A few weeks ago, we wrote that while a recent panel discussion of the iPhone NPR app was focused on the ability to access any NPR station despite its over-the-air local broadcast range constraints (geographic independence), the primary value proposition of the NPR app is the ability to access any program despite its scheduled air time constraints (temporal independence).  Put another way, this app represents the ‘tivo-ization’ of NPR.

In fact, the intrinsic ability to time-shift content is arguably the primary value proposition of any internet media platform.

Some recent coverage of Apple’s forthcoming Apple TV subscription model misses this point entirely, though…

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Comcast has bought a controlling share in NBCU.  Maybe you’ve heard.

Just what this means for hulu is now topic du jour.  For those unfamiliar with the service (are there any left?), hulu is a browser-based premium video website that launched a year and a half ago as a NBC/Fox joint venture and has since became wildly popular (and deservedly so: on a technical level, the streaming is very well implemented, and on a user experience level, the UI is  very cleanly designed).  Since April, when Disney bought into hulu, CBS has been the only major broadcast network left outside of the hulu fold.

More than any other service, Hulu was looking like the future of premium online video.

Then along comes Comcast and makes things interesting: the largest company in the vertical industry most threatened by the advent of online premium (non user-generated) video is now part owner in the nascent medium’s industry leader.

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Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

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For while now, we’ve been puzzled by the surprisingly large number of industry analysts operating under the assumption that “internet video” represents just another (albeit fast-growing) computer/web browser use case.  It  comes up most often during panel discussions and articles covering the seemingly intractable problem of how to monetize internet video - “how can we get internet video users tolerate a TV-like higher ad load?” is often the point at which shoulders start to shrug, hands get thrown up in the air, and the discussion grinds to a halt.

“By making the internet video user experience more like TV” is one obvious answer - and one that at least allows the discussion to continue…

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We’ve been watching (and writing) about the rumored Apple tablet netbook for a while now - essentially an iTouch with a 6-10″ touch screen, we feel like this thing is gonna be huge.

Hulu’s been working on an iPhone App (using the more Apple-friendly MP4 format rather than than Adobe Flash) for a few months now - imagine a 10″ tablet for the home that can access iTunes, YouTube and Hulu.  Imagine all this running over your fast home internet connection rather than AT&T’s under-performing 3G data network.  Imagine (the admittedly more remote) possibility of the otherwise Microsoft-centric Netflix streaming service coming to the iPhone OS as well.

In short, this could be one compelling consumer electronics internet video device.

We had speculated on a holiday 2009 release, but recenty the Financial Times reported the iTouch tablet/netbook might hit as soon as September. There’s one (as yet unsolved) problem most of the somewhat breathless coverage of this device fails to mention, though:

Battery Life.

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We’re fans of Will Richmond’s VideoNuze newsletter here at digitalmissive.   However, we have to take issue with a recent VideoNuze article on the future of long-form online video - like many such forward-looking articles we’ve come across lately, it’s tacitly assumed that since we view internet video on a computer and web browser today, the situation will remain unchanged  indefinitely.  It’s surprising how many articles attempt to predict the future of internet video while failing to consider the role a new generation of consumer electronics devices (i.e. televisions and set-top boxes) with network interfaces and baked-in internet video functionality might play.

First and foremost among the conclusions often drawn from this flawed premise is that “advertising alone will not be sufficient for profitable long-form program distribution online”.

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For two reasons, Brian’s recent TV Everywhere post caught my renewed attention.

For one, earlier today, Comcast announced expansion of its online TV video efforts to an impressive 23 networks. From full-length movie channels - think Cinemax, HBO, IFC, an Starz -  to cable TV favorites such as A&E, E!, Food Network, and WE,  Comcast’s 5,000 trial homes are now among the very first to enjoy online video akin to legacy TV.

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2005:  YouTube loses $271 million

2006:  YouTube loses $276 million

2007:  Google buys YouTube for $1.7 billion

Google doesn’t break out how much YouTube is losing.  However, the pesky problem of just how to monetize user-generated video clips remains unsolved while the dramatic growth in YouTube viewership continues unabated - with nothing to offset the costs of scaling up bandwidth and hardware to meet the increasing demand,  is it unreasonable to estimate that YouTube may be losing somewhere upwards of $1 million per day by now?

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A Wall St. analyst’s report on Apple today has touched off a new round of buzz on the rumored Apple netbook - essentially, a 9-inch iTouch.

Although we wrote about this over two months age here,  it’s well worth a bump: given that hulu has just decided to stop waiting for Apple to let Flash onto the iPhone OS and will instead release a workaround app of their own using MP4/Quicktime (à la youtube), this device promises to be one seriously cool “lean-back” (lean way back, if you want to take it to bed) internet video device for the home.

This is going to be a huge success.

Huge.

Which would happen first - would Apple and Adobe get together to bring Flash (and therefore hulu) to the iPhone, or would hulu (like the similarly Flash-based YouTube service) write a workaround iPhone App?

Historically, Apple has been uninterested in letting Adobe get its Flash Player technology onto the iPhone.  Technical power consumption issues have been often cited,  but given that Google’s Android devices have had Flash support from almost square one, perhaps a more reasonable explanation for Apple’s resistance has had to do with a desire to promote their competing Quicktime technology.   Meanwhile, Flash has become the clear defacto standard for web-based video streaming (according to Adobe, the Flash Player is installed on  98% of US browsers) - and in terms of the still nascent embedded CE hardware market, Adobe alone seems to ‘get it’,  recently making decisive moves to become just as ubiquitous there as they are on the browser (more on that here).
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