In this issue

Internet TV.  To schedule or not to schedule? 

The Internet TV industry has something of a split personality. 

1. Is Internet TV the World Wide Web with moving pictures?  Do people sit forward while watching, and hunt for the content they want?  If so they want short clips that give them the information they need and when the clip is finished they will probably go somewhere else. A schedule is somewhat irrelevant in this context.
2. Is this entertainment TV delivered a different way?  If so people sit back while watching and expect longer (30 minutes plus) shows. And when the show is finished you can hold their attention by serving up something relevant next.  If so then the schedule is the key to success.

As long as access to Internet TV is limited to the PC in the study, rather than the TV in the living room, the answer has to be number 1.  But is this how things will stay?  Will the PC move into the lounge as a home entertainment centre?   An on line poll by DivX shows 33% of responders watch downloaded movies on their TV.

When we started working on www.frontier.tv we started getting involved with infrastructure companies in the internet TV industry. They take the view that they are working in the TV industry not the Internet industry.  People approach this from a broadcast TV viewpoint.  So the world revolves around the schedule.

However if you load up Joost (developed by people with an Internet background) there is no schedule.  You choose a program to watch and then you watch it.

Which has it right?

What is a schedule?

If you decide to watch the BBC news channel on the Internet the experience is identical to watching on your TV. There is a program schedule and items come up when they are supposed to.  Not very surprising, news is like that.

On some Internet channels the schedule is shown on the screen alongside the picture.  You can scroll up and down the list.  You can click on any of the programs and watch that show right now.  You can even watch programs 'scheduled' for the future. So the schedule is just a running order to decide what is on your screen when you go onto the station, and  which show follows which if you do nothing. 

Joost seems to follow the standard pattern, a picture and a schedule.  However you soon spot that the schedule is always the same.  Click on to the Sci Fi channel and you will see episode 1 of Total Recall 2007 - every time.  The schedule is not a schedule at all, but just a list of programs.  As the list, even in its present beta stage, includes whole seasons of programs, this is soon going to get out of hand.  It will be interesting to see how they organise things in the future.

What is Internet TV?

When you think about it there are at least three different kinds of TV content.

1. Events where the timing is everything. The Wimbledon tennis final will take place at a certain time and that is when people want to watch.  News channels come under that heading as well. 
2. Series, like 24, where you can see them at any time, but probably in the right order.  If you watch 'Lost' in a random order, the plot won't make any sense at all.  Normal schedules take care of this because they are shown in the right order.
3. Movies  and one-off shows. You watch movies in a random order when you want to.  The scheduling of them is irrelevant, in fact you definitely want to choose when you see them.

So there is going to be more than one type of online TV station with different approaches to organising content. 

News etc

Almost the only mainline TV channels that are mirrored on the Internet are news services such as BBC news. Timing is important and the BBC owns the rights to pretty much everything on it.  So it is a natural.  The US weather channel is another although a tad less gripping. Sports is going to be big as well. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.bloomberg.com/streams/video/LiveBTV200.asxx

Shorter programs and series programs. 

In this area another factor comes in big-time. This is the rights issue.  No series producer gives a TV station world-wide rights, and try figuring out schedules when certain parts of the world cannot see certain shows.  The majority of Internet TV channels that show this sort of material are niche players who own their own content because no-one else is interested or because they make it themselves. 

http://www.frontier.tv
http://www.wwitv.com/ is a good portal site with hundreds of stations

Movies

For movies think Blockbuster rather than BBC 1.  On-line libraries are being set up as I type and they deliver HD quality for downloading and showing on your TV in the living room. 

http://www.jaman.com/
http://www.themoviedownloads.com/
http://www.movielink.com/

The future

Will the PC move into the living room?  I have a PVR at home, you may have sky+.  Let's not forget that these are basically PCs with a special program loaded up.  In the early days of word processing you would go out and purchase a special word processing device, basically a PC with a special program running.  In the end people figured out that a PC would do the same job as well, but also do many other things, so the days of the word processor are gone.  Will the PVR go the same way?  It wouldn't surprise me.  A PC with digital TV card (you can buy a digital TV USB gadget for about £40 now), connected to broadband, would provide

• PVR 
• Internet radio
• web browsing
• downloaded music
• DVD player
• CD player

A couple of good speakers and you can ditch that shelf-load of equipment you have now.  Crank up your broadband, and Internet TV becomes another player along with satellite and digital TV.

Business intelligence

The universe and everything

 It seems Google comes out with some new jaw-dropping product every month.  This month Google earth looks skywards and you can survey the universe from your PC.  Just load up Google earth (http://earth.google.com) and click View-> Switch to sky.  You can move around the universe, zoom in, pick up information boxes about interesting features.  Absolutely amazing.

If you haven't signed up for Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) do it now.  There are billions of galaxies, so many that classifying them is too big a task for any single team.  Now you can help classify them.   Sign up and see galaxies that nobody has looked at before. 

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News from the web

A new video site My Damn Channel launches this month.  What is it all about?  Their own material says, and I quote "...  My Damn Channel produces a diverse array of programming and... blah, blah, blah. Are you still reading this crap? This is the web age. People don’t read anymore."  They have that right.  Basically the site has videos produced by Hollywood professionals but otherwise works a bit like YouTube.  http://mydamnchannel.com/

Meanwhile http://www.thisjustin.com/, launched in February, is closing to be replaced by something more closely branded with the owner's (HBO) brand.

Would you use video to sell cars? http://www.hotswap.com/ thinks so.  And some big-name people are putting their money behind it. 

The thinking person's YouTube is I guess DailyMotion.  http://www.dailymotion.com/  It is buying content from Hollywood production company RDF.

Latest entry into the video on demand field is Auntie. I think more significant is the fact that the BBC News channel is on-air on the internet live. 

Will your next mobile phone be from Google? You might if it were free.

In a very logical move, PayPal might offer financing options.  The new service will be called 'PayPal Pay Later'.

The big deal for preteens these days is Club Penguin (I know, I hadn't heard of it either). http://www.clubpenguin.com/ In any event Disney has just bought it for $350 million.

New word: Cybercondriac.  Someone who searches the web to track down their imaginary symptoms.

I have Vista, and I wish now I had waited for service pack 1 at least.  Well we have to wait until next year. 

High Definition DVD is in limbo while people hold out waiting to see which format (HD DVD or Blue Ray) will win out.  HD DVD has come up with a new twist - internet connectivity.  Connect your DVD player to the Internet to download additional features such as language tracks, or participate in online polls.

Have you ever thought of going on to blogs anonymously and slagging off your competition?  Why not?

A month ago, iLike was just another online music community struggling in a crowded market. Today it is leading the pack because it integrated itself with Facebook.  It is obviously much easier to provide services to an existing community than try and build a community from scratch.  Something to ponder...

Internet radio is in crisis.  A royalty system developed for broadcast radio could kill many fledgling stations. But there is some hope of a deal.

In a triumph for the little guy, German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch won his law suite defending his use of the brand G-Mail in Germany.  He has been using the name for four years for his email service four years before Google launched their gmail product, so 'prior use' wins the day. 

How green is your Apple?  A survey of IT suppliers rates IBM, HP, Sony and Dell at the top, with Apple near the bottom with a derisory score.   

While the Live earth concert's web site was solar powered.

From the silly season department

Souls in the virtual world of Second Life need saving too.

Did you know that if you superimpose a mirror image of Leonardo's Last Supper on top of the original, you get a picture of a templar knight holding a baby. Wow - I had better check that out.  Enough people checking it out crashed web sites associated with the picture. 

An empty can of dog food sells for $305 on Ebay.  Allegedly from Paris Hilton's trash.  Prove it!