Internet video development tools ensure "no TV left behind"

Active-TV Ecosystem Developers,

The Issue: Lack of low-cost and easy-to-use technology-in-a-box for Internet-based video has kept it from reaching a living room audience.

Solutions: Established companies (with only mixed success so-far at resolving both business and technical issues…) appear stalled due to conflicting business agendas.

Behind the scene: A new Web 2.0 ‘mash-up’ site for TV-web content makes it easy to build customized TV channels for delivery right to the living room TV. You no longer have to wait for established companies to make great strides in enabling a path to the living room TV.

In a recent Knowledge@Wharton article, Wharton Business School marketing professor, Peter Fader, argues that “by adopting so-called web 2.0 techniques -- such as consumer rating systems and new combinations of content – [TV] networks could create a sense of community, much like that found at social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook”. He is referring to the broad adoption of Internet-based video streaming directly to the TV.

Key to Fader’s argument is not “to resist the urge to protect content but instead to focus on giving users a good experience.” Also, that “the goal is creating connections and a trail to eventually buy a DVD. Doing that would create revenue and a deeper relationship [with consumers]."

To this end, the PC industry has done a poor job of delivering on its promise of elegant yet cheap technical solutions that deliver Internet video to the living room TV. This is clearly pointed out by Matte Richtel in a New York Times article: so far, “here’s the reality: laboriously hook your computer to your TV; watch low-definition photos of the family vacation. At no risk of hyperbole, the promise of the digital home has fallen desperately short”.

Richtel goes on to describe a “new crop” of boxes which take a “more modest” approach to satisfying the needs of consumers who want to watch YouTube on the TV. Given this new potential, and the perhaps little understood but far-reaching consequences of a power shift in the TV industry, he speculates that “television makers could demand a share of advertising or subscription revenue from content partners who are given access to the viewers of their TVs”. Hence, content owners and TV builders would effectively side-step or supplant the current business model led by dominant service providers and relatively subservient set-top-box providers. It is a scenario most suited to the US market.

What is more likely to drive market development is extending the reach of PC-web-based social networking and video sharing sites to the ‘big TV’ via TV-web supported devices that use active-TV technology. To show how easily this can be done, a ‘mash-up’ of Web 2.0 components are available at www.active-TV.org. With the availability of active-TV technology-enabled boxes such as the recently upgraded D-Link DSM-520, it is quite easy to bring Internet-delivered video to any TV. What is next is a mash-up combining or merging Web 2.0 content for both PC-web and TV-web. At that point it will be easier to build your own TV-web channels than building a blog.

Feedback, corrections and comments welcome.. Contact me for more information or support with active-TV technology development.
Daniel Mann