JamieG Analysis

The iTablet hype is reaching ear-bleeding level.  The speculation goes from one extreme to the other.  Personally I am getting tired of it, so in this blog post, lets go over the obvious moves Apple will make when it is finally released.

1. The hardware spec and prototype was most likely finished quite some time ago.  Obviously they have been refining it continuously as time permits.  However, it is not the hardware that dictates the iTable release.

2. Anyone pushing the “iTable is only rumor etc” is obviously just trying to generate clicks. (Total opposite to general opinion generates traffic) I don’t even look for these leaks but I have heard that it certainly exists.

3. The iTablet success is connected to content.  Apple will not release the iTablet until they have the content in place.  It is far more important then the product itself.  Why buy a TV if you have nothing to feed it, ie Movies/TV shows.  Remember the old days, the Radio makers MADE the Radio shows to drive demand.

4. Apple needs to get the formula right.  The iTablet success is based around replacing the hole left behind by news papers going away and everything going online.  This is all well and good, but the old timers, the general MASS MARKET, (As opposed to the very small and limited tech hype engine that is western US) will only adopt the product in mass if it is seen as a replacement for what they know and love now.  Ie picking up the news paper in the morning and reading it while you eat breakfast.  This is a key issue that combines the functionality of the iTablet and the media deals.  For the iTablet to be as successful as everyone is hoping it will be, it need to exist in its own right.  Not an iPhone replacement, not a Ultra light PC/MacPro replacement.  A product in that “it” is the best product for the purpose.

5. The magic  you get when this product come along, interactive magazines, video communication, (Twitter, facebook integration etc) is what  makes this product worth all the hype. It is what the excitement is really about. All that BLUE SKY..  the potential.

The more interesting aspect of all this is the wave of change in the printing industry this will bring.  Unlike Music in which Apple found itself in a very dominant position and sacrificed the artist for its dominance in portable music players, no other industry has been willing to let Apple do this again.  The AppleTV, for example, is been a failed project as the media providers are not willing to let Apple gain a postion of dominance.  They are making sure other companies and paths to market exist. As Apple has not seen a path to dominance, they have not spent much time on AppleTV.

So, how is Apple doing these deals with Print Media is the bigger question.  From what I hear, Apple are doing very reasonable deals.  I expect they understand they cannot get away with what they did with music.  Print media suppliers are not going to back themselves into corners like the Music industry did.  They are likely to make open ended deals in that other hardware makers will easily join in on. (For example, at half the cost of an iTablet) This means Apple is not as likely to be able to dominate the market with the iTablet.

However, I think Apple masterful plan as to use the “accidental” success of the App store with its lock in APPS (Ie not cross platform, only run on Apple) as a form of obtaining dominance.  Apple will be open with its media suppliers, but will lock in the users by locking them to APPLE only applications.

The iTablet will obviously have a App Store, and countless Apps will appear over night.  Users will find themselves investing another few hundread dollars in Apps before they know it.  If your iTablet breaks, or the battery dies (And most likely cannot be replaced) what are you going to buy, a new white box Tablet at 1/2 the cost and loose access to your APPS, or just get another iTablet?

This explains why the open and cross platform technology from Adobe (Flash Development platform) and Microsoft (Silverlight) , are being poisoned as much as possible by the Apple hype engine.

In any case, we are all likely to want one, I just hope th contract I sign to get it, does not include small print that means Steve owns my Soul as well as my wallet.

Recently Philip Hodgetts remarked on how the future of digital media and advertising. http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2009/10/30/how-will-branded-media-replace-advertising/

I had visited this topic a few years ago in older posts.  Strangely enough looking back now, we do not seem any closer to many questions we need answered.  One of the big ones to me is:

Regional Price per item advertising can make up to 70% of the ads we see on TV. How does the new digital media future replace this?

Just to look at this issue.  New Digital Media advertising is very much based from a single producer making content for distribution all over the world.  This is a very cost effective model but cannot replace that 70% gap left behind in typical localised TV and radio.  You need more infrastructure (People on the ground in that local, regional content distribution and creation with regional advertising combination etc.).  The price structure of new Media simply cannot support these old school ideas on advertising.

So where does this 70% go.  Google has tried hard to build a solution but does not appear to be very successful “yet”.  The idea was to turn new media advertising into a Web advertising type model. The idea is to use the regional website poster ads and turn this model into an infrastructure engine to replace the 70% of TV/Radio advertising model.

Unfortunatly, what you can build and how business works are not always the same.  And from what I see, the business of media buying, in which you have large advertising companies talking to huge media buyers and making a lot of this 70% of traditional advertising spend..  They want to keep it the same.  This new model cuts them out.

So where to now?

No idea really. (If I knew I wouldn;t be writing this would I).  I personally see the slow and eventual rise of networks like TWIT.TV and similar ones that build local advertising into local content.  They will slowly grow until they errode the traditional methods.

If you follow my blog, I have been a big believer in the Blu-Ray format. I have written many posts over the years to bust this myth that online will kill Blu-Ray.  At this stage I think I need to revisit this issue, especially as Philip Hodgetts received some very interesting comments from video equipment makers.  Quote from Philips Blog Post -What to use to archive non-tape media? – “on the Exhibit Floor (At DV  Expo) to find out what Panasonic, JVC, Sony and hard drive manufacturers recommended for long-term storage for non-tape media, and the answer surprised us both: Blu-ray.”

I am personally not at all surprised.  I have always held the line that Blu-Ray due to it being the best hi-density random access storage ( apart from Hard drives, which has many issues) is the only real path forward for our data storage needs.  This alone will pull it across the line enough to make it the defacto standard for what will replace DVD.  But likely one of the last for a long time.

See this link for graphs on DVD/Blu-Ray sales.. “High-Def digest“.  Blu-Ray is slowly growing, however, slower then anyone expected.  Even me.  But growth is growth.  Until Blu-Ray takes it’s place as the archival pinical of our future, to think Blu-Ray and to want Blu-Ray  is not likely to materialize.

Once we are all using Blu-Ray disks, we are likely to think Blu-Ray when we come to purchase films or replace DVD players.  The Archival revolution will establish this eventually.

However, lets look at some of the reasons why this is inevitable.

1. Philip has unearthed the fact that all the new Video makers, producing more data then ever before, are starting to become uneasy about spinning disk storage for long term archival.  Do you really want to maintain a RAID system permanently for the relevance of the content?  This realization is only a drop in the ocean. (See following points)

2. Cloud storage is by no means a real solution.  Yes, it probably goes a long way to solving this, but do you really expect to take 1TB of video, pictures, you may need later, say  20-40 years form now.  Dump it on a cloud, and upkeep it?  How about 10 Blu-Ray disks. put it in a box, through it under our bed, forget about it for the next 20 years..  Who do you think will sleep easier?

3.  I mentioned a drop in the ocean, now lets look at Noah’s flood coming in the next 10 years..

When I was young I was watching the news about a house on fire..  An old lady ran back into the burning house to save.. get this..  out of all the things.. A picture Album of her memories and family.  That was the most important thing in the house to her.  As a kid, I expected her to get her TV, Bike or favorite Mixed tape…  But now at 40 I can understand and relate to this behavior.

These days with digital Cameras the norm, everybody is storing their prized memories on DVD’s, portable Hard Drives or thumb drives.  How long until these devices start failing?  When will this generation, storing these priceless memories on inappropriate devices, realise they need to take steps to protect it?  Well, its probably starting to take traction now..  And when it does, Blu-Ray will thrive, and any industry connected to it will likely come along for the ride.

Many, evangelists do say Cloud Storage will fix this.  I’m sorry but this simply does not ring true to me.  Yes, it will probably answer this problem, however, it will never answer the problem of trust and paranoia. My most important pictures. Why would I even bother trusting some unknown corporate entity that 1.could loose my data or 2. go out of business.  Just dump it on a storage device that will last for a LONG time, and put it under my mattress.  Nothing makes you sleep sounder.

The only real issue here is that a newer, even better data storage technology will show up.  This was more likely to destroy Blu-Ray as a successful product then anything else.  Fortunately for Blu-Ray, nothing that mature seems to close.  Blu-Ray has the floor for quite some time.

Today the Google I had come to know changed..

The “Do no Evil” slogan crumbles as Google blatantly berried a great Web idea only to bring out their own version of it.

Recently Google launched Google Sidewiki.  An idea in that anyone can comment on a web page outside the control of the website itself.  This is a firefox (and Internet explorer) plugin.

Back in February (7 months ago)  some friends of mind (www.sharpsushi.com) launched FeedBack Loop (www.feedbackloop.com.au).  Strangely enough “Google SideWiki”  is exactly the same idea and implementation.

When they launched feedback loop, the FireFox plugin went into what is called “Experimental” plugins.  That’s OK, as it is what all plugins have to go through.   However, today, the plugin is no longer even listed on the FireFox extension site.  It had been removed.

Obviously Google has added its “Back End Magic” to some of the features it has, but still.  This is obviously not an original idea and has been copied from feedbackloop.com.au

This is an example of a big company taking advantage of its position.  A every day occurrence in reality.  However, Google is not a typical company.  Any company that dominates an industry needs to be held accountable to much higher values.

Is the weight of Google dominance and power starting to escape from the clenched fist that holds it to the slogan “Do No EVIL”?

Recently I was reading Encore, a industry mag about the media and production industry here in Australia.  The story in question talked about how the Post Production industry in Australia has developed into fewer smaller boutique businesses with the larger companies becoming even more dominant.

The reasons for this where said to be many, however, as a person who was a part owner of a largish post facility in Melbourne until a fire ended all that, the “real” reasons for the larger player becoming so dominant is quite simple.

I like to call it the “Rate card, Mate Card factor”.

If you are going to make a movie you have two expensive factors of the post production portion.  This is either the Telecine/Film scanner at the beginning, or the Film Printer/duplication at the end.  These are very expensive processes.  As a larger player who has built up to these hi-value parts of the production chain, you can offer a full end to end solution.

Now, if you use the end-to-end offering, you get the Mate-Card rates (Never published) on the hi-value portions.  If you choose to use an external boutique (and usually much cheaper) post house to do anything in the middle, well then you get the Full-Rate Card, usually 40-50% more then the Mate-Card.

These practices have protected the incumbent players by killing of man of the boutique post houses.  Only the larger and more powerful post houses remain.

This, however, may all soon change.  Both ends of the hi-value chain are changing.  Digital Cameras like the RED are cheap and the boutique post house or even the film maker can afford to purchase this kit themselves.  With the use of digital cameras, the need for the hi-value telecine/film scanner portion of the chain is removed.

Digital cinema projection is starting to get reasonable traction and the capability to export a DCP (A file used by digital projectors in cinemas) is available for very little if not soon to be built into editing systems like Final Cut Pro or Premiere.  This removes the need for the film recording and duplication costs.

In the very near future, a film maker will likely to able to purchase all the kit they need (Digital Camera system and online editing and effects system) plus contract all the labour for the same amount as going to a big post house to do the same job. At the end of the production, you have all the kit ready to go on the next job, more then halving your typical Post costs you expect from a big post house on that net job.

Unfortunately is is not as simply as that, but a smart film maker could make this happen.  Its all about building the right team.

What a big post house bring to the table is more then just services, they bring know how and knowledge.  You KNOW it is going to work.  This is especially important on special effects films where a lot of visual effects and 3D integration is required. Doing it yourself could be very risky. Can you trust the contractors to do the right job?  What if you hire the wrong guy and everything you shoot is unusable?

The DO-IT-YOURSELF nirvana is very definitely here, and is likely to lead to a contraction in large post house dominance.  Especially in Australia.  However, for more complex and specialised films, there will still be a need.

Still, I am keen for this future of ease of production. To many times I have seen the larger post houses take advantage of smaller independent film makers.  Film makers are very passionate and are easily convinced they need many deliverables, they simply don’t need but end up paying 50-100K more to obtain.