C-Net's NATPE presentation

This was a factually dense but not particularly exciting presentation, unless you're into gadgets with unimaginative names made of letters and numbers: "The New Technologies That Will Change Your Business".

I was hoping for something with a bit of oomph, but it was mostly about new distribution opportunities, which aren't really that interesting. What about the technologies that will enable new content forms? CES is, I guess, not the place for that sort of stuff, so I'll forgive Brian here for his box-centric infopres: his top trends from CES hidden behind the link.

4 hot trends from this year's CES:

TV ON PHONES.
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We do reserach with the consumer electronics association twice a month. We have a very frequent pulse of what users think about all the content and technology out there. Our first product that I want to bring to you - we're pointing to trends here, the products will come and go - the LG VX9400 television-watching phone, using MediaFlo from Qualcomm. This thing is amazing. The quality is amazing. You can flip the screen 90 to landscape orientation, which really helps. 2.5" swivel screen. It has all the usual bells and whistles, and it's going to carry a lot of network level content. Nothing local though, and this is a sticky wicket. There's a $15 a month addon to add the MediaFlo VCast Mobile TV to the Verizon phone that can handle it. Samsung's U620 is another phone that can handle, although more ordinary in its hardware orientation.

We've been talking TV to a separate channel on the phone here. There's another way: the Nokia N75 has OTA - Over The Air music and video downloads. If you have an impulse need, you can get it direct off the network. You don't have to download it on the web, then bluetooth it to your phone, that's kludgy. It supports PlaysForSure, Rhapsody, Napster, etc. Legal, Windows Media, DRMed content.

Another way of TV to phone: DVBH. This is supported by big companies - Intel, Microsoft, etc. Modeo are the leading company pushing this out now, but everyone's a bit stuck. This is also a separate channel to the phone : MediaFlo, DVB-H, two ways of getting content to the phone in really high quality.

Apple iPhone. Just looking at this machine from this room's POV: the 3.5" hi-res screen (160dpi) - gorgeous - iTunes, and iTunes video of all types, which is the best known legit content place in the world. They have a long way to go though before they have everything you wanna watch. The device has wifi. You can make VOIP calls, although I'm offtopic there. 4-8GB storage, but you can't upgrade that yet, which is something they must fix. We're concerned about that. It's pricey too, at 500-600 bucks, pricey for something that won't be embraced by business. It's not being positioned like that. The blackberry isn't going to get dumped that quickly, but nevertheless the iPhone is a really hot device. It's a revolution in hand-held video. But no TV streaming, no MediaFlo, no DVB-H! No live connection to the network, this is a problem. All fixable by the next version, of course.

INTERNET TO TV.
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Apple TV. The 'iTV'. It's a simple little box. It can stream from iTunes on your PC over to your TV. It's 720 hi-def compatible at the moment. 300 bucks! It's out in a matter of weeks. Apple will get so much press for this thing, they'll create a market for their competitors.

Along those lines.. here's the SlingCatcher, from those Slingbox folks. It takes what's on your coputer or web, and bounce it to your TV. It displays whatever your PC sees. It's cheap, under 200 bucks. You can also use it as a room bouncer: if you only have one DVD player, and you want to watch that content in another room, you can use this as a repeater of sorts. Nice bonus for sharing content.

Here's another, Sony Bravia Internet Video Link. You clamp it onto a Sony TV, and it will only work with future Sony TVs [alices note: what is *wrong* with them?]. It will put AOL, Yahoo and Grouper content on your TV. Walled garden. No PC involvement required. It's hardware restricted, and no price yet. My concern on this is the restricted content - YouTube is missing here. The limited content set is my biggest hangup, although they can fix that with the stroke of a pen.

Netgear Digital Entertainer. This is another class of this device: it plays most anything, including iTunes or YouTube on your TV. It has DVR ability. 1080p output. 350 dollars. 

Here's an oddball: the Sandisk USB TV. It docks to your TV, and you walk around with the USB portion and a remote control; you can drag-and-drop video to this device; the internal hardware transcodes whatever it is into DIV-X. It's got a lovely UI too, not geeky or computerish at all.

Joost was just rolled out. Venice Project. They're trying to create a network of video with input from the majors; it's a managed, quality-controlled YouTube, is how I'm reading it. They wanna have the best of grassroots too. They've signed with Warner Music so far, more to come I'm sure. Launching with TMobile, Wrigley and Maybelline as trial sponsors. The interface is great, but everythign else is a bit rough; however they're polishing it up. HD quality video here.

HIGH DEF DVD IN CHAOS
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The LG dual format deck, plays Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Great. It has issues with interactivity though; the Blu-Ray Java is supported, but HDi, what HDDVD uses for interactive, is not supported at all. Plus 1200 dollars. THAT'S a problem. The consumers are smart enough to know that there are two formats, and one will win out. They'll wait and see, beyond some few early adopters. This causes noise, but it's by no means a perfect answer.

Warner Dual Disc format, Total HD. This is a disc that has Blu-Ray and HDDVD on each disc. There's no fidelity sacrifice. The price will not be materially higher than either of the other formats.. retailers will have to stock another format however. Consumers will have to figure out which is which and what they invested in; it doesn't answer the question, it's again just 'band aid'. We're disappointed by how the industry hasn't been able to sort this issue out, and our consumers tell us this.

TV IN CARS
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Another sneaker trend. This is in the back seat, but will move forward. Here's the KVH TracVision A7. it's HUGE. 185 DirecTV channels, 70 XM channels, and 140 local DMA signals. So you can see local shows. Content from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox. It's 3 grand though, plus a subscription. This is not a cheap thing, but they've been at it for a number of years, there's a market out there. They've already been working out the kinks.

Verizon/MSN TV: 20m in-car monitors by 2010, I saw recently. This box hooks up to your car's monitors, and it has a 3G cellular connection provided by Verizon. It's like a very bad DSL connection. This is great compared to what you have in the car now, which is nothing, but no compare to work. There's lots of content specially made for in-car environment; the hardware is 2000 bucks, plus 70-90 a month for all you can eat data. That's quite high. This is so much smaller than the previous device, plus you have in-car wifi.

Autonet is another one. Cellular 3G, in-car hotspot again, and 400 bucks with a 50 a month sub. Avis are installing these for $11 a day.

Let's say you have this whole world of satellite TV to the car: these wireless networks are only getting faster. WiMax is on the way, faster and more robust than 3G. Do I need a special TV connection at home, or do I get everything via the internet? These things are IP everything. IT's happening at home and in the car. Do we have IP to every device, or do we have specialised networks, like cable, or satellite? This remains to be battled out by the vendors and ruled on by the consumers.

Sirius SC-V1 tuner: Sirius video are doing a gadget, a tiny box, you stick it in your car, and it decodes video from the sirius radio satellites. Sirius are doing a strictly back-seat solution, targeted to kids, so as not to bring too much attention to themselves. 300 bucks.

Bonus big trend:

Skip Inventory
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Did you see this on TiVo? When you skipped an ad, a banner appeared.. it's back. Skip Inventory is an interesting discussion point. Here's a TiVo Series 3. It's hi-def, 32 hours of HD, 300 hours of Standard Def. It also has dual tuner cable card so you can have two premium subs.. it's 800 bucks. This is the big guy. It's the only one of its kind that is also THX certified, so it's the cats meow for AV buffs. So it supports skip inventory. You're skipping an ad? They'll put a still over your skipping. Ad buyers will have a second chance to grab those eyeballs. If you hit the green thumbsup button, you go into that interstitial.

[alice's note: OMFG.]

I don't know if this is going to be useful. I did a focus group a year ago on skipping commercials, and it's not the spot that they don't like, it's the schedule. The schedule is what brings you unrelated messages; the spot is just content. It's the way that they're slotted and scheduled that's annoying to the user.

Brian Cooley, Editor at Large, CNet. 

Comments

[kim]

>format war.

I know a guy at a silicon company (no, not my former employer) who's just developed a dual-decoder chip that does HD DVD and Blueray. In silicon-land, this is kind of analogeous to when mp3 support got added to cd players. One vendor had the capability first, and it went from +$50 feature to +$5 feature to checklist item in the space of 18 months. I expect "supports both formats" to do teh same.

>skip inventory.

I also said OMFG, but for different reasons. I can't beleive they are trying to sell it. In the end, I think consumers will speak with their wallets. Tivo can prob get away with it for some time because of their mss.