Category: Streaming and Multi-Media

TurnHere – Short Films about Cool places

TurnHere.com ~ The video insiders guide to neighborhoods across the world
My good friend Paul is featured pointing out all of the new buildings going up in the area. Nice..!

The site concept is interesting. I am glad to see that niche video content sites are popping up (as opposed to YouTube and Google Video).

I have a couple of problems with how it is built such as there isn’t a search box (I want to see all of the Brooklyn films but could find no way to do it). There is no way to leave comments or otherwise say that I like any particular video. Also, this might be a personal bias but I think there is too much Flash used. It is fine to present the videos in Flash but why the rest of the site? Last, I wish they would give me an RSS feed with MPEG-4 videos so I can watch on my new Mini hooked up to my TV.

Overall though, I love it.. Good content!

Mark Cuban calls bullshit, bullshit

Emmy Advanced Media – Television Business News: Cuban Likes Obesity
Shelly Palmer tells us about Mark Cuban calling out Disney’s Preston Padden in obvious over exaggeration..

From the post:
There aren’t many of us who could call bulls__t on Preston Padden–at least not in front of a room full of press and politicos. However, Mark Cuban, CEO of HDNet and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, did it twice in 10 minutes at the Consumer Electronics Association’s 2006 Entertainment Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. Preston Padden, executive vice president-government relations, The Walt Disney Company, was trying to tell the audience that there had been over six million illegal downloads of Disney’s animated hit movie, “The Incredibles.” Mark wasn’t buying it. “I call bulls__t!” he said, with no small degree of effervescence in his voice. “Maybe if you said ‘Star Wars,’ but ‘The Incredibles’? No way!!!”

“HBO busted me for using bittorrent”

Gen Kanai weblog: “HBO busted me for using bittorrent”
HBO is going after users for downloading content using BitTorrent. Here are some stories, letters and so on..

HBO could simply start doing things like simultaneous release (or at least shorten the time), offer it through iTunes and the like and maybe, perhaps just embrace the BitTorrent phenomena and offer access to a good high quality seed for 1 or 2 dollars. Would be cheaper than the lawyers..

I/ON TV

People With Ideas – Blog Archive – 10-foot “Potato” UI fun
The guys at Open Network Television are hard at work on more great features for their video aggregator I/ON. This time it is a television interface for those of us with Mini’s or Windows Media Center’s. I can’t wait to try it out on my Mini as STB and hope to have some time at some time in the future to start hacking around with the source.

Cingular jumps on the VOD bandwagon

PDAStreet: News: Cingular Debuts Video-on-Demand Service
More mobile networks launching VOD. You probably know my feelings about these services by now..

I love how most articles about this have the obligatory statement about consumers less than enthusiastic response:
“But are consumers ready to watch mobile video and TV on their small handset screens? According to a new RBC Capital Markets survey of 1,001 Americans, perhaps they aren’t. The RBC study found that three-quarters of those surveyed weren’t interested in watching TV programs or movies on their mobile device, let alone using a cell phone for music even.”

Even better is the confusion over plans and pricing:
“It is not to be confused with Cingular’s MobiTV-run television offering, which delivers live television broadcasts over the operator’s standard 2.5G or EDGE network – 70 to 135kbps. MobiTV costs $9.99 per month and requires a data plan, ranging in price from $4.99 for 1 MB to $19.99 unlimited.

The new service is free to Cingular customers with an unlimited $19.99 per month Broadband Connect plan, which also includes all-you-can-eat messaging and image sharing. As a premium offering, the HBO channel costs an extra $4.99 per month.”

Mobile Games Tied with Live TV

Startup to Wed Mobile Games, Live TV Shows – Yahoo! News
Very interesting:
AirPlay Network Inc. said it will introduce a lineup of cell phone games tied to live television broadcasts. While watching TV, subscribers could use their cell phones to compete against others in “real time” by predicting plays in sports, choosing winners on reality TV shows or picking answers on game shows.

‘The Fourth Screen’ Mobile Media Festival

The4thScreen.com :: global mobile media festival
This festival looks very interesting. They are pushing people to think about the phone in a different way, not just as a television that is carried in your pocket as it seems the providers are pushing for:
‘The Fourth Screen’ Global Mobile Media Festival will focus on the mobile phone as an emerging social, cultural and technological phenomenon.
We invite artists, technologists, and other creative thinkers to submit creations, inventions and concepts in two categories:
1/ moving images: videos made with mobile phone, movies, animation and games intended for mobile delivery
2/ wise technologies: software art, software and hardware that proposes new uses for mobile multimedia communication, applications that have positive cultural, social and economic impact in diverse cultures

My New (old) STB

This is a completion of a post that I started in March of 2006:

Then:
So.. I bought a shiny new Intel Mac Mini solely for use as a set top box. First of all, I love it! Second, a lot of work is needed for this to compete with TiVo, MyTH or even Windows Media Center.

So here is what I have, 1 Dual Core Mac Mini with SuperDrive and a great EyeTV tuner/PVR device…

Now: What makes this truly extraordinary (at least in disruption of the pattern of my life):
At some point last year, the cable was unhooked and never got hooked up again (except for about 15 minutes during the 2008 election). This isn’t to say that I don’t watch TV anymore, I do, I watch Heroes, Lost, ER and a bunch of movies. The difference is that I watch it on my terms, not the terms of the networks. I get none of this TV from regular cable, instead I watch these shows through their respective websites (NBC, ABC) or through Hulu and now NetFlix’s online on-demand service (which is soooooooo much better than DVDs via mail as I don’t know what I want to watch next week today).

No longer do I come home and zone out to reruns. No longer to I switch on the TV just to have something to do..

A couple of additional thoughts:
I am pretty sure that scheduled TV will always have a place and people will always want programming in that form. I don’t think TV will go away (at least any time soon). I do think that (if the cable industry doesn’t buy our government) that it will eventually subsumed into the internet (despite all of the fear mongering about clogging the tubes).