Cablevision Systems shook up the TV network establishment this week with the trial launch of its networked DVR. But, according to company COO Tom Rutledge, program providers should embrace the technology because there are opportunities to exploit with it.
Speaking today at Bank of America’s Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference, Rutledge offered more detail on Cablevision’s view that centralized storage of TV programs is the same, from a copyright standpoint, as storage of programs in individual DVRs.
“We’ve done a lot of research. We think that to the extent that a DVR is legal…this is legal,” he said. “What we’re doing is allowing consumers to use their set-top box as a DVR, just as we do when we put a DVR in the house.”
Cablevision’s networked DVR architecture can be extended, however, to create new copyrighted uses that TV programmers could embrace to help grow their revenues, Rutledge said. “There are lots of opportunities that flow from that to create new copyright opportunities…programmers should look at this as an opportunity to create new value that they don’t have with DVRs.”
Cablevision is also pushing the programming envelope with its early-stage deployments of switched video services. The company ran an extensive trial of switched video delivery in Patterson, NJ, an effort that will now expand company-wide in the form of a switched video foreign language service.
Using switched digital video and advanced compression algorithms, Cablevision can more than triple its channel capacity. The new foreign language service (high-value but narrow market demand, Rutledge said) will offer over 60 channels of foreign language programming.
Not that Cablevision really needs more channel capacity. “The modern cable system is vastly underutilized today,” Rutledge said. “We’re not worried about channel capacity at all.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:10 PM | Print | Comments (0)Comcast Cable President Steve Burke made a number of surprisingly specific industry-wide predictions during a talk he gave today at Bank of America’s Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference. The straightforward Burke addressed Wall Street’s disenchantment with the cable business, saying that investors have the misperception that cable is suddenly subject to competition for the first time, and that phone company entry into the video business is ratcheting up the competitive tension.
“You have this history in the cable business of investors assuming that cable is a monopoly and therefore a good business to invest in. The reality is that cable hasn’t been a monopoly for a long time,” Burke said, pointing to ten years of DBS rivalry and, more recently, cut-rate pricing competition for high-speed customers instigated by the telcos.
Phone company competition in the video business is, however, pretty thin, Burke maintained. “The reality on the ground is that we don’t have realistic competition from Verizon or AT&T until 07 or beyond.”
“There are a variety of structural reasons that lead me to believe we will have eight or ten million telephone customers before the Bells have one million video customers,” Burke predicted. Although Comcast is taking a slow-but-steady approach to its voice service roll-outs, the operator’s telephony momentum will gain speed. “To the degree that people are disappointed that we’re not adding 500,000 or one million units per quarter, I think our time will come.”
Another specific projection by Burke: If Cablevision’s networked DVR trial proves successful, and Burke thinks it will, the entire cable industry will adopt it. “If it all works out, I’m sure the rest of the industry will follow.”
Comcast is confident that networked DVR, as conceptualized by Cablevision, is permissable under the copyright laws. “Our lawyers have told us they think Cablevision is on fairly firm footing. They did it very carefully to replicate the experience the consumer has with the DVR,” Burke said.
Finally, Burke predicted that within six months, the VOD window will shorten to the point where films are made available on-demand on the same date they are released on DVD. “My prediction is that your’re going to start seeing some kind of day and date [release of filmed content] in the next six months.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:19 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The House Commerce Committee held a hearing today on draft telecom reform legislation released earlier this week, the so-called Barton bill named after Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX). As expected with this controversial bill, sparks flew, with most of the friction generated by the conflict between majority and minority members of the committee. The biggest bone of contention: the bill lacks any enforceable requirements regarding network neutrality.
Ed Markey (D-MA), Ranking Minority Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, was strident in his objections to the draft bill, reflecting a bi-partisan crack in the committee that emerged earlier this month. Markey’s main complaint is the lack of clear-cut net neutrality requirements in the bill. (The draft legislation bucks net neutrality disputes to the FCC for adjudication under “principles” adopted last year.)
Markey said that allowing broadband providers to create a two-tiered Internet is nothing more than an electronic commerce broadband bottleneck tax:
I understand that there are those who argue that we should rely on mere network neutrality ‘principles,’ or an imprecisely-worded FCC policy statement, rather than legally enforceable rules. Others will advise us to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. Yet, we know from public statements from several industry executives that the owners of the broadband wires into our homes would like to start charging fees to Internet content providers. In other words, they want to artificially constrain the supply of Internet-based content and services to high-bandwidth consumers. This represents nothing more than the imposition of a broadband bottleneck tax on electronic commerce. Such a bottleneck tax for accessing consumers will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on investment and innovation.
Full committee Ranking Minority Member John Dingell (D-MI) was less passionate but no less opposed to the bill. “This bill violates the fundamental principle of legislation: first, do no harm,” Dingell said.
Rick Boucher (D-VA) called the bill a “thin measure” when it comes to network neutrality and said “I’m deeply concerned that this two-lane plan will have a dramatic effect on innovation.” Boucher dismissed broadband providers’ arguments that net neutrality regulations are premature because no problems have occurred yet in the marketplace.
“We don’t have the luxury of simply sitting back and seeing how things work out,” he said. “When businesses start to generate revenues from a business model, it is exceedingly difficult to later outlaw that business model.”
Chairman Barton showed little patience for these attacks and asked the industry representatives on the first panel for their definitions of what net neutrality is (see below). After each of the panelists offered a different construction, Barton said with clear irritation “We’re tied up in this [net neutrality] before we even have a universally recognized definition of what it is.”
Each of the panelists did, in fact, have a different take on network neutrality, although Kyle McSlarrow, CEO of NCTA and Walter McCormick, head of US Telecom, bolstered Barton by professing confusion about the definition. However, Jeffrey Citron, founder of VoIP provider Vonage said “the hallmark of net neutrality is consumer protection.” It is, he added, “the right to bring any device to the network, access any content on the network.”
Amazon.com VP Paul Misener defined network neutrality as “preventing the extension of market power over the network to market power over the content.” Corning VP and TIA President Tim Regan offered this definition:
Consumers ought to get access to the bandwidth they buy, they ought to gain access to the applications they run, they ought to be able to attach devices they want, and they ought to be able to go anywhere they want to go on the Internet.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:18 PM | Print | Comments (6)
Although cable operators have long hoped to offer top network shows on-demand, that desire has stepped up in its urgency since Apple beat the industry to the punch by offering hit programs from TV networks via iTunes. Now, cable is catching up: Comcast announced this morning that it has a pact with NBC-Universal to offer top-rated first-run programs on-demand the day after those shows first air.
Among the programs that will be available are the Law & Order programs, The Office, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the new hit show Conviction. NBC-U’s cable network hits, such as Monk, Battlestar Galactica and Bravo’s Celebrity P*ker Showdown (how’d that get in there?) will also be available on-demand. The primetime shows will sell for $.99/pop, cheaper than iTunes’ $1.99/download — and most of these shows are available on iTunes as well — while the daytime and late-night programs will be free.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:09 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Online Publishers Association released a study (press release here but interesting PDF here) yesterday showing that online video viewing is a fairly common activity for about half of all Internet users. The study, “From Early Adoption to Common Practice: A Primer on Online Video Viewing,” consisted of a survey of 1,241 Internet users conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates.
Among the more interesting findings:
—Nearly half (46%) of the users watch online video at least once a month, with almost a quarter (24%) of the users saying they watch online video at least once a week.
—Not surprisingly, heavy and moderate viewers of online video tend to be male and affluent.
—Most viewers focus on 2 to 5 sites for their “video fix.”
—The top category for viewing is news and current events, followed by funny videos and music videos.
—Even at work, “personal” videos dominate work-related videos in terms of the amount of viewing time. Of the videos viewed at work, 38% were only personal/mostly personal, while 30% were only work-related/mostly work-related.
—5% of the users have paid to buy videos on the Internet, with 85% of those spending more than $50 to buy online videos in the past twelve months. Movies and music videos were the top two kinds of content for which users paid.
(Thanks Lost Remote)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:19 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of SiliconBeat, this item about AtomFilms’ new user-generated video site called AddictingClips. Like YouTube, AddictingClips allows users to upload and share videos and embed others’ videos into their websites. One distinguishing feature about AddictingClips: it allows users to upload videos directly from their video cameras. Higher quality videos submitted at AddictingClips (I didn’t see too many of those) stand a chance of gaining a wider audience via AtomFilms main site.
Kudos of the highest order go to Information Week’s Thomas Claburn who has this investigation into the DOJ’s subpoenas related to the government’s efforts to reinstate the Child Online Protection Act. The Justice Department’s demands that ISPs turn over search data grabbed attention when Google fought off the government’s request as both a violation of privacy and a threat to its trade secrets.
Information Week filed a Freedom of Information Act request related to this effort and discovered that the subpoenas sent to Google, AOL, MSN and Yahoo were only the tip of the iceberg — the government sent subpoenas to at least 34 ISPs, search providers and security technology vendors. All of the top cable and phone company high-speed service providers, including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Cablevision, SBC, Verizon and Qwest, were included in the data gathering expedition.
The full list of companies subpoenaed by the Department of Justice includes: 711Net (Mayberry USA), American Family Online, AOL, ATT, Authentium, Bell South, Cable Vision, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable Company, Computer Associates, ContentWatch, Cox Communications, EarthLink, Google, Internet4Families, LookSmart, McAfee, MSN, Qwest, RuleSpace, S4F (Advance Internet Management), SafeBrowse, SBC Communications, Secure Computing Corp., Security Software Systems, SoftForYou, Solid Oak Software, Surf Control, Symantec, Time Warner, Tucows (Mayberry USA), United Online, Verizon, and Yahoo.
Of these, at least two — Verizon and Cablevision Systems — raised some objections to the scope of the government’s demands, according to the article. Claburn points out, however, that ISPs are routinely subject to government subpoenas, although at least one attorney cited in the piece characterized the scope of this particular request as surprisingly broad.
Stephen Ryan, a partner at Manatt Phelps & Phillips in Washington D.C., considers the scope of the government’s discovery efforts unusual. “I’m not surprised that the Google piece looks like the tip of an iceberg,” he says. “But it is sort of surprising that they’re using their authority this broadly.” Ryan acknowledges that government subpoenas place undue burdens on companies every day, noting that there are probably scores of attorneys at large ISPs who do nothing but process subpoenas. He suggests that as information technology produces more information, that the government will want greater access to that data.
(Hat tip to Techdirt!)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:19 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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