JamieG Analysis

Watching TV from Internet based sources has grown drastically in the last year, still, amazingly there has been little more then lip service and toe in the water reactions from the larger encumbent players.

The bandwidth issues has been touted as the main reason.  For example, until the internet is upgraded giving higher bandwidth access to the consumers it is not really a viable concern… yet.  If the incumbent players did start advertising and promoting access to TV shows, the internet would arguably collapse under the weight of the strain of trying to support the bandwidth requirements.

This, to me, is a smoke screen as those who largely want this type of TV experience are getting it now with the current internet using shared infrastructure.  TORRENTS.

What the industry really is working on is new advertising models which can hopefully be successful in an ira where the consumer has complete control.  With a flick of the finger, anything the consumer don;t want to watch is gone.  Commercials, poor content. Everything.

So looking forward, one would consider a similar model in which the consumer is already in this dominant position, but at the same time the industry is commercialized and growing…  WEB SITES.

This leads me to the dominant player in commercializing this area. Google.

Strangely enough, media and blogosphere has had little to say about Googles roles in this.  But here are a few I did find..
Google enters the PC to TV arena
Google wants to do for TV what it did for the Web

And most importantly
Advertising on TV just got easier with Google TV Ads

It is also on Techcrunch
The Google Set-Top Box (Think Android For TV)

Looking at the general commercialization of the Internet one very important issues is apparent.

“Standardization in advertising, production, distribution and display”

Standards have always been the key to a healthy advertising medium and in some ways is a indicator to the health and likelihood of a robust industry.  An example of this is the banner ad self imposed standards, resolutions and file sizes, that came out many years back.  After which, we started to see banner ads everywhere.  Google introducing its on standard of simply text based ads that have also proven to be very successful and popular.

What I am trying to point out here is that, for example, YouTube, the king of online video has been trying all forms of advertising around video content.  Post/pre rolls.  Interstitials etc.  None have worked very well.

If Google plan to move forward and dominate video on the web, they have to base it around a set of known standards.

For example,  recently I heard some one say Google was very successful as they had the eye balls.  I could not disagree more.  Google is successful as hey can get advertising out to websites owners that own the eye balls. The key here if that Google has studied and formulated a way to do this as automated as possible with the best results as possible.

The challenge here for google and everyone else in this area, is how do we do this for video?

This then breaks down to.  UNTIL we can do this for video on the web, we want to slow down moving to this new medium as much as possible.  We have a 100’s of billions of dollar industry looking for future relevance.

From comments I have gotten from my Blog, in which I seem to have attracted a number of inside people, unfortunately, its not looking like the incumbents are close to any real solution.

The rosy picture painted by some is that in the future, “THEY” will track everything.  They will know exactly what commercials we watch, if we skip them and more. From this data, a new form of cost for advertising will be born. A new form of AD will be born.  Entertaining Ads we are less likely to switch off. Shorter ads we don;t have time to skip. Product placement.  Ads built into the content like the old radio days.

All this is possible, but is it likely in a future were only ZONE free DVD players are for sale in my local electronics store?

I personally do think some type of compromise is possible in terms of what the consumer wants and how much money the incumbents can make out of us.  But like any compromise, neither sire will be completely happy.

Recently I wrote about “The tend towards an open STB continues.”

This trend has just been turned into a reality with Sony announcing that by Christmas, 90% or all TV on sale will be Internet ready,  and to quote the Sony release..

Sony will embrace open standards “to improve interoperability among all of our customers’ devices.”

See this report “Sony sets sights on global networked entertainment“.

The Apple hype engine has been going into overdrive lately about Sproutcore. “What is Sproutcore?” Well, to a long tooth net developer, its JUST ANOTHER JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORK.  But to the Apple alumni, its the biggest thing to happen to net applications in a long time.

My Web/Javascript programming friends do not even consider sproutcore is as good as many other javascript libraries on the net for example, the Yahoo libray, mootools etc.  However, because Apple is using it and promoting it and Apple has very publicly refused to support Adobe Flash.  This is a big deal.

Apple has given some relevant but ultimately hollow reasons to refuse the support of FlashLite (As a developer I never expected full Flash support), probably one of the most asked for features on the Iphone.  This leads everyone to ask WHY?

Sproutcore is the first sign of why.  In my opinion, this is the main reason why the hype engine is running into the red/extreme zone.  Ultimately it gives us a hint that Apple are actually considering introducing a competitive product to Flash and Silverlight.

As a developer Sproutcore, as an alternative to a real Internet application development environment, is laughable.  All these new javascript frameworks are, in a simplistic description, just an extension to the typical old HTML <FORM> type features and widgets but better looking and friendly-er with real time feedback.

A set of widgets does not an application make.

If we look at current Internet applications which only use Javascript frameworks.  You will notice they are extremely limited and simple.  Javascript frameworks are simply not well suited for extensive Internet Applications.  It gets over complex fast and slows down very quickly.  I have seen flash/flex internet applications that simply cannot be done in Javascript frameworks.  A good example of these are the online picture editing tools like, Photoshop Express.

Lets look at the other Internet God, Google.  Google is a flagship of businesses built on OSS (Open Source Software).  Much of their technology is based on it.  Android, the new Mobile Phone OS and much more.  Still, Google does use Flash extensively in all their analytics products.  The new Flash version of Google Maps API, in my opinion, is far superior then the AJAX version. (Faster, Zooms better, etc)

Google is not afraid to use the right technology for the right Job.

Adobe has also, in recent months, released much of the specifications of FLASH.  So much so that writing your own Flash player is now very possible (From my understanding a number of open source projects are chewing on this right now.)  Adobe did not , however, release much of the information regarding the video and DRM systems. (What did you expect)

Flash has its uses.  The lack of flash on ANY of apple websites and iPhone restrict it from any type of analytics and data representation.  It restricts if from more complex Applications that are possible in Flash and Silverlight.  Apple, proud of its superior OS and software, this simply does not jell.

Still, Apple is right about one thing.  Javascript frameworks like Sproutcore is very suitable for the iPhone applications.  the widgets it supports and the type of applications you would use on the iPhone can mostly be implemented with Sproutcore.

Reading other blog analysis of this issue, much weight is put into the issue that Steve wants to support non-proprietary standards for its tools.  This is a nice “Purist view” but nothing more then hot air.  Apple may encourage the use of open standard on its products, however, Steve knows more then most that, to make a superior and well defined product, open source development methodology simply does not work.  Look at Linux for the desktop.  It could be as refined and as good as OSX.  It has come a long way but has not and possibly never will reach that level of OSX as Linux is an OS with a vision sourced by hundreds of developers around the world. OSX is a vision of one man. Steve Jobs.

It is for these reasons that no open source attempts at making a technology like flash can reach the level flash has.  Steve knowns this, so rejecting Flash for the reasons stated is, in my opinion, a smoke screen.

As a developers, the big issue with the lack of Flash is the lack of cross development capabilities.  Flash is very popular, and right now, FLEX is one of the hottest programing languages around.  I personally have a lot of code I would like to drop onto the iPhone.  But right now, I have to go back to the drawing board and use javascript and a framework like Sproutcore.  That’s like asking a C++ programming he has to go back to BASIC.  It’s degrading.

Ultimately, one must concede that Apple has something up its sleeve.  And it was announced at WWDC with the feature list of Snow Leopard.  Quicktime X is likely to be more then a video engine.  I expect a new platform encompassing much of the features left out in the current restricted frameworks supported by Apple for the Web.  It is likely to be very standards friendly and cross platform (Windows, Linux, Apple)

One could even speculate that Snow Leopard is possibly an open version of OXS for any Intel based hardware.  A common rumour I like to push and feel would catapult Apple into a position where it really is competing with Microsoft.

A common topic I cover on my blog is what the Set top box of the future is likely to be. Recently in my post named “Discussion with Philip Hodgetts about the digital TV future.”, Philip and I covered many aspects of this idea.  Recently a number of developments connected to this topic have surfaced.  I wanted to tie them all together here.

They are:

• Verismo Box Plugs Web into Your TV: this is a very good example of the trend towards a open STB with no direct connection to the larger companies.  Ie Microsoft, Apple.  This is intended to be a cheap STB that can utilise as many services as they can get API’s from/for.
• Panasonic Pipes YouTube Directly to TVs: Another example of a large consumer electronics maker making an open STB for general free content on the web.
• Sony To Bring YouTube To HDTV Sets: Sony is getting into the act too.
• R.I.P. SanDisk’s TakeTV, Fanfare Shut Down: A filed quirky attempt.  Not unexpected.
• YouTube Set to Dominate the Boob Tube: A story pointing out how YouTube is partnering with all these general purpose STB and becoming very dominent in this space.
• Apple Should Open Up: More comments from about how AppleTV needs to be open to take off.
• Scoop: Boxee to Go Alpha on Monday: Yet more developments towards open STB with the very well know and popular XBMC (X-Box Media Centre) open source project launching into this space.
• I would also like to mention ADOBE’s release of AMP (Adobe Media Player), all the DRM technology and that Flash Player for embded devices as been made free.  Obviously something is cooking here.

I would like to point out that these stores have all come out in no less then a month.  Thats a lot of action in the STB area.

Still, I find this all very worrying as unlike the past, there is no one driving the development of what I like to compare to as the Analog TV Tuner of past to todays Internet-TV-Tuner of the future.

In the past, organisations such as SMPTE where formed so that the development of TV technologies was based around standards.  Content was structured and produced in a documented way as so it could then be trasnsmitted in a standard way. Any TV manufactuer could simply follow these standards and have a working TV set on the market.

Altho these standards bodies exist and an attempt by them has been made to address the issues of Internet TV, the current state of play is that it is a complete mess.  We have many suppliers using proprietory technologies, trying to leverage their products into a dominent position.

These organisations are very powerful and have, in my opinion, stifeled any movement towards simple open standards for which would allow the adoption of Internet TV to take off.

There is a lot of potential power and money at stake, so no one is willing to “play ball” so to speak.

Fortunatly the technological tuth to all this is that open based STB are inevitable.

For Example.  Lets look at DVD region coding.  This was a way to let the distributors control the release of content around the world.  The movie would be released in the US, for example, under REGION-1.  Here in Australia, Region-6, we would not be able to play that DVD.

Strangely enough, I have never had a problem with this as REGION-FREE DVD players came out very quickly.  REGION-coding today is next to useless.  Consumers eventually learnt about these issues, and today, the consumer electronics stores simply will not stock Region-restricted DVD players are they simply cannot sell them.

The AppleTV for example is already in this bucket.  A consumer who is interested in a AppleTV is as, he is knowledgeable enough to understand that purchasing an AppleTV only really means he can watch shows blessed by Steve, of pod-casts specifically designed for it. (You can hack it to do anything however)

A potential consumer of an AppleTV would understand Torrents, and that alternative content is around, and that obviously, anything he purchases, he will want to also play that content.

This may look to be a trivial matter, but from my experience it is quite the opposite.

The standard TV set of the future is going to need a TV tuner of the future, ie an Internet TV tuner.  This tuner technology needs to be cheap but at the same time as powerful as possible.  I am a big fan of the Adobe mythology as it is possible that each CHANNEL can load its own user interface designed specifically for the target consumer. It can also be easily updated.  Ie the way you use the channel can evolve with the user.  The complexity can evolve with the user.  The Social aspects of the channel can evolve with the evolution of social networks.

The STB of the future still looks like its a fair way down the road. I just hope the incumbent players who are trying to take advantage of this realise sooner then later that we need to get together and head down this road collaboratively soon.  As the longer they procrastinate, the more likely we are to damage the production industry and ultimately the TV shows we love to watch.  At the current rate of development, nether side will end up with very much.

I awoke this morning to the chatter on the net about WWDC and the iPhone.  Nothing we didn;t expect.  All and all very boring. Later today I thought I would look at me.com (mobileme) another less noted announcement at WWDC.
Now this is where the story is, and it appears most of the internet have overlooked it.

see me.com and the online demo at HERE. (http://www.apple.com/mobileme/guidedtour/)

Ad the new focus on business (See HERE http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/)

mobileme is a direct attempt of Apple to jump into the Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Web2.0 space.
Online Email, Calandar, Contacts and File share.  This is an attempt similar to the Microsoft deal of software and services.  Ie unlike Google and applications online, Microsoft push Local Applications with internet services.

This is likely only the start.  What are we to expect next?  OSX been given away just so end users use the Apple Internet Apllication services @$100 per year?  A trend Microsoft is heading towards?

Comments please…