by ·Comments Off on Lots of little streaming TV news

This week, I’ve been accumulating lots of news about streaming TV. None of it seemed worthy of a long post, but all of it’s worthwhile. Let’s start with this video, embedded to the right of these words, of Roku vice president of marketing Chuck Seiber speaking on a panel discussion at Streaming Media West. Seiber said, “As it turns out, people are pretty comfortable watching TV a certain way. Very established behavior and it’s pretty hard to change that.” The original article is at StreamingMedia.com.

More streaming notes:

The Super Bowl last Sunday was streamed as well as broadcast over the air. CBS claimed that the event was viewed through “nearly 10 million live video streams, up more than 100 percent from last year, resulting in a record 114.4 million minutes streamed, which was up 46 percent over last year’s game.” But Dan Rayburn wrote at the Streaming Media Blog that the online version had “really bad video quality, lots of pixelation and a stream that look(ed) to be encoded at less than 1Mbps.” Rayburn summed it up by saying, “For all the people who talk of streaming media technology supposedly replacing broadcast TV distribution, this is just another example of many where one webcast can’t even be delivered to a small audience with HD video, or a reliable user experience.” Go read the rest!

Consumer Electronics Association president Gary Shapiro wrote an op-ed piece for USA Today with more about the CNet/CBS Best of Show disaster. I already wrote about most of the details, but this is the first I’d heard that the Hopper Sling had been the unanimous choice of the CNet editors before CBS butted in. Shapiro asserted that through this action, CBS destroyed its reputation and that of CNet. It also brought more attention to Dish’s new product than a relatively quiet Best of Show award.

On a related note, CBS also blocked CNet from reporting on Aereo, another company that CBS is suing. The Verge has the full report on that story, which seques to …

Jeff John Roberts just wrote a report for GigaOm from the inside of Aereo’s transcoding plant in Brooklyn. There are plenty of photos of the setup, including Aereo’s servers and proprietary transcoding devices. Go see how it works!

 

by ·Comments Off on CES Recap 6: Final notes

Giant Onkyo Headphones in front of the Gibson tentIt’s been just two weeks since I walked through an unusually blustery Las Vegas wind to visit the outdoor Central Plaza at the International CES. The Gibson tent had a 15-foot wide pair of “Onkyo headphones” at its entrance. As I paused in its sweet spot, alone in the cold, huge twin speakers thumped out a glorious, full-bodied rendition of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”. That’s my favorite memory of the show this year.

Here are a few more odds and ends from CES 2013:

  • I was going to make this a post by itself, but I figured that you’d heard enough about streaming non-directed channels versus on-demand programming. At CES, I had a great conversation with Jennifer Baisch of iStreamPlanet. She explained how her company handled the 2012 Olympics streams with no problems, but iStreamPlanet also has clients that broadcast 24/7. The next day, I talked with a guy from a major streaming device company who didn’t want me to quote him. He said that cord-cutting is overblown, and that the overwhelming percentage of viewers continue to subscribe to pay TV. Over-the-top internet-based delivery makes a great complement to that, he said, and it will continue to co-exist with the traditional cable model. Maybe I was hasty in shutting down my streaming channel. If I come up with a compelling reason to program a new one, I’ll do it.
  • On Monday’s press day at the Mandalay Bay, the press facilities were simply overwhelmed. CES likes to say that it issues more press credentials than the Super Bowl, and when all those people cram into one large room, it’s not good. I was just leaving to get some fresh air when I spotted a flier advertising Nokia’s press hospitality suite upstairs. I went up there and enjoyed a half hour of peace and quiet, rehydrating while my phone recharged. Many thanks to Nokia for providing that oasis in the desert.
  • To me, what makes CES worth it is not the products I see, it’s the people I meet. My favorite this time was entrepreneur and Wired editor Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, Free, and his latest, Makers. Anderson gave a nice presentation on Makers at the American Express OPEN booth, always a great place to get good business ideas.
  • I warned you about the iPhone cases. If I said I counted each and every one of them, I’d be lying, but doing the math, I’m sure there were at least 100,000 of them physically present at CES. They were in every hall, in big booths and tiny booths, occasionally under water, but more often in long rows and columns. Here are just a couple photos of them. I have more.

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That wraps it up for me. If you want a really long post with a lot more product profiles, go visit Robert J. Elisberg’s post on his CES trip. I completely agree with everything he says up to his ninth paragraph. Unlike Robert, I was brave enough to visit Central Hall. Twice!

by ·Comments Off on CES Recap 5: It's a circus out there
Gary Shapiro and Kazuhiro Tsuga

CEA’s Gary Shapiro introduces Panasonic’s Kazuhiro Tsuga to deliver the opening keynote at the 2013 International CES.

Today’s post comes from Andy Marken, president of Marken Communications. Andy has been involved in the strategic marketing and promotion of hardware and software storage technology for more than 20 years. For more information, visit www.markencom.com. For more photos that accompany this post, click here.

Everyone – except people who have a clown or big crowd phobia – loves the circus. The International CES is one of the world’s biggest circuses on the globe with acts of all shapes, sizes and quality; each hungering for the cheers of the crowd.

It isn’t often you see a lawyer as the ringmaster, but Shapiro (Gary, head of CEA – Consumer Electronics Association) does a pretty good job of handling the tempermental acts.

The main acts (those in the center ring) are the big boys who pay bigger fees to put on their keynote speaker acts. Just like the real circus, some of the acts are good, some bad, some “What the ….!!!!” A few of the CES 2013 keynotes – Panasonic, Qualcomm, Samsung – were acts you found interesting, put you to sleep, dazzled, puzzled. The others were phone and car guys.

The Good
Coming off a pretty rough year (you lose a couple of billion and smile), Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga was the first to take the center ring with one of the more focused acts of CES.

Even though he had the parade of paid personalities you expect at keynotes, Tsuga highlighted the company’s new message as an eco-engineering company saying his people were committed to delivering innovative, eco and smart solutions to the market. Sure, he showed off his new 56-in OLED TV; but he stayed focused on folks who buy stuff:

  • “Your TV” that lets you personalize and customize, and deliver a range of service choices
  • “Your Home” energy solutions that let you create, store, save, manage energy
  • “Your Car” solutions for electric vehicles and connected automotive solutions
  • “Your Business’ B2B2C strategy for end-to-end solutions for retailers
  • “Your Journey” avionic, in-flight entertainment, communications solutions
  • “Your Community” informational kiosks, digital signage, business/industry energy solutions and global entertainment support like the Olympics, soccer

Of course, to show that Panasonic really understands what folks want, the company’s North American boss, Joe Taylor, made a cameo appearance with TV personality Lisa Ling. Oh yeah, and he lugged out a 20-in 4K tablet that someone said was compensating for certain inadequacies.

To quiet the snickering crowd, Tsuga proved he was serious about bringing the company back by saying, “If we are to achieve our goals, the imperative to transform and innovate has never been greater.”

What the…
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer forgot he had turned over his normal keynote slot to Qualcomm’s Paul Taylor and showed up anyway. Good thing, because the mobile chipmaker’s boss worked hard to make an IC (integrated circuit) look cool, hip. Unfortunately, Ballmer didn’t give Qualcomm any more lift than his Win 8 did for boosting PC sales.

Still, Jacobs was fired up to be on the stage – he said so – of course, you would be too if your company sold 11 billion parts over the years. Lots of them go into the 6.4 billion worldwide mobile devices. That number will soon pass the number of folks on our little blue orb. Working hard to make a great first impression, Jacobs noted that 84 percent of the people say they can’t live without their connected device.

To prove how popular their Snapdragon 800 processors are with faster WiFi links, advanced broadband wireless capabilities and speeds up to 150 MB/s, Jacobs brought in the big guns. He had a parade of singers, dancers, drivers, actors, directors, gamers and … Big Bird! Yes, Big Bird and friend helped blur the lines between the real world and virtual world … It worked for us because at that point, we had no clue as to where we were! Before our brain could settle down, Jacobs threw a recorded message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu talking about how mobile will have a “transformative effect” on health in Africa and around the globe.

With all that going on everywhere and sales growing 27 plus percent to $13B, it’s no wonder Shapiro felt he simply had to have Qualcomm’s Jacobs in one of circus’ outer rings. It was “different!”

Wooing, Wowing
If you had just finished your fiscal year with a record $8B profit and soundly beating your lawsuit dancing partner, you’d probably be as upbeat as Samsung’s System LSI business president, Stephen Woo.

While the company was hyping everything from washers, dryers, ultra- ultra-HD TVs, bendable displays, oh cripes everything; Woo and several of the firm’s senior executives were on stage to show Apple what it was going to miss by ignoring their 8-core Exynos 5 Octa processor. Woo said the chip was designed to deliver a level of pure processing power never seen in a mobile device and would finally enable the units to do heavy-duty multitasking. Designed for high-end smartphones and tablets, Woo said the processor would easily handle HD streaming movies without dropping frames and would deliver razor-sharp picture quality.

Focused on selling stuff with his keynote, Woo was wowing the audience with facts about the world’s first mobile chip based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. According to Woo, “It’s an architecture that gives you all the power you want to run intensive apps, but is smart enough to conserve energy when running more basic tasks. Ultimately, we are saving energy and prolonging battery life.”

Woo confirmed the whispers about the company’s next-generation flexible display technology that would let you bend and fold your mobile devices. Proving that Samsung is a whiz at engineering, but not so good at naming products, he said the new technology was called YOUM. It’s super cool and “virtually unbreakable” but there was no pricing or availability mentioned at Woo’s keynote.

With a flawless sequel, Woo again wowed the crowd by introducing former U.S. president Bill Clinton to discuss how technology was advancing the Clinton Global Initiative. He was also at the keynote as ambassador of Samsung Hope for Children effort, which educates children in the developing world and partners with the Bill Clinton Foundation. Proving his ability steal the scene, Clinton joked, “When I became president, the average cellphone weighted five pounds.”

During his 30-minutes of owning the stage, Clinton also pointed out that South Korea is number one in the world for download speeds and the U.S. is 15th. “Our speeds are one fourth of South Koreas,” he said pointing out that technology would help the world move forward. Turning to his other pet subjects, he urged the audience to help address gun control, climate change, and the ways technology can topple governments and boost developing economies and bigotry. “The world has huge challenges,” he said, “and I think technology can help solve them.”

Too Big?
After hearing a number of the keynotes, some attendees said that CES was on its last leg, pointing out that organizations like Google, Apple and a few others weren’t visible at the show.

You saw Google on every screen when folks started a search. They were busy your searches and clicks, fanning the flames of CES excitement.

Apple? Sheess, there were a gazillion great to mediocre to stupid cases for the iPhones, iPads. Every new phone, new tablet, every phablet was touted as the Apple killer.

We’d like to see Shapiro limit the amount of space any given company could rent for the show. It’s impossible to get around an exhibit that takes up 37 football fields to even hope to see a fraction of the 3,000 plus cocky to desperate exhibitors from around the globe.

CES doesn’t need to have a bigger venue, Shapiro needs a bigger whip!

by ·Comments Off on CES Recap 4: World's best copyright panel

While most of the attention at CES goes to the flashy exhibit floor and all the cool stuff that gets introduced every year, there are always a lot of quiet conferences going on in the upstairs meeting rooms. This year, I was pleased to witness one of the best conference panels on copyright policy that you will ever see.

(Coincidentally, today is the one-year anniversary of the day Google and other sites rallied opposition to the overreaching Stop Online Piracy Act. Declan McCullagh, Chief Political Correspondent at CNet, wrote about the anniversary.)

As part of the Innovation Policy Summit, the event was “Beyond SOPA: Creating a Pro-innovation, Pro-artist Copyright Policy”. McCullagh moderated the conversation as superbly as he writes. And what an all-star panel it was:

McCullagh expressed disappointment that the invited corporate rights-holders had declined to participate, which made the discussion one-sided. But it was a great, nuanced examination of the current state of copyright, and how an enlightened system would work better for everyone. Here are a few quotes to give you a taste:

Sohn: I think we have a huge opportunity, in light of what happened (stopping SOPA) a year ago … to push for some affirmative copyright reform. … Make the other side explain why we shouldn’t bring balance back to copyright. … Let’s put it to those that want greater and stronger and longer copyright enforcement and put it to them: Why shouldn’t we have some balance? Why shouldn’t we turn the clock back to the original purpose of copyright? … I think this is the year that we push our own affirmative agenda.

Khanna: (Copyright) is a congressional-created instrument in order to maximize content creation. Which is why we can look at it from a cost-benefit analysis and say, are we actually maximizing content creation? Is there actually an author who says, “Well, I probably am not going to write that book if I only get earnings for my entire life, and then my children get earnings for 50 years. BUT I would write the book if I made money forever and then my children made money for 70 years or 90 years.” Which is the kind of argument you have to make to justify our current copyright system. … Intellectual property is actually different from tangible property, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that the Constitution very clearly says it has to be for a limited period of time, whereas most property you can have forever.

Barlow: There is a big difference between a song and a toaster. Treating songs as though they were no different from toasters is absolutely not the right way to monetize creativity. … It’s simply impractical unless of course you’re a large institution that pirates the creative work of artists and holds that as your property for a century or so while you reap huge profits from it. Copyright at the moment has been serving very well to do that.

I could go on for a very long time about all of the great ideas and optimism for reforming the worst abuses of the current copyright system, but as it turns out, you can experience it for yourself. CES is presenting that session, along with the rest of the Innovation Policy Summit sessions, keynotes, and a lot more, at its CES TV site. Or you can click the embedded video above to watch the panel discussion. For more information on these topics, visit InternetBlueprint.org or the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

by ·Comments Off on CES Recap 3: Verizon is going to be a broadcaster?

Verizon booth at CESIn his Broadcast Engineering Blog, Phil Kurz writes about a part of CES that I missed, but which might be important. The event was one of the keynotes, which I avoid at CES because they rarely include anything new and substantial. Kurz caught something in Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam’s afternoon keynote on CES’s opening day. (You can watch that keynote here.)

In his keynote, McAdam unveiled LTE Broadcast, a new way to use wireless phone spectrum to deliver video to viewers. As McAdam explained, “We are also developing a service to broadcast live video over LTE. Now to do that today, we have to dedicate a separate channel to each individual user, which uses up capacity pretty fast as you can imagine. With LTE Broadcast, we’ll be able to stream to everybody over the same channel at the same time.”

Kurz offers the proper perspective to this announcement: “What a revolutionary concept! Transmit, excuse me, that’s stream, ‘to everybody over the same channel at the same time.’ Where have I heard of that before? Oh, that’s right. There’s already nearly 1800 full-power commercial and public television stations that are streaming, excuse me, that’s transmitting, digital video and audio content on their own ‘same channel at the same time’ to everybody.”

There’s a lot more to Kurz’s blog post about the silliness of taking broadcast TV spectrum away and handing it to broadcast video. You really should go read it!