LIVEdigitally

Category Archives: Video/Music/Media

Why isn't AppleTV an actual TV?

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It seems fairly apparent that AppleTV is nowhere near the runaway success the company’s enjoyed recently.  It’s been called a “hobby” by some, and that’s about as flattering as it gets.  It might actually be the best examples of why…

  • Convergence products suck – they are too hard to explain to consumers, too hard to get working properly (yes, you need a computer running iTunes to get content into it, but no, it doesn’t have to be on all the time.  gah!), and they can’t satisfy even their own users all the time due to incompatible networks, formats, codecs, etc.  Sneakernet is a better solution for getting digital media off a computer, as the standalone products violate my “4-boxes in the living room, and no more” rule (which I have not yet written, but will do soon).
  • Good UI isn’t enough – it doesn’t matter how nice it looks if there isn’t enough substance to support the product.  Yes, the AppleTV has a better UI than the NETGEAR Digital Entertainer HD and probably any other streaming media device in the past, but it’s still a convergence product (see above).
  • Walled gardens are clearly annoying customers – let’s face it, there are just too many content options available today to try to trap consumers into a limited set.  The only reason the iPod was more successful at this game is that it’s main value proposition when it came out was about the ease of ripping and synchronizing, not the iTunes store.

So now let’s take a step back.  Apple makes a beautiful (yet pricey) 30″ LCD monitor – it’s more expensive than the 46″ Samsung LCD I’m considering.  One of the reasons it’s so expensive is the resolution is so high.  They could easily drop it down to 1080p, up the sizes to 36, 42, and 46 inches, and pow, it’s a TV.  Next, they could throw the guts of an AppleTV inside, and you’ve got a great-looking display with built-in media streaming capabilities, and they could probably hit a pretty affordable price point.  My hunch is it would sell better as a $1999 TV set than the $299 box does today.

While they are at it, I’d love to see them apply some Apple-goodness to the EPG, and throw a DVR into it. There’ve been rumors that they’d buy TiVo for years, I hope they don’t.  They can out-TiVo TiVo in my opinion.  Better yet, they should throw in the ability to synch it back to an iPod, or to your .Mac account online (for an additional fee).

That’s a winning convergence product in my eyes.

I guarantee Amazon's MP3 store is important to you

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I’ll open by saying that despite switching to a Mac recently (because the Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N is a terrible, terrible laptop) I’m not completely drinking the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid. I don’t like iTunes, and I don’t understand how more people aren’t crying foul at the Apple monopoly that is the iPod + iTunes music store. If it were any company other than Apple, the phrase monopoly would get used a heck of a lot more often. But, as a good friend of mine likes to say “the rules of physics do not apply to Steve Jobs.” He’s right.

So I like the Amazon MP3 store because it is open, not closed. Open content is good for consumers, period. You choose the software player on your computer, as opposed to it choosing for you. You choose the gadget to play it on, whether its your MP3 player or your cell phone. You burn it to your own custom mix CD, or you just listen to it on your PC.

Regardless of how much the current players (RIAA, music labels, Apple, etc) like or dislike this flexibility, this has been the de facto standard for music since the dawn of the cassette deck in the 70s. Let me repeat this, because it’s important: if you are 60 years old or younger, you were brought up in a world where purchasing music gave you rights to consume where, when, and how you chose.

My how this world has changed, and all thanks to the Internet, and for the worse. As consumers our rights are diminishing rapidly, all under the banner threat of “illegal downloading”. In fact the punitive damages surrounding “illegal downloading” are so severe you’d think Al Qaeda invented Napster and BitTorrent.

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, if any of this rings true and you want to learn more about how much the media industry has spent bribing congress to take away your rights, please pick up a copy of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture. If you are familiar with it, and want to use the most effective weapon you have (aka your checkbook), go buy a few MP3s from Amazon (and read this too). Showing monetary support for an open initiative is important. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but definitely in the long term.

Cable companies find new excuse to raise rates (again)

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To the best of my knowledge, deregulation of utilities and services in the USA have generally led to price gouging. The cable industry in particular raised rates over 50% in the first six years since being deregulated in 1996 (source). Even with competition from satellite and phone companies, your living room TV is about the biggest cash cow companies like Comcast, Charter, Cox, Time Warner, and others have ever seen. Sure we’re seeing money flow to new services (see my buyshifting articles for more thoughts on that topic), and Joost (and others) are enabling free, or virtually free TV services. But that’s not stopping the cable companies.

The AP reported today that cable companies intend to increase rates by $2-3/month in 2009, blaming the FCC-mandated digital transition for the hike.

Time Warner Cable Inc. spokesman Alex Dudley said the company agrees with the cable industry’s stance that the FCC cable card rule is a “tax” on consumers.

This is a bad thing. Not just because they want to increase prices, which they are entitled to do, despite being either a network of monopolies or oligopolies, depending on how you look at it. Not just because despite deregulation over 90% of Americans only have a single cable service provider option. And not just because the cable companies have seen fit to exploit their entrenched position to impose rate hikes at a rate of over three times inflation.

Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union in Washington, said it’s convenient for cable companies to blame regulators when they’ve stalled about complying with the FCC rule for years. Cable operators also have had no problem raising rates regularly for various reasons.

“They raise rates three times faster than inflation every year, for more than a decade,” he said. “Cable companies want to have absolute control. We don’t think they should have it.”

Cable companies have known about the digital transition for years. It’s been delayed time and time again. They’ve had ample opportunities to build infrastructure and save the necessary funds to make the transition painless. Instead, they wait to the 11th hour, and then attempt to pass the buck.

Here’s an easy way to do something about it.  Click here to send a simple email to your legislator on the topic.  Note that this is focused on A La Carte cable, but joining into this campaign will most certainly be the best possible first step down a very important road.  Take 5 minutes, it’s worth it.

It's More than Meets the Eye (first!)

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Just saw The Transformers movie. Had a grand ol’ time. Kudos to Michael Bay for, well, not over-Michael-Baying it. I’m not doing any sort of review here, I’ll leave that to the pros, but I will say it most certainly stirred all the memories playing with the toys and watching the cartoon as a 13-year-old.

What’s bad:

  • Dialogue could only be worse had George “metachlorians” Lucas written it himself.
  • Way too many characters with way too many mini-plots.
  • Couldn’t always tell which Transformer was which during the action scenes.
  • Did I mention the dialogue?
  • The scene Bay lifted from The Rock (his own movie).
  • Little too much time in the backyard (you’ll know what I mean).

What’s good:

  • Best. CGI. Ever. Seriously, only after walking out did I have that realization of “those weren’t really robots!”
  • Novel action sequences – it wasn’t just one long punch-em-up.
  • Solid(ish) plot. Look, it’s a comic book movie, so you have to start with fairly low expectations. That said, they weaved together a decently credible storyline with only a few “really?” scenes here and there.
  • Not scared of a little violence, but also not gory or nauseating. I think Gears of War actually has more violence in the opening sequence than the whole movie had.
  • Not too ridiculous a use of technology (other than the whole cars-turning-into-robots thing), although “hand me a screwdriver” was a bit silly.
  • Quite a few throwbacks/references to the original cartoon.
  • It’s just plain fun, and doesn’t take itself too seriously!

Considering I don’t get to see many movies these days, I was glad to make it through the 2.5 hour (OMG yes) flick and not do a watch-check or anything else. I had a lot of fun. It’s no masterpiece theatre, but I have a hunch this’ll go down as the most fun movie of the summer.

Happy 4th o’ July everybody!

Marketing Morality is Hard: why the future of music is free

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I recently had a lengthy discussion with my Rabbi talking digital media and more specifically on content piracy. One area we focused on was about people’s awareness of right and wrong, and their tendency to do wrong, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Many have conjectured that consumers would stop “stealing music” if there were “better systems” in place to buy it and use it legally. At this point, I think it’s fair to say the systems are there, and they aren’t really working.

First, to stop a counterpoint in its tracks – I know iTunes sells a bunch of music to a lot of people. Even Steve Jobs himself stated that Apple estimates about 3% of music (max) on iPods is purchased, leaving 97% ripped or copied/downloaded. When I did a music survey several months ago, over 60% of the people who completed it acknowledged a peer-to-peer download within the past 30 days. Let me repeat: 2 out of 3 people are actively illegally downloading content.

Over the past month I’ve randomly been asking friends and strangers the following questions:

  • Do you download music that you don’t pay for?
  • Is that wrong?
  • Would you walk into a Best Buy and walk out with a CD without paying for it?

In almost every case, the answers are, predictably, YES, NO, and NO. Interestingly, there’s no reason to ask people if shoplifting a CD is “wrong” – they know the answer to that one. More importantly is the focus of the second question and the corresponding response. People today, in general, do not believe the act of downloading or copying music files is wrong.

Marc Cuban has some excellent thoughts on the future content, including this one (source):

Can the music industry be saved ? Yep. It would be so easy its scary. Make music available anywhere and everywhere.

In my eyes, this isn’t nearly enough.  If people don’t think of it as wrong, then the problem the music industry faces is deeper than availability, access, DRM, synching, devices, mobility, PCs, iPods, or anything of the sort.  The problem is morality can’t be spun.  Morality is exceptionally hard to market.

Consider the cases where the RIAA has prosecuted college students (and others) for peer-to-peer sharing.  Without fail, bloggers and even mainstream media tend to leap to the defense of the sharer, rarely to the side of the RIAA.  Deep in the hearts and minds of modern technology culture, there is a belief that sharing music files isn’t wrong.

My suggestion to the industry at-large is two-fold:

  1. Publishers/Labels: Enjoy sales why they last, but intensely build out ad-supported models.  Figure it out, and do it soon.  There should be plenty of money to keep publishers and producers in business.  Also, while you are at it, stop throwing money at sensationalist acts that are only good for a track or two – it is a model that has led to the problems you face today.  Focus on spreading your promotional and development budgets much wider across many genres and acts.
  2. Artists: Continue to focus on the live shows.  It’s fairly accepted that that’s how you make most of your money anyway, so work on deals that heavily emphasize your touring and live revenue.  Also, figure out how to do live streaming for micropayments, and enable a revenue source from a fan base you can’t otherwise touch.

I could probably come up with another dozen or so models that would work, from unlimited subscription plans to “donation” options.  At the end of the day, when they say “if you can’t beat em, join em” it’s time to realize that there is a massive groundswell of people who do not, cannot, and will not accept the concept that music sharing is wrong.  No number of lawsuits or failed DRM experiments is going to change that, nor cleverly phrased advertisements at bus stations.

Some are showing interest in DRM-free music, are you?

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I was reading my daily news over at the ol’ Tennessean, and saw that EMI is claiming their DRM-free tracks on iTunes are selling well.  Another (possibly untrustworthy) source claims:

Since EMI ditched the DRM on iTunes it has seen sales of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon increase by between 272 and 350 percent

This is an excellent sign.  With the massive increase in power to conglomerates (in every industry, actually), the only real way consumers have to voice their preferences is with their checkbook PayPal account. Plus it’s a lot more “friendly” than waiting to deal with lawsuits from the RIAA.

If you believe, like many of us do, that DRM is eviler than Google, I can only recommend two paths:

  1. Write your congressperson
  2. Buy a DRM-free track for $0.99

Pick whichever one you find easier, and, as the swoosh says, just do it.

note: big props to Mr Underpants for finding the typo in my post today. 

NHL cross-checks MLB with Sling deal

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Important Disclosure: I was born in Montreal, Canada, home of the greatest NHL team of all time as well as the baseball team “that got away” – and yes, I’m bitter.

Sling Media and the NHL just announced (although my friend Om seems to have gotten a bit of an earlier scoop than old JT) that they are working together to enable NHL content within the forthcoming Clip+Sling technology (more from SlingCommunity, refresher details here, beta signup here – don’t know if they are still taking, but it can’t hurt to sign up!).  Now if this were any decade prior to the 90s, I would probably insert nice gloating comments about how much I would use this to show my Habs trouncing their opponents, but, uhm, they, er, kinda, sorta missed the playoffs this year. 

Now granted, NHL’s TV licensing business isn’t quite the same as MLB’s.  Furthermore, this deal isn’t about to change the bottom line for the organization during the 2007-08 season.  But that’s not the point: it’s that they are working with Sling to see what the future holds, not working against them to see how lovely the fresh air was back in the 1970s.  MLB can’t act like the music industry when it comes to Internet distribution, they must make deals with tech companies, experiment, and look to increased revenue through innovation, not lawsuits (refresher on this one here).

While Bettman’s antics over the past 15 years haven’t done much to bring the NHL out of 4th place when it comes to professional sports in the US, he’s certainly enabled his organization to test the waters when it comes to new technology.  It’s not quite enough to excuse him for moving teams to North Carolina and Florida (two of em, in fact), but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Disclosure: I’m a former Sling Media employee, but I think the hockey/Canadian disclosure was more important.

Networks blame DVRs for their bad lineups

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Twice this week I’ve found gems over at the Hollywood Reporter!  Here’s a few excerpts from the latest:

Nielsen Media Research said Thursday that the impact of digital video recorders is a leading cause of why television viewing dropped precipitously this year.

Many of the top shows — from ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” to Fox’s “American Idol” to CBS’ “CSI” — saw their ratings drop in the spring.

I have a personal beef against industries that jump to point their woes on technology (newspapers, have you met MLB? you have a lot in common, I’m sure you’ll be good friends).   It’s just too easy a scapegoat, and there’s not an easy way to defend the tech side.  It’s actually nearly impossible.

For example, I’ll make the opposite claim of Nielsen – I’ll claim that the slip in viewership is due to quality (and maybe a bit of the ol buyshifting – hey, I can plug my own work, can’t I?).  Now I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but over the course of 06/07, the quality of TV went from what seemed like an awesome lineup into a big old snoozefest.  I think it’s just too many years of investigating crime scenes, grizzly murders, and serial killers; too many years of mediocre singers trying to get their 15 minutes; I suggest that audiences are getting tired of it.

But, just like Nielsen, I can’t prove it.  I don’t even have hard data like them, but I know enough about the “technology” in use to accept that they can’t prove it either.  The music industry is suffering as well, but frankly they’ve spent the better part of 10 years making as many wrong decisions as possible.  And they blamed the tech the whole way down the slide.  My advice to the TV folks: look inward for problems before being so quick to point fingers outwards.

MLB Gets All Silly Over Placeshifting

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Disclosure: I am a former employee of Sling Media.

I thought it made sense to get that out of the way up front.  Was just reading an article at Ars regarding MLB’s latest feelings about that Slingbox company (nothing reflects better on someone who can’t even deign to get a company name right when quoted):

“Of course, what they are doing is not legal,” MLB general counsel Michael Mellis told The Hollywood Reporter Esq. “We and other leagues have formed a group to study the issue and plan our response. A lot depends on ongoing discussions. Plus, there’s no guarantee that Slingbox will be around next year. It’s a startup.”

I must say I enjoy picking apart quotes when given the opportunity.  And that opportunity is now.

“Of course, what they are doing is not legal” – if it were “of course” why would they need to …

“We and other leagues have formed a group to study the issue and plan our response” – shouldn’t it be obvious?  Maybe it’s not so “not legal” as he said up front?  Maybe??  Probably.

Additional Disclosure: I am not a lawyer.

“A lot depends on ongoing discussions” – good, that’s always good.  I wonder who’s in those discussions?

“Plus, there’s no guarantee that Slingbox will be around next year” – actually, unless the boxes are going to spontaneously combust in 2008, there is every guarantee they will be around next year.  Unless he meant the company, I guess, in which case it’s just as fair to say there’s no guarantee that MLB will be around next year, they might just go on strike, again.  Okay, I must admit I’m particularly bitter because I am a Montrealer, and lost my Expos to the insane greed propagated by MLB and the owners, particularly G.S. of N.Y. Washington.

“It’s a startup” – well, if it’s just a startup, and not even guaranteed to be around next year, then why get all fussy about it anyway?

Still more disclosure: I get all bent out of shape when I read such inanity.  So much so that I use words like inanity without even verifying if they are real words.

Also from the article:

At last year’s Digital Media Summit, MLB VP George Kliavkoff said that a San Francisco Giants fan visiting Chicago and watching a Giants game via his Slingbox is “stealing” from whatever Chicago cable operator has the rights to carry the game in the Windy City.

This is a very interesting point, one in which MLB has fairly, well, dead-wrong.  See, when I’m visiting Chicago, the local cable operator doesn’t really give much thought to me.  Hotel room TVs aren’t counted for local advertising.  So the provider there really ignores me.  On the other hand, my local SF affiliate loves counting my eyeballs every time they can (not mine specifically per se, although almost mine). 

I guess the part I most don’t understand is why they get quite so ridiculous about it.  It reminds me of Hollywood starting out all anti-VCR, which turned out to be one of the most profitable avenues the studios ever saw.  MLB’s response to placeshifting shouldn’t be to call in the lawyers and cry foul.  I’d like to see them, as they say, “man up” about this.  They should either:

  • COMPETE with Sling – Provide an alternative solution that is more compelling than a Slingbox
  • PARTNER with Sling – Find a way to leverage the Slingbox to generate additional revenue or business opportunities

MLB is a multi-billion dollar organization. Yup, that was with a “B”.  Sling’s raised a total of about $57 million.  Calling in lawyers to deal with this is like me calling Terminix to kill a spider in my house. 

Final disclosure: I do not work for Terminix.

Inanity!

HP helping to increase HDTV FUD

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History has shown that when it comes to technology, the fastest method to hamper consumer adoption is to have FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).  In my limited lifespan, this dates back to the VHS-Betamax duel back in the 80s, and continues today in the BluRay-HD battles.  Nobody wants to buy the wrong thing, and consumers will often sit around and wait for a victor to emerge.

HP, a company I’ve liked over the years (and one where I have a lot of friends), decided that they wanted to get involved and, for lack of a more perfect phrase, screw with the HDTV industry by using the term “HDTV 2.0”. Shame on you, HP, for such an ill-timed, inappropriate, and unnecessary move.

Consumers today have enough trouble differentiating between 720p, 1080i, and 1080p when they try to buy a set (answer: the first two are effectively the same, 1080p is the ‘better one’ that you should be looking for if you are spending more than about $1500 on a set). 

They have enough issues trying to figure out if they should buy an upscaling DVD player or an actual high-definition player (answer: unless you have a very good set, you probably won’t really notice the difference, plus I wouldn’t buy until the format is settled). 

They have to figure out if they should buy DVI or HDMI or component cables (answer: it’s gotta be HDMI, no debate here), and once they’ve picked, have to then assess how much to spend on those cables (answer: now that I’ve learned a bit more about the cabling and the future of HD, if you are looking at a long-term investment in your HD setup, buy the expensive cables, there will be a difference).

Shame on you, HP. It’s not like a debate on what Web 2.0 (or 3.0) really is, where end-users can happily ignore the topic and just enjoy trying out cool new Web sites/services as they launch.  For a marketing organization to intentionally go out and cause additional FUD in an already confusing space is pure and simple a bad move.  Your job is to answer questions, not create them, and your job is to grow the overall pie, not try to cut out some small piece with such short-term thinking.  

Shame on you, HP!

When will the FCC give up on content regulation?

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I can’t think of any federal organization that has less fans than the FCC.  The FAA seems to do a pretty solid job.  The FTC could probably crack down on a few more tech monopolies out there.  The SEC should ease a few restrictions that so heavily discourage IPOs today. But those are minor annoyances compared to the FCC. The FCC has this weird dual-role, in which one half is trying to make sure lots of new technologies don’t make a mess out in the real world, and the other half is trying to figure out if its okay if I say “peepee” on television.

In it’s first role, I think it seems to do a bang-up job, but I’m not a spectrum engineer or anything like that, so I could be wrong.  But when I see stories such as “FCC Chairman Martin to Telcos: No Blocking Iowa Calls” (updated) “FCC approves plan for major wireless spectrum auction: Spectrum in 700MHz band to have greater range for broadband” I have to say, it sounds good to me!  After all, my microwave works, my cell phones work, my wifi works – this whole spectrum thing seems like it’s being managed well.  And guess what, it’s exactly this purpose wherein the roots of the FCC lie:

Before the commission was established, radio was regulated by the Commerce Department under Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Naturally, chaos reigned. The biggest problem was that hundreds of stations were trying to broadcast on only two frequencies, a situation that detracted from listening enjoyment.

But then there’s the other FCC, the one that sounds a whole lot like an uninformed yokel, who arbitrarily fines DJ’s, declares that the word “Dick” better mean “Richard”, and generally acts like a bully only barely overshadowed by Homeland Security (but at least those guys are trying to take actions with the intent to save lives).  On almost a daily basis, I see through my variety of feeds and newsletters articles discussing how the FCC is playing in territory that should clearly be outside their “turf”.  Two recent examples:

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who heads the House Commerce Committee, said at an occasionally rancorous subcommittee meeting Wednesday that “the FCC is not a legislative body – that role resides here in this room with the people’s elected representatives.” – source

Congress could regulate violence on cable, satellite and broadcast television without violating the First Amendment, according to the Federal Communications Commission. – source

Now whether or not I side with political correctness or moral majority or whatever term you prefer is wholely irrelevant.  Fundamentally, the FCC plays a game in which they redefine the rules as it suits their purpose.  But changes are afoot, changes that will render this part of the FCC near-useless in the coming years.  The good old Interweb is here to lay a bit of a smackdown on the FCC.  And the nice thing about Interwebbing is, it tends to do a lot more self-policing, with a lot better checks and balances.

The interesting part is the “checks” are literally checks – when it comes to IP video, of whatever nature, the dollar is almighty.  Put simply: streaming video costs money.  It costs money to create, produce, edit, and most importantly – stream.  If you cannot make enough money to cover your bandwidth costs, you will sooner or later be off the “air”.  Which is where our “balances” come in, and we call them advertisers (sponsors works too).  Mathew Ingram recently wrote (he wrote a second piece on a related topic that’s also a good read):

What kinds of advertisers will YouTube be able to attract? Critics such as Mark Cuban have argued that most advertisers won’t want to be associated with the kind of content that’s on the site, whereas Joost is much more like regular TV.

Cuban is dead-right on this topic.  But after “most” comes “some” and those some advertisers that are left will want to be associated with YouTube content.  That’s how they exercise their power – they write the checks for the content they like.  Don’t like it? No checks.  Fair and balanced at its finest.

Thanks to the FCC, television has its seven deadly words.  Thanks to YouTube, ustream, PodTech, PodShow, Apple, Fraunhoffer, MPEG-LA, and, as Time magazine so ______ put it, YOU, the Internet has no deadly words.  Go ahead, do a podcast, say “peepee” a lot.  If you get enough advertisers, someone might ask you to stop saying it one day, as that is their option.  And you are fully empowered to make your own decision.  As are the listeners or viewers.  As it should be, no unelected, unbounded, outdated, and out-of-touch government body needed.

I coulda been a Nielsen home

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I was reading Davis Freeberg’s article on DVR stats from Nielsen, and it jogged a memory I meant to blog about last month.  A few weeks back a guy knocked on my door, informed my wife and I we had the option to become Nielsen households.  Basically, we’d get another set-top box to install, and have to push a button (or two) every 45 minutes while watching TV.  Seems easy enough, but frankly I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle right now.

Maybe if Arrested Development were still on I’d care more, but my favorite shows (Heroes, The Office) are doing smashingly well.  Further, we’re about to get back on to the Netflix bandwagon, so my “real TV” hours are diminishing rapidly anyway.

The weird part is if accepted, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.  I wonder what my guests would’ve thought?