FiberGeneration

DailyMotion Goes Soccer 2.0

French video sharing site DailyMotion is bidding for the French Soccer Premier League TV broadcast rights (actually, the VOD online magazine part) for seasons 2008 to 2012. The startup competes against medias giants Canal+, TF1 and France Télévisions, TV channels M6, Eurosport, and Direct8, but also against telcos Orange and SFR.
No matter the final decision by the League, the fact that a WebTV platform is offering its services shows how things are moving fast. Industry shake-up, you said ?...

See here for more details (link in french).

Zattoo : Say Hello To The TV Of The 21st Century

I'm currently testing the new Zattoo Beta application. Just blazingly simple.
Says the US startup' website homepage : "Zattoo is live TV on your PC - it's the football game as you chat, the news as you email, and your favorite soap as you pay your bills. Zattoo is also TV when you don't have a TV - it's the channels you want, when you want, where you want.".

Thanks to Zattoo, I'm relieved now : I'll be able to watch Roland Garros and The Tour de France whilst "working" at the office next summer. Pretty cool, huh ?

Seriously speaking, Zattoo is the application lots of us were waiting for since a while : an easy way to watch free TV live channels on our computers.
Now, the question is : how will Zattoo make money, provided that the software is supposed to be free of charge ? The answer may be in the Partners page :

Partners

Zattoo's customers are end users: people who appreciate high-quality, quick-start, long-play video from multiple channels available on one browser. Broadcasters and advertisers are our business partners.
Broadcasters

The ability of broadcasters to reach large audiences via the Internet has until now been limited by the unfavorable economics of Unicast, whereby for each additional audience member a broadcaster has had to incur additional cost. Zattoo solves this problem with our peer-to-peer distribution architecture, which allows broadcasters to reach ten times the audience with no additional infrastructure investment. For the cost of serving 10,000 users with Unicast, broadcasters can now serve 100,000 users with Zattoo.
Zattoo provides broadcasters with compelling competitive advantages beyond reducing operating cost. Zattoo gives broadcasters the technology to deliver streaming with vastly increased quality, reliability and unmatched video smoothness. Furthermore, Zattoo enriches the user experience by integrating compelling multimedia elements, thus making the Zattoo experience stickier than traditional TV.

Contact: Niklas Brambring, Content Acquisition Manager (nick@zattoo.com)
Advertisers

Zattoo enables advertisers to leverage the most successful web-based advertising methods in combination with the best attributes of broadcast television "spots" by supporting banner ads, targeted text ads and video clips. Advertisers understand the inherent strengths and value propositions of each method and can make an educated investment to reach specific audiences. Furthermore, advertisements can be sourced from ad specialists and integrated without modification, leveraging de facto industry standards.

So, correct me if I'm wrong : Zattoo gets (or will get) revenues from both the channels broadcasters and the advertisers. I understand the earlier, but don't get the later one yet : does that mean we will experience complementary ads during the live program ? Such as embedded contextual advertising, for instance.
Think about the combination of a live transcription system (used in live captionning) together with customized/localized advertising content : you're watching the latest '24' episode (well, once the writers' s strike will be over ;-), Jack Bauer is driving the brand new Ford SUV, and boom, you see a beautiful ad banner urging you to call your local Ford dealer... That is the power of TV thru Internet : UCC "User Customized Content", as opposed to the UGC User Generated Content.

The question is : could Zattoo be the Next Big Thing ? When it's about watching live TV on a PC, probably yes. Is that what the people want (watching live TV on a PC), I don't know. On the one hand, some want a PC on their TV, on the other hand some want TV on their PC. The right answer is called something like "convergence", isn't ?
So, what do I Average Joe want ? I want Zattoo on the iPhone. I have VOD already (iTunes, YouTube), now I'd like to get live streaming too. Because I'd like to be able to watch Roland Garros live whilst Im' sitting in a High-Speed Train.

Last thing on Zattoo before a more deeper review some time later : the folks there seem to care about their users. As an example, I've received the invitation to download the beta in french, although the company is based in the US (as far as I understood on the 'About' page). The set-up is quite fast and simple too. Pretty neat stuff, Folks ! Keep going ;-)

To visit Zattoo : here.

This Is What WebTV Is All About

The CES big circus has just started. If you can't make it to Las Vegas, you can still attend the show and get the whole flavor of it... on the Web.
See here, here, and here. Lesson : WebTV is the future. And the present, too, should you have a broadband access.

Ed. note : for a full coverage of CES'08, Robert Scoble has the list.

Post-Scriptum : I wonder if the folks at the Optical Society Of America are going to offer the live coverage of the forthcoming OFC-NFOEC exhibition in San Diego next month.

Festival Européen Des 4 Ecrans, Première

From tomorrow Thursday till Saturday, the 4 Screens European Festival is for European productions (reportages, reality-inspired fiction, documentaries and docu-dramas) that deal with contemporary society and real-life .
Interesting part : the Internet and Mobile competitions. The (Information) World is changing...
To attend the Festival from without leaving home (or your desk ;-) : DailyMotion here.

A New Star Is Born (?)

Check this brand new internetTV startup, live since a couple of hours. No need for huge fundings anymore. Good luck, Folks !

(Fake) Steve Jobs talks about the WebTV revolution

The famous/must-read/sometimes-hilarious/always-right-but-on-portugal-matters/almost-as-good-as-the-real-one Fake Steve Jobs gets it on the forthcoming revolution which will change the Television industry for ever.

Kazados.tv : not the first WebTV for Teens (unfortunately)

French TV production firm 2T Productions (well, the site still under construction as of today 05/25    26/07) is to launch kazados.tv its first television channel next week. As the iCTO, I have had the chance to participate to the adventure for a while. Kazados.tv is supposed to be the very first InternetTV station for Teenagers, made by Teenagers.

When I started working with 2T Productions as advisor in late January this year, the WebTV or InternetTV * world was still in its infancy. Kazados was one the of very few projects aimed at real TV **  experience : live streaming, as opposed to the classic progressive download technic used by the YouTubes, the vPods, and the likes. Launch your web browser, go to kazados.tv, and boom, you watch TV. You get the idea.

Based on a UGC User-Generated-Content concept, Kazados is also run by seasoned medias professionals, from producers to directors and journalists, all featuring 10 to 20 years of presence in the Television/Radio/Press industry. That means the audience will be watching contents which will be moderated by people used to create and broadcast TV programs, whilst the teens willing to create their own programs will get help from professional journalists and producers. Doesn't look like usual YouTube stuff, right ?...

We spent most of February and March to find out the best solution for the technical infrastructure : basically speaking, 2T is a ' Content ' provider, not a Web hosting/broadcasting platform.
So, we have  investigated several options, from creating 2T's own infrastructure from scratch to calling on established firms - ooops, read : existing startups - offering  Video Publishing platform and services. The first option wasn't the ideal one for a company a) based in France and b) targeting a french speaking audience : investors putting money into the so-called Web 2.0 arena are mostly based in the US, and it's hard to convince them with a french-only project. Plus, I  prefer integrate an existing solution rather than reinventing the wheel (at least as long it's not about creating a true disruptive proposition  disruption ;-)

So, 2T decided to go for the second option : collaborate with an existing firm. Enter ipercast, a multimedia services provider based in Paris, vPod, the famous startup lead by Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, Gilles Babinet' Eyeka, and a few other smaller players. Issue #1 : those very talented and smart guys still didn't get it. They all offer Progressive Download and/or VOD Video-On-Demand services, whilst Kazados is a real television channel, meaning it's broadcasting a live video stream. On top, kazados.tv is a full-Flash website, featuring Flash video files. Hosting it onto their respective platforms wasn't an easy task, requiring too much development work for their sw teams in regards of the tight schedule.

In the meantime, we took a look outside the french borders. Democracy was an interesting option, but the folks out there seemed to be too busy to answer my calls properly. Nevertheless, the concept is interesting. Then came Joost, which we couldn't test on time for the launch of kazados.tv next week. Veodia, which is an outstanding platform for real professionals, was just starting when we had to take a decision, and Mogulus, which seems to be the perfect solution to test new online TV concepts, was operating in private beta.

Finally, at the end of April, 2T decided to partner with the Britany-based TV production firm VO-Productions, which do internetTV since a while. That's why I'm no longer in charge of the launch of kazados.tv, by the way : most of the time, merging two projects together means you need only one project manager. In the business, 1 plus 1 often equals 1 ;-)
 
However, over the last month the landscape has changed quite dramatically. InternetTV and UGC become mainstream, see the numerous recent announcements. Justin.tv is the hot stuff at the moment. Always surprising to see what teenagers are watching on television, no matter it's on the Net or not !
 
Last, I wish kazados.tv would have been made of mixercast, vPod, and Joost for all the user interface stuff, Mogulus for the features set, and Veodia for the flexibility.
I also wish someone will soon come with a solution for live  text caption for disabled people : those among the population who can't hear properly can't certainly not jump on the WebTV bandwagon. Plus, once you can insert text caption, you can also insert text translation. See the video below for a better understanding (joke).

More info on Flash Video here and here (Adobe' DevCenter is a  fantastic source for self-training), and video webcasting technologies here.

Chris Tew of WebTVWire does a tremendous job watching the internetTV trends, read for instance " Online Video No Threat to Television says YouTube " here.
Chris has published a very detailled review of Mogulus here.

Another great source of information is Broadcast Yourself Live On The Web: Best Tools To Create Your Own Live Web TV - A Mini-Guide written by Michael Pick of MasterNewMedia : a must read.

* I still don't know how to say, because the two words are in use today to describe the very same thing : watch a TV channel on the Web. See dictionary here for more details, and read the impressive list of internetTV services already available.

** I'm not talking about those RealTV things.


This video contents contains material which can offend some people. DO NOT WATCH IF YOU ARE IN THE OFFICE ;-)