Still longing for ubiquitous interactivity with my mass media, Cable industry folkal got together in NY for a MultiChannel News event, Advanced Advertising 3.0 to discuss the state of the industry and where to go from here.
Of course the continued hot topic was OTT, and what effect(s) it will have on traditional TV advertising, including the positive side effect of kickin their arses into gear in regards to the whole addressable/interactive advertising thing.
Canoe recently announced they will be conducting a new study with support of some major advertisers such as Amex to analyze the effectiveness of interactive tv advertising. While they get their research on, OTT continues to roll with Netflix now touting over 20MM subs.
I am very sympathetic to the plight of the provider and the issues with doing massive upgrades with their infrastructures to support interactivity in a reliable fashion, but its time to turn it to 11 and push the roll out more and drive awareness amongst consumers, and hopefully adoption.
Boxee Show Boxee Box Users Some Luv, Delivers Netflix
Boxee announced today they have met Neflix's security req's and added the channel to their lineup of premium content. In a blog post on the company's site Avner mentions that Neflix support was the most common request by the community, and the wait is finally over.
Below is a demo clip of the Neftlix goodness:
As a Netflix streaming subscriber this "must have" addition makes the D-Link Boxee Box much more desirable. Looking forward to what the rest of the year holds for the Boxee team on both the content and hardware front.
Below is a demo clip of the Neftlix goodness:
Netflix App on the Boxee Box by D-Link from boxee on Vimeo.
As a Netflix streaming subscriber this "must have" addition makes the D-Link Boxee Box much more desirable. Looking forward to what the rest of the year holds for the Boxee team on both the content and hardware front.
90 Days and Counting, Canoe/Cable Keeps Draggin Feet
After a few false starts and one failed/delayed attempt Canoe Ventures and the rest of the Cable industry has been slow to roll out their interactive and addressable advertising solution(s). Promising to focus their efforts on RFI (Request for Information) campaigns, Canoe is now saying they will be finally delivering RFI functionality to Discovery, Bravo, USA and History channels within 90 days.
This is a MUCH anticipated move and hopefully should lay somewhat of a foundation for EBIF ITV solutions to roll out. The big question everyone.., well at least I have, is once things are implemented in a wide fashion on the ITV front, will other organizations and developers have any hope of getting their solutions in front of consumers after all the heavy lifting has been done by the Canoe folks?
Only time will till., we will be watching, tick tick tick.., 90 day countdown begins....clock is tickin with other folks like Leap Media building out their own ecosystem for buyers and sellers, maybe Canoe can leverage their audience once they get the crazy implementation work completed.
This is a MUCH anticipated move and hopefully should lay somewhat of a foundation for EBIF ITV solutions to roll out. The big question everyone.., well at least I have, is once things are implemented in a wide fashion on the ITV front, will other organizations and developers have any hope of getting their solutions in front of consumers after all the heavy lifting has been done by the Canoe folks?
Only time will till., we will be watching, tick tick tick.., 90 day countdown begins....clock is tickin with other folks like Leap Media building out their own ecosystem for buyers and sellers, maybe Canoe can leverage their audience once they get the crazy implementation work completed.
Leap Media Group Launches ITV Matchmaking Service
Leap Media Group has announced the beta of a new service to play matchmaker to the buy/sell side for interactive tv advertising dubbed AdYield.tv.
Leap is not providing any of the nuts/bolts like Canoe is, instead they dub the service as an "eHarmony" for advertising. They also mentioned possibly connecting into Canoe or other services down the road.
Leap is not providing any of the nuts/bolts like Canoe is, instead they dub the service as an "eHarmony" for advertising. They also mentioned possibly connecting into Canoe or other services down the road.
Samsung TV Apps Eclipses the 1 MM Download Mark
Ok, its not quite up to snuff with iOS download numbers, but Samsung has reached a nice milestone in surpassing the 1 million mark for the TV app downloads.
We still have a long way to go to get TV app ecosystem(s) up to some level that would be considered ubiquitous, but you have to start somewhere. Kudos to Samsung for being the industry cheer leader on the CE side of things.
I hope that the others take note and get their act together before Apple swoops in and takes the TV industry by storm with iOS enabled Apple TV boxes and who knows, some future move into actual TV's as panels and other components become commoditzed and software/services becomes the differentiating factor.
We still have a long way to go to get TV app ecosystem(s) up to some level that would be considered ubiquitous, but you have to start somewhere. Kudos to Samsung for being the industry cheer leader on the CE side of things.
I hope that the others take note and get their act together before Apple swoops in and takes the TV industry by storm with iOS enabled Apple TV boxes and who knows, some future move into actual TV's as panels and other components become commoditzed and software/services becomes the differentiating factor.
Ball State Shows off their ITV Chops
With the help of vendors S&T, ADB, and the OEDN folks, Ball State's Center for Media Design (CMD) is the first academic group to fully implement an end-to-end ITV system.
This is a great accomplishment, having been looking into pulling together a similar environment for devers in Silicon Valley and realizing the cost and pain in the arse involved.
CMD Insight & Research folks were kind enough to snag a video of a rundown of the setup and what all the team has going on:
This is a great accomplishment, having been looking into pulling together a similar environment for devers in Silicon Valley and realizing the cost and pain in the arse involved.
CMD Insight & Research folks were kind enough to snag a video of a rundown of the setup and what all the team has going on:
Samsung Free The TV Developer Day, Live Coverage
Arrived here at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose for Samsung's first TV Developer Day. Should be an action packed day with a good speaker lineup and lots of dever goodness around their new TV SDK.
10:01 - Samantha Harris emcee'ing, introducing Eric Anderson, Samsung VP of Content Development
10:04 - Eric Anderson up, Samsung hopes to have 200 apps by years end. Some interesting apps on the demo screen, Hulu Plus and Rovi stand out as the most interesting at first glance
10:15 - BK Yoon, Samsung President of Visual Displays up, giving a nice talk about how Samsung is embracing apps across all devices, points out its all about developers. More then 50% of connected Samsung TV's and blu-ray players are Samsung Apps ready
10:30 - Tim Baxter up, Samsung America President up. Throwing out all sorts of interesting stats:
Touting devers should choose Samsung b/c of their reach:
Samsung going to back the tv app effort with $70 million marketing budget, tv, pring, online, social media.
Setting up ~6,000 retail endcap displays, Best Buy big partner in effort, Best Buy CTO Robert Stephens coming on stage now, talking Geek Squad beginnings and how excited they are for whats happening on mobile/tv's
10:44 - Pandora founder Tim Westergren up now, telling story of how pandora started and how great it is to have a company of Samsung's size, question time:
Qik founder up asking question, "How do you build experiences across all the devices/screens?" A: we have an internal sdk we use, and sometimes give to partners to develop
When are rankings and listener interest? Video coming? A: not getting into video, we dont want to be a list company
11:04 - Chuck Pagano, ESPN CTO on stage, talking history of ESPN
11:19 - Olivier Manuel on stage, Director of Content & Business Development, talking about the app challenge and about to do some demos, "we are on the edge of a consumer revolution"
Hulu Plus demo now, pretty nice experience, very similar to web UX but adapted for TV viewing experience
Announcement that Galaxy-S Android app being released today to allow users to control all aspects of television
Bunch of talk and demos of other apps, Pandora, BlackJack, kids game
Lunch Break
10:01 - Samantha Harris emcee'ing, introducing Eric Anderson, Samsung VP of Content Development
10:04 - Eric Anderson up, Samsung hopes to have 200 apps by years end. Some interesting apps on the demo screen, Hulu Plus and Rovi stand out as the most interesting at first glance
10:15 - BK Yoon, Samsung President of Visual Displays up, giving a nice talk about how Samsung is embracing apps across all devices, points out its all about developers. More then 50% of connected Samsung TV's and blu-ray players are Samsung Apps ready
10:30 - Tim Baxter up, Samsung America President up. Throwing out all sorts of interesting stats:
- 45 milion tv's per yr
- 227 mobile phones per yr
- this year 17% tv's sold will be connected/smart tv's
- by 2014 70% of tv's will be connected/smart
- about 12 million connected home devices sold this yr
Touting devers should choose Samsung b/c of their reach:
- 37% tv market
- 60% connected tv market
- 40% blu-ray market
- 50% application activation of Samsung TV Apps
- 80% of 40" connected tv's
Samsung going to back the tv app effort with $70 million marketing budget, tv, pring, online, social media.
Setting up ~6,000 retail endcap displays, Best Buy big partner in effort, Best Buy CTO Robert Stephens coming on stage now, talking Geek Squad beginnings and how excited they are for whats happening on mobile/tv's
10:44 - Pandora founder Tim Westergren up now, telling story of how pandora started and how great it is to have a company of Samsung's size, question time:
Qik founder up asking question, "How do you build experiences across all the devices/screens?" A: we have an internal sdk we use, and sometimes give to partners to develop
When are rankings and listener interest? Video coming? A: not getting into video, we dont want to be a list company
11:04 - Chuck Pagano, ESPN CTO on stage, talking history of ESPN
11:19 - Olivier Manuel on stage, Director of Content & Business Development, talking about the app challenge and about to do some demos, "we are on the edge of a consumer revolution"
Hulu Plus demo now, pretty nice experience, very similar to web UX but adapted for TV viewing experience
Announcement that Galaxy-S Android app being released today to allow users to control all aspects of television
Bunch of talk and demos of other apps, Pandora, BlackJack, kids game
Lunch Break
Clearleap and RCDb Show Why Future Could Be Bright For Blu-Ray Players
The disc is definitely on its way out in all forms of media as ubiquitous broadband proliferates the globe and services like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, et-al continue their adoption ramp. This of course means a slow and painful death to the cd, dvd, players out there, but the life expectancy of blu-ray players is looking bright thanks to Sony's vision for a blu-ray filled future and upstarts like RCDb leveraging the platform.
Blu-Ray players sport a Java based stack that is an offshoot of that of the GEM Spec and Tru2Way stacks, the new BD-Live enabled ones are also internet connected. This combo, along with some clever deving from Clearleap and RCDb, out of SF, are bringing Cable VOD direct to Blu-Ray players.
The duo showed off their latest efforts at the Cablelab's Summer Conference in Keystone, Colorado.
RCDb took their BD-J chops and applied them to creating software delivered via a disc that when played will load/run the program to enable conditional access to a Clearleap managed VOD asset library.
Although I am not a Blu-Ray fan, and have doubts about its longevity, its solutions like this that make Sony not look too crazy when you hear them talk about a bright future for Blu-Ray. If more devers drop solutions like this, Blu-Ray players could be well positioned to become one of the leading STB's of choice.
Blu-Ray players sport a Java based stack that is an offshoot of that of the GEM Spec and Tru2Way stacks, the new BD-Live enabled ones are also internet connected. This combo, along with some clever deving from Clearleap and RCDb, out of SF, are bringing Cable VOD direct to Blu-Ray players.
The duo showed off their latest efforts at the Cablelab's Summer Conference in Keystone, Colorado.
RCDb took their BD-J chops and applied them to creating software delivered via a disc that when played will load/run the program to enable conditional access to a Clearleap managed VOD asset library.
Although I am not a Blu-Ray fan, and have doubts about its longevity, its solutions like this that make Sony not look too crazy when you hear them talk about a bright future for Blu-Ray. If more devers drop solutions like this, Blu-Ray players could be well positioned to become one of the leading STB's of choice.
Registered For Samsung's First TV Dev Day, New Event Added
I had the pleasure of connecting with folks from the Mobile Developer Community team at Samsung's San Jose, CA office. They turned me on to what appears to be a fantastic up and coming event in the bay area for TV Dever enthusiasts.., Samsung's first ever TV Developer Day.
I just recieved my reg confirmation and added the event to our listing page.
For those interested do not delay, RSVP needed by August 20th, email RSVP@SamsungDevDay.com to get on the list.
The event site is located at http://www.freethetvchallenge.com/
I just recieved my reg confirmation and added the event to our listing page.
For those interested do not delay, RSVP needed by August 20th, email RSVP@SamsungDevDay.com to get on the list.
The event site is located at http://www.freethetvchallenge.com/
Random Site Hack, Content Temporarily Lost
Appears that two of the wordpress based sites that are being hosted under our account were both hacked, one of which is yours truly.
The hack effected all content entries on the site and was attempting to serve malware on page load.
To combat the issue we have put a temporary copy of our dev site in place for the time being. We are a little strapped for time right now, so content will be missing and out of sync for a while until we can get the next wave of content and development up.
Thank you for your patience
The hack effected all content entries on the site and was attempting to serve malware on page load.
To combat the issue we have put a temporary copy of our dev site in place for the time being. We are a little strapped for time right now, so content will be missing and out of sync for a while until we can get the next wave of content and development up.
Thank you for your patience
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