The Problem: Video content owners are comfortable making their programming available over the internet only if the delivery device is a computer hitting a website (i.e. hulu.com or the thedailyshow.com).  More compelling platforms such as tablets (and, um, televisions) are denied access to this premium content – precisely because they are more compelling platforms  (and would be too disruptive to incumbent business models).  For example, note hulu’s cat-and-mouse maneuvering to fend off access by boxee television software for almost two years now – or Viacom’s threats to sue various cable providers over their new internet-based on-demand mobile device apps.

The Solution (for now, at least): If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Until internet television really ‘happens’, the best solution (for me and many others) is to get video and audio from the computer over to the television, so I can appear to the internet to be someone sitting in front of their computer – when in fact I’m a guy sitting on his couch in front of his television.  This way, I have access to all that web-only content (take that, hulu!).

It does involve solving the technical problem of getting audio and video (in at least 720p resolution) over to the television, though.  That’s a lot of data to move, and an HDMI cable running across the floor is not an option – what’s required instead is a  ‘short fat pipe’ capable of moving a lot of data over a short distance wirelessly.  I’ve written about the various options available (and what I’ve been using for the past few months) here.

Is my solution a bit clunky?  Sure – I have to go to the computer, enter full-screen mode, and then control the video transport from there.  But the fact remains that until the business-side issues preventing true internet television get resolved, the web will continue to offer a richer video selection than dedicated systems such as Apple TV or Google TV – and for all its lack of elegance, my low-cost solution makes that problem just go away.

In fact, it has been working so well for me, I wonder if there’s a business opportunity being missed…

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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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When you find back-to-back Hulu and Verizon Hub commercials rolling across your TV screen, (as I recently did in New York), you know for traditional media delivery, the times, they are a-changin’.

Turns out, the TV spot for Hulu and Verizon Hub each mark a first for their respective parent company; pitching products previously not marketed on live television.
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Has lengthy Sigur Ros concert coverage replaced subversive short-form clips on Current TV?

In other words, is US television’s first intrepid citizen journalist network gradually jettisoning its user-generated videos, in favor of a content format ubiquitous elsewhere on TV? 
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A few weeks I was struck by the unusual sight of a YouTube video embedded on a Yahoo! sports page.  It appears that as video streams are increasingly syndicated across multiple outlets, we’re seeing more signs that video stream hosting and video stream aggregating are developing into two complementary but independent businesses.

YouTube is moving from a core competency in hosting user-generated content into the premium content marketplace via the rapidly growing number of YouTube Channel partnerships.  The business models and monetization processes are still a bit of a work in progress as YouTube explores how much system integration is appropriate and YouTube’s content-owning partners seek a comfort level with how much content to syndicate.  But what is clear is that as YouTube offers more licensed and copyrighted content on its Channel pages, and (as mentioned above) syndicates its hosted streams to often competing destination sites (such as Yahoo), we are seeing the company’s hosting and aggregating business models branch off from each another.


Take ABC/Disney: if you go directly to youtube.com/abc, you’ll find the YouTube ABC Television Channel.  However, it’s still largely a placeholder page, with only limited content available from the Jimmy Kimmel show – and if you didn’t happen to already know the URL and had to search the YouTube site for an “ABC Channel”, you wouldn’t get there at all: instead, you’d get to a public broadcasting station from Australia that happens to be named ABC.  That’s right – the search returns no mention of ABC/Disney whatsoever – clearly, YouTube and ABC are taking it slow here…

There’s also the issue of physical asset control – speaking on a panel the other day, ABC’s Albert Cheng acknowledged that any ABC/Disney content streaming from YouTube is actually being hosted from the ABC/Disney servers.  In other words, rather than host the data and the stream it locally at YouTube, the content is merely pulled in from an external data center and wrapped in a Youtube ‘skin’.  Since the ABC streams still use the YouTube Flash player, this is all transparent to the user, but nevertheless, in this case YouTube is merely serving as an aggregator.


Now let’s look at CBS: games from this year’s NCAA  Men’s Basketball Tournament are being streamed live on the YouTube CBS/March Madness channel.  As with ABC, these streams are hosted externally by the content owner (CBS) and are also available for streaming from the network’s own site.  This year, however, streams of live games are being delivered via the Microsoft Silverlight format rather than YouTube’s streaming format of choice, Adobe Flash – a coup for Silverlight, and a first for YouTube (users will have to download and install the Silverlight player if they haven’t already done so). As can be seen from the screenshot at right, to the user accustomed to the familiar look and feel of YouTube’s Flash player, this a much more CBS-branded experieince.

In general, syndication makes a lot of sense: content owners tend to be more comfortable holding on to and hosting their own assets, and if a given partner has their own streaming infrastructure already implemented, there’s little point in reinventing the wheel.   Furthermore, live streaming of events such as the NCAA games is especially demanding, and Silverlight has already proven itself as a very capable live platform during last summer’s Beijing Olympics.

All well and good – but for streaming video to make it to television hardware, these technologies will have to migrate to chipsets.  Adobe already has a standalone version of Flash optimized for use in embedded devices, and the next verison of Silverlight (Silverlight 3, just entering beta testing) will be able to run outside the browser (it’s not known yet if a similar lightweight version of Silverlight for embedded devices is also planned, but I would guess that’s a strong possibility).

Stay tuned…