Lifecasting: The New Broadcasting Platform

At the Streaming Media East show on Wednesday May 21st, community social media guru Chris Brogan will be leading a session entitled "Lifecasting: The New Broadcasting Platform". In the early days of television, live was the second choice, because of potential pitfalls, cost of production, and a host of other problems. And yet, in the world of Internet video, lifecasting—using Internet video to share moments of our lives or to broadcast personal events and happenings—is the new hot thing.

With platforms like Kyte.tv, Zannel, Mogulus, Stickcam, and many others now available, lots of new options and opportunities exist. Come see some of the hot and upcoming mobile lifecasting options in action and learn if lifecasting will become just a fad or the next big thing.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Chris Brogan, VP, Strategy and Technology, CrossTechMedia, co-founder, PodCamp
• Scott Monty, Consigliere, crayon
• Sarah Austin, Founder, Pop17.com
• Brad Hunstable, Founder, Business Development, Ustream.tv

Have a topic or question for any of the speakers you want to see addressed? Submit it in the comments section and we'll add it to the Q&A portion of the session.

Registration is still open and you can see all the various pricing packages, including a one-day ticket on our website. Six years since we took over the StreamingMedia.com business and we've still managed to keep the conference very affordable for everyone to attend. A full two-day conference ticket is only $895.

Learn How To Broadcast Over Mobile And Wi-Fi Networks

At the Streaming Media East show on Tuesday May 20th, Steve Garlfield will be leading a hands-on demonstration entitled "Live Broadcasting Over Mobile And Wi-Fi Networks".

While big media tests the waters of mobile broadcasting, many web video producers are already out there doing it live from the street, with a cell phone. Others are joining in and experimenting with two-way broadcasts via streaming video over cellphone networks and via Wi-Fi, wherever they are. Viewers can chat while the broadcast is going on and affect and sometimes even direct the content being produced. Come to this session to see Steve Garfield and other pioneers in the live broadcasting space show how its done.

Confirmed presenters include:

• Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist, SteveGarfield.com
• Max Haot, Founder, CEO, Mogulus
• Bhaskar Roy, Co-Founder, Qik.com

Registration is still open and you can see all the various pricing packages, including a one-day ticket on our website. Six years since we took over the StreamingMedia.com business and we've still managed to keep the conference very affordable for everyone to attend. A full two-day conference ticket is only $895.

Adobe CEO Says Flash Player For iPhone In The Works

Last night, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen said on a conference call with investors that Adobe is working on a Flash player for the iPhone and hopes to have it ready around June. Shantanu said that Adobe has been working on the new media player since the release of the iPhone SDK by Apple last month. While this is good to hear from Adobe, I think there still are a lot of unanswered questions about how Flash video may work on the iPhone and what if anything Apple may do to prevent this if they have their own agenda.

Microsoft Licenses Adobe Flash Lite For Mobile Windows Devices

This morning, Adobe announced that Microsoft had licensed Adobe's Flash Lite software so that Flash based content will be able to be viewed within Internet Explorer on future versions of Microsoft Windows mobile phones. While Flash Lite itself does not play back video, rather the device plays the video and Flash Lite acts as the container, this is still a step forward in the right direction. With Adobe saying that half a billion mobile devices shipped with Flash Lite and Microsoft willing to license Flash Lite from Adobe to make the content experience better, the bottom line is that the consumer is the winner in this deal.

Now if only Apple and Adobe would come to some kind of arrangement and made Flash video work on the iPhone consumers would really win. My hope, Microsoft and Apple come to a deal to allow Silverlight to work on the iPhone. But after Steve Ballmer's comments earlier in the month from the MIX 08 conference, it does not appear this will be happening anytime soon.

Apple iPhone's To Support Flash Video Very Shortly

Some folks who work closely with the iPhone product line are telling me that iPhones will support Flash video playback very shortly. While I know there has been a lot of speculation about Flash video on the iPhone not being possible due to battery constraints and other technical rumors, the only real thing stopping it from working is an agreement between Apple and Adobe.

While I don't personally have an iPhone, getting Flash video adoption on the handset will go a long way in helping to make video a lot more portable for handsets. Yes, many phones already do video, but iPhone users amongst all others are always very adamant about showing what the phone can do and the moment it does Flash video, you'll see a lot of iPhone users showcasing that to anyone who wants to watch.

UPDATE: I am already getting a lot of questions about what "very shortly" means and it's a valid question. The answer is I don't know for sure, but based upon who told me the info to begin with, I took it to mean this quarter.

Adobe Releases New Software For Mobile Flash Video and AMP Beta

This morning Adobe announced that they launched its Flash Lite 3 software, used for playing back Flash video on cell phones and Flash enabled web sites. Adobe says that Nokia and NTT DoCoMo are planning to support Flash Lite 3 with their upcoming handsets, but didn't say for how many models. Nokia, said it would launch a new development community today to help Flash developers and designers with mobile software development.

Adobe also announced today that major television broadcasters and leading content publishers would collaborate with Adobe to distribute video content via the new Adobe Media Player. Today also marks the first time that the Adobe Media Player is available to the public as a beta download, with the final version being ready in the first half of 2008.

Streaming Media Europe Speaking Spot Opens: Streaming Video Content To Mobile

I just had a last minute cancellation at the Streaming Media Europe show for the "Streaming Video Content To Mobile: What Works Technically and Commercially" panel on Thursday, October 4 in London. If you are interested in filling the round-table panel spot, contact me ASAP. This spot is open to everyone, including vendors, as long as you are a fit for the topic of the session.

Video To Go: The Future Of Mobile Video

EVDO, DVB-H and 3G. The mobile market is still an alphabet soup of competing formats, protocols, and networks, and with the recent demise of Amp€™'d and ESPN'€™s MVNO initiative, no one can blame you for thinking that mobile video might never take off.

But that's not stopping carriers and content publishers from trying and the market is starting to pick up for video on the go. The October/November issue of Streaming Media magazine entitled "Video To Go" will help readers make sense of the confusion and reveal various experts take on what the future of mobile video holds.

For those who don't already have a subscription, what are you waiting for?!?! It's FREE! So join the nearly 20,000 other readers who get it bi-monthly and sign up today.

In The Mobile TV Wars, It's Not MediaFLO Versus MobiTV

Last month, Business Week had an in-depth article entitled "The Mobile TV Wars" talking about how Qualcomm's MediaFlo and MobiTV's service are going to compete with one another to try and dominate the market. While the article is a god read, I think it misses the major point. That being that it’s not MediaFLO versus MobiTV.

MobiTV is simply an aggregator that is filling a spot in time similar to the role that Moviso and Infospace once filled for ring-tones. Once the content market matures and mobile discovery is more effective, MobiTV will become a footnote. MediaFLO is a $800M Manhattan project that is built on the belief that video cannot be delivered in-band due to a scarcity of spectrum. By taking the delivery out-of-band MediaFLO simply trades a scarcity of spectrum for a scarcity of content.

I'm not the only one that thinks that the capabilities of broadcast delivery compared to unicast are more economic than technical. Just as airlines use different aircraft depending on load and demand; video will be delivered via different mechanisms based on demand. The real issue is how to deliver the appropriate experience at the appropriate time. The best way to do this is develop tools, systems, and delivery networks that are designed for the mobile use case.

I'd like to see an article that really details the economic differences between broadcast and unicast. It’s not a technical issue as most make it out to be but rather, it is simple economics.

News Roundup: Announcements From The Mobile Video Industry

There's been a lot of announcements in the mobile video space over the past two weeks, and these are some of the more interesting I've been reading up on:

• Last Friday, news outlets were reporting that Virgin Mobile was closing its U.K. Mobile TV service. This really comes as no surprise considering the service was based on the DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcast) standard and not the DVB-H standard as well as Virgin Mobile only being able to sell 10,000 handsets capable of getting the content.

• Two weeks ago, The European Union announced that it was backing DVB-H as the mobile TV standard  across Europe. The EU's Commissioner is quoted as saying, "We can either take the lead globally - as we did for mobile telephony based on the GSM standard developed by the European industry - or allow other regions to take the lion's share of the promised mobile TV market. Wait-and-see is not an option. The time has come for Europe's industry and governments to switch on to mobile TV." If only it was that easy in the U.S.

• Last week, the Open Mobile Video Coalition, an association looking to accelerate development of mobile digital broadcast TV in the U.S., announced that it had doubled its membership with the addition of nine new broadcast groups. The group has established a time line that calls for parallel development of standards, devices and business models with the goal of a 2009 launch.

• Transpera, a platform that provides online video publishers with an easy way for consumer to create, share and re-purpose video, confirmed last week that it has raised a first-round of venture capital from First Round Capital, IDG Ventures, and Intel Capital.

• Last week, A&E announced that MobiTV has added two new A&E mobile video channels to its lineup bringing A&E's channel count on MobiTV to nine.

• Telephia Inc., which was acquired by Nielsen last month, released new data last week on the size and adoption of the mobile television and video subscription business. From the release: Mobile television and video subscription revenues grew 198% year-over-year to $146 million in the first quarter of 2007. Approximately 8.4 million wireless customers now subscribe to some form of mobile video, representing nearly 4% of all U.S. mobile subscribers. While those numbers seem high to me, Telephia says that it collects its data from Telephia's panel of 35,000 mobile subscribers.

• ESPN, MediaFLO and Verizon announced they have teamed up to offer live coverage of the X Games 13 event for V CAST Mobile TV. Eight hours of live footage will be provided during the days of the event along with on-demand content. No one has a phone with a battery that will last for 8 hours, so I know they don't expect users to tune into it for the duration, but I'd be interested to hear what the average length of time is spent watching it live.

• Last week, AT&T announced a new service named "Video Share" that allows users to share one-way streaming video. While the announcement seemed to get a lot of coverage in the media many don't highlight the barriers to this AT&T offering. The service only works on their limited 3G network and currently only with four models of Samsung and LG video capable handsets. And there is a monthly video premium consumers need to pay to use this.

• Last week, Harmonic Agreed to Acquire Rhozet, a privately-held company that offers software-based universal transcoding solutions that facilitate the creation of multi-format video for Internet, mobile and broadcast applications for $15.5 million. Harmonic says the acquisition will position them as a leader in Internet and mobile video creation space.

• Based on data released last week, Frost & Sullivan announced that leading U.S. mobile operators have started to embrace mobile advertising and said that mobile advertising is likely to be used to subsidize the cost of content production and lower the cost of service usage. That's a pretty bold statement. To date, online advertising via the PC has not subsidized many content models let along content models for mobile which are still in their infancy.

Job Opening: Sales Director/Senior Sales Executive, Ortiva Wireless

Fresh off their announcement on Monday of raising $15 million, Ortiva Wireless is looking to hire a Sales Director/Senior Sales Executive for the Eastern United States. This person will be responsible for developing strategic partnerships with other ecosystem participants as well as identify opportunities among Ortiva’s target customers, qualify these opportunities, present Ortiva solutions and negotiate sales.

If you are interested in the opportunity and would like more details on the position, contact John Rogers who is conducting the search.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog - free of charge.

Reuters: Asia To beat Europe In Mobile TV

Interesting short story on Reuters last week talking about how industry executives are saying that they are seeing a shift to where the market in Asia is going to beat out the European market for the adoption of TV to mobile. Newsworthy to me as I always thought the Asian market already had beaten out the European market in terms of adoption. Of course the article also mentions how the lack of standards and spectrum availability in some markets is also hindering the progress.

Mobile Video Delivery Heats Up: Ortiva Wireless Raises $15 Million

Ortivia Wireless, a network specializing in mobile video and multimedia content delivery announced that they have raised $15 million in its Series B funding led by Comcast Interactive Capital. I first met Ortiva at the Streaming Media West show last year and profiled them on my blog back in February.

The size of this funding should be a clear indication to the industry that mobile video delivery is starting to gain traction and will soon become a real business. Using a content delivery network that has been built to deliver content just for mobile devices is going to become a requirement for content creators, especially since the traditional CDNs are setup to do very limited mobile video delivery. Of the nearly ten content delivery networks in the U.S. today, seven out of ten of them don't have any mobile video delivery offering at all. And the few that do offer a very basic service in some cases charge up to 10x what they charge for regular CDN delivery as they are not properly setup to truly deliver video to mobile.

InternetNews.com just profiled the CEO of Ortiva Wireless, DeWayne Nelon this past Friday and did a Q&A interview that discusses some details of Ortiva's offering. Ortiva is one to watch.

Looking For Bloggers To Write About Online Video

Ok, so I'll put my money where my mouth is so to speak. If you are interested in doing a blog about some facet of the online video industry, we'll setup the blog for you, drive traffic to it, promote it on StreamingMedia.com AND sell sponsorships and ads on the blog and split the revenue with you. All you have to do is blog, which is enough work by itself. I'll even blog with you on your site to start.

We can get you the traffic if you can provide the content. While I am open to all ideas, in particular I want to start blogs on enterprise video, mobile video, webcasting and P2P video. I own domains already like p2pvideoblog.com, enterprisevideoblog.com, webcastingblog.com etc... and you can use one of them if you so choose.

So that's about as easy as I can make it. You'll get a login to TypePad and can just blog, we'll do all the rest. If you are serious about it, please contact me.

On2 Acquires Video Technology Provider For Mobile In An Effort To Extend Reach To Devices

On2 announced yesterday that it had acquired Finland based Hantro Products Oy in a cash and stock deal valued at around $58.4 million. Hanto provides video compression technology for mobile, consumer electronics and IPTV devices. The press release says that Hanto's technology has been implemented on more than 200 million devices and in mobile phones produced by 5 of the top 6 handset manufacturers.

On2 said the Hanto business is expected to generate between $8.1 and $12.2 million in revenue this year which should really help On2's bottom line. For a company that has excellent traction in the market, a set of really robust products and many happy customers for its Flix product line, I always found it odd that On2's revenue has always been so low. For Q1 of this year their revenue was only $2.8 million.

On2's move of focusing on the chipset comes as no surprise considering how mobile devices are finally starting to become adopted in the States and already have better traction overseas. If On2 can give increased video quality with lower power consumption demand and lower silicon costs for manufactures like they say, then this will be an interesting product offering to watch.

Forbes Video: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Watching Television on Your Cell Phone

Last week, Forbes.com launched a new video show called "The Download", a weekly program they classify as "an in-depth yet concise look at the Internet technology".

For the first episode they look at what the mobile carriers are offering in the way of mobile TV and how it all works. They discuss cost, the handset hardware and what the barriers to entry are. You'll have to watch it at the Forbes.com site as they don't allow anyone to embed their videos and the quality of the video seems a bit poor, but I like the laid back style of the show so far.

WSJ Article: Testing TV on Your Cellphone

The Wall Street Journal had a good article last week reviewing the current MobiTV service on Sprint Nextel and AT&T's Cingular networks. The outcome of the review is that MobiTV's service is still the only one that provides "live" streaming of TV with no requirement of downloading the content to the device like the Verizon's V Cast system requires.

All in all the MobiTV service got a pretty good review. The biggest downside to the experience for the reviewer was that her eyes got tired after 30 minutes due to the small screen not being the ideal device to watch long form content. Non surprise there, short form content is the only type that has a shot at making any traction on mobile devices. While the cost of the service was also outlined, that's another one of the many factors that I believe keeps it from being adopted here in the States.

One thing I would of liked to have seen in the article is a breakdown on MobiTV's subscriber numbers broken out by country or region. How many of the 2 million current subscribers are based in the U.S.? They don't seem to say anywhere on their website or in their press releases. My guess is that less than 10% of their business is coming from the U.S. today.

Ortiva Wireless Launches Content Delivery Network For Mobile Video

I follow the content delivery market for video probably closer than any other facet of this space because it's how I got started in the industry and I really enjoy how fast the CDN market changes.

While most CDNs are talking about and working on the delivery of video over the Internet, Ortiva Wireless has a taken a different approach and has built out a CDN specific to the delivery of only mobile video. I recently completed a survey of content owners and current CDNs and found out that most CDNs have no offering for mobile delivery or have one that is very limited. The reason for this is simple. Mobile delivery in the U.S. is not yet a real business. Traditional CDNs can't spend a lot of time and money to invest in mobile delivery if they can't get near-immediate revenue. But for a company like Ortiva Wireless, they have the potential to create some real revenue based on the fact that it's all they specialize in. Content owners I spoke to, both large and small, found that mobile delivery over traditional CDNs was complex, expensive and confusing. Delivery of video for mobile is not easy from a technical perspective as delivering videos to PCs is.

I first met the executive team from Ortiva Wireless at the Streaming Media West show at the end of last year. I heard their pitch and liked their technology and the fact that they are focused on offering a single product and service. They know what content owners want for mobile video delivery and have confidence about the business they can build over the coming years as mobile video starts to get adopted. Yes, there are some big potential hurdles that mobile delivery in the U.S. has to overcome, but at some point in time, video to mobile will become a real business and Ortiva Wireless is looking to lay the groundwork now to be a major player when it hits.

Why is U.S. always last in line for new phones?

That's the question that's answered in an MSNBC.com article by Michael Rogers. There's nothing new in the article we haven't heard before in regards to the factors that stop the progress in the U.S., but the article is a good read none the less. Some of the factors Michael talks about are:

• "Early on, most of the world decided to all use the same technical standard — GSM — for their mobile phones.  In many countries, the government actually enforced that decision. In the U.S., on the other hand, free enterprise ruled and multiple standards competed, with GSM initially only a small part of the market."

• "...high-speed cell phone networks — generically called 3G — are finally rolling out across the U.S., with Web surfing at speeds approaching that of home DSL (assuming customers are willing to pony up for the new services).  But there may also be some price competition to keep those services affordable: this year, a new technology service called WiMAX will appear, initially from Sprint and a start-up called Clearwire."

• "Another kind of new signal is coming to U.S. cell phones this year: direct broadcast television. In the U.S., Verizon will be the first to introduce this new television service later this year, and in Barcelona AT&T announced they will do the same. The good news is that unlike the early days of the U.S. cell phone market, both carriers will actually use the same technology, which should make a bigger market for cool handsets.  The bad news is that, once again, the Americans have chosen a form of mobile TV broadcast that’s different than the one most of the rest of the world has adopted, so it could be a bit like the GSM situation revisited."

Michael sums it all up by saying "While choice is generally a good thing, it has unquestionably slowed progress."

I think I have to agree. What I wish the carriers in the U.S. would tell us is real numbers for video usage on their networks. If they are not going to share them, then stop trying to tell us how successful your service is. Because every time I ask for real data and numbers, the response I always get back from them is a response like "it's wildly successful".

Sprint Offers Full-Length Pay-Per-View Movies on Mobile Phones - Why?

This one has me stumped. I know this was announced in Q4 of last year, but I've just being doing some reading up on the service and frankly, I don't get it. Who in the U.S. is going to pay to watch a two-hour movie on their cell phone? We all know that short videos to mobile devices, for the right application has some potential. But full-length movies? When are technology companies going to understand that just because you can do something technically, does not mean that consumers want it? All that matters is what's adopted and there is no way consumers in the U.S. are going to adopt the idea of watching full-length movies on a mobile. They don't even watch movies downloaded to a PC in any large quantity.

That being said, what applications are you seeing in the market for short videos to mobile that does show promise and has some traction?

Flash Video Coming To Mobile Phones

At the 3GSM World Congress, Adobe announced that support for video will be included in the next generation of their Adobe Flash Lite software. Flash Lite 3, expected to be available in the first half of 2007, will bring the Adobe Flash Player video format to mobile phones and devices. Beet.tv has a video about the news story on their blog.

It was only a matter of time before this happened and it will be interesting to see how Adobe competes with others in the market, including Microsoft and RealNetworks, who have long integrated their video platforms into handsets. Since Flash games are so widespread on phones, you'd have to think that Adobe is going to be able to get some good traction when it comes to the development community. I think the deciding factor though will be the licensing cost from Adobe to the phone manufactures and carriers.

How much video do you currently watch on your mobile?