Categories
Viodi View

Viodi View – 09/29/30

Facebook is the web for some people. This is one of the many insights shared by Mark Cuban at the Media Innovations Summit this past Monday and Tuesday. His point was that content owners should not ignore Facebook as a distribution outlet, since there are a sizable number of people who use this site as their primary portal to the online world. I had the unique position of viewing the many excellent speakers at this conference from the projection room. Although my notes were sketchy, I look forward to absorbing more of what was said when I edit the hours and hours of recordings we made of this event.


Truly Portable Production

Prior to Media and Innovations Summit, I spent some time working with the folks from datavideo and OpenTV to create an interactive audio/visual experience that would emulate the theme of the conference. In this video, I provide an overview of the datavideo part of the configuration, while a future video will look at the OpenTV portion of the set-up. If you are interested in more details on the set-up, please join me at the Local Content Workshop that will be held in conjunction with the Minnesota Telecom Association’s Video Group.  Click here to view the video.  


Telecom Carriers Discuss Innovation Needs With Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs by Alan Weissberger

Everyone is aware of the carriers' dilemma: To meet the exponential growth in data traffic, mobile carriers must spend ever more money to finance the build out of their wireless networks (both access and backhaul). Yet this spending and plant upgrade must be done while carrier data revenues are growing much more slowly (estimated at only 3% annually) than the increased data traffic they must support. Tiered pricing, new business models with revenue sharing (e.g. eReader downloads over 3G networks), new apps and services (e.g LBS, health monitoring, etc) have all been suggested But with their often stodgy corporate cultures and bureaucracies, can carriers innovate on their own and execute promptly? Is collaboration and investment in start-ups a better solution for telcos to grow revenues and fund network expansion? Click here to read the article.


P1040177

Help On Demand – Online and On TV

HDTV calibration is another innovative way SureWest Communications is adding value to its bundled service offering. They are doing this through a series of on-demand videos that help people calibrate their televisions. The videos provide an easy to follow along tutorial on how to adjust contrast, brightness, resolution and color. What is amazing about this concept is that the output signal of the set-top may rival that of broadcast test generators in years back (about a year ago, I saw on-demand test patterns from a generic set-top that provided an amazingly accurate output). Click here to read the rest of the article on this innovative way of providing customer support.  Creative Commons License photo credit: Kaiban


Music for the Living Room and Beyond – A Look at MOG

Does technology drive us apart? This was an interesting question posed in a Rockline interview with the Wilson sisters of the rock band Heart. With MP3 players, game devices and smart phones, people may be connected, but, as Stephen Stills might say, not necessarily connected with the ones they are with.

The timing of last night's interview with Ann and Nancy Wilson was impeccable, as I have been reviewing MOG for the past couple of weeks.  MOG, an on-demand, subscription-based service, is looking at bringing social back into the music listening experience.  The Heart interview gave me the perfect excuse to, once again, test MOG’s claim of 8.5+ million songs under license.  Click here to read more.


Some Tweets and Short Thoughts


The Korner – 2020 Vision with Gary Arlen

For as long as there have been conferences, panelists have been making predictions about technology and its adoption. Gary Arlen of Arlen Communications has seen and made his share of predictions both on panels and as part of his consulting practice. At the Media and Innovations Summit, Arlen moderated a couple of panels and coaxed predictions from his panelists regarding interactive television. He also showed off his latest button that sums up his philosophy on predicting the future; and the button even comes with a user guide!

Click here to watch the video.

Click here to watch the video

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

Linked In Profile

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.