Frederic Martin's List: Online TV

• November 7, 2008 - Deutsche Telekom has reported that it had 333,000 customers for its 'T-Home Entertain' IPTV service at the end of the third quarter of this year, an increase of 33% within a single quarter from the 250,000 announced at the end of June.
• Of these total orders, the telco reports that it has activated 257,000 connections, an increase of around 60,000 or about 30% from the "almost 200,000" reported at the end of the second quarter of this year. The strong progress in the quarter is thought to be due in part to the broadcast of live football games from the Bundesliga, which includes interactive services .
• Deutsche Telekom is aiming to reach 500,000 customer for T-Home Entertain by the end of this year, and has just launched a promotion under which new customers receive a free high-definition set-top box with built-in PVR, normally costing €49.99.

1 more annotation...

• Worldwide subscriptions to internet Protocol television (IPTV) services are on pace to reach 19.6 million subscribers in 2008, a 64.1 per cent increase from 12 million subscribers in 2007, according to Gartner
• In 2008, 1.1 per cent of households worldwide will be subscribers of IPTV. By the end of 2012, Gartner forecasts worldwide household penetration of IPTV will be 2.8 per cent, while worldwide IPTV revenue is expected to total $19 billion in 2012.
• Worldwide IPTV revenue is projected to total $4.5 billion in 2008, a 93.5 per cent increase from 2007 revenue of $2.3 billion.
• Western Europe is the region with the largest number of IPTV subscribers. Western Europe is on track to have 8.2 million subscribers in 2008, and will grow to 18.8 million subscribers in 2012. North America is the largest market for IPTV revenue. IPTV revenue in North America is forecast to reach $2 billion in 2008, and grow to $8 billion in 2012.
• However, the global market is characterised by vast regional variations. Although the fundamental reasons why telecom carriers are launching IPTV are basically the same, the adoption profile, the go-to-market strategies that providers embrace and, in the longer term, the success of IPTV, are governed by local factors.
• Over-the-top video providers, such as Amazon’s Video on Demand, and VuDu, as well as video rental services, such as Netflix and Blockbuster, are developing or have developed a combined set-top box and video download service.
• In addition, device manufacturers are offering their own Internet-based offerings, such as NeuLion and AppleTV, while some broadcasters are going directly to the consumer over the internet, such as BBC’s iPlayer, and NBC and Fox’s Hulu.com.
• New competitors include portal players such as YouTube and Joost, and social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
• “The biggest change since 2007 is the rapid advent of new entrants making inroads in consumer video consumption and placing greater demands on IPTV operators to innovate,” said Gartner research director Elroy Jopling. “The video consumption field will become increasingly crowded.”

7 more annotations...

• newspaper editors believe that adding video to their websites provides "huge opportunities" to increase revenues as TV ad spend moves online.
• The research paper, Convergence Calls: Multimedia Storytelling at British News Websites (PDF), also found that:
• Online news publishers should embed video at the page level where it can gain up to 20 times more views than if it is only available through a stand-alone player;
• Newspaper editors believe that they have an opportunity to compete with broadcasters in online video because of their access to exclusives and their journalists' expertise;
• Editors urged journalists to focus on developing skills to allow them to select and edit video to complement their written work;
• Online publishers should focus on creating original video content which proves popular with news audiences.
• Says Thurman: "Web editors have found that video content produced for TV doesn't work well online as users prefer 'real' and 'raw' footage rather than the 'polished' type produced by broadcasters."

5 more annotations...

• A new study by Nielsen Media Research found that the heaviest Internet users also happen to be the heaviest users of television.
• At the same time, the study showed that the lowest users of TV are also the lowest users of the Internet.
• For example, the top fifth of Internet users spend four hours and 10 minutes (250 minutes) watching television. Conversely, those TV users who do not use the Internet at all have nearly similar amounts of viewing--three hours and forty minutes of TV viewing (220 minutes).
• Other study results reveal that nearly 31% of Internet activity in households takes place while the Internet users are also watching television.
• Among very heavy users of both TV and Internet, the study noted that more than 80% of people who watched TV and used the Internet that month had simultaneous sessions--they watched TV while being online at the same minute.
• The results came from Nielsen's new TV/Internet Convergence Panel, launched earlier this month. Nielsen uses 3,000 people in more than 1,000 homes as a panel to measure the interaction between TV and the Internet.

4 more annotations...

• Broadband video publishing solutions provider, Brightcove, has announced a number of new deals over the past few weeks, including three in the UK (a market which it has been targeting over the past few months and where its existing customers include BSkyB, Channel 4, Emap, Guardian News & Media, Hachette Filipacchi, IPC Media, ITV, Sony BMG, Telegraph Media Group and UKTV)

• Thomson Showcases Personalised TV And Targeted Advertising Features For Its World-Leading IPTV Solution
• During IBC Thomson demonstrated its new Personalized TV solutions designed to bring IPTV services to new levels of personalization and interactivity which will enable network operators to benefit from even greater revenue driving possibilities.
• The new enhancements for Thomson’s SmartVision video service platform mean that viewers will be able to enjoy personalized TV services. The personalized features include a new TV Home Page that shows recommended listings of live and on demand content, based on user preferences.
• SmartVision is also expanding its information enabled services to display customizable and personalized online information selected by the user, such as the weather forecast, stock market information and even video/voice mails in the case of an integrated triple play service. 
• Thomson’s SmartVision now offers new advertising possibilities in its user interface in addition to those ad insertion functions in live streams managed by Thomson’s NetProcessor (a real-time splicer) and ad insertion to on-demand streams enabled by its Thomson VOD servers.
• The new capabilities of Thomson’s SmartVision now support recommended and targeted ad placement in its interactive menus and program guides. Combined with its personalized TV features, SmartVision allows the optimization of advertising campaigns by efficiently targeting them to user profiles or watched content. The revenue generated by this unique knowledge of customer expectations allows operators to provide for the increasing demand for free on demand content, but in a profitable manner.
• “As TV is becoming a more personal experience, IPTV is not just about delivering live channels and video on demand” said Patrick Montliaud, Senior Vice President of Thomson’s Networks and Integration Solutions within the Systems division.  “IPTV is about creating a unique relationship with every customer based on user preferences and profiles. This takes the form of live and on-demand content recommendations that enhance the user experience, leading to increased average revenue per user.”

5 more annotations...

• OpenTV Corp and Adobe Systems have agreed to integrate Adobe Flash Lite software onto OpenTV middleware as an additional application environment, complementing OpenTV’s standard and HTML offerings, further enhancing Web browsing capabilities and strengthening the development of rich applications and user interfaces.
•   The first commercial deployment of OpenTV Core2 middleware with integrated Adobe Flash support is expected to be targeted at the Japanese market in the second half of 2009.

• Canal+ will today (September 9) launch its Canal+ à la demande service for all DTH subscribers who own a so-called Dual-S tuner with an external hard drive.
• With the built-in ethernet connection, viewers will be able to request programmes from the Canal+ schedule and view them on their TV set.
• Selected programmes from the Canal+ channels will be available for a period of seven days. Only those programmes for which the online VOD rights have been cleared will be offered.
• The system uses a hybrid receiver: the main channels are received via satellite, while the VOD service is delivered via broadband access. A fast internet connection is mandatory to access the service.
• Yesterday (September 8), CanalSat also launched Nat Geo Wild for the French market. The channel is the fifth from the National Geographic/Sky joint venture. Voyage, National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Channel HD and FOXlife are already available in France.

3 more annotations...

• BERLIN — IFA 2008 — Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) and Deutsche Telekom (Frankfurt: DTE; NYSE:DT) today announced a collaboration to deliver IPTV in Germany and Deutsche Telekom will use Motorola’s High Definition (HD)-ready IPTV set-tops for its “T-Home Entertain” services. The collaboration will enable T-Home customers to access a variety of multimedia applications in addition to standard TV offerings using a high-quality, optimized Motorola set-top which is already equipped for future services.

• The first territories for Net TV will include Germany and The Netherlands.
• When looking at Philips Net TV, it reminds us of the old Web TV, which was bought by Microsoft. Net TV will compete with similar technologies, including Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link, which also is a closed shop for streaming video content.

• record number of Europeans watched the Beijing Olympic Games via the Internet, confirming an upward trend that will make it all the more necessary to update networks to satisfy surging demand.
• Over 18 million individual viewers watched live events of the Olympic Games on national television websites or on Eurovision , the pan-European video portal, according to figures released by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
• This represents the largest online audience ever recorded for an Olympics at European level. In comparison, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin attracted an audience of less than two million, a score which was nevertheless higher than for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
• According to the EBU, the growing audience is the result of increased Internet viewing options (120 million broadband video streams were offered by EBU members for the Beijing Olympics in comparison to 23 million for the Turin Winter Games). It is also reflects a "rapidly increasing acceptance of these new distribution mechanisms, especially among younger audiences," according to EBU representatives. 
• Put into perspective, however, broadband is still a nascent service, especially in comparison with other more traditional ways of watching sport. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games, for instance, attracted an audience of about 2.3 billion television viewers across the globe, according to MindShare, a consulting firm.
• Nevertheless, the EBU reckons that its members made some 15,000 hours of live content available online.
• An typical user visited the EBU video portal for 30 minutes, watching on average five different live streams per visit.
• After the Games ended, the audience unsurprisingly decreased, but many users continue to access videos on the Web to watch the most spectacular images again. 
• What's more, the increased Internet traffic for bandwidth-consuming services makes it more important than ever to upgrade telecommunication networks. After strong pressure from the main telecoms operators, the European Commission recognised the importance of facilitating the deployment of new infrastructure based on optical fibres, the so-called New Generation Networks (NGNs) that are able to support a much heavier data stream than current systems. A recommendation by Brussels is expected in the coming weeks
• However, there is currently no data available regarding the number of users of new broadcasting services provided on mobile phones. The take-off of new services was supposed to coincide with the Olympic Games and the previous European Football Championships in Austria and Switzerland. But the industry has so far been quiet about viewing figures.

8 more annotations...

• My Personal TV Digital, the intelligent Personal TV service from Axel Springer and APRICO, a technology venture of Philips, will be available starting November 2008 for free downloading from the Online Media of the Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center.
• My Personal TV Digital permits the creation of personal TV channels on the basis of conventional TV programs and internet video offerings.
• The intelligent and self learning service uses the software-based recommendation technology from APRICO, as well as the program guide technology and program information services of Axel Springer Digital TV Guide. Axel Springer and APRICO plan to introduce this innovation in the sector of digital and interactive program navigation progressively throughout the global digital media market by the end of 2008.
• MY PERSONAL TV DIGITAL enables viewers to add to their existing program offering a range of “virtual” personal television channels. These personal channels are created automatically and are continuously updated, and reflect individual television preferences and viewing behavior.
• In this manner the viewer has a personally-tailored TV channel, which can be easily accessed thanks to its intelligent and „self-learning“ program profile. 

3 more annotations...

• A new IBM online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits shows audiences are more in control than ever and increasingly savvy about filtering marketing messages.
• The survey shows the TV and the Internet are on equal footing as entertainment sources. 66 percent reported viewing from 1 to 4 hours of TV per day, vs. 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.
• In the largest digital video recorder market, 24 percent of U.S. respondents reported owning a PVR in their home and watching at least 50 percent of television programming on replay.
• In the largest digital video recorder market, 24 percent of U.S. respondents reported owning a PVR in their home and watching at least 50 percent of television programming on replay.
• Surprisingly, 33 percent in the U.S. reported watching more television content than before the PVR.
• More than twice as many U.K. consumers surveyed use video on demand services than own a PVR, and less than a third of U.K. consumers have changed their overall TV consumption as a result of PVR ownership.
• In Australia, despite owning a PVR, most respondents prefer live television or replay less than 25 percent of their programming.
• IBM also stopped young people from all over the world on the streets of New York to ask whether they prefer spending their free time online or watching TV. IBM’s informal street sample found surprisingly similar results to the official survey.

6 more annotations...

• Hundreds of millions of online viewers watched the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games across an extensive range of digital media platforms, according to an International Olympic Committee press release.
• By the final day of the Games, US network NBC Universal,had reached a total of 214 million viewers with its Beijing Olympic coverage. The broadcaster said that it's website, nbcolympics.com had recorded 1.3 billion page views, 53 million unique users, 75.5million video streams, and approximately 10 million hours of video consumed.
• n Europe, over 30 EBU broadcasters offered Olympic content on their respective websites, complemented by the EBU aggregated live video portal www.eurovisionsports.tv/olympics, which delivered over 180 million broadband video streams, primarily generated by live event viewing to a unique audience of over 51 million, with a cumulative total of over 22 million hours viewed.
• In China, over the 17 days of the Olympic Games, 153 million people watched live broadcast of the Olympic Games online, with 237 million watching video-on-demand footage and an average 20 million page views per day on the mobile phone platform provided by CCTV.com.
• In Latin America, rights holder Terra made 13 online channels available to allow subscribers to choose which events to watch with over 300 hours of available action from all competitions. Terra's Olympic site registered 29 million video streams and over 10 million video-on-demand downloads over the period of the Games.
• In Australia, since the Games began, over 32 million page views have been seen by over 2.3 million users, with more than 4 million live and on-demand videos streams watched on Yahoo!7 Olympics.
• In Beijing, over 5,000 hours of footage has been produced by the host broadcaster and our media partners have made an unprecedented amount of this coverage available online.
• The Beijing Games have proved that online broadcast has been complementary to television ratings, with record figures across both media platforms. Sports lovers have clearly been relishing having different options available to enjoy the action".
• The IOC said that the 2008 Games represented the first time that digital media coverage of the event was widely available throughout the world from websites of official rights holders.
• The exclusive rights of official Olympic new media platforms were protected by a sophisticated anti-piracy campaign, overseen by the IOC, which successfully contained online piracy of Beijing 2008 footage to minimal levels.

8 more annotations...

• The 2008 Communications Market Report, released today by the regulator Ofcom, shows that although there has only been a small increase in the number of minutes spent each day watching TV (218 minutes in 2007, compared with 216 in 2006) the numbers watching TV online has doubled from 8% to 17%.
• A third of internet users (32%) watched videoclips and webcasts in 2007 compared to a fifth (21%) in 2006. At 9 million in April 2008, the number of UK internet users watching YouTube is double that of one year ago.
• By March 2008 almost 80% of all TVs sold in the UK were HD Ready.
• As at July 2008 nine out of ten households had digital TV compared to seven out of ten 12 months ago.

2 more annotations...

• Internet TV has so far had very little impact on British viewing habits, according to a Deloitte report produced for the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, the annual gathering of the broadcast establishment.
• The report, Loves Me, Loves Me Not, says that only 4% of the UK population consider it “very important” to be able to receive TV over the Internet. 47% still regard it as not important at all.
• “Internet TV currently appeals most to the young: 25% of 18-24 year olds thought the ability to watch Internet TV was important compared to just 8% of over 55s.
• “At the moment most viewers simply do not want most of their television to be on-demand. The majority still prefer to have their television scheduled for them. In the future Internet television will become one of the principle options from which the mass market could occasionally source its television viewing, along with direct broadcast, DVDs and PVRs.”
• The comments are at odds with the statements heard regularly by Broadband TV News, that viewers want to watch their programmes at a time convenient to them. In the multichannel environment the PVR has become a key means of consuming content.

3 more annotations...