead the development of eCommerce, globally. In July, Volker was appointed to the Global Online Board. In March 2008, he became a member of the Global R&D Board.

Prior to this executive role at Vodafone, Volker has held several leadership and management positions at pre-eminent technology companies, including Yahoo! Europe, Germany’s pay station Premiere, MSN, and Infoseek. Additionally, Volker is owner of Constream Ltd., a private equity company specializing in Internet and health businesses.

And since I’ve had the pleasure to work with Volker in the past, I’d like to also add that he’s an infectiously energetic and strategically operational (really!) individual. It’s such a pleasure to work with him again and I hope you’re as excited as I am that he’ll be sharing his thoughts with all of us at the show. As always, if you have any questions for Volker in advance, just let us know and we’ll pass them along!

Just a quick post to note that Kate Burns informed us today that she’s leaving her post as Managing Director UK at Dailymotion for the newly created position of vice-president and managing director at social media site Bebo. You can read more about it in this Guardian story. Congratulations to Kate!

So what of her scheduled keynote at Streaming Media Europe? We’re working on a replacement right now; in the meantime, check back later this week for another keynote speaker announcement.

Since I couldn’t resist doing so and already let the cat out of the bag, it seems like a good time to formally announce our second confirmed keynote speaker for the upcoming event.  As hinted in the Advance Programme, we felt that this Streaming Media Europe conference just would not be complete without hearing from an executives of…

Europe’s biggest threat to YouTube to date

And as hinted (noted!) in my post from earlier in the week regarding the comScore UK report, we are extremely pleased to announce that Kate Burns, MD of Dailymotion, will be our second keynote speaker.

As all of us surely already know, Dailymotion is the phenomenon which came out of France but is now live in 12 different countries around the world — France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, the US, Poland, Holland, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and India, and is one of the 60 most visited sites in the world (source: comScore World Metrix).  In the month of April 2008 alone, the sites received more than 51.9 million unique visitors and registered 1.5 billion page views (source: Xiti).  The company has received financing from premier investors Partech International, Atlas Ventures, Advent Venture Partners, and AGF Private Equity (a division of Allianz AG), and has content relationships with MTV Networks, Turner Broadcasting (CNN), Warner Music, CANAL+, SFR, whilst also promoting and harvesting user generated and independent film maker content abound.  In February 2008, the site also started offering all of this content (where available) in high definition, raising the bar for online video globally.

We’re so fortunate to secure Kate’s commitment to speak because she has overall responsibility for all operations in the UK and reports directly to CEO Mark Zaleski.  She’s played a leading role in developing the UK’s digital media industry for over a decade with experience in launching and leading several businesses to success including Google — where she was the company’s first employee outside of the US — and DoubleClick.  She’s also held senior positions at AltaVista, Ziff-Davis and News International, and her experience and vision for the future of this sector will be invaluable.

As was the case when we announced our first keynote speaker, Claude London, let us know in comments if you have any questions for Kate, and we’ll definitely pass them along.

I’m quite a bit late in picking this up and taking notice of this, but in case you might have missed it too, comScore released a report last week that cites 27.4 million UK internet users viewed 3.5 billion videos online in the month of March 2008.  Of those totals, Google Sites (i.e., YouTube which accounts for 99% of Google’s video traffic) had 48% market share, with second place BBC sites far behind with only 1.2% market share.

What surprised me was that there was such a gap between YouTube and BBC sites (and of course any of the others) — This will be worth asking Claude London about at our event in October, as well as some of the other keynote speakers, including Dailymotion (oops, did I say that out loud?) which only grabbed 0.4% of the UK audience according to comScore figures.

Other notable findings in the report:

• 81.2% of the total UK internet audience viewed online video
• The combined UK online video viewing audience watched a total of 172 million hours of video content
• 20.5 million viewers watched nearly 1.7 billion videos on YouTube.com (47.3 videos per user)
• The average online video duration was 3 minutes

And of course with yesterday’s news that Kangaroo’s release could be delayed up to 6 months because of competitive review (coverage everywhere, but our media partner paidContent:UK has a nice summary here), this gives YouTube — or some of the even smaller players — even more time to grab more market share.

Tell us, from which sites and services do you consume your online (or mobile) video?