Wine Spectator’s Brightcove channel (http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=151854679) is very serious and focused on wine education (it’s a superior, serious channel with undertones of stuffiness and (yawn) a long finish). The clips drag on forever, really didn’t make me want to drink wine (and let me tell you, it takes something to make me not want to drink wine) and include lots of background noise fluff (birds chirping, goofy sound effects, etc.).
Serious Eats’ Sommelier To Go Brightcove channel (http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=315980337) is a casual, light-hearted channel that doesn’t add cheesy (hah!) sound effects, but instead interviewed a restaurant owner in his pizza shop about pairing wines with pizza. The interview was casual and the interviewee didn’t hesitate to correct the interviewer and vice versa (it was a fresh and sassy little interview, with notes of earthy realism and a smooth, yet casual, finish). The shots were loose and sometimes a little jerky, but not as annoying as that makes it sound.
So how were the channels? They were geared to very specific audiences which made sense in the context of the channels. Wine Spectator has been around for ages and the magazine has always been for the serious wine aficionados, people who want detailed histories and education on all aspects of the wine. Folks like me that eat a lot of pizza don’t necessarily want this much detail. They want to know which wines are good with pizza.
Both organizations have full-fledged websites and they are leveraging Brightcove to distribute their digital media via the sites as well. Wine Spectator has done a much more seamless job of integrating the video into their existing website and creating a clean UX for site visitors. Serious Eats’ site is set-up to show the latest video and all of the (usually worthless) comments posted by Gosh Knows Who (<-- actual person, I think he's Swedish). This makes it much more difficult to browse their video content. Starting at Brightcove’s site and browsing through Serious Eats videos from there is actually a better way to dig around in Serous Eats’ video library.
Summary you ask? Wine Spectator utilizes Brightcove more effectively and appeals to a very specific audience. This is fine –until they decide they need to grow their customer base, but that's a problem for marketing, not Brightcove. Serious Eats utilizes the video better (much wider appeal without very much, if any, modification needed to their video style/format), but they need to work on website integration with Brightcove.
Hmmm… suddenly I’m thirsty.
Bruce Rosenblum of Warner Bros. Television Group stated that his company needs to be careful that they “don’t allow the growth of new business models to have a negative impact on the downstream value of the content without offsetting the lost revenue.” Um, hello, this is basic product cannibalization and is something that businesses have been successfully dealing with for quite some time. Concerns that $1.99 downloads on iTunes will impact DVD sales are valid, but isn’t the real issue DRM? Shouldn’t he be more concerned about illegal distribution that generates no revenue versus balancing increased download and streaming media sales revenue with potential lost revenue from other sources?
Potential is of course a key word in this statement, as making a movie available for streaming or download does not automatically nix any chance that the customer will also buy a copy of the DVD. Currently, customers will see a movie at the theater and then buy a copy of the DVD. Why wouldn’t customers still do the same after streaming a copy of the movie? For that matter, who says they won’t see the movie in the theater, then pay-to-stream it a few months later, then still buy the DVD six months after initial release? Streaming media fits perfectly into their windowing distribution model and continuing to offer extra features on DVDs will continue to drive DVD sales. Furthermore, some additional features could be included in streaming offerings to encourage usage and then “full featured” DVD versions (at a conveniently premium price point) could be offered. Thus, each product offering is provided during a different period and with a different user experience.
Further, as movies are a product with a high initial investment, doesn’t utilizing as many distribution methods as possible increase the company’s odds of turning a profit? While, according to the reading, the largest portion of revenue comes from sales and rentals of DVDs, this doesn’t necessary have to be the case.
Don’t get me started on Jeff Bewkes from Time Warner and his comment that “the biggest audiences for video on demand are on TV screens now and in the future." As has been the case for some time now, movie and television companies seem to be clueless about what their customers want and will pay for (ahem, movies initially boycotting the television industry, fighting against proliferation of VCRs and TiVo, etc.). Now that broadband penetration is considered a key economic indicator and its reach is expanding exponentially, how can television and movie execs still overlook streaming media as a viable and desirable distribution method?
This week, I wanted to go with a “sure bet” when reviewing media. So, I chose to look at QT and started at the Apple site to find media. As movie trailers have been using QT for a while, I thought I’d find some great examples to discuss. I chose the Paramount Pictures trailer for Hot Rod, located at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/hotrod/hd/.
Although I could only get the link to the HD files to work, since I was on a T1 line, I thought I’d still be able to view the media without issue. I ran through all of the HD versions (1080p, 720p, and 480p) and all of these files caught up to the buffer and paused or re-started the file every time this happened – incredibly annoying.
So, I switched to the Harry Potter trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/harrypotterandtheorderofthephoenix/. I was able to view both of the non-HD trailers and these made great use of stellar graphics and audio. The first trailer was much stronger and really captured my attention and motivated me to go see the movie. As I dislike going to the theater due to crying babies, teenagers, and cell phones, I usually wait until movies are available on PPV and watch at home.
So, the site makes great use of QT and delivers a quality product, as long as you don’t hit the buffer. For this type of general audience media, I suspect many users do not know enough about viewing media to determine which version to watch on their connection and have to resort to trial and error. This may cause some loss of customers who become frustrated before they figure out which file will play well on their set-up.
However, I assume drawing viewers to see the film at the theater generates more revenue than if they PPV the film, so providing the trailers on-line is a great idea. The trick is advertising the trailers well enough to draw customers to the site where they are located. I suspect iTunes has movie trailers, but I don’t update my iPod that often, so I don't even know if they are provided . I also suspect movie trailers are available at YouTube, but again, not all potential viewers frequent these sites. A great way to get the word out would be a partnership between all movie companies to create a joint site for all trailers – or to work with a well-established movie site, such as IMDB (www.imdb) to add high-quality movie trailers for free (IMDB currently uses Windows Media, QT, and REAL to show trailers and forces you to watch a commercial first. What was supposed to be a Harry Potter trailer on their site, was actually a 30-second clip from an interview with one of the actors, not even the actual trailer as the link claimed, and it crashed my browser three out of the four times that I tried to watch the media).
In a recent interview with Ustream CTO Tim Villanueva, Chris Pirillo and the audience, discuss the Ustream product (“A platform that provides live interactive video for everyone. Anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can use Ustream to broadcast to a global audience.”).
http://chris.pirillo.com/media/category/streaming-media/
However, what I found just as interesting as Pirillo’s calling Ustream “the future of streaming media,” was the format of the Pirillo show. During the live stream, a chat room is set-up and Chris and the guest interact directly with the chat audience. The streaming media feed also provided the chat room feed for those viewing without being part of the chat (also provided in the archived feed). In this interview, the audience provided the majority of the questions, virtually driving the discussion (ha).
This level of audience intervention was particularly interesting to me. It negates the lame, scripted interviews typical of most media formats (including providing the list of questions to guests pre-interview, so their PR folks can craft carefully worded answers – making most traditional interviews altogether worthless).
On the flip side, audience involvement distracted Villanueva at the beginning of the interview, which could be seen as “making it more real” to some viewers or “making it less professional” to others. It also created a scattered line of questioning with no consistent theme and certainly some uninteresting tangential discussions (like whether women dislike it when men shave their heads – sigh). However, the dynamic format certainly is more appealing that a traditional interview.
I’m not sure this format would work for broader subjects though. For a specialized topic, those participating via chat will usually be knowledgeable and interested in the information, thus adding to the conversation most of the time. However, for more general interviews, such as interviews with celebrities or talk shows such as (god forbid) Jerry Springer, the contributions from chat room members will likely be less than valuable. Similarly, the broader this format is adapted, the more likely nuisance participants will engage in the discussion.
So, in summary, what I liked about the stream - interesting format, high degree of audience interaction, quality questions from the audience (mostly), and a highly dynamic format.
To cover all the bases (I do like to follow directions, after all) – Chris needs to train guests not to rock back and forth during the interview – very distracting :). Also, the video format was small and very choppy. In all actuality, I got more out of the interview when I minimized the screen and listened to it in the background while doing other work.
Bottom line – the video stream probably wasn’t necessary as this interview could have been just as effective, perhaps more effective, as an audio only stream.
An April 4, 2007 article on BBC News describes the use of “talking” CCTV cameras which are being deployed across . The cameras are monitored by staff members in a control center who then address people via loudspeaker when they misbehave. In the example, the reporter is told not just to pick-up his trash, but is also directed to the nearest trash bin.
The article with a sample video is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm
So what did I like about the video? Not much.
I chose to stream it via Windows Media (Real was also an option). The initial image was tiny and rather blurry. Locating and buffering the video took almost 20 seconds on a T1 connection and the intro music was annoying at best. As the sound quality was poor, I couldn’t understand the song lyrics and can only assume they were relevant to the story. I also had difficulty understanding what was said over the loudspeaker.
All of my inept attempts to increase the size of the image only resulted in poorer video quality (blocking, increased blurriness) and when the reporter stood up from the bench, the shot felt like the camera operator had swooped the camera instead of merely following the reporter’s motion. When the video showed other videos from the CCTVs, these clips were even more difficult to see.
Ironically, the two times I tried to replay the video, Internet Explorer froze and I was forced to close Explorer, thus losing the draft of my blog entry twice (this version was drafted in Word before posting).
What could be better about this streaming video experience? Everything.
Some notes of interest:
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There are approximately 4.2 million CCTV cameras already in Britain and this initiative is merely adding loudspeakers to the cameras. (Note the population was estimated at 50.4 million in 2005, so this is a camera for every 12 citizens).
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The initiative is being touted by some in government as a “very public, interactive” initiative and "not secret surveillance.”
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There is mention of having school competitions for kids to become the voice of the cameras.
