The savvy guide to the Internet-TV connection

One would think that Apple would want to pump as much video material as possible onto iTunes as they promote Apple TV and launch a new and improved video iPod, but in a surprising turn, Apple announced that it would be cutting NBC programming from their lineup.

Apple claims that NBC refused to renew its contract after Apple balked at paying fees that would more than double the retail price of episodes from $1.99 to $4.99.

Cory Shields, executive vice president of communications for NBC Universal said “It is clear that Apple’s retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service is designed to drive sales of Apple devices, at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying.”

Their contract ends in December, but Apple has announced that it will not be selling episodes from the new fall season because it did not want to have to pull programs midway through the season. Old episodes will continue to be for sale until December.

This means that popular programs including “The Office” and “Heroes,” both of which rank in the top-10 list of iTunes sales will no longer be sold. Apple says that NBC content accounts for 30 percent of its video sales.

NBC has less reason to be concerned. They have been successfully streaming many programs including “The Office” and “Heroes” from their website, and in the fall NBC is planning on launching an online video portal called Hulu, which will feature some of NBC’s shows.

This dissolution questions the future of online video content. Apple may not be able to maintain its near monopoly on legal downloads.

“Apple must face the fact that charging flat rates for television programs of varying lengths and vintage will not resonate with an industry for which advertising is its lifeblood,” Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner Inc., said. “This is especially true with the number of competitors who are streaming the same programs for free.”

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OK, we admit it, Engadget gets some things first. So, here’s a link to an Engadget report about a mysterious product from Neuros, which released a media streamer a few years ago that hasn’t seemed to make any big waves. As described here, it looks as if Neuros is trying to add a layer of metadata over existing TV shows so you can access related shows and whatnot. The device also apparently cuts out the PC/Mac, and gets its information directly online, as with Vudu.

For more on new media extenders, here’s a review from Cnet Australia on the Beyonwiz DP-P1, whose features include the ability to play back movies, music and photos over a network, allowing you to view all the content you’ve amassed on your PC in your living room.

But the DP-P1 doesn’t support Wi-Fi, as do the Netgear EVA8000 or the Apple TV for examples of wireless streaming devices.

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It’s Saturday night, and you just decided that you want to watch a particular movie. You have several options: You can rent the movie from a video rental store (a.k.a. the old fashioned method). You can download the movie off of iTunes or any of the various free file-sharing programs, or you can stream the movie onto your computer.

This last option is the hippest and newest way of watching TV and movies, but it comes with some obstacles. There’s the slowness of the buffering and terrible picture quality, not to mention the fact that you’re probably watching it on your tiny laptop or computer monitor, but most significantly, it’s hard to find what you want.

YouTube has an enormous amount of content, but its clips are limited to less than 10 minutes, and it certainly doesn’t have everything. Similar websites have similar problems. Their videos may be longer, but they may or may not have the video you’re looking for.

Video search engines have been created to combat this difficulty. The best of the bunch is Truveo, a subsidiary of AOL, which unveiled its new site last week after spending three years dormant.

Truveo offers several interesting features over its competitors. It assumes that users don’t know exactly what they want when they perform a search, and browsing through related content can help them figure it out. Users can organize their results by a variety of different criteria including top ranked, most viewed and most relevant.

The results are organized into three columns of five video thumbnails that give a description of the video when the cursor is moved over the thumbnail. This unique organization makes skimming the results much easier than browsing through the lists that competitors, Google and Yahoo, generate. A special bucket is also created in the top right of the results page if your search produced an abundance of results from the same webpage.

All in all, Truveo makes watching online content a little simpler. The creation of this search engine is yet another step towards making Internet content more practical to watch on the big screen.

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I remember the first time I heard the name YouTube. At the time, YouTube wasn’t nearly the giant it is today. It is currently the fourth most visited website according to Alexa.com. People upload homemade videos and their favorite movies, music videos and TV shows.

However, YouTube isn’t the only game in town. In fact, according to PCWorld, it’s not even the best game in town.

Blip.tv was the highest rated. Uploading is easy if not a little slow, and users are given the option to upload thumbnails or to have one created for them. Blip.tv converts files into mediocre quality Flash 8 video, but unlike any other similar site, you can also stream or download the original high-quality file that you first uploaded. Uploaders can also give downloaders the option to download files in multiple video formats, and the site provides multiple HTML code options for embedding videos.

DivX Stage6 took second place. It is the only service that allows users with standard accounts to upload hi-def video. You have to convert your file to DivX format, but this is accomplished easily with conversion software to which there is a link on the site. Their video quality was the best after sites that support original-source files. However, the website can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a day to process your video, as compared to Blip.tv, where your video goes live almost immediately.

YouTube placed seventh. It certainly lays claim to the largest audience and the most content. However, it has some limitations. Videos can only be a maximum of 10 minutes, and the picture quality from Flash 7 is not as good as competitors. Higher quality, H.264-fortmat videos are available to AppleTV and iPhone users but not yet to the general public. Uploading is easy, and the videos are live soon after. YouTube features several privacy options including allowing videos to be viewed only by you and your friends.

For the full review, check out PCWorld.

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Many cities host film festivals that feature films from around the world. For the second year in a row, Melbourne, Australia is the source of an unusual film festival. Luckily for those us who don’t live in Australia, this festival can be viewed anywhere with an internet connection.

The Portable Film Festival features international short film and user created content. All films are distributed online via live streaming and are available for free.

The festival aims to democratize filmmaking and viewing. Even short films used to require a sizable budget, but today, most cellphone owners can be filmmakers. The online film festival gives everyone everywhere the ability to participate in the festival both by allowing anyone to send in content and by giving viewers the the opportunity to give feedback. The festival’s website allows viewers to register and rate the films, creating direct interaction between filmmakers and their audience.

This year’s festival includes more than 150 films from countries ad diverse as Australia, the US, France, Japan, Singapore, Lebanon, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Croatia, Romania, Estonia, Russia, Italy, and Greece, and the festival hopes to attract 150,000 viewers.

The festival splits the films into five categories: short film, music video, look at me, first hand capture, and media achiever. The films range the gamut from traditional short film and music videos to amateur video blogs to serials and documentaries captured on mobile phones and digital cameras.

Personally, I like the concept. Not all of the films are great, but the festival definitely contains some quality material. I really enjoyed “The Little Dictator” (see above), and hopefully, by this time next year, more of us will be watching the third annual Portable Film Festival on our TV screens.

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The Apple Remote can control all of your Apple devices. Coming from a household with three different remote controls on the coffee table, this development seems very convenient.

However, as tuaw.com points out, when you want to relax in front of your Apple TV in the evening, you may accidentally turn on your MacBook as well.

There are a couple of ways to fix this nuisance. First of all, you can turn off the infrared censor on your computer since you probably don’t need to turn on your computer with a remote anyway. This can be done at the Security Preference Pane.

The other option is to pair and unpair your remotes with your devices so that each remote only turns on one device. Here are directions on how to pair and unpair an Apple Remote with an Apple TV, and here are instructions on how to pair a remote to your Mac.

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PC-TV convergence is getting closer everyday as new, improved products enter the market. It is therefore no surprise that industry experts would want to discuss it. (I mean, you and I like talking about home connectivity so why wouldn’t they?)

DisplaySearch, the world leader in display market research and consulting, is hosting a panel discussion on home connectivity at its upcoming 2007 HDTV conference on October 10-11 in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »

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More comments from friends and colleagues who are using PC-TV connections:

Bülent Boytorun, Owner, Zap Medya Ltd., Istanbul, Turkey: “I sure do watch video online, but the quality of the content is very poor and rapidly deteriorating. As for technical solutions, Apple TV has proven to be a very practical platform for me. To have an internet-able TV source is a good solution. Content is still limited but I believe that will change in time.”
Raanan Azoulai, Director of Business Development / Legal Issues at Yedioth Internet, Tel Aviv, Israel: Well… first, I went into TVmama it looks cool. Content is good [though the homepage needs a new grid in my opinion…. but ] and there are some big names there (Anne Holland for example), which is great.

Anyway, I hardly watch video on the web. I do not have patience for doing so, but sometimes I watch. When doing so, it is for 3-4 min (at the most) videos, in which I use my PC to watch. Even though connecting the PC to the TV screen (especially the LCD’s) is very easy, I guess we’re at the “media center preliminary stage.” If there’s a feature movie or a long video, I believe I’ll burn it to a CD and watch it using the DVD :-).

Best,
Ra’anan

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Brian Clark at Gizmodo suggests Dell isn’t going to have any success selling HDTV’s as long as they are virtually clones of products from brands known in the TV world, such as Sharp, Panasonic and Sony - and he’s right. What Dell and other PC-makers can offer (and it’s not rapid online purchase and delivery - because people do need to see the screen) is added functionality - such as seamless connections to their PC’s (or Macs!), remotes that control their computers, Slingbox-type services that “sling” the picture from the TV back into the PC for recording, downloading, etc….

“Plain vanilla” LCD HDTV’s are commodities based on price, as almost all of them are equally good to the average eye (the videophiles will always pay a premium for the biggest, fastest, sharpest and best sounding). But the average eye is 95% of the market. So, Dell, etc… - let’s see some true convergence between your TV’s and PC’s. No one is really doing it - even Sony’s new Bravia sets with limited Internet connectivity aren’t a true hybrid product.

If you want to know what they should have, feel free to call or write me and ask for advice. But you don’t need a consultant to tell you what should be in these TV’s. Here are four key things new TV’s should incorporate:

1. Wired/wireless connections to PC’s and Macs via USB, Firewire, Wi-Fi connections
2. Cable card slots
3. Hard drives with large storage capacity for storing downloaded/streamed media
4. Connectivity to peer-to-peer services like Joost or Vudu without a computer

What else? Tell us what you think should be in next-gen TV’s.

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Use their consoles to stream the web or their downloads to their TV from their computer, using Orb, or so says TVOver.net (get it? one of those “clever” Web 2.0 names).

But not all sophisticated downloaders seem to know about such solutions.

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