Television has always been traditionally distributed
by cable or
satellite
systems, but now a new pretender to the throne to be the media of
choice has stormed in and broken the party up.
Internet television or IPTV uses the Internet to
deliver
video from a source to a target device such as a Web browser or set-top
box.
Joost, VeohTV,
WiTV, Babelgum
and, most recently, Microsoft Internet TV
are some of the prominent players jostling for market share in this
rapidly emerging space.
Additionally, sites such as YouTube
Mobile and MySpace
TV,
two top online destinations, will continue to drive traffic and
generate demand for online/mobile video consumption.
(Brightcove has a
good summary of why Internet TV
matters.)
The recent public beta of Joost,
a raising star in this space, has generated a fair share of media
coverage about the realities of Internet TV.
From Traditional TV to Internet TV
The big question: Is the
promise of high quality and snazzy user interface enough to pry
eyeballs from traditional TV to Internet TV?
Neither Brad Stone at Bits nor our own Michael Garrett
seem impressed with Joost—citing bandwidth problems,
overloaded P2P
architecture, and general lack of incentive for users to interrupt Web
browsing to watch Internet TV.
Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee posted a great video interview
with CEO Mike Volpi who noted that Joost is targeted at the
early adopters, not the mainstream TV consumer.
This is fair commentary from the end user
perspective. There is a feeling at Ripcode that Internet TV has already made significant
inroads in capturing television eyeballs.
Hard To Ignore Metrics
The fact that a
user-submitted YouTube parody on
Britney Spears can secure over 10 million views in less than two
weeks, thus rivaling the viewership metrics on an average prime-time
television program, is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore.
The Conference Board
and TNS reported last week that more
consumers are watching TV online. Report highlights include:
- Close to 16 percent of American households who use the
Internet watch television broadcasts online. - Three out of five respondents say that watching TV online
is just
more convenient, while one third say they go online to avoid watching
commercials. - Streaming and free downloads are the top methods for
viewing TV online. - Respondents said that TV on the Internet has replaced news
programs as their most widely viewed online content.
Mainstream Acceptance Of Internet TV
And In-Stat
has published a report in the last few weeks titled Trends Favor
Mainstream Acceptance of Internet TV. In the press
release announcing the report, the In-Stat summary states that overall:
- Respondents to an In-Stat survey felt online video will
become more mainstream over time - Social networking aspects are starting to play an important
part on
how the newer generation wants to watch and interact with TV. - Primary detractors for online video continue to be download
speed, user interface, cost, and quality of video
We could not be in more agreement with these
findings.
Feedback
from our customer engagements confirms the same trends.
Social
networks and search engines in particular appear to be gaining
viewership at a faster rate than most other models.
How Will Traditional TV Counter?
The
question will
be, how long will it take for the traditional channels to generate a
counter solution to the rapid growth of Internet TV?
The rapid change and uncertainty in Internet TV
and how
the traditional television markets will respond is the key to Ripcode’s
business model.
In just about every possible outcome, the
resultant
business model will require significant transcoding
to accomplish the task of combining traditional television viewership
with the Internet experience.
In addition, as these two
worlds
collide, the resultant combination of video libraries only fuels the
need for the On Demand Transcoding℠
methodology.
Originally written by Brendon Mills of the RipCode Blog. RipCode offers on-demand video transcoding solutions to ease the process of re-purposing video into multiple viewing formats.
