Category Archives: VOD
From Beet.tv – KIT Digital Analyst Alan Wolk: The State Of TV Everywhere Is At An Impasse
This is the second of three interviews Alan Wolk did during Beet Retreat 2013 Wolk notes “As an indication of how fast the industry is moving, although we filmed this about 3 weeks ago, in the intervening period, Nielsen announced that they would soon begin counting views on iPads, Xboxes and other non-TV devices. Since that was the crux of the network’s objections to TV Everywhere (the fact that they’d lose ad revenue when people watched remotely on a iPad) it would seem to give a green light for a renewed push. One that may have the full cooperation of the networks, or at least their tacit blessing.” Read the rest at Beet.tv
From RapidTV News: KIT digital Delivers Video On Demand on Windows 8
KIT digital has launched a new app for Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system that will enable viewers to access the 4oD video-on-demand (VOD) service. The UK’s fourth largest broadcaster says that it commissioned KIT digital for its experience and knowledge of the 4oD architecture to develop the new app, which was the first UK VOD app to be made available on Windows 8. KIT digital had already developed a similar app for the Xbox 360. “Channel 4 recognises that its audience expects to be able to access its programmes on the platform of their choice, at the time of their choice,” explained Mark Christie, chief technology officer of KIT digital… READ THE REST AT RAPID IPTV NEWS
Talking TV On TV: KIT’s Alan Wolk on The Brian Lehrer Show
KIT’s Global Lead Analyst Alan Wolk appeared on the Brian Lehrer Show last week along with Lost Remote blogger Natan Edelsburg and Tampa Bay Times TV critic Eric Deggens. Topics included the reaction to Netflix House of Cards, Netflix business model and the general future of television. The clip starts at 30 minutes and 30 seconds into the show.
The TV Business: A Primer For The Uninformed
It’s a relentless drumbeat: the TV industry is dead. It’s just like the music industry. 20somethings are avoiding the cord. I want HBO a la carte. YouTube will kill cable. The TV industry is dead. And yet, if there’s a common thread to all these articles and blog posts, it’s that so many of the people writing them have a limited idea of how the television industry actually works, particularly from a business perspective. So here’s a little primer on how the US television industry works (there are significant difference in other countries), just to clear the air. The Players: This is step one – knowing who is who and what their relationships are. We are going to look at the 7 key players, circa 2013: The Networks, The MVPDs, The Premium Networks, The OTT Networks, Smart TVs, Third Party devices and Social TV. PLAYER #1: The Networks: The networks (ABC, CBS, MTV, et al) provide content and right now, … Continue reading
TV Everywhere Just Got Blown Wide Open: New On Digiday
Charlie Ergun sure knows how to keep things interesting. The Dish CEO poked his finger in the eye of the TV networks last year with his ad-skipping Hopper device. He just jabbed them again when he introduced the SlingHopper at CES — and blew TV Everywhere wide open. READ THE REST ON DIGIDAY.COM
From Beet.tv: KIT Digital Turns Video Ads Into Retail Experience With Ad Locker
KIT’s Alan Wolk was interviewed at the 2nd Screen Summit at CES by Beet.tv’s Megan O’Neill LAS VEGAS — As second screen technology continues to evolve, consumer desire for the second screen experience is on the rise and video software and services company KIT Digital is at the forefront of this evolution. At the 2nd Screen Summit at CES we had the opportunity to talk with KIT Digital’s Global Lead Analyst, Alan Wolk, to find out what the company has in store for the coming year. In our video interview, Wolk discusses a Windows 8 app, which KIT Digital recently created for 4oD, channel 4 in the UK, and is “already one of the more popular apps on the Windows Store.” Wolk also told us about updates to KIT’s Social Program Guide, a white label solution enabling cable television providers to offer subscribers a second screen experience. Talk explains that KIT is prepared to launch a major update which is … Continue reading
The TV Industry Is Alive and Well: New @ Digiday
I have a new article about the TV industry up at Digiday this week, explaining why the business is currently more analogous to the pre-iPhone mobile phone industry than to the post-Napster music industry. It’s a relentless drumbeat: The TV industry is dead, 20-somethings are cutting the cord. They want HBO; YouTube will kill cable. Not so fast. The pay-TV industry is not that easy to dismantle. That’s largely because the business dynamics make it a pretty tough beast to slay.Let’s start with the giant bundles of channels you’re forced to take as part of your pay-TV package. READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY
Apple’s iTunes Problem
Apple does a lot of things right, but iTunes video isn’t one of them. I’ve rarely had a smooth experience with the service, and my recent experience shows they’ve not gotten any better. With Hurricane Sandy approaching, I decided to rent Casablanca after my kids noted they hadn’t seen it. So I downloaded it to my laptop, as I’m able to plug that directly into my FIOS router and get a faster connection. All good… until I decided I wanted to watch it on my iPad. I plugged the iPad into the laptop, opened up iTunes and dragged the unwatched movie into the iPad line-up. It showed up on iTunes, but when I unplugged the iPad, the movie did not show up. Thinking there might be some kind of WiFi connection needed to make the transfer, I logged both the iPad and the laptop onto my iPhone’s hotspot (we had no power and thus no wi-fi at that point.) Success … Continue reading
Breaking Through
As anyone who has ever turned on a television lately can attest, the main pain point in the viewing experience is navigating the increasingly Kafka-esque series of screens that pop up to prevent you from finding whatever it is you are looking for. So it’s baffling that so many in the adtech industry seem to think that the amorphous entity known as “social TV” is the savior we’ve all been waiting for, the One True Path to improving the viewing experience. (To their credit, those actually in the TV industry seem less easily duped.) As a founding member of the 2nd Screen Society who spends most of his days studying the industry and applying that knowledge to (shameless plug) KIT’s award-winning Social Program Guide product, here’s my somewhat educated take on what’s going on right now. Discovery Is The Key Use Case For Any “Social” Data: Let’s start with the fairly safe assumption that the average TV viewer’s initial concern is finding something to watch. That means … Continue reading
IBC Retrospective: KIT’s Double Whammy
KIT digital walked away from IBC with an unbeaten record, winning both the IBC Innovation Award and the CSI (Cable and Satellite International) Award. The XBox app that KIT created for Channel 4’s 4oD video-on-demand service received the prestigious IBC Innovation Award on Sunday night. The app app extends 4oD to the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and leverages the Xbox Kinect’s Voice andNatural User Interfaces, allowing users to browse and choose video content using intuitive gesture and voice control. On Friday, our white label Social Program Guide product beat out three other finalists to garner the CSI Award for Best Social TV Technology, Service or Application. The Social Program Guide or SPG is a second screen app that is a mash-up of an EPG and a remote control with an overlay of social functionality. Because the product is owned by the network operator, the SPG provides the unique ability to change the channel directly from the app, so that users can … Continue reading
KIT digital’s Social Program Guide Shortlisted for the CSI Awards
We are proud to announce that KIT digital’s Social Program Guide (SPG) has been shortlisted for the CSI Awards in the Best Social TV technology, service or application category. The SPG is a white label, second screen solution for network operators that is essentially a mash-up of the remote control and the electronic program guide, with an overlay of social functionality to aid in the discovery process. This allows viewers to enjoy a full range of social TV functions, as well as change the channel, all through a single intuitive interface. Served through KIT digital’s Cosmos Video Platform, the SPG also boasts support for cloud-based DVR functionality, seamless VOD store integration, and multiple e-commerce models and ad serving for advanced content monetization. The SPG was introduced to critical acclaim at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters show. We are especially pleased to be shortlisted this year as it marks the 10th anniversary of the CSI awards which were first launched … Continue reading
Apple TV Is Going To Be Software, Not Hardware
Back in January, we predicted that an Apple TV would be sold like an iPhone, via a proprietary deal with a select MVPD, who’d offer their subscribers an iPhone-like discount on the beautiful new box for a two-year engagement. So now I’m invoking Clause 34.2.A of the 2007 Addendum to the 2005 International Internet Code* to take that back. Sort of. I still think Apple is still going to offer someone a proprietary deal for its product similar to the one described above. Only the product is not going to be a TV set, but rather software that will put a beautiful new interface on the TV you already own. There’s no need for Apple to build a TV: the ones we already have work really well. They’re dumb terminals. There’s not a whole lot of clamoring for improvement on the size and shape of the screen or the quality of the HD display. (Compare that to the cell phone market … Continue reading
Why #NBCFail Is #Doomed
This article originally ran on Digiday It sure sucks to be NBC this week. The Peacock Network is at the center of yet another Twitter-centric firestorm around a relatively minor First World Problem that’s got the cable-free utopians in yet another uproar. Granted, not showing the opening ceremony in real time online or on Bravo was a bit of a miscalculation. But it’s certainly not the disaster of apocalyptic proportion the Occupy TV types are making it out to be. It was a business decision. And while I get that no one else you graduated from Vassar with has cable, between 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans do, so NBC really isn’t all that worried about the 2 percent to 5 percent that don’t. No matter how much you tweet about it. They (and the rest of the TV industry) actually do get that change is coming. It’s just that right now, it’s not profitable for them to radically … Continue reading
2nd Screen Rising
While Google’s recent announcement of details around their Great Kansas City TV Adventure raised all sorts of questions about both their eventual intentions and the viability of their current ones, one crucial detail got lost in the shuffle. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Google is planning on giving every new subscriber to their pay-TV service an Android-based tablet to use as a remote control. That’s a development we’ve been predicting for a while now, but Google’s announcement moves the timeline up. A tablet as a remote control opens the door for all kinds of 2nd screen apps, particularly one that’s controlled by the MVPD themselves. (Full disclosure: our KIT Social Program Guide app is a white label app that does exactly that: give control of the 2nd screen app and all the resulting data to the MVPD.) By putting a tablet directly into consumers hands and telling them to use it as a remote control, Google is all but ensuring the rapid ascension … Continue reading
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television from Alan Wolk
Lessons From Netflix
While it’s a given that Netflix’s runaway success as an online streaming service took everyone (including Reed Hastings) by surprise, I’d like to offer up a few reasons why consumers are so enamored of Netflix. First off, it just works. The UI is very well designed and has a real indie film theater vibe. Recommendations are sorted by quirky categories, but there are enough of them that it works as both a discovery engine (when I have no idea what I want to watch) and as a recommendation engine (when I do.) It’s easy to search for movies and TV shows, and just as easy to watch them. That may not seem like such a big deal at first, but the fact that there’s no Buy or Rent option, no HD or SD choice, makes the whole experience feel more like watching a cable channel than watching VOD. And if you’ve ever had to wade through the VOD offerings of … Continue reading
E-TV in the Age of Personalization
Adland has long dreamed of a world where viewers sat in front of their television sets, buying everything from Anacin to Zest with a single click of the remote. They’ve even named it “Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater” after a hypothetical situation where viewers would be able to click to buy the garment the moment they saw it on the Friends star. Only that’s never going to happen. For the Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater experience to be viable, it needs to truly be one-click, or it becomes too distracting and takes the viewer away from the show, something the actual viewer regards as a negative outcome. And the fact of the matter is that very few products– impulse purchases or otherwise– fall into that category. There are always decisions to be made: what color? what size? where do you want it shipped? do you want it sent overnight? And by the time you’ve made those decisions, Chandler’s already asked Monica to marry him, and … Continue reading
Content Distribution- Where Are We Going? That Is The Question.
I wanted to introduce Laura Frankel, the newest contributor to The Monitor. Laura comes to us via Sezmi and now heads up our Content Strategy and Programming Department. Laura is a respected industry veteran who helped launch Animal Planet and numerous other Discovery Networks properties. She will be providing us with her unique perspective on the content site of the business. — Alan I thought that for my first post with the Monitor that I would just do a little piece on how far we have come with content distribution in the past 35 years totally from my perspective. Nothing fancy… you will find that my style is very conversational and that I don’t take myself seriously at all. I am just grateful to still be in the content space and having a blast as the rules keep changing and the content owners keep trying to grow their margins. I was just reminiscing and remembering my childhood when there were … Continue reading
An End To Bandwidth Caps?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether cable companies are “acting improperly” by using bandwidth caps to “quash nascent competition from online video.” Depending on how this plays out (and it will take several years to play out and likely require a Supreme Court decision) this could significantly change the industry: without some sort of government action there’s no way any virtual MSO could take off: the cable companies and telcos (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner, FIOS et. al.) provide internet service (and the wires that bring the internet) to a huge percentage of the US population – estimates are somewhere between 75 and 90%. As we discussed here last week, the ability to impose bandwidth caps allows cable companies and telcos to effectively shut down any internet-based MSO by making it prohibitively expensive to watch online video from another provider. Especially since subscribers to their double and triple play packages (TV + Broadband … Continue reading
Alan Wolk on The Real Story At Apple’s WWDC
Apple made a number of noteworthy announcements at today’s WWDC, but the one that’s of most interest to the TV industry is the fact that the newest OS, dubbed Mountain Lion, will have AirPlay enabled for laptops and desktops, not just iPhones and iPads. AirPlay is Apple’s software solution for streaming video from your device to your TV set using the $99 Apple TV box. Enabling it on all devices, while not unexpected, is still a huge breakthrough. That’s because most people don’t have iPads. A fact that’s easy to forget if you are in the industry and surrounded by people who do. (We call that “NASCAR Blindness” after the ad industry’s inability to recognize the huge fan base NASCAR had accrued because no one on Madison Avenue actually knew someone who admitted to liking NASCAR.) Most people don’t have iPhones either, and neither iOS device has a whole lot of storage. But laptops and desktops? They are plentiful. And … Continue reading
The Orange Milk Crate: Musings on the Rapid Shift in Power in Retail and TV
A few weeks ago, I set out to buy an orange plastic milk crate to use as a newspaper recycling bin, so, like many consumers these days, I went online to search for one via Google. Looking back, I realized that my decision reflected a real sea change in consumer behavior that involved a couple of unique decisions along the way. Pre-internet, I would have walked into a store like Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond and chosen from among their selection of plastic milk crates. If I was really committed to finding an orange one, I would have continued my search by roaming from store to store. The amount of time and money I spent on my search would be directly correlative to the degree to which I wanted an orange milk crate. Nowadays, that paradigm is reversed. It’s easy enough to find an orange milk crate online. My key decision has now changed to “does the price exceed my … Continue reading
The Convergence Conundrum
Verizon’s FIOS TV service announced a rate hike this week, which coincides with their announcement at The Cable Show that they were going to be rolling out a mobile video app called Viewdini, which searches through content from Netflix, Comcast, Time Warner and others (but not FIOS, interestingly enough. At least not yet.) The app allows you to look for a particular show or movie, find it and then stream it to your mobile device. This comes on the heels of the telco’s recently confirmation that they are done with FIOS build-out for now, and are concentrating instead on fill-in: gaining additional customers in areas where they already have a presence. All of which leads industry insiders to wonder: is Verizon looking to sell FIOS? While the service is widely regarded as the Neiman Marcus of cable service, with new fiber optic cable and truly “blazing fast” internet, it’s been very, very expensive for Verizon to build: it can take … Continue reading
Companion Devices: Roku vs Apple TV
One of the more interesting side effects of the rapid growth of Netflix and other OTT services is the equally rapid growth of devices made specifically for watching OTT services on your big screen TV. Roku is the biggest indie player, followed by Boxee. Roku gets less PR than Boxee, which seems to be constantly adjusting what exactly it is they do, while Roku has remained a straight up connection device. I have owned a Roku device for about six months now and there’s a lot to recommend about it: it’s cheap (around $50 for the entry level) small (about the size of my fist) and has an impressive array of big league content options: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBOGO – plus a number of interesting smaller channels like the TED conferences and Crackle. In addition, there are dozens of minor league channels, most of which feel like a small step above local access– not a whole lot of production value, … Continue reading
Multiple Screens, Multiple Personalities
We spend a lot of time thinking about how people watch TV now, how they’ll watch it in the future and what the best way is to get them to watch more of it. One of the questions that we wrestle with, as a global entity, is how much regional preferences play into the equation. For instance, while Americans and Europeans take the iPad for granted, local import taxes can triple the price for viewers in other areas, who turn to Xoom and other Android devices. We’re also cognizant of the different habits of Western viewers who grew up with “57 channels and nothing on” and those viewers who grew up with a single, state-supported station. Just to give you an idea of how personal the viewing experience is, I asked three KIT digital employees from different parts of the world, to write about their own personal preferences. As you’ll learn below, they each have a unique pattern of where, … Continue reading
It’s A Hit: Press Around Our New KIT Social Program Guide
We’ve been getting a lot of great press around our new Social Program Guide and wanted to share some highlights. Lost Remote, the white-hot Social TV site, was first out of the box with a lengthy article by lead writer Natan Edelsburg, who cited the ability to instantly see the which friends are watching which shows as his favorite feature. Beet.tv, whose Andy Plesser has made a name for himself as the tech world’s leading interviewer, filmed a great in-depth with KIT Global COO Alex Blum, where they discussed the social program guide and KIT near term roadmap. Mari Silbey reviewed the app for ZatzNotFunny, the ultimate TV industry insider blog. Silbey, formerly Chief Blogger at Motorola, was impressed by the SPG’s ability to provide unique accounts for each family members and the option to limit social activity to a companion second screen device. To see it in action, check out our demo video. For more details, visit our Social … Continue reading
KIT digital working on 11 Latin American TV Projects
This article, by Phil Anderson, originally ran in Business News Americas Video management software provider KIT digital expects to end 1H13 with 11 commercially active OTT or IPTV projects in Latin America, executives told BNamericas. “We have 10 large infrastructure projects going on now, apart from [already active] Telecom Argentina,” said Charlie Deane, KIT digital’s OTT solutions director for Spanish-speaking markets. “Some are very advanced, already in internal beta-testing today. There are others that are going live in 2-3 months, and others for which we’re discussing terms, with no agreements finalized yet. We can expect them to be happening by year-end or in the first and second quarters next year.” The company established its client footprint in the region during 2011, gaining such names as The Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (ZNS Network), Merville Lynch Productions, Telecom Argentina (NYSE: TEO), Clarín, Hosanna Visión, Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), Victory in Christ Ministry … Continue reading
Back To The Future
So Pandora’s Box creaked open yesterday and out flew HD digital antennas, this time in the form of Aereo, a legally tenuous startup funded by the likes of Barry Diller. Aereo (né BamBoom) offers consumers two lightweight mini-antennas (they’re about the size of a dime and look like doll-sized Silly Bandz bracelets.) With your antennas, Aereo gives you access to all the broadcast channels in your area (all the major networks) and a cloud-based DVR that holds 40 hours of programming (you can even upload from both antennas simultaneously.) For potential cord-cutters, this is huge news. Access to live news and sports has long been the main thing keeping viewers tied to a pay TV provider. With Aereo, they’ll get news and weather. For the most part, anyway. Broadcast-only means no cable networks like ESPN and CNN. But ESPN and CNN have web-based apps that feature live TV. And along with popular cable staples like HBO, Showtime, AMC, USA , … Continue reading
The VOD Wars
While social TV seems to be garnering the bulk of the buzz these days, the real action is happening in Video on Demand or VOD. VOD was once treated as the ugly stepsister of the industry, with most operators regarding it as a promotional vehicle (hence the proliferation of 5-minute “Making of X” videos on most On Demand channels.) Purchasing broadcast rights from the studios was costly, VOD technology was very unstable and prone to mid-broadcast meltdowns, and, with the ubiquity of DVD rental services, there was very little demand for On Demand. Until, of course, there was. Reed Hasting and his board seem just as stunned as the rest of the industry by the rapid growth of Netflix streaming video. The fact that consumers, a notoriously technophobic lot, would actually figure out how to hook up a third-party device (laptops, PlayStations, Roku boxes and the like) and use them to stream movies over WiFi to their television sets was … Continue reading