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Media The Internet

Roger McNamee On Video on the Internet 111

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-talk-film dept.
plasticmillion writes "Roger McNamee, venture capitalist and author of The New Normal has just posted the third part of a fascinating series on his blog entitled "Video on the Internet". Here are parts one and two. His basic premise is that media companies are trying to treat the internet as a normal distribution channel like broadcast or DVD, but they need to learn that there are new rules to this game if they are to avoid the errors committed by the music industry. The user comments are also a must read, with luminaries like Marc Andreessen chiming in with their insights."
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Roger McNamee On Video on the Internet More

Roger McNamee On Video on the Internet

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  • Spot On (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @07:46PM (#11895451) Homepage Journal
    Akimbo believes that the internet offers a way for content owners to bypass middlemen and go directly to consumers. The company envisions its market evolving as blogs have, with a rapid proliferation of content vendors, much experimentation with business models (and content), and ultimately a substantial impact on traditional channels of distribution. I think it's too early to know if Akimbo is right, but not too early to think about the implications of the model.

    They've got that right. The bottleneck is still bandwidth into the home, but as that continues to improve, expect little grassroots content to pop-up all over the place. Of course the pr0n industry will obviously be an early adopter, but imagine being able to go out with a video camera with your friends and do your own TV shows, broadcast the local s Jr league soccer match or even your HS football games. Even ambitious people could do up their own Star-Trek shows. Those which demonstrate real promise could probably sell advertising or subcriptions or even sell out, if they have a mind to. Consider how low budget you could do your own Dr. Who.

    I think television is already losing to the internet, what'll it look like as the barriers come down to hosting your own shows? Interactive, even.

    'i don't like what he said, mod him down, enough negative points and it'll launch a rotton tomato at him!

    • Re:Spot On (Score:4, Insightful)

      by poopdeville ( 841677 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @07:52PM (#11895486)
      While I agree with the sentiment, people demand entertainment with relatively high production values, which really limits the ability for the average Joe to start up his own television show. Moreover, with a ton of crap floating around, finding the good shows is going to be a pain the the ass--even more than television. Of course, if this starts catching on, we'll see websites and the like devoted to sorting the wheat from the chaff.

      • Re:Spot On (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
        people demand entertainment with relatively high production values,

        Cough. Choke.

        I can't believe you said that. Ok, maybe slick looking, but anyone with some practice can get that down pretty well after a few tries.

        Camerawork and writing will be necessary skills. Editting you can do with Pinnacle or something else. I think a few people with some good props and some imagination are all that's needed for the next big thing. Just remember, you'll no longer need a million watt transmitter, antenna towe

        • Re:Spot On (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ChatHuant ( 801522 )
          people demand entertainment with relatively high production values,

          I can't believe you said that. Ok, maybe slick looking, but anyone with some practice can get that down pretty well after a few tries.

          Yet it's true; "some practice" is not enough to get something compelling. And knowing how to use the tools doesn't an artist make.

          Look at other similar forms of art where production is even easier than with movies: music, or say literature. Writing your own novel and publishing it on the web is triviall

          • Re:Spot On (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )
            ---Look at other similar forms of art where production is even easier than with movies: music, or say literature. Writing your own novel and publishing it on the web is trivially easy, yet professional authors and publishers still do good business. The reason is that an amazing amount of the material written by amateurs and available on the web is mind-numbingly bad. The extra effort required to get your book professionally published filters out a lot of the chaff; editors at publishing houses do a lot of e
          • I would have to agree that the traditional content providers would continue to provide a higher level of quality than your average Joe. But let's not overlook the potential for many people to get their 15 minutes of fame.

            Jib-Jab, Numa Numa, Star Wars Kid, etc. are all fun little things that would be great to have "ready to view" on my TV. I remember my friends in college doing some "remakes" of movies that looked terrible but were freakin' hilarious. I see no reason why these one-offs couldn't make a bi
        • Yet another person that fails to understand the difference between "art" and "craft".

        • I thoughy camerawork and writing skills were not part of the equation anymore. Just look at the proliferation of "reality" tv. Soon we will shoot all the reality and have to script our lives.
      • people demand entertainment with relatively high production values

        No they don't, people, including me, loved MST3k right from the start, and it's production value was crap.
        • Good work finding a single exception to the rule. For each MST3k on television, there are 100 shows with multi-hundred thousand dollar production values per episode.
      • people demand entertainment with relatively high production values...

        While I agree that people's standards are somewhat higher when it comes to video - to me it seems that people demand entertainment with, well, entertainment!

        Podcasters have no serious studio. Yet plenty of people listen to those.

        And on video, are not some of the post popular video clips on the net the most poorly produced and shot things you have ever seen? Yet they are invariably funny and interesting to watch.

        People are willing to
    • Currently BitTorrent solves bandwidth issues for small time home-made shows. The problem still remains, though, that enough people need to be interested to keep the system going. If there's only ever one seeder then you're basically just doing the same thing as hosting a web server, and you're back to not having enough bandwidth.
      • 1 seeder to 1 client is fine.

        What gets interesting is when you get 20 clients and still have the same seeding bandwidth (hard cap).

        I think that is what bittorrent is supposed to fix.

        It's a bandwidth multiplier, not a bandwidth alchemist.
    • no one wants to see some random local little league game or an amatureish star-trek ripoff. sure, it may be fun for about 3 minutes, but the novelty wears off really fast.
      • no one wants to see some random local little league game or an amatureish star-trek ripoff. sure, it may be fun for about 3 minutes, but the novelty wears off really fast.

        The kind of genius that gave us Saturday Night Live, H2G2 radio plays then tv series, Dr. Who and Monty Python could never happen again without the guidance of the kind of brilliant people in charge of major media networks. It was probably for the best that Nickelodeon/Viacom canned John K. just as Ren & Stimpy were getting good, an

        • Except that Dr Who, Hitch Hikers and Monty Python were all created by the BBC, a major media network.

          Even though anyone can put any music on the net for downloading, very little has made a cultural impact that way alone. This may change, but right now, the internet is full of small artists.

      • These guys havent gotten that point yet... http://www.newvoyages.com/news.html (though I have to say, for what they set out to accomplish, they've done a pretty good job...)
      • You all have made a solid point that none of the millions who aren't one of the parents or non-local family members of the 100+ kids who play in that league want to see those games. But 100 kids x 2 parents x 4 grandparents and a few aunts uncles and various other family related folks begins to add up.
        And that is the real beauty of this specific example. What is random to the masses and therefore non-broadcastable for networks and cable systems is not random to the target audience. And that is where th
    • imagine being able to go out with a video camera with your friends and do your own TV shows

      You mean like those crappy American cable tv shows that I have heard about (but, admittedly, never seen for myself, because I am not American)?

      Gee, just what we all need.

    • Re:Spot On (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:20PM (#11895643)
      what'll it look like as the barriers come down to hosting your own shows?

      Pretty much what the web looks like now with people hosting their own sites: one helluva bunch of crap.

      • Oh, come on... While the general sentiment is true, you can't deny that there are pockets of brilliance out there - even if you have to wade through shit to find them.

        The thing is, the way things work these days only one person inside the 'web of people I get information from' need do the dirty work and I get a little tinkle in my RSS reader. That's cool.

        Adding indie TV to the equation is even cooler...
    • http://www.pacerbroadcasting.com/ my highschool sports broadcast through the internet
    • Consider how low budget you could do your own Dr. Who.

      I remember one Tom Baker episode with a creature being some brown/orange bubble pop wrap thing crawling around the floor.
      • I remember one Tom Baker episode with a creature being some brown/orange bubble pop wrap thing crawling around the floor.

        Yeah, such a show has some nerve attracting a cult following.

    • You can do this now (on a limited basis). In most communities that have cable tv, there is a little known resource called a cable access studio (or community media center, etc.) that will allow one to take a camcorder out, shoot footage, edit, and play it back over a dedicated cable channel. They will even teach you how to use the equipment!

  • TV on the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Acius ( 828840 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @07:58PM (#11895519) Homepage
    I would love to see TV stations offering their programs over the Internet. I'd even pay for it -- probably a higher rate for recent shows, with discounts if I buy an entire season at once, for example.

    I guess a lot of people think that, but my reason's a little different. I'm an American, but most of the TV I watch is in Japanese. It's very hard to get Japanese TV in the U.S., and for most shows there's no way to do it without breaking copyright laws. If I had a legal way of getting shows from other countries, I would be willing to pay a premium for this.

    For me, it's not a question of convenience, it's a question of being able to do legally that which I currently cannot.
  • The race to aggregate comercial media has already begun: www.gofish.com [gofish.com] -Alec
  • ..the /. effect his video won't be on the internet for long.

  • Cable Access Vs Internet Access (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bobcat7677 ( 561727 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:09PM (#11895587) Homepage
    The technology is available now for cheaply producing a reasonably good internet show. Good video cameras are cheap, powerful editing computers are cheap, and there is plenty of open source software out there for making it all come together. The main bottleneck was always that dialup connection your non-geek neighbors had and their lack of internet awareness. But now that grandma is surfing the net instead of watching TV, and broadband is getting broader; how long will it be till "cable access" is obsolete and everyone just posts their shows as .torrent links to a community bulliten board/wiki/content site?

    Actually this is allready being done on a small scale in some networks. The Portland, Oregon Personal Teclo Project http://www.personaltelco.com/ [personaltelco.com] offers free community wireless internet access and also has local content including news, .mp3 music and meeting minutes, common application installers (firefox, openoffice), among other things available on many of the nodes for local distribution (not to metion being fast downloads as you don't have to go over the slower internet backhaul for the content).
    • http://www.starwreck.com/ Very high quality home brew show made for very little money. There are also the "new adventures" of star trek. There are also 400 user "tv channels" on winamp. --- Imagine this... TV station has a Bit Torrent like distribution program (so it scales up as users increase). You have to have a current sub to use the program (server validated like everquest). Voila- internet based cable. I have a 5mb connection now - that will easily support real time video. Even with normal
    • Whattaya bet there will be ALL KINDS of huge industries lined up to stop that sort of set-up you describe?

  • Another P2P-like issue? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TMonks ( 866428 ) <TMonganIV&gmail,com> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:14PM (#11895613)
    From TFA-
    Akimbo intends to support all video content on the web. By this I think they mean all "legitimate" content, but time will tell.

    What do they plan on doing to stop the illegitimate content from immmediately flooding the service and causing organizations (like the MPAA) to condemn it as a distributor of illegal files?

  • All That Glitters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:25PM (#11895665) Homepage Journal
    Andreesen is a "luminary"? Maybe to venture capitalists, especially the clueless lemmings among them. But to anyone else in the know, he's just a one-hit wonder, who jumped the shark in 1993 when he invented (appropriated) the <IMG> HTML tag. Since then, he had a flare as Netscape spokesmodel, while Jim Clark and an army of optioned programmers did all the heavy lifting. He's been nobody for years, and his tag is one of the worst hacks HTML inflicted on the Net. Andreesen is like a barium enema, a "luminous" tracer that radiates his promoters' ignorance and blind brand loyalty.
    • I note that mcnamee admits that he actually owns a part of Akimbo indirectly. I wonder of Andreasson was PAID for his comments here....

    • Re:All That Glitters (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Doc, that was beautiful.

      And true !
      • I've hated that guy since way back in 1995, when Netscape PR still let him post to Usenet unfiltered. He was railing against some kind of government tech investment, because his "tax dollars" were being wasted on something that private investment should be growing or killing. Now that he had his millions from the Netscape IPO, he'd kill exactly the kind of investment that paid his way at UIUC/NCSA to ride the coattails of Mosaic, that created his millions, from which a tiny portion was retained in capital-g
    • I won't argue that celebrity (even among nerds) always overshoots real value, and that I haven't seen Andreesen do anything that impressed me since then (unless you count the sheer amount of VC largesse he's passed along to techies hired by his companies... ka-ching!)

      But I'd used and struggled to interest others in hypertext systems using three other platforms before a friend showed me Mosaic 0.9 for X/Motif in early '93. Mosaic was nothing less than revolutionary. For that single thing, like Woz's work

      • No, you're just upset that I impugned a hero that you worship, without knowing how clay his feet really are. Mosaic was truly revolutionary. Andreesen's contribution, as a project manager, was to con a real programmer into adding an icon tag. The programmer refused to create an image tag, so the story goes "because that would destroy the Internet" (in an era of 9600bps dialup and X.25 frame-relay WANs). Andreesen had enough programming skill to hack the icon tag into a badly-designed image tag, Mosaic creat
        • I'm not upset. And I think I got skipped by the hero-worship fairy, because I've never, unless ooh-ah is a mantra or something closer to religious genuflecting than I ever meant.

          Second verse, same as the first, little bit louder: I wrote "I won't argue that celebrity (even among nerds) always overshoots real value, and that I haven't seen Andreesen do anything that impressed me since then".

          I read your 'I've hated Marc since ...' comment here, and that's a bit of negative bias. But you're forgetting tha
          • I don't think you're getting me. "Jumping the shark" means the last important, exciting act, after which nothing important happened. Andreesen jumped the shark. Mosaic was just getting started. Andreesen is no "luminary" - he's faded to cold, dark matter since his early-1990s home run. He's now famous merely for being famous - and only people preoccupied with the Netscape spokesmodel PR think otherwise. For example, Andreesen had nothing to do with business decisions like pricing, or selling "the firm" to A
            • Nah, I get you just fine: you want famous people to be worthy of the fame and you're quick to hate 'em if they're flawed. Whatever. I don't do that dance, either.

              As for your definition, conventional wisdom (and Urbandictionary) says Jumping the shark [urbandictionary.com] is:

              • when your favorite show starts to flag and go downhill, as when Fonzie jumped the shark on waterskis. We all knew that Happy Days was on its way down then. (doesn't fit, since he was unknown *until* after creating Mosaic)
              • A semi-popular phrase for "
              • No, I'm quick to hate obnoxious, conceited jerks who abuse their fame to make stupid statements in public. Everyone's flawed; Andreesen sank to a pretty low level with the statements he made, to which I referred in the other post you read, and others around that time. Until Netscape PR obviously started filtering his public comments, because they abruptly stopped - except those exactly consistent with the Netscape PR at the time.

                As for "pinnacle" in "jumped the shark": you do know that, by definition, thin
                • Am just gonna drop the whole Marc thing. This is exponentially more attention than I've given him in the last several years, and I was ok with that. I doubt you'll object if I say I expect to forget him again until he either enters the room I'm in, impresses me again, or shows up on the Obit page. Thanks for the commentary, though.

                  As for "pinnacle" in "jumped the shark": you do know that, by definition, things "start going downhill" immediately after the pinnacle, right?

                  But Mosaic wasn't jumping the s

                  • Mosaic did not jump the shark. As I keep repeating, Andreesen jumped the shark.

                    Nice use of Adnan Kashoggi in a geek context. So I'll add about Clark: he's a luminary for capturing a tech breakthru into a billion-dollar corporation, spearheading a trillion-dollar industry. Healtheon/WebMD is yet another, but Clark is less "luminous", because the healthcare industry is already trillions-large, and new capital hasn't arrived to make it grow the way Clark usually rides. When the Republicans are done turning he
            • "Jumping the shark" means the last important, exciting act, after which nothing important happened.

              No it doesn't. That mis-definition implies that "jumping the shark" is an entertaining climax, and a show that ended right then would be positively remembered by viewers and critics alike.

              But it really means an action AFTER the final important/exciting event, which serves as a graphic reminder that the best times are over, and the show will never be that good again.
              • You can infer all you want. But jumping the shark [jumptheshark.com] means

                "A defining moment when you know that your favorite television show has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on... it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark."

                That expression was taken from the episode of _Happy Days_ when Fonzie jumped a shark on a "motorcycle". As someone who watched that episode in original broadcast, and have seen many other things, least among them TV shows, jump the shark, I can tel
                • But jumping the shark means

                  Yes, I know the definition, and I'm using it correctly, unlike you. Just like you pasted, "jumping the shark" means you know the "television show has reached its peak". It is evidence of having passed the climax, but not the climax itself. That came earlier.

                  On Happy Days, the Shark-Jump was not the climax. It was a dumb, stupid stunt attempting revive a slumping program, and it failed.

                  Fonzie had done an earlier motorcycle stunt that was far more successful and exciting. I
      • Except that he's not the primary author of Mosaic. He simply took the code when they were working on it, and forked the codebase and ran off to start Netscape with it. Many of the original authors of Mosaic know that Marc was not a talented programmer, just an opportunist looking for a way to cash in on other people's work.
        • Who deserves credit between leader and primary authors is a gordian knot. I won't go there. A good technical team goes to hell with a crap leader, a crap team can't excel even with a good leader. Some (many?) techies can't step back and see the real-world issues of the things they create. And some (many?) leaders can ruin perfectly brilliant ideas. In that context, Marc was *in charge* of Mosaic when it was taking the world by storm, so he gets credit, fair or not.

          To distance the discussion from anti

    • How does that differentiate him from other "luminaries", such as B. Gates?
      • Gates has consistently put Microsoft at the forefront of PC development for decades. He hasn't been a programmer since the late 1970s, but his consistent success in business makes him a "luminary". Andreesen was a one-hit wonder, riding the coattails of everyone else's success.

  • The Secert: The Apple Concept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:30PM (#11895692)
    When I saw people in 2001 and 2002 paying upwards of 2 Euro each for Cell Phone ringtones, I knew it would work for MP3 files too. The whole issue was a fair balance between protecting against piracy and giving people fair use. Its been said before, but Apple pretty well nailed it.

    I still say that there needs to be a system where once you purchase it you can keep it. Wether that would be buring say a physical DVD or what ever comes next or the ablity to redownload and have some kind of key to reunlock it again.

    Again I have to use Apple as an example. Two years ago I bought QuickTime pro. Well two logic boards and system wipes later, I can go into my account and get my access key online.

    I am not against DRM so long as there is a balance. No matter what your view on the media industry is, I respect the ideas of copyrights.

    Why? I work in the industry in a small company that produces 3D FX for smaller video producers using Lightwave 3D and other high price software. I have seen people try entering the market with pirated software and once they are discovered blacklisted. Why? Lightwave is about $1600 a seat. We pay for it. I didn't quite understand what people meant by "piracy hurts" until I started working in the industry and it changed my mind a little.

    Like I said, there has to be a fair balance and it will work...

    • I'm not sure a license/key solution is warrented. That is, after all, the source of their problems now. They are so scared of piracy and desperate for the killer DRM app that they aren't focusing on the problem.

      Unfortunatly I can only describe the problem as it pertains to me.

      I have been known to download music from the internet. I do this not because I get a rush from stealing, or that I don't want to pay for it. I'm lazy, AND OK I'll admit, a little cheap. It is my personal feeling that I don't get my m

  • Inefficient? (Score:4, Informative)

    by KingOfTheNerds ( 706852 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:32PM (#11895697) Homepage
    Streaming's inefficient use of network bandwidth is an Achilles heel.

    Streaming is not inefficient, it still transfers the same amount of information as nonstreaming. The problem does not lie in efficiency. Datagram networks (the internet) is notorious for bad streaming content because the packets can take different routes and because of network jitter. I agree that a tivo setup will dominate like he says, but that doesn't make streaming inefficient!
    • Until the second time you watch the same bit of video... unless you mean streaming + local caching, in which case you might as well download at full speed instead of just fast enough to watch.

      Finally, if you're using a bittorrent-type protocol to distribute your video (which is very efficient from the point of view of the uploader) streaming doesn't work too well since everyone requests the same packets at the same time from the seed.
      • Finally, if you're using a bittorrent-type protocol to distribute your video, streaming doesn't work too well since everyone requests the same packets at the same time from the seed.

        Only for live streaming. For on-demand streaming, downloads will be staggered and thus can take advantage of swarming.

  • The movie industry ADAPTING? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:37PM (#11895731) Homepage
    Fat chance of that! They are still getting used to that "VHS and DVD thang." They hire actors and actresses for as much as $20,000,000 then whine that their movies cannot make a profit at $52,000,000 in average revenue. You don't have to be an accountant to realize that there are few thespians who are worth that much money to the public. Most of the time when people react to previews of cool looking movies, the actors and actresses are only one of many variables.

    I'd like to make a bet with the CEOs of every major studio. Make only 10% of your "serious" movies each year with the big names and then do everything else with people that look really good coming out of acting school who have a passion for the job. Cut those movie tickets 50% in cost, and put just as much money into script writing, directing and special effects as the other 10%.

    I bet that within a few years, those 90% will be significantly more profitable because people will be able to not only see a cool movie, but see it for as little as $2.50 for senior citizens and not even $4.00 for mattinee in most small to medium sized towns. People under 25, who are a major part of the market, have lots of disposable income and little responsibility right now, would be able to afford to easily go see several movies a week.

    People are more likely to blow $3.00-$4.00 on a movie ticket on a whim than $8.00 which is what I pay in a town of not even $60,000 25% of which are college students. It'd give the movie studios an edge over illegal downloading because most people under 25, especially guys, wouldn't think any big deal of spending $6.00-$8.00 a few times a week on a date, but when it's say... $16-$20 before the food is factored in. My God. At that rate, a diamond is looking like a bargain by comparison...

    And lastly, where is the direct purchasing online of cheap new DVDs? Why can't I go online to a studio's website and buy a few of their new, "non-special" releases for $10.00 each before shipping and handling? It costs them $1.00 tops to make the damn thing. Why aren't they biting at the chance to scoop up $9.00 of revenue, much of which will be pure profit and will go toward making customers like buying from them? That's the solution to piracy right there. $10.00 or under on all new regular releases and you'll sell a lot thanks to an economy of scale effect.

    But then again, that'd require their CEOs to take a step outside of the ivory tower of corporate lobbying and grandstanding and want to do their jobs. Heaven forbid that they actually be really... daring. Heaven forbid they take a real risk that hurt the company badly, but that could finally end their piracy woes entirely.
    • There's actually an easy way to get DVDs for $10; just go to Blockbuster and cruise through their used DVD bins. They have a constant deal of 2 DVDs for $20 and sometimes even put on a better sale like 3 for $25 or buy 2 get 1 free. I have bought well over 50 DVDs from them and have yet to have a problem with the quality of any of them regarding scratches. And these are DVDs that have only been out for about 2 months so it's not like those $5 DVDs you see at the grocery store that you've never heard of.

    • Re:The movie industry ADAPTING? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by randomwalker ( 758064 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @10:02PM (#11896230)
      What you says sounds interestng, but shows you have very little knowledge of how the film industry works. Each film is financed in a unique way, with different investors, with the major studios usually only serving as distributor or partial investor. Saying the studios should only make 10% of movies with celebrities of movies is like saying a pro sports team should only pay high salaries on 10% of the players and hire cheap players for the rest. Each movie is judged independently for its revenue potential. If the cost of the movie including star fees is lower than the expected revenue it will make, someone will invest and distribute.

      Hollywood is already moving towards Internet delivery. Movielink is one of many web based services that already has content available. Studios will license content to new delivery mechanisms and business models. Getting content for businesses like Akimbo is not the problem, make a good affordable user experience in home is the challenge.

      The reasons studios don't run online stores is simply its not what they are good at. Walmart and amazon may take a cut of profits, but they sell more than a studio website.

    • You are right, but I'll tell you a story....

      A friend of mine urged me to catch The Usual Suspects. I know that big names do not always a great movie make. So, I watched it and was absolutely blown away by it. I guess you've seen it.

      Anyway, so I start telling people I work with about how great it is. First question "who's in it". Well, errr, no-one well known, but it's a great movie.

      A lot of people pick movies on stars. They view them as a quality indicator, and it's probably one of the worst. Particul

  • Marc Andreesen is a luminary now?

  • Are the prices out of whack? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've never understood the relative valuation of music versus visual content.

    How many movies do you have any desire to view more than once? For me, it is maybe 5%, if that.

    But how many CDs do you listen to over and over and over again?

  • Comments a must read? (Score:4, Funny)

    by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @08:57PM (#11895835)
    The user comments are also a must read, with luminaries ... chiming in with their insights.

    That's one sentence you will never hear used to describe slashdot. ;)

  • Streaming or Caching? Paper of Plastic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @09:09PM (#11895903) Homepage
    Historically, Hollywood has not only survived non-theatrical distribution formats such as TV, VCR, DVD, it has also benefited from them, and it will eventually figure out a way to use Internet as a distribution channel. With due respect to Mr. McNamee's convoluted theorem, I think Hollywood has no reason to fear these "gadgets of the month" like Tivo and Akimbo, and I base my observation on my 15-year experience of working in both movie studios and independent film industry. Allow me to explain.

    Hollywood has a group of loyal friends, namely, local theater owners -- all these guys have to do is to find an air-conditioned place, a projection booth, and a nice concession stand, they can sell "good times" for less than $20 per person (parking and food included). The theater owners probably don't make a lot on ticket sales, but their profits from selling popcorns and soft drinks are significant. As long as there are teenagers dying to get out of the house, lovers who are looking for a dark place to smooch, and families that need some cheap entertainment to refuel after a hard day, people will go to the movies.

    This weekend, a friend excitedly informed me that he had just gotten DSL and had been downloading movies from p2p sites, but when he said it took him "days" to download a DVD-quality movie, I knew my old coworkers at the movie studios got nothing to worry about their jobs.

    "Streaming or caching?" Mr. McNamee posed the big philosophical question. To me, it is as profound as asking "paper or plastic?" at the supermarket. That is to say, it's not a big deal. Hollywood makes movies for people so they can get out of the house. Those who like to stay indoors and fret over "streaming or caching" will always have their Web forums to yak until the cows come home.

    • Re:Streaming or Caching? Paper of Plastic? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rho ( 6063 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @10:15PM (#11896306) Journal
      Your opinions also applied just a few years ago to the music industry.

      Theaters only do well with first-run movies. First-run movies are also very spotty in quality. People are starting to waidt for the DVD (the long lead times between a theatrical release and home video are down to mere weeks) so they don't get burned by high ticket prices (per viewer, no less!).

      What makes the big bucks for theaters? Family movies. Get mom and dad and the two kids in there for The Incredibles, you make a bundle. But, wait: mom and dad are now waiting for the DVD and watching it at home. $20 for the DVD (or $3 for the rental), and the kids can watch it again and again.

      Why is the theater relevant again? Only for purists.

    • >families that need some cheap entertainment

      Cheap entertainment? Are you nuts? At $8.50 per person? And the vast majority of the material the studios market to my kids is absolutely unacceptable. I wouldn't let them see a lot of it at all, even if it was free.

      Cheap entertainment would be under $5 per person. Otherwise I'm better off buying a DVD for $14.95.

      We almost never go to the movies any more. It just costs too much.

    • Hollywood makes movies for people so they can get out of the house. Those who like to stay indoors and fret over "streaming or caching" will always have their Web forums to yak until the cows come home.

      I'm not in the industry, so I can't back this up with the same experience as you. However, I heard an interesting piece of information a while back. The reason why Disney puts out so many sequels straight to DVD is that it's a cash cow for them. Lion King 2, Shrek 2, and countless other sequels weren't r
  • I'm often surprised to find that some of the most popular video shorts distributed are commercials. Some websites have commercials making up 50% of their content (it seems like boobies and skateboard accidents are the other 50%). There's a huge lesson here for content providers and distributors. People will willingly watch and trade commercials (commercials!) for products if they are simply well made and novel.
    • In my experience of that kind of site, it's commercials *with* boobies that get traded. Perhaps 50% boobies and 50% jokes. There's also a fair amount of trade in music videos, which are basically adverts for songs.

      Anyway, my point is that for video advertising to survive into the next decade, it's going to have to be funny, with a good soundtrack, and have naked people in it. Hooray for the future!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I haven't RTFA but I can't believe someone has appropriated "New Normal" for a business book title?

    In these parts "New Normal" is code for new post 9/11 security procedures or more commonly the post SARs changes to hospitals and doctor's offices (restricted visitation, hand santizer everywhere and masks a plenty).

    I think I'll write a business book and call it "Tsumani Cleanup"....

  • internet video is already very possible, (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i feel kinda bad posting this as its going to kill some bandwith, but there are lots of internet only shows that are really good.

    http://packetsniffers.org/ [packetsniffers.org] packetsniffers

    http://www.binrev.com/hacktv/ [binrev.com] hack tv

    these are great computer shows that are made by normal people on comsumer grade computers.

    and there are others like infonomicon and broken floppy that still need some work.

  • TV and computer viweing are very different (Score:3, Informative)

    by ctwxman ( 589366 ) <me@@@geofffox...com> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @10:40PM (#11896424) Homepage
    For the past few years my wife and I have been watching Major League Baseball on our PC. Our team, the Phillies, aren't on-the-air here in Connecticut. What we've found is very important. It isn't necessary to have full screen video to have a meaningful streaming experience!

    Whenever I read about the promises of VOD or using the Internet for television type programming, I hear about the huge bandwidth necessary for full screen, VHS quality. It's just not necessary. In fact, full screen might be a detriment.

    Computers are viewed differently than TV's. It's an immense difference. We're closer and we're not adverse to doing multiple tasks on the screen at once. Someone is going to have to step up to the plate with that realization and then VOD over an IP network will be reality.

    After one game, I asked my wife if she'd be willing to pay for a live concert by an artist she really likes (Rick Springfield) at this smallish screen size, but with sharp video and good stereo audio? She said, "yes."

    To me, this makes some events economically feasible that wouldn't make sense as free TV, basic cable or even pay-per-view. There are undoubtedly other applications, with similar niche audiences.

    The current streaming technologies from Microsoft and Real and especially Macromedia Flash (quickly becoming the major player in streaming video) make it easy to integrate advertisements in many different ways, often without stopping or disturbing the actual desired content.

    This is the 500 channel universe we've heard about. Except, it's really an infinite channel universe.

    Of course, there's a question of whether there's enough bandwidth right now to handle it. The answer's probably no - but - there is a plethora of 'dark' fiber, waiting to be powered up. If video is the next killer app for computers, there will be plenty of incentive to unleash enough bandwidth to enable it.

    I work for a local TV station, but I don't consider this our ruin. If we're smart and aggressive, we'll be able to sell the content we already produce, and specialized content that demands our localized expertise, in this new venue.

  • Slightly offtopic, but why is TIVO failing? Everybody I know who has one loves it and is fairly addicted to it. I myself would love to get into the PVR game, as it would make TV a lot more feasible for me, someone who a) hates programming by the small, ad-cloven chunk, and b) would rather have TV fit into his schedule and not the other way around.

    And not just TIVO either. It seems the PVR market in general isn't doing well, so somebody please explain it to me, becuase I just don't get it.

  • No, it's an appliance, not a service. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @11:49PM (#11896896) Homepage
    The trouble with Tivo is that their business model is that of a "service". Investors like that ongoing revenue stream, but consumers hate the monthly bill.

    Consider the DVD player. Costs under $50. Buy it once, and throw it away if it breaks. No monthly charges. Made in China by cheap labor. Available everywhere. That's the winning business model.

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