Posted by andrew pascoe on May 9, 2010 · View Comments
A few noteworthy news items from the world of VoD and IPTV from the last couple of weeks:
- 08 May - YouTube is said to be looking to offer content owners a mechanism whereby they can charge for access to their videos in a self-service manner (CNET article). Understandably it will only initially be available to those who are already content partners.
- 04-06 May - Some of the latest stats around VoD consumption: Virgin Media saw 200 million VoD views across 2.1 mill homes (TechRadar); time-shifted TV consumption is at 6.9% of all Tv viewing (& 13.7% in households with PVRs) says TV marketing body Thinkbox (MediaWeek); Five served 51mill total VoD viewers online in 2009, with 1.3mill long-form videos per month (PaidContent UK); ITV served an avg 16.4 million views per month to 8.7 million unique viewers per month over Q1 (ITV release).
- Not directly related to VoD yet, but Sky announced record growth in its HD boxes - adding almost half a million of them in Q1 (Broadband TV News). This is important because the Sky+ HD box has the ethernet connection that will allow for Sky’s true-pull VoD offering to be launched to the entire HD install base later this year.
- 04 May - Robert at PaidContent UK has a post showing some of the BBC iPlayer’s socialised aspects out in the wild (on Twitter). ‘Version 3′ of iPlayer has long been touted by Huggers & Rose as the social version, but as far as we are aware, there’s not been any publicly discussed launch/roll-out date.
- 27 April - Hulu has reportedly ‘abandoned’ plans to launch in the UK. Emma Barnett at the Telegraph has this article. We say reportedly however because - like all the past Telegraph pieces about how close a Hulu dea/launch was claimed to be, there is still no official statement from any party including Hulu - just the “sources close to…”. For the record, the reasons for Hulu’s withdrawal are the oft-repeated ones: ITV is not syndicating it’s VoD content, and C4 and Five want to sell ad inventory around their content in any syndication deals they’re striking.
- Bill Scott at Easel.tv has a piece on what a good app store could mean for TV.
Posted by andrew pascoe on December 12, 2009 · View Comments
A few highlights from the world of IPTV, VoD, and more from the last few weeks:
- Dec 7: BT - through their wholesle arm - are trialling an initiative called “Content Connect” whose aim is to improve video delivery by hosting popular video content at the actual ISP. There’s a good Guardian article here (which says that the trails include BBC and 4oD content). There is also a presentation from BT Wholesale on Content Connect from 12 months ago, posted on Scribd here.
- Dec 3: Five announced that it has bring its on-demand catalogue to YouTube, joining Channel 4. Broadband TV News article. PaidContent UK article.
- Dec 2: Seesaw - the Arqiva-owned VoD initiative that was Project Kangaroo - has signed up its first content: some shows from BBC Worldwide. DTG post.
- Dec 2: Freeview HD was turned on. It was more a technical milestone than a c0mmercial one, but it gets a mainstream Freeview HD push closer. Broadband TV News article. It was also announced on the same day that (regular) Freeview passed the mark of being in 10 million homes.
- Also, at the Freeview HD launch, Freeview MD Ilse Howling also commented that they are looking at brining IPTV services to DTT. Digital Spy article.
- Nov 28: Reportedly, BBC iPlayer won’t be coming to the Xbox 360 anytime soon, because of Microsoft’s policy of charging for content access (through Xbox Live) conflicting with the BBC’s public access remit . Telegraph article here.
- Nov 27: Tivo has partnered with Virgin Media to return to the UK - they’ll be powering a new Virgin set top box (STB). Broadband TV News article.
- Nov 27: The BBC released some detailed iPlayer usage statistics (likely in a bid to be seen to be more open, and also to demonstrate the appetitite for on-demand). The BBC Internet Blog post is here. The file itself is available here (PPT - 2.4mb). And CXO magazine have made some of the stats into an infographic here.
Posted by andrew pascoe on September 22, 2009 · View Comments
Whew - it’s been a while since our last update - apologies!
In the world o’ Project Canvas news:
- According to this interview in PC Pro with the BBC’s Canvas project director, Richard Halton, the BBC “hope to hear back from the BBC Trust”‘ by Oct 1. Could he mean the the Trust’s provisional conclusions on the Canvas consultation will be published by Oct 1? Halton in the same Q&A also suggests there’ll be something more to announce regarding Channel 4 soon (although surely they’re a little busy now replacing Andy Duncan?).
- Project Canvas was actually covered in the New York Times two days ago - the article is here. The Euro-wide HbbT is also covered. Interestingly, Richard Halton on timing: he hopes that Canvas will be in use for the 2012 Olympic games. Is Canvas internally starting to pushout its consumer start milestone timings?
- At the Westminster eForum event (15 Sep), Richard Halton also announced an intention to have a software development kit (SDK) available for Project Canvas by summer 2010. Broadcast Now article here.
- From the IBC (14 Sep) Microsoft announced they are considering incorporating Canvas as part of Mediaroom - its IPTV product offering - if it was truly open with no proprietary standards. There’s a ConnectedTV post here with more info.
- Going all the way back to early this month (3 Sep), Broadcast Now ran an article explaining how the DTG (Digital TV Group) is stepping up work on fleshing out the core technical specifications, and that related to that and other steps related to developing the standards, the BBC is continuing to hire personnel to work on Canvas.
In related VOD & IPTV news:
- Ofcom published proposals (14 Sep) on how to regulate video on demand services. The Ofcom consultation page is here.
- At the IBC, Erik Huggers formally announced plans to create Open iPlayer - this was the initiative that was until now known as Project Marquee, and is based around opening up the technology behind iPlayer to other public service broadcasters Broadband TV news article here. It sounds though like the Open iPlayer - which as the BBTV News article highlights still needs approval from the BBC Trust - might be made available to broadcasters from other countries also.
- After releasing an upgrade for the Sony PS3, the games console is now making up 10% of BBC iPlayer views. ITProPortal article here. The other big TV-based iPlayer implementation is Virgin TV which historically accounts for approximately one third of iPlayer streams, and of course there is a Nintendo Wii implementation as well.
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