The first Open Video Conference—put on by Kaltura, Yale Internet Society Project, and Participatory Culture Foundation in partership with Mozilla, Red Hat, Creative Commons, Level 3, and Akamai—is going on now and through the weekend in New York. Some great speakers and, in addition to addressing technology and business models, some great insights on the social, cultural, and political implications of video and social media.
Today the Broadband Forum announced its latest broadband and IPTV statistics, with data prepared by Point Topic. No real surprises—global broadband grew by 16.6 million subscribers in 1Q 2009, while IPTV subscription worldwide is now nearing 24 million, with most of the growth in Eastern Europe and North America. The IPTV growth in Eastern Europe is down to significant pushes in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Russia. Clearly, while OTT video is giving IPTV a run for its money, it’s still a very competitive space
According to this Reuters story, German public broadcaster ZDF will “drastically reduce” online programming because commercial television channels and newspapers are accusing them of “unfair competition.” The twisted logic being that, since public broadcasters don’t have to worry about cannibalizing profits by putting television content online, they can, um, put more television content online.
ZDF director Markus Schachter told Reuters that the broadcaster will cut back its online programming by a whopping 70%, and reduce the time that catch-up programming is streamed on both the ZDF site and sister channel ARD site. Video reports on Bundesliga games, for instance, will only be available for one day. The sites also plan to cut back on their text offerings.
In the same story, though, Schachter says the sites will increase their video offerings, but didn’t say how they’d do that while at the same time reducing catch-up programming. Should be interesting to watch; what’s going to be even more interesting will be whether or not ZDF/ARD’s moves make any difference in Germany’s dwindling newspaper revenues.
All of the videos from last month’s Streaming Media East and Content Delivery Summit event are now online. Of particular note is Dan Rayburn’s presentation, “CDN Market Size and Pricing Trends.” Most analysts and research reports that cover the CDN space don’t share their research methods, nor do they really share detailed numbers and pricing information. In the video below, Rayburn does, and it’s worth watching.
We’re excited to announce the first annual European Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award, for which nominations will be accepted beginning today. Modeled after the successful U.S. program, the European Readers’ Choice Awards will be the only awards program that honors the top efforts in the online video industry as decided by the people who actually use the products and services and watch the content.
The awards process begins with the collection of nominations in 12 categories:
• Transcoding Solution—Hardware, software, or cloud-based solution for encoding and transcoding content
• Online Video Platform—SaaS platforms that enable customizable publication, syndication, distribution, and monetisation of video on the web
• UGC Platform—User-generated content sites and services
• TV over IP Solution—Set-top box, over-the-top, and “catch-up” solutions for delivering television content online
• Reporting, Analytics—Services that offer metrics that, among other things, help content publishers better understand who’s watching, when they’re watching, where they’re watching, and for how long
• Streaming Services Provider—Provider of end-to-end streaming services, from capture and encoding to delivery and distribution
• Video Advert Platform—Technologies and services that allow for targeted ad insertion into online video content
• Webcast Platform—Hardware, software, and SaaS solutions for delivering live web events
• Delivery Network—Edge or peer-to-peer content delivery providers
• Music & Audio Delivery Solution—Music download services, internet radio, and music sharing
• Best Live Webcast of 2009—Most impressive and successful live web event
• Best Streaming Innovation of 2009—The “catch-all” category, for simply the coolest, most innovative streaming product, service, or event of the year.
Nominations may be submitted here beginning today through 29 June. The staff of Streaming Media will evaluate the nominations for appropriateness to category and then publish a list of nominees in each category on 6 July.
At that point, our readers will be able to vote for one nominee in each category, with the voting open until 21 August. We’ll publish the finalists—the top 3 vote-getters in each category—on 7 September, and then announce the winner in each category at Streaming Media Europe on 15 October, as well as on the website and in the Winter European edition of Streaming Media magazine.
So make your nominations soon, and look out for the list of nominees on 6 July!
• Brightcove announced it had been selected by La Vanguardia to publish the newspaper’s online video. La Vanguardia is the largest newspaper in Barcelona, and this marks another big move by Brightcove in their on-going European expansion.
• Datmedia is making a major push with its Datpresenter online video platform (which Streaming Media reviewed here), but they’ve also introduced a very neat new enhanced podcasting tool. You can learn more about it by listening to this podcast, which we recorded with Datmedia’s Jay Pritchard at Streaming Media East in New York earlier this month.
Everyone loves Hulu. Everyone who can actually watch it, that is, a demographic that has until now included only people in the U.S. (or savvy geospoofers). According to an article in the Telegraph, the service is set to launch in the UK in September, featuring about 3,000 hours of U.S. content in addition to shows from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. That is, if negotiations about who controls the advert sales around the ITV and Channel 4 content get ironed out. Hulu wants to run the show, while the networks are (unsurprisingly) not quite so eager to turn over that control. Chalk it up to cultural differences? And when, oh when, will the rest of the world get all that Hulu goodness? No official word on that yet, but surely the UK plans are a good sign.
We’re looking for an independent writer who’s familiar with the CDN space in Europe — the major players, the trends, the challenges, the opportunities, etc., as they relate specifically to the Europe market as distinct from other markets. Need someone to write a high-level article for the Autumn issue of the European edition of Streaming Media magazine. If you fit the bill, contact me directly.
Just back from a terrific week in New York, meeting with readers and exhibitors. We had more attendees than ever before (well, at least since the heady pre-bubble days), with 3,733 registered for the two-day event. Larry Kless, who’s written for Streaming Media and has his own blog covering the online video industry, did my work for me (thanks, Larry), and collected links to as many of the news stories coming out about the show — check it out here.
We’ve extended the deadline for speaker proposals for this year’s Streaming Media Europe conference, to be held on 15 & 16 October (with pre-conference workshops on 14 October), again at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. You now have until Friday, 8 May to submit proposals.
While we welcome all potential speakers, we’re especially interested in end users who can speak to the challenges, trends, and opportunities they are dealing with as they deploy online video and music strategies in both consumer-facing and internal communications. Submissions can be made directly here, but be sure to read our guidelines first.
Once again, we’ll be having two tracks, one focusing on Technology & Content and one on Business & Strategy. We’ll likely have a total of about 20 sessions, as well as four keynotes. Stay tuned for more information about those keynotes, and we look forward to your speaker submissions.
