NBC and Microsoft Kick Off NFL Season Tonight, Akamai Doing The Delivery

Tonight at 8pm ET, NBC will once again kick off the start of the NFL season by streaming 17 games this year on NBCSports.com and the NFL.com website. The service which will be powered by Silverlight and Microsoft's Smooth Streaming technology will offer a total of five different camera feeds, 720p HD quality, picture-in-picture functionality and the ability to pause the video and watch it in slow motion.

The player includes tabs for the ability to chat and ask questions to announcers, get details on stats, see video on demand clips and will enable users to scroll back to highlights in the game that are noted by a small symbol above the scroll bar. The player gives uses the ability to see real-time details on the quality of the video being delivered by showing the current bitrate being streamed as well as the maximum bitrate the video is encoded for and has the ability to go full-screen. Akamai is the exclusive delivery provider for these games and I expect we'll see NBC put out some details on viewer numbers once the season gets under way. NBC has a pretty good track history of giving out details on consumption from their online video offerings so I expect we'll hear more about it.

While NBC has a dedicated sales team that is selling ads for the games along with other online properties and has said they will do well with their ad sales, they aren't yet willing to project what this might bring in revenue wise other than to say "seven figures". Whether or not that pays for the service itself is not known, but with 17 games over the course of the year, one would have to imagine NBC is making money from streaming. But since Microsoft and NBC are both sharing in the revenue and not knowing if they have to give the NFL or anyone else a cut of the ad sales, it will be interesting to see what details they are willing to give out during the season.

Who Wants To Co-Host A Networking Event With Us At Streaming Media West?

With the Streaming Media West show only two months away, we're looking at hosting a big networking event on the first night of the show, Tuesday November 17th. We have a couple of great spaces in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and want to use it to foster some good industry networking. We're currently looking for any other blogs, associations or news sites who want to co-host the event with us, help promote it, get branding on-site and simply work with us to bring the industry together. The event will be free for everyone and we're not looking to make money from this but rather provide a good networking forum.

If you're interested in helping out, please contact me and we can share ideas. We have the space already, would be a shame not to put it to good use. Also, if your company wants some great exposure and branding and is willing to cover the cost of some drinks, we'd be interested in that as well.

Streaming Media West: Speaking Spots Still Open, But Not For Long

Now that the holiday is over, I am hard at work to secure the remaining open speaking spots at the Streaming Media West show in San Jose in November. We have 113 speaking spots in total and about 70% are already spoken for.  We have confirmed speakers from Xbox, MTV Networks, Sling Media, Roku, PBS, Adobe, Motorola, Turner Broadcasting, Revision3, Boxee, Move Networks, All Things Digital, NBC, NHL, GigaOm, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, TiVo, ZillionTV, EPIX, Amazon Web Services, AP, MobiTV, CNN, Comcast, Verizon, Conde Nast Digital and many others.

While I still have many submissions to sort through, there are a bunch of open spots where I am looking for very specific speakers. Here is what's open and please make sure to read the details about each opportunity before you email me.

Tuesday Nov. 17th, 2009

Panel Session: The Evolution of Over-the-Top Video
Looking for content companies offering over-the-top video, MSO's or analysts and bloggers who write about and cover this subject in depth.

Panel Session: Monetization And Video Advertising Formats
Looking for a moderator for this session who has a lot of expertise with the different ad formats on the market and someone who is willing to take this session and re-focus it to talk about a facet of the online video advertising business.

Wednesday Nov. 18th, 2009

Panel Session: Monetizing Long-Form Video
Looking for a moderator for this session who can talk about how sites like Hulu are starting to get some traction with long-form video in addition to some of the content owners speaking on this session who will showcase a few examples of their own.

Thursday Nov. 19th, 2009

Panel Session: Live Broadcasts And HD Video: Can Web Video Ever Scale To TV-Sized Audiences?
This was a session I moderated myself at East and may do again for West, but am open to moderator suggestions as well as speaker suggestions. The focus on this panel will be about whether or not live events can make money, what the business model is, how it relates to TV distribution and whether or not the Internet can truly handle HD quality live events.

Panel Session: How Old Media Is Embracing Online Video and New Media
Looking for a moderator for this session, which contains a nice mix of old and new school media companies on the panel.

If you are interested in any of these speaking opportunities, please contact me ASAP and don't just send me an email saying, I want the spot. Please send me some details on your background, your bio, what prior speaking/moderating experience you have and how you are a fit for that particular topic.

Level 3 Comments On The Future Of HTTP Based Streaming

Over on the StreamingMedia.com discussion lists, a big debate has been raging over whether or not HTTP based streaming and services like Smooth Streaming are cheaper for content delivery networks to deploy. Earlier in the week I wrote a post saying that today, it's not cheaper to deploy and for content owners, doesn't cost them any less than other forms of delivery. With both Microsoft and Apple making a strong push for HTTP based streaming and Adobe hinting since the beginning of the year that they will provide support for it before too long, there's no question that HTTP based streaming will play a big role in the future of video delivery.

While I spoke to a couple of CDNs about their HTTP deployments for both Apple and Microsoft's platforms, Level 3 was willing to give out some additional details for the blog and I did a quick Q&A with Mark Taylor, the Head of Media Product and Strategy at Level 3. Here are his thoughts on HTTP based streaming and some of the positive signs Level 3 is seeing with their deployments.

Question: Is HTTP based streaming cheaper for Level 3 to deploy and manage today when compared to FMS and WMS services?

Yes. There are three areas where it is more cost effective for a CDN.

Firstly, we have no software integration on any of our edge servers with the new HTTP streaming solutions. For significant new versions of proprietary streaming protocols, that do not use HTTP, this integration is a significant amount of work for our development teams. We effectively have to fold the new technology into our own ecosystem. There are a lot of things we have to build to turn the streaming vendor's code, a framework really, into a functional service. And even when we have the code built we have to go through rigorous regression testing before we can roll it out onto the thousands of servers throughout our network - we clearly have to be completely satisfied that no existing customers will be impacted negatively. Contrast that with the new HTTP-based streaming technologies where we need do almost nothing; maybe a few tweaks to our existing caching code in order to improve efficiency. And of course nearly every time there is a new feature or a code upgrade we need to go through the same cycle again.

Secondly, it is simpler and more efficient for our operational teams to manage. There is less complexity and we don't need to build any new management tools. Managing one technology is clearly easier than managing many technologies that all essentially do the same thing.

Thirdly, CDNs do not pay any traffic/bandwidth/volume related fees to the HTTP streaming software vendors.

MLB's $0.99 Per Game Live Streaming Service Launches On The iPhone

Apple has just approved the latest update to MLB's iPhone app which now enables any user to pay $0.99 to view any out of market game live on their iPhone. The update to the MLB At Bat app is now live in the iTunes store (version 1.4.0) and available for download. While some might wonder if this new pay-per-view service will also be rolled out to the PC, MLB said the new offering is only slated for mobile devices. In addition to the new pay-per-view functionality, the updated app also includes the ability to deliver customizable push notifications for when games start and end.

The live video streaming is being delivered by Akamai and MLB says to date, they average about 25,000 live streams a day, total, not simultaneous. While that may seem like a low number, keep in mind that the ability to see up to fifteen live games a day was originally only being offered to iPhone users who had a MLB.TV subscription. This new pay-per-view service now opens up the live streaming of all non-blackout games to everyone. While live video streaming is cool, it was no surprise to hear MLB say that the live audio streaming, delivered by Limelight, is one of the most popular features in the app, since the live audio streams are not subject to any blackout restrictions.

In addition to these latest updates to the MLB At Bat 2009 app, MLB said that come the postseason, MLB will introduce Quad View within the app, allowing users to view up to four different live camera angles on one screen with nat sound.