Update: Web TV. Potential & Obstacles

Brandon Godwin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:19:59 +0000

I wrote this just 3 months ago regarding Web TV here:

If the decision comes within the next year or two for me to have either the Internet or DirectTV/Dish at home, I’m not so sure I’d be disappointed to just choose an ISP (probably AT&T) and spend the money I would “save” from a DirectTV/Dish subscription and spend it on a sweet-action HD monitor. (My current plan has me paying over $700 over the 18 month contract.)

I know WebTV isn’t there yet. But considering this was breakthrough only 3 years ago, seeing its rapid progress has me excited about what the next 5 years holds. I’ve yet to branch out to vote for a third-party politician, but in the visual streaming media campaign, my ballot has already been cast.

The big advantages to TV on the Web are these:

Cost — Basically getting ISP & TV at one cost, not two.
Portability — watch TV wherever you have broadband connection. (This is a lifeline for college students. At least, it was for me.)
Mover & Shaker — Web TV has shown rapid progression each year.

Basically, for the Cable and Satellite providers to win the day over Web TV, they would have to convince users that either (1) the advantages with Cable/Satellite were greater than Web TV with an attached cost, or (2) that Web TV couldn’t deliver to expectations.

Addressing the first, history says that people don’t mind paying for TV service. A story that issued on Friday says that Time Warner has grown in subscribers every quarter since they were founded.

Addressing the second, the wired story announces intentions of Comcast and Time Warner Cable to launch a Web TV experiment called “TV Everywhere.” They are strategically hitting the main weaknesses of “free” Web TV — inconsistency in quality and availability. As Mark Cuban noted back in March on his blog, the Web TV experience is not sustainable. There are too many variables involved with the quality of the Web TV experience.

The “official license” language of the Cable companies scares the Hulu crowd. It’s a battle of ad-funded Web TV or subscription/license-funded Web TV.

How will this play out? Users are casting votes every day. History says that people will pay to have higher, sustained quality, rather than taking the cheaper option.

Not a two-dog fight (Hello WebTV)

Brandon Godwin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:55:59 +0000

Assumptions are dangerous. Plain and simple. All the ads on TV today about TV center around Cable & Dish services. I’m not really sure what the Cable advantage would be, to be frank. I haven’t watched cable in 5 years. So, it seems that Satellite TV (Dish or DirectTV) has the upper hand in the media slugfest. But what’s not being advertised may be their greatest enemy. It’s the Web. What isn’t on the Web today? I’m not sure what’s driving down Dish/DirectTV prices more, “th*s *c*n*my” (sorry I don’t let myself say those words together) or the fact that they are afraid of the Web, foreseeing what it could do to their businesses.

I remember telling my dad in 2003 before leaving for college the following year that I bet watching a live sporting event would become reality before I graduated in 4 years. At that time, video highlights were big stuff. It was a breakthrough that came faster than expected when in the Spring of 2006, I watched a UNC vs. Duke college basketball game on ESPN360 as part of an expanded coverage broadcast for that game. My prediction went cash!

So, 3 years later, TV on Web has exploded. In the last 12 months, I’ve watched events such as Euro 2008, the NCAA tournament and President Obama’s inaugural address LIVE on the Web. Here’s what I currently have access to on the Web for TV:

ESPN360 through my ISP | Nearly every ESPN production can be streamed online here.
Hulu.com | Check out Hulu if you haven’t. They have a plethora of archived movie clips and tv shows for viewing. Free!
Major news stations | CNN.com and Foxnews.com often cover big stories with live streaming coverage. I was never a 11:00 pm news person. There’s nothing on TV news that I can’t get in 15 minutes by going to CNN or Foxnews online. Plus, I keep up with mainstream news stories through user updates on Twitter.
Justin.TV | This user-generated streaming start-up describes itself this way on the website:

“Founded in October 2006, Justin.tv is the largest online community for people to broadcast, watch interact around live video. With more than 41 million unique visitors per month and 428,000 channels broadcasting live video, Justin.tv is the leading live video site on the Web, enabling users to create real-time connections with others around the world.…Justin.tv’s live video platform scales to support massive audiences by measuring demand in real-time and intelligently replicating streams to additional servers to meet that demand. Constructed by a team of MIT and Yale graduates, the Justin.tv platform pushes more than 177 Gbps of video at peak usage – the equivalent of 16,946 standard DVDs per hour.”

If the decision comes within the next year or two for me to have either the Internet or DirectTV/Dish at home, I’m not so sure I’d be disappointed to just choose an ISP (probably AT&T) and spend the money I would “save” from a DirectTV/Dish subscription and spend it on a sweet-action HD monitor. (My current plan has me paying over $700 over the 18 month contract.)

I know WebTV isn’t there yet. But considering this was breakthrough only 3 years ago, seeing its rapid progress has me excited about what the next 5 years holds. I’ve yet to branch out to vote for a third-party politician, but in the visual streaming media campaign, my ballot has already been cast.

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Update: Web TV. Potential & Obstacles

Not a two-dog fight (Hello WebTV)