IP TV Times

Comparing Sky+ and Virgin Tivo

2012-01-23T20:44:00.001Z

Yeah, yeah, I know. I swore that I wouldn't do it, but it was the red button wot did it.

I paid for Sky Sports online and on Virgin and was still unable to watch Welsh rugby teams play in Europe (without resorting to Justin.tv, of course..), so our home in Wales now has BSkyB TV, along with Sky Sports (and that pesky red button).

So, now I have full on experience of Sky+ and Virgin's Tivo box, so here here are my impressions.

The interfaces are both far from perfect but Sky gets 7/10 and Tivo 3/10. Sky has fewer services and plugins, but everything works seamlessly and is very fast, with a great remote control that works from a good distance (this may seem a minor point but is my single biggest bugbear, click, click...nothing..). The Sky interface is more logical and takes far fewer clicks to achieve anything. The Tivo interface seems to be a cobbled together bunch of services that have nothing to do with each other which take days to load and navigate. The Sky box seems to be on rocket fluid compared to the Tivo interface. I often give up on trying to reach content on Tivo since the process is so painful.

The Tivo remote gets 2/10 and the Sky remote 6/10. The Tivo remote is barking - the buttons are all in the wrong place and are totally illogical. The Sky remote has far too many buttons, but at least there is a logic to the layout and functionality.

The picture quality on Sky gets 9/10 and Tivo 6/10. To be fair, this may be an aspect of my screens, but both are of the same age and I can get HD on the Sky one, but not on the Virgin box; even this notwithstanding, the image quality on Sky is significantly better .

On recording functionality Tivo gets 7/10 and Sky 6/10. The gap here really should be greater since the Tivo box has an additional tuner and can record three channels to Sky's two, but the Tivo box is just hopeless. You can adjust the top and tail time, but then you lose the end of programmes, or you can record three programmes, but then nothing for the following hour. Sky somehow seems to manage this a bit better, but the Tivo functionality is better on this measure.

Tivo also wins on the marginal ability to find the beginning of a programme when fast forwarding, but knowing that the box can actually automatically wind past ads, but doesn't do this for commercial reasons, is a bit annoying.

Of course, Sky has better content, including the red sky content and the HBO driven Sky Atlantic.

Overall it's a total walkover. Tivo is a disaster. It's what a medieval knight would expect from a STB (although still a bit up the food chain from Humax's dreadful, dreadful Freesat offerings). Sky looks like a decent sixties chevy. God knows what a decent product could do in this market.

Game, set and match to Apple TV ?

We'll see..

Is Google Destroying Value ?

2012-01-23T13:55:00.001Z

On the 2nd Nov 2007, Google's share price hit an all time high of $711.25. Five years later, it stands at $585.99. In other words, the pin up company of the internet has managed to lose nearly 20% of its owners' money over the past five years.

The endless free and uncommercial services that blight the online business world are being paid for by shareholders. Every time you watch a YouTube video a Google shareholder is, effectively, putting their hand in their pocket to pay for your pleasure: the internet brought with it a raft of new business models (or lack thereof in many cases), and some were madly successful - such as Google's Adwords - but many others simply have not worked. Almost nothing else Google does makes money, and it has amongst the most obfuscated of core business metrics as well as business models.

In 2007 Google had revenues of $16.594bn and income of $5.084bn; in 2011 this had grown to $37.905bn with income of $11.742bn. So, even doubling the business seems not have returned any value to shareholders, suggesting that investors think that Google is a very poor investment and its business model a bad way of utilising capital.

Now, this has, of course, been a rocky period for any business, but the Apple share price has gone from $88 to nearly $400 in the same time and its revenues quadrupled. The Apple business model is very transparent and it is ruthless in not supporting unprofitable business lines.

In the more ruthless business environment we now operate in, it is worth asking if there is a place for companies like google on public market unless they start returning value to shareholders in the form of dividends, as Microsoft has had to do.

Equally, I'm longing for the day when bad execution of unprofitable business models subsidised by deep pockets are no longer tolerated by shareholders and management alike.

The Vicious Eunuch

2012-01-20T01:10:00.002Z

Around seven years ago I wrote a review of UGC video sites (user generated content) and YouTube was low down the list. Since then I've spent a career trying to fight that gorilla, despite, or perhaps because of doing what they did weeey before them.

Being the first doesn't count - in TV terms, ask Philo Farnsworth or John Loggie Baird.

Understanding a market doesn't count. Even correctly predicting the future doesn't count.

All that counts is execution. And being lucky. Oh, and having deep pockets...

The YouTube guys had a dreadful product and impossible business model, but by finding a sugar daddy in Google who threw hundreds of millions at the problem, they may have a business that has some value. The irony is that they have destroyed thousands of startups in the video space, but are still incapable of competing with mainstream broadcasters.

Meanwhile, the rest of us live off crumbs, and I spend my life being asked to replicate YouTube - for free, of course, since people are often too lazy and/or stupid to think of video beyond YouTube.

So, here comes the next challenge. Taking on YouTube at its own game...

NewsCorp's Shine Adopts Rights Tracker

2012-01-19T23:53:00.001Z

The past few months have been highly challenging for us here at TVE as we bed down a number of massive new client wins that we've been unable to publicise... until now!

I'm delighted to announce that Rights Tracker has been adopted by NewsCorp's Shine production subsidiary to manage all of its rights. Here's the press release:

Leading rights management software developers Rights Tracker has licensed its web-enabled software suite to global production group Shine. The system will completely manage the Group’s Production and Distribution Rights end-to-end.

Rights Tracker Enterprise is a bespoke, configurable system which has been designed to integrate with Shine’s business platforms. Multi-company functionality will allow companies within Shine Group to independently control their licenses and title metadata. Meanwhile, the system will manage the Group Sales and Distribution arm Shine International’s end-to-end acquisitions and sales processes. As phase one of the implementation Rights Tracker’s modules have been integrated into Shine International’s financial package.

Ronan Walsh, Rights Systems Manager at Shine Group: “As part of a wider business systems initiative, Shine Group had identified a need for a web enabled solution covering our product life cycle, from group production companies through to our international distribution division. The Rights Tracker solution fulfilled all of our requirements.”

Ross Bentley, Rights Tracker’s CEO comments: “It is tremendous news that Shine has made the decision to use our software in order to manage their business processes. The Group is a hugely impressive global player whose ability to grow super-brands such as MasterChef speaks for themselves. Shine understands that rigorous management of rights and metadata from initial production through to international exploitation and beyond is key to ensuring maximum return on their brands. This deal points to a very exciting future for us.”

Kodak in Chapter 11

2012-01-19T11:13:00.000Z

Sadly Kodak was put in Chapter 11 today. The US system is weighted towards keeping the business going as opposed to the UK system of administration (pre-pack being closer to Chapter 11) so something may yet rise from the ashes.

However this is quite a significant point in the transition to digital and marks the end of a 131 year old analog giant of the US economy. Basically Kodak did not accept fast enough that a large number of consumers would move from film to digital believing that brand and "habit" would be enough to keep consumers locked in the past. A very good parallel would be the paper based book / journal business.

As Iolo suggests things are really moving now - perhaps because financing to prop up "zombie" business models is not about anymore.

On the subject of copyright and IP protection online we need new rules to govern in the digital age and SOPA and PIPA (does it look good in a wedding dress ?) are doing a great job in sparking a debate - hopefully at the end of it a decent set of regulations will emerge after everyone has had their say. Both the uber censors and the "property is theft" nutcases are equally wrong.

We All Have Copyright

2012-01-18T19:46:00.001Z

SOPA and PIPA are, let's face it, bad.

Al Gore may have claimed to have invented the internet, and in a way he did, by sponsoring the Digital Millennium Act. The DMA has a number of principles, including that online trades are not taxed and that the interchange of data over internet networks remains neutral. It was as important to the growth of the internet as the development of HTML and the world wide web by Sir Tim Berners Lee in my opinion.

But the DMA has been hijacked by companies who have created virtual online monopolies such as Google and Facebook, the vampire squids of the online world. They blatantly use other people's IP as their own and build massive businesses on the back of this. Imagine if we all charged Facebook copyright for the content we freely give them ?

The problem is, we either have copyright, or we don't. Online users glibly click on those 'I Agree' buttons that link to sixty page legal terms drafted by the finest legal brains of our generation in order to circumvent this, but, fundamentally, we're in the wrong place.

If Wayne Rooney can make money from his resurfaced head, so can I. If anyone takes my photo and publishes it anywhere, they owe me. And that includes on Facebook.

If Google links to pirated content on the internet, they have the same liability as a student from Sheffield, or anyone else who actively supports piracy (for Godsakes, Google puts its own ads around content pirated using its own services... A vampire's vampire...).

In the past, Governments were concerned about monopolies, about organisations that fundamentally worked outside the spirit of the law.

SOPA and PIPA represent one part of bug business against another part of big business. What we actually need is another Al Gore - someone who will stand up for freedom, free markets, but also protect the value generated by small entrepreneurs, from traders to musicians and film-makers, who are now horribly exploited by big business.

The real irony of this is that Sky has been shutting down Al Gore's Current TV channel across Europe. We're in a new era, where the big guys are bigger than ever.

2012 - The Year Of Internet TV ?

2012-01-18T16:55:00.002Z

As someone who's been espousing internet TV since 1997, the above headline might be surprising to those of you who have know me during this time.

But, finally, it all seems, well, more mainstream, doesn't it...

It's been a busy old start to a new year, with some of the announcements to date being obvious, but others a bit surprising.

Microsoft admitted that it couldn't afford to launch a content service that would be profitable. (So, how come Apple can ? It shows how far ahead Apple are in the domestic market). Google hasn't bother with service and instead claims that half of all tellies sold this year will carry its Google TV platform.

Netflix has arrived in the UK to a great big yawn, but it has resulted in a price war that should be good for all use viewers.

Meanwhile, everyone wants be a broadcaster - from Sony to Philips. Companies that used to have a sensible place in the supply chain now fawn and preen over ownership of the interface; hardly surprising when you can buy a sophisticated smart 42" screen with the power to run a web browser that's been shipped half way around the world, taken a retailer markup and sales tax, for under £500!

CES was, meanwhile, evolutionary not revolutionary, with LG's new 55" OLED TV was my show favourite, and Vizio's $99 streaming box leading the vanguard for Google TV (but I still don't want Facebook and Twitter on my telly, thanks... I want them on my phone whilst I'm watching the telly).

And of course, everyone's just waiting for Apple TV..

It's going to be a busy old year as more and more TV becomes internet TV... But will the consumer care as they struggle to keep their jobs and hang onto their Sky/Comcast subscription ?

Murdoch squares up to Google

2012-01-16T10:38:00.002Z

Rupert Murdoch writes on his Twitter page in direct style "Piracy Leader is Google". Does he have a point ?

People who work in the "content" business will understand the costs and risks of creating new content that drives an audience and makes a profit. For every successful movie, TV series, book, album etc etc there are many failures and people who have lost money on them. Google and YouTube have never needed to invest significant sums in risky content creation and therefore have been able to post the best content in the world for free (and keep the revenues) which is a business model to die for. Essentially they exploited the slowness of the incumbents to realise what was happening and the failure of IP law around the world to adapt to new technologies (plus a healthy dollop of political lobbying to stop the Politicians bringing forward appropriate legislation). So yes he does have a point.........but probably wishes he had thought of it / realised it could be done. Certainly our SnifferDog harvests data which consistently shows Google as one of the top 5 infringers on a consistent basis.

Credit goes to the US for so actively and openly debating the proposed SOPA legislation. Over the past few days DNS blocking provisions at the ISP level have been dropped but it still looks like the essence of a solid framework for regulation will emerge. Certainty on where the line is to be drawn (re copyright online) will help all parties and makes the lack of clarity in Europe (Digital Economy Act, Copyright Act, WIPO treaties) look a bit behind the times.

This in an indirect way brings us to the issue of Richard O'Dwyer who faces extradition to the USA re the TVShack website which made movies and TV programmes available for free. His claim is that he simply linked to others who provided the content but that is pretty thin given that he generated $230,000 in advertising and had 300,000 people per month visiting. A more realistic position perhaps is that the law is very unclear and it was and is difficult to know if he was on the right side of the line. An interesting point however is that while the $230,000 looks large given this was run from a bedroom this level of revenue would not come close to funding a single movie he was distributing and shows that the "you guys need a new business model" brigade are frankly talking out of their *****. No business model can survive the proposition that entity A creates, builds and markets and bears the the costs of this and entity B then gets a free ride selling it and is not required to pay entity A anything.

I wonder who bought all that advertising ? At £5cpm that will be a lot of banners. Perhaps that is next on the list of things to consider here.

Wandering down the digital high street to the YouTube cineplex

2012-01-12T11:24:00.000Z

A friend of mine who has done fantastically well over the last 5 years or so (in the online space) has a theory that in the future there will simply be a digital high street where all the online traffic flows, browses and purchases and the physical high street will be reduced to a fraction of its current size.

Since touch is one of the key senses this might be a bit extreme but the figures from Experian of 96.2 million visits to online retail sites on Boxing Day (the biggest day ever) tend to support the argument. To some degree if you make and sell clothing these cannot be usefully digitised (except perhaps in SecondLife)so online represents a great new channnel of distribution but does not change your product fundamentally.

If you distribute media which can be digitized & copied in some way (books, movies, games, TV etc etc) then this is very much not the case - control over distribution drives value (see HMV). What is very evident is that control over distribution has somewhat left the building. So what ?

Interestingly online retail stole a march on the rest of the market because (in my view) the product was the same and cannot be copied with a click (Laboutin heels are the product not the shop / distributor they come from) and online shopping could be done over a narrowband connection. Since narrowband rolled out about 6 years ahead of broadband an argument could be made that the impact of IP distribution is just about to really hit home on digitised products as online retail started to hit critical mass in 2006.

The consumer certainly seems to be up for it. Again, according to Experian, on Xmas day 42.1% of all online visits were to Entertainment, Social Media and News sites. Further over the course of 2011 YouTube grew by an astonishing 42%. My guess is that YouTube has gone mainstream and that it is now accessed by a broad demographic.

As I have been banging on about before the link between the ultimate EPG (google) and probably the biggest live and on demand video channel delivered to multiple devices via IP is a killer combination. If this logic is correct the next question is which other forms of media distribution will the consumer stop watching / reading when this really hits home ?

Spanish Fly

2012-01-11T23:00:00.001Z

I've been lucky enough to do a lot of my business in Spain over the past decade.

Spain is a wonderful country that reformed itself from a dictatorial period and brought a huge amount of wealth to its people, but the recent election of the right of centre Popular Party has instigated cuts that make me worry for the future of this great country.

As everyone in Europe worries about Greece, Italy or Ireland, I believe that Spain will be the nemesis of the EU. The stringent right wing policies being implemented are pouring oil onto a fire.

What Spain needs is labour market reforms, not cutbacks. I suspect the PP might not be popular for much longer...

Dark Clouds

2012-01-10T23:04:00.002Z

I've worked with cloud services since they were introduced. indeed, many of the services my companies have offered since the early noughties were, ostensibly, cloud based. But Amazon confounds me. Their products are impenetrably complicated and totally unscalable out of the box. After years of paying them for services we barely used, they recently 'retired' one of our key servers for no reason and with no notice. Our reaction was to shut everything Amazon down and I will never work with their lousy service again.

And this was after a whole load of other issues, the biggest of which that it is totally impossible to cost or predict costs. I just KNOW that Amazon is far more expensive than alternatives such as dedicated redundant hosting.

And if this is business critical, it's more expensive than managed hosting, since you then at least know what your costs are and have someone to point a finger at when things go wrong.

Clearly, an ecosystem has risen around Amazon's cloud services, but it remains a highly specialised, esoteric and technical system to deal with.

Unless you have a large IT department, avoid at all costs. If you have a large IT department, what the heck are you doing dealing with Amazon ?

Timing is everything

2012-01-10T09:51:00.005Z

"Digital deniers" are pretty thin on the ground now (or perhaps like the Marxists are waiting for their day to come and getting old and fat in the process while listening to Genesis box set LP's at 33rpm) but some recent developments offer a very good indicator of where in process of transition to digital we stand.

Netflix yesterday launched an IP delivered film service in the UK & Ireland to compete directly with LoveFilm who themselves have an online offering LoveFilm Instant. Clearly this is preferred to offering a linear channel via a traditional EPG (Film 4)- the economics if takeup is at all significant will be massively more attractive given technical costs alone. Similarly the Sky Go online version of the TV product has been a massive hit with the customer.

In contrast HMV released results showing declining sales (even taking account of the snow problems in 2010) which show that "physical" distribution continues to take a hammering.

It may be that digital, due to the fact that it cuts the supply chain down (or disintermediates if you are in investment banker), will contribute less to the economy overall but the move is inexorable. How legitimate distributors compete with pirate offerings when they are only a few clicks apart remains to be seen but we can leave that for another day.

Neither LoveFilm, Netflix or Sky were the first in digital distribution and many similar offerings have already fallen by the wayside - but it looks like the consumer market has finally arrived about 14 years after the first propositions in this area were formed. My guess is that we are about 10% into the switch over to IP / digital distribution.

Google red faced

2012-01-04T16:28:00.003Z

It seems that Google have been supporting the IP pirates - and the element of plausible deniability seems limited. CLICK HERE for more.......

This information tallies with the data we pick up using the SnifferDog and it remains surprising that Gooogle allow this to continue.

IPTV Times 2012 Almanac

2012-01-04T14:37:00.001Z

Here we go again. Another year has passed in the online TV world.

So, what's in store for the year ahead ?

Recession - this seems to have been largely good for the TV industry to date, as people stay at home, but America has shown that real hardship results in declining revenues and we predict that this trend will start to impact in Europe.

YouTube steps up a gear - already YouTube has been making plays for the video management platform market whilst also trying to become a content owner. Google is determined to own video content distribution and will bring all of the force of its organisation to bear. Content owners will be stupid to play along. But they will.

YouView - will finally arrive to underwhelming response.

Forget Europe - the old world is a mess. The growth of television, and television like services, will be in countries like Brazil, India, China, Turkey and Indonesia.

Facebook as a platform - will become one of the most important video delivery channels, but will struggle as they seek to offer their own video solutions in competition with third parties.

The web is over - video now belongs on smart devices of all kinds, from mobiles to connected TVs. The web browser will become an increasing irrelevance.

Sports Stall - finally, the price paid for sports rights will begin to fall, even for premium events.

Brand TV - from sports clubs to bands, brands will begin to realise that they need to control their video output and that simply posting on YouTube does not amount to a video strategy.

Apple TV Screens - if all that I've been told is true, Steve Jobs' final legacy will be a new TV product based around the screen and a revamped iTunes.

Format wars - yes, it's rearing its ugly head again. As the vast majority of online video has gone H.264, so the advent of HTML5 brings huge issues as Flash decays as a platform for video delivery. But HTML5 has huge issues around security and non-standardisation and is supprted in a different way by pretty much every browser out there.

Micro-narrowcasters - forget music sites, or even generic sites, there is a huge gap in the market for music, sports and other 'micro-brands' to take control of their online presence and to stop subsidising the likes of YouTube, facebook and iTunes. McFly's Supercity has been a very successful example of this, attracting tens of thousands of paying subscribers. The model is a difficult one, but worth persevering with.

The death of the on-screen app - just as second screen applications like Clicker and Zeebox multiply, the idea of sticking apps on a TV screen will finally die away as manufacturers realise that video screens are best for, er..., watching video!

Failure of regulation - the monopolists will thrive, be given massive tax beaks and will relish the recession as a way of killing off what little competition here is. Our politicians will suck up to them, make noises about an 'entrepreneurial-led recover', set the dogs of the HMRC on small businesses, do nothing about effective monopolies, and then wonder why entrepreneurs like me are thinking that signing on (with that lovely RPI linked annual hike) is the best strategy for surviving the recession....

I expect 2012 to be the most challenging year of my (long) professional career, so I can only wish and hope that those of you out there manage to weather, and even set a fair course, in the storm ahead.

Best wishes from Peter, myself and everyone at TV Everywhere's companies for 2012!

App Variable Bandwidth Woes

2012-01-04T14:16:00.001Z

For those of us living in rural areas broadband remains an issue. I've recently changed from TalkTalk to Sky on the same un-LLUed exchange and it's resulted in a doubling of the actual broadband speed and a much better improvement in latency.

However, whilst still on TalkTalk (which allegedly gave me 1.2Mbps according to Speedtest.net), whenever I connected to the iPlayer app on my iPad the image would disappear, leaving only the audio. Fine for stand up comedy, but not so good for drama.

The reason for this is a clause in Apple's App development T&Cs:

"Video streaming content over a cellular network longer than 10 minutes must use HTTP Live Streaming and include a baseline 64 kbps audio-only HTTP Live stream."

So, Apple encourages roll-over to audio, which sort of makes sense, until you think that your iPad isn't working.

Apple should drop this clause - it's over-prescriptive. At the same time the BBC need to look at the encode rates of their adaptive streaming - surely a 1.2Mbps connection, even from TalkTalk, should enable the service to work over WiFi ?

Online TV Viewing Growth Slows in 2011

2012-01-04T11:52:00.001Z

The latest BARB figures for online TV viewing make for interesting reading (this figures relate to TV, not overall video viewing, so are subject to a large pinch of salt since viewers are often confused between live and on demand, especially when it comes to TV services - over 85% of British internet users claim to have watched videos online.)

In the previous week, 14.9% of respondents said they had watched TV via a PC, laptop or tablet, compared to 14.4% a year previously and 14.8% in June 2011.

In the previous month, 25% of respondents said they had watched online TV, up from 24.8% in June and 23.6% a year earlier.

Finally, 36.2% said they had ever watched TV via the internet, up from 34.3% in June and 34.4% in November 2010.

BARB hypothesises that the slowdown in growth could be due to increased DVR penetration and the availability of catch-up services on connected TVs.

Meanwhile, around 7% of respondents to the survey claimed to have ever watched TV via their mobile phones, up from 5% a year earlier,

Perhaps more relevant is that 14% of 15-34 year-olds have watched TV on their mobiles, rising from 8.9% a year earlier.

Review of 2011 predictions etc

2012-01-02T10:16:00.003Z

To quote Julian Barnes "history is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation" and on that basis my suggestions for 2011 were pretty much spot on in terms of Jeremy Hunt and the DEA (although did not even have a sniff of the hacking scandal to come) and the judgment in MPA v BT (Newzbin 2).

So self regard aside what looks likely in 2012 ? Well.........

1. The content owners will continue to recover territory vs the pirates and new media distributors - and possibly the pendulum will swing too far the other way in the case of SOPA.
2. Lack of financing will continue to reveal flawed models in the content sector and consolidation (or worse ) will gather momentum. Only the very strong will be able to continue with non digital based models.
3. Irrespective of the financial climate digital will continue to advance and the consumption of entertainment via Internet to multiple devices will accelerate. Zuckerberg's Law of Sharing will apply and this will threaten the IP rights of content producers and owners.

Personal favourites for 2011 were Steve Jobs authorised biography, Tom Bingham's the Rule of the Law and the exceptional movie Drive. High on the list is also David Cameron's NO to the Franco Prussian (sorry German) alliance which can restore people's faith in democracy - regardless of the arguments either way most British people want out which seems a relevant point to me.

Very sad to see Steve Jobs check out so early but he did leave a legacy of optimism based on the idea "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do"

A Tired Format

2011-12-31T00:21:00.001Z

Isn't it interesting how quickly TV tastes can change. A month ago the lads' motoring programme Top Gear was one of the most valuable TV franchises on earth, and certainly the biggest moneyspinner for the BBC.

Down the years I've loved the show's irreverance and unadulterated appeal to petrolheads like myself.

But something has changed. Jeremy Clarkson, the main presenter, used to be hilariously witty. Now I find him boorish and ignorant.

The latest series has seen the format creak with lack of originality, and the Christmas special was boring, predictable and showed all the moving parts of a heavily scripted 'mockumentary' which I found embarassing in its treatment of Indian people and culture.

Surely it's time to put this show out of its misery.

2011 Predictions Review

2011-12-29T23:21:00.001Z

Every year this blog makes predictions about likely events in the year ahead. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're spectacularly wrong, but more often than not it's our timing that's out.

So, let's see what came to pass in 2011...

1. The Status Quo - no, not another comeback tour for the three chord wonders, but a recognition that very little will change in 2011. The major battles have been fought and the incumbents have won. In the UK Sky, the BBC and Virgin remain dominant. In the US cable cutting will have minimal effect and Hulu will continue to trounce YouTube as a serious video portal.

8/10 Perhaps YouTube has done better than we predicted and new alliances such as the Amazon takeover of Lovefilm have created powerhouses. But overall, the incumbents remain dominant.

2. The Apps Have It - delivery of content will increasingly involve apps, or at least we based delivery presented as apps. The cost charged will be significantly lower than traditional charged, with 59p being the norm against £2.99 for rental or £9.99 for physical purchase.

8/10 The rise of the App has truly happened and even my dear old mum is watching S4C on her iPad (cyfarchion, mam!). Delivery is largely ad supported, so our cost analysis was a bit out.

3. Sky High - I agree that the Sky takeover of itself (well, what else is it ?) will be given the nod and I expect Sky to make a significant play for the broadband market in 2011.The fight with YouView should be interesting.

3/10 Oops, our crystal ball totally, well, ballsed this up. We discounted the effect that activities at News International would have on Newscorp's ambitions. YouView remains a concept...

4. The Beginning Of The End - the set top box is approaching its place in the great scrapyard in the sky alongside VHS players and HiFi units. The introduction of more tablets, mobiles and screens with built in browsers and computing power will begin to erode the market for these units and security will move from the living room to the cloud or the server.

9/10 The sales of connected TVs (or Smart TVs) are sky high and manufacturers like Samsung and Sony are making serious plays for the end delivery market. As we have long predicted, TV services are moving into the cloud.

5. H264 Dominates - it's over for VC1 and VP6 (or Windows Media and Flash Video as you might know them) - everything from Google indexing to iPhone delivery now requires H.264 and I think that no one trusts Google enough to adopt VP8.

10/10 according to recent studies, 80% of all web video is now MP4, and Adobe seem to have conceded defeat on Flash, which means the inevitable death of FLV as a format.

6.The Rights Levee Breaks - we've seen piracy threatening the video industry in a similar way to the effect it had on the music industry, but the main reaction to piracy has been complacency. As serious piracy begins to take hold, DRM will be back on the agenda and rights holders will be forced to take protecting their assets more seriously.

3/10 Unbelievably, rights holders are still complacent in our view and leaving the hard work to legislators and industry bodies. Things are certainly better than in the music industry, but it's not going to last long.....

7. The Condems Break More Promises - I'm struggling to think of a single Condem policy in the UK that hasn't seen backtracking - the promise to abolish OFCOM being perhaps the most significant in our industry. Now we're promised 100Mbps broadband. This is a fantastic policy and IPTV Times will track the implementation of this policy at every step. We'll especially keep and eye on its delivery in rural areas.

8/10 Univeral broadband remains a pipe dream and things are going from bad to worse in rural areas thanks to contention as more people use the internet. But proving that politicians are breaking their word is easy fodder.

8. Stagnation - this will be seen everywhere from the wider economy, where house prices will drop, unemployment will rise and the UK will fall significantly behind the Eurozone and the US thanks to its short sighted Thatcherist policies, to the general economy as the higher rate of VAT takes toll. Enterprise will be next to impossible since there is no financial liquidity for new and growing businesses. Failure rates for startup businesses will be equally as tragic.

2/10 Actually, thanks to the Condems implementing Labour policies, the ecomony has been surprisingly buoyant, but we think this is a timing thing and expect full marks when we reiterate this next year.

9. Social TV - Facebook is already the most important online service for video, only it's not video friendly and most producers don't know what to make of it. Expect a slew of new socially based aggregation services to launch and for more TV to become social rather than scheduled or on demand. Expect more and more TV consumption amongst the younger generation to be driven by friends rather than schedules.

7/10 The rise of Facebook as a platform must be keeping many Googlers at Youtube awake at night. Again, we were a bit early on this, but will carry over our predictions into 2012.

10. The Yanks Are Coming - yes, an ongoing prediction, as Universal and CBS channels appear on our schedules and Shed, and very soon, All3Media become US owned. Sky will soon be US owned, and Virgin is US listed. However, creatively there's little doubt that the UK will continue to export hit formats around the world.

7/10 Done and dusted, but All3Media proved too expensive and Sky remained independent, still, the US controls much more of the UK media business than it did at the beginning of the year.

11. Rights Platforms Become Marketplaces - the global content industry is highly inefficient and will in the next year begin a move towards content rationalisation. This should be good news all around and will certainly be the focus of my efforts in the New Year.

2/10 Too early. Online content marketplaces remain a theory, well at least until we at TV Everywhere do something about it!

As ever, it remains for me to wish the many thousands of loyal readers who follow this blog a happy and prosperous New Year. Thanks for your comments and support in 2011, and please feel free to add your own predictions as comments below!

Our Almanac for 2012 wil appear shortly.

Cheers!

From the beach

2011-12-24T11:22:00.002Z

Luckily for me I find myself literally on the beach in Thailand at the moment and it is great. Picking up on some missed reading Mark Zuckerbergs "law of sharing" came up and it makes sense; the volumes of data we will share each year is set to double. Specifically defining this may be tricky and eventually it must reach equilibrium but in the meantime the adventure continues.

Don't Broadcast Me!

2011-12-18T22:21:00.001Z

Christmas is a time when we go social, catching up with friends, seeing family and doing lots of real world socialising.

Meanwhile, it seems more and more difficult to do anything online without socialising and broadcasting it. Take Spotify, which I love and pay for, but am close to leaving, since I'm sick and tired of the endless Facebook screens that appear, with no way to unlink from the horrible vampire squid website.

Listen website people - if I want to share and socialise I'll tell you, otherwise the default option is "me" and "I" require total privacy.

This obsession with "social" is just madness.

Red Light For The Red Button

2011-12-09T20:24:00.001Z

If you want proof that a contention long held on this blog is true, see the announcement today from Sky that it is dropping red button interactive ads due to lack of demand.

We have long said that people don't want their television to be interactive. It is, as Marshall McLuhan would have it a 'cool' medium, or, in more common parlance, a 'lean back' experience.

The second screen, on the other hand, is very real and holds huge potential. Indeed, moving the EPG from the main screen to the second screen makes a lot of sense. So, forget TV apps, Google TV v1 and the rest: they will go the way of the red button.

Don't mention the war

2011-12-09T08:49:00.004Z

Finally David Cameron stands up and represents our interests - fantastic. Win, lose or draw it is important we protect our sovereign interests. We import more from Europe than they import from us and we should have the confidence to paddle our own canoe.

In the media and IPTV sphere they key questions will be to what extent we continue to recognise certain European legislation and potentially start to restore the supremacy of the English Legal system.

European history reminds us that there are periods of German dominance and the Habsburg Monarchy bears some resemblance to what is starting to take shape now. When this collapsed we headed into WW1 which is a reminder that for all the chat whatever is agreed in grand documents they have a pretty consistent habit of being superseded by events.

In case you can's quite remember how it goes..........well you started it you invaded poland

Original content is King

2011-12-05T12:34:00.003Z

To pick up on Iolo's thread it does seem that the period where the "new distributors" got a free ride on the back of original content created by others is drawing to a close.

It is very difficult to create compelling content in any format and the costs and risks of doing it are considerable. You only need to ask the brave souls who get involved in Film Finance. No surprise then that if you can simply show all the content that everybody wants for free (and sell the advertising) you will be onto a winner. YouTube have partied for 5 years on this basis.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of BskyB they invest considerable sums in new content and rights and take big risks in so doing but have a mature business model and ability to manage the process of original content creation.

YouTube are at the very beginning of this and will experience the realisation that if they had been required to pay market price for all the worldwide rights they have been showing they would be deeper in the hole than Silvio Berlusconi.......but sadly without the bunga bunga parties.

If Google decide to create the mother of all global rights budgets they can hold the position in terms of audience but how that looks on the P&L is another matter entirely.

YouTube Stares Down The Sink

2011-12-01T21:42:00.001Z

When a goliath like YouTube makes a major announcement, I begin to quake. YouTube has single handedly destroyed the video space through its combination of piracy, useless content and sheer weight (read Google money).

So, a new launch based around channels ? Surely this was the vision I had in the late ninties that led to Narrowstep and the belief that narrowcast channels could become the publishing industry for the 21st century. But the monster that is Google swept in, picked up a third rate UGC site and destroyed models from local TV to narrowcast sports channels across the world. Now, apparently, they want to re-instigate this vision in their own light.

So, it was with apprehension that I reloaded YouTube (which, frankly, I never use, not for ideological reasons, but because it seems to carry very little of interest to me beyond the odd pop video from 1979). And there it was:

Jeez, what a mess. Actually, what an ad! So, a site that is aiming to usurp broadcasters depends on massive placement ads to commercialise itself. ALOL.

The rest of the interface follows the dreadful 'social' trend where 'discovery' has become the prerogative, but based on people, not content.

Trending, Popular, Subscriptions. I suspect that there is a party going on at Comcast and BSkyB just now as they realise how botched this is.

Promoting 'curation' but building a UX around social is just a dichotomy. Planet YouTube is a very, very confused place.

Even more barking is this:

So, you have to log out to log in ? I thought Google employed some technical people....

YouTube is a mess..... Thankfully for those of us working towards a decent narrowcast world.