Peter Kafka interviews Peter Chernin in this interesting 11-minute video from the AsiaD conference.
“As News Corp.’s longtime chief operating officer, Chernin was instrumental in developing Hulu,” reports All Things D. “He explained why he wanted to build the video site — in part to compete with Google and YouTube — and why he thinks its studio owners should help it thrive today — in part to compete with Netflix.” Chernin also expresses his thoughts on purchasing Yahoo.
Chernin knew IPTV would be big, but didn’t want one dominant video distributor like YouTube. Thus, the studios got together to create Hulu, which today competes with Netflix.
Chernin believes online viewers will pay $2 per month for premium content. He talks about the future of video and creating something like a digital HBO.
By the end of the year, both the Wii and Nintendo 3DS will have access to TV shows and movies via the $7.99 per month Hulu Plus service (but only in 2D).
Hulu Plus joins Netflix in offering content on the Nintendo devices.
Also, the 3DS will get a software update at the end of November that allows 3D recording for up to ten minutes, and the ability to “stitch together stereoscopic images for stop motion animation that jumps out of the tiny screen at you,” suggests Engadget.
“With both Hulu and Netflix in tow, as well as the ability to create your own content, the 3DS is actually turning into quite a powerful little portable.”
Apple’s new iPhone 4S touts an 8-megapixel camera sensor capable of recording HD video at full 1080p resolution.
As an experiment, Robino Films recently posted a video comparing HD video shot with the new iPhone against video from the $2,400 Canon 5D Mark II. The two devices were mounted side-by-side on a camera rig, with similar exposure settings, shooting 1080p video at 30 frames per second.
“This test is really only to show that the 4S is coming close to the 5D but in NO WAY is it better,” comments Robino Films. “The iPhone is a great 1080p pocket camera and shows us where technology is heading. Give it two three years and we should see some interesting micro high performance cameras.”
ETCentric staffer George Gerba comments: “Add a professional connected app for news production and the white iPhone 4S might be more like a white news van than a phone…”
New platform from San Francisco-based Veokami aggregates user generated videos of concerts.
Veokami crawls YouTube and automatically puts together a playlist of videos from a single concert.
Videos are then synchronized with each other to offer Veokami users the ability to switch between the different camera views that were found on YouTube, without interrupting the flow of the music. Clips can also be arranged based on audio and video quality.
According to GigaOM, “the goal is to extend its platform so that artists, promoters and — most importantly — fans will be able to build these pages themselves. That could end up being a very powerful promotional tool for artists as they look to show listeners what it’s like to be at one of their shows.”
The company’s site also suggests the tool could be useful for organizing videos from political events and conferences.
Steve Jobs had plans for a full-fledged, integrated Apple TV, The Washington Post learned after reviewing the authorized Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” wrote Isaacson in the book, available today.
“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,” Jobs told the author. “It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”
Rumors have persisted that Apple might launch a television by the end of next year. Details have not been available, but if it “offered users a la carte programming with integrated Web surfing and access to Apple’s iOS platform, it could upend longstanding industries in telecommunications and entertainment,” suggests The Washington Post.
Filmmakers and coders gathered in San Francisco for a recent “hackathon” to explore the future of Web video. Discussions focused on Popcorn.js — “Mozilla’s HTML5 media toolkit designed to amp up interactivity,” according to Wired.
Popcorn is a framework “that allows filmmakers to supplement their movies with news feeds, Twitter posts, informational windows or even other videos, which show up picture-in-picture style. For example, if a subject in a film mentions a place, a link can pop up within the video or alongside it, directing the viewer to a Google Map of the location.”
While initially hesitant that such enhancements would distract viewers from the movie experience, directors reportedly grew accepting of the concept of providing a more interactive experience.
“It’s easy to envision Popcorn helping filmmakers with their productions as well as creating communities for films after their release,” reports Wired. “At least one documentary project, ‘One Millionth Tower,’ has already made use of the tools, coupling Popcorn with 3D graphics generator WebGL to create a Web-ready documentary that shows what would happen if the residents of a Toronto highrise were allowed to participate in re-creating their home tower.”
Yesterday, ETCentric reported that San Francisco-based start-up Lytro was getting ready to launch a new digital camera that could potentially be “the biggest technological jump since we started talking megapixels over 20 years ago…” (as suggested by All Things D).
In a public demo at AsiaD this week with Walt Mossberg, Lytro showed its innovative light field technology and camera that allows you to capture all the light rays of a scene and alter the focus AFTER the picture is taken.
The camera, which starts at $399 for the 8GB model, also offers the ability to view a scene in 3D. The Wall Street Journal post includes a compelling 17-minute video of the demo.
ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld submitted a related article that provides product and technical details of the consumer market light field camera.
“The camera itself is a square prism in shape, around 4.4-inches long and around 1.6-inches square,” reports Digital Photography Review. “Around two thirds of its length is bare anodized aluminum, which houses a 35-280mm equivalent, constant F2 lens. The rest of its length is coated in a soft, light gray rubber, in which you’ll find the camera’s three physical controls — the power switch, a shutter button and a slider that you stroke to zoom the lens in and out. All other interaction with the camera is conducted via the small, 128×128 pixel square touch screen that covers the rear face of the device.”
Janus Friis, co-founder of KaZaA, Skype, Joost and Rdio (with partner Niklas Zennstrom) is working on a new online video subscription service that will be available soon in the UK.
According to GigaOM, Friis has been “assembling an A-team of media and Web technology experts to launch a site that seems destined to replicate the model behind their music subscription site Rdio in the video space.” Offices have been set up in Santa Monica and Europe.
From the follow-up Q&A: Vdio (Vee-dee-o) is in closed beta for the UK and is privately funded, while the assembled team’s experience comes from companies such as Netflix, Microsoft, TV Guide and Napster.
A spokesperson for Zennstrom’s VC company Atomico confirmed that Zennstrom is not involved in the project.
Google has announced that through the new Merch Store feature, YouTube partners “will be able to sell artist merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and other experiences to fans and visitors.”
The Merch Store evolved from multiple partnerships: Marketing enabler Topspin will handle merchandise sales, while concert organizer SongKick will handle ticket sales. Amazon and iTunes will power transactions for music download transactions.
“The ability to add merchandise sales, ticket sales, digital downloads and more to an artist’s YouTube site definitely gives these sites more of an engaging presence for artists with their fans,” reports TechCrunch. “These destinations will now become more than just a way to discover music videos, but also a way to transact business and actually see the artist and buy their works.”
The feature should arrive in the coming weeks. YouTube will take a percentage of sales to cover costs.
The MoPix digital platform allows filmmakers and content creators to inexpensively distribute their projects as paid apps.
“Filmmakers choose from templates and customizable options to create a DVD-like experience that bridges video content with the interactivity, enhanced features, and extra content of an app,” according to the LAUNCH blog.
Filmmakers can target multiple devices including the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire and Android devices. The developers charge a one-time fee and a percentage of sales.
MoPix will demo the app at the LAUNCH PAD Tablet Conference this Friday in Mountain View, California.
Last month saw a surprise boom in home entertainment as Blu-ray sales surged 156 percent over the previous year during the week of September 18.
Sales were also up 131 percent for the week prior and 60 percent the week before that.
The release of high-profile titles including “X-Men: First Class,” “Thor,” and “Star Wars” made significant sales, boosting overall numbers.
The $140 six-movie “Star Wars” collection was the biggest seller, possibly due to retailers such as Amazon and Walmart heavily discounting the set to as low as $80.
“Studios are starting to bring the crown jewels out of the vault for BD release,” said IHS video analyst Jan Saxton. “That, coupled with the first releases from a very strong summer box office, has the potential to turn the movie disc market around. Weak DVD sales have continually dragged the market down in 2011.”
Check out this fascinating TED presentation on data visualization, crowd-sourced collaborative art projects, and the interface as a narrative device.
“We’re collecting and creating all kinds of data about how we’re living our lives and it’s enabling us to tell some amazing stories,” says digital artist Aaron Koblin. The TED description suggests, “his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human.”
Compelling tweet from the opening: “19th Century culture was defined by the Novel, 20th Century culture by Cinema — the culture of the 21st Century will be defined by the Interface.”
The second half ties in with interactive, collaborative music videos featuring Johnny Cash and Arcade Fire, earlier reported by ETCentric.
After months of bidding, Hulu’s owners — News Corp., NBCUniversal, Disney and Providence Equity Partners — have decided to stop its sale.
“Since Hulu holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners, we have terminated the sale process and look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success,” explained the partners in a short statement. “Our focus now rests solely on ensuring that our efforts as owners contribute in a meaningful way to the exciting future that lies ahead for Hulu.”
In a related TechCrunch post, it was suggested that media companies saw more value in retaining licensing fees than selling them.
Bidders were not willing to pay more for Hulu knowing that the costs for content rights would increase dramatically after the two year period being sold. (Google reportedly bid $4 billion, but wanted streaming rights for longer than the guaranteed “couple of years.”)
A new study from Nielsen shows that approximately 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners use their devices on a daily basis while simultaneously viewing television. The figures jump to 70 percent for users who do the same several times a week.
Most of these viewers are primarily checking email, followed by surfing information and accessing social networks, suggesting strong potential for second-screen applications.
The study suggests users are accessing social networks more than websites with information related to the TV program. “Unfortunately, the study doesn’t break down if people are 1) participating or just listening to social conversations and 2) if the conversations are related to the TV program at hand,” reports Lost Remote. “But it’s probably safe to say that more viewers are more inclined to talk about (or listen to) conversations about a TV show than proactively look up expanded content about it.”
Successful second-screen apps should bring together “social conversations, expanded content and interactive (even synchronized) advertising,” suggests the article. “Compelling second-screen experiences, in theory, will move the needle more in the ‘related’ direction, making TV viewers more engaged overall.”
Netflix returned from MIPCOM last week with several new foreign TV shows it hopes will draw interest from its 25 million subscribers.
Programs include Norwegian gangster drama “Lilyhammer” starring Steve Van Zandt, French/German co-production “Borgia,” and the British supernatural drama “Being Human.”
The slate of foreign programming will join the remake of BBC drama “House of Cards” as Netflix turns to original, first-run drama series.
“Netflix has already committed to a second season of both ‘Borgia’ and ‘Lilyhammer,’ suggesting its taste for original and foreign-made fare is no passing fancy,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The company is also in a bidding war with Showtime and Hulu for the rights for the relaunch of cult comedy series ‘Arrested Development.'”
Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos points out the strategy is in response to customer demand, since TV shows account for 50-60 percent of total viewing on Netflix.
“We’ve moved very aggressively into this space,” Sarandos said. “The growing audience for these 1 hour serialized dramas is typically on pay TV: Showtime, HBO or Starz, those ones who are least likely to want to sell their shows to me on our (second-run) season-after model. So we have to develop the muscle to create and distributing these shows ourselves.”
