Recently in the Video Category

The prevailing topic of discussion at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas this week may have sounded a bit like the old Chicken or Egg discussion... in reverse. 

Network executives need to figure out a way to capture the eyes of young, affluent viewers who are more likely to watch videos on their portable players than on their set top box. And yet they also need to figure out how to stop those same viewers from watching their copyrighted and pirated content on youtube.com. 

One thing is for sure, the numbers are in -- online video viewing is here to stay, and YouTube continues to be the big winner. New numbers posted this week by comScore Inc show February's numbers up 66% over the previous year. The Goliath in the market captured one third of the market, or 10 billion views (up from 15% last year), while TV networks made a dismal showing. ABC for instance captured 1% of the market; CNN captured 1.3 %...you see the trend.

The conundrum for network executives continues to be whether or not to focus on fighting the piracy that fuels part of YouTube's growth. Or just capitalize on it, while building a better mousetrap.  YouTube has offered content owners the opportunity to pull those videos that are posted illegally or tag them and capitalize advertising revenue of them.

And that mousetrap?  Hulu.com, the joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., only launched last month but early reviews show that comScore's numbers will surely become hotly anticipated each month.

Last Fall Dr. Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. When Dr. Pausch received his diagnosis he retired to spend time with his family, but before retiring, he decided to give one last lecture to faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon University.  The lecture really was intended for his children, aged 6, 4 and 2.  In the lecture he offered a father's advice to children who would go through puberty, adolescence, early adulthood and the rest of their lives without their dad.
 
Dr. Pausch's lecture has been viewed 10 million times online.  He has been profiled in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, among other publications.  He recently published a book about his lecture that was translated into seven languages.  And, April 9th he was interviewed by Diane Sawyer.  We often think of technology as something that brings us closer together geographically.  But Dr. Pausch's lecture demonstrates that technology also can bring us closer together spiritually, emotionally and experientially.

If you haven't seen the video, watch it now.  And, maybe share Dr. Pausch's gift to his children with your children or a friend.

Yesterday Comcast announced that it would begin offering a new service in the Minneapolis- St Paul market. The service of 50 mbps download speeds will allow customers to download HD movies in approximately 10 minutes. 

Today is the day that every basketball junkie in America has been waiting for.  It also is the day that many IT network managers across the nation have been dreading.  The San Jose Mercury News reports that employers across the nation are taking steps to avoid network meltdown as their staffs attempt to access the first day of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on their computers.  CBS, for the first time ever, is making every game in the tournament available online, free of charge.  Online viewership is expected to spike, with much of that viewership taking place in offices around the country and with unknown and unknowable consequences for corporate networks.
 
The good news is that as broadband network capacity expands locally and nationally, the fears expressed by IT managers today should not be as much of a concern in the future.  It should be noted, however,  that DirecTV is broadcasting every NCAA game in high definition this year.  Will CBS stream the games in high def next year or in the near future?  That prospect could cause sleepless nights for IT managers in the run up to future NCAA tournaments.

Technology prognosticators, enthusiasts as well as plain old geeks are often guilty of overhyping a new high-tech product, pronouncing it fit for masses of mainstream consumers long before it's ready for prime time.
But once in a while they err in the opposite direction and actually underestimate the way technology will revolutionize our work practices or entertainment habits. 

And speaking of prime time, it looks like the experts underestimated how swiftly prime time television would shift from the TV to the Internet --- by a long shot.

The New York Times reported this week that one of every five people watching the season premiere of The Office last September, did so on a computer screen. Nielson Media Research data shows that the episode attracted a broadcast audience of 9.7 million people, and was streamed to the Web some 2.7 million times in one week. Now it looks like a broader demographic is shifting to these new modes of entertainment. The Nielson research found that it was not just teens and twentysomethings who streamed The Office over their computers; 23% of the show's viewers in the 25 to 54 age group did so as well.

The runaway hit The Office in in no way unique when it comes to watching TV via the Internet. Ugly Betty, CSI, Grey's Anatomy all derive a growing chunk of their audiences from the computer crowd, people who are happy to sacrifice a little picture quality for the freedom of watching the show when and where they want.
For television networks that produce and broadcast this witty content, the big concern here is that lucrative advertising contracts will not shift from the television to the Internet as swiftly as eyeballs have. The New York Times story cites one NBC executive worrying about swapping "analog dollars for digital pennies." It is just one more sign of the coming Exaflood.