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Quick Jump Menu to this Issue’s Articles April 14th, 2004 Overview The Scoop on IP Video from USTA Beyond Movies: TV on Demand – More Notes from Digital Hollywood Content Protection …..The Rest of the Story..
Beyond Movies: TV on Demand – More Notes from Digital Hollywood
by Ken Pyle ([email protected])
April 14th, 2004 Issue
This panel at the Digital Hollywood conference featured Rebecca Scilingo, [Director of New Products, Digital Television, Comcast], Mary Coller [Sr. Vice President, SoapCity.com, Sony Pictures Digital Television] and several other prominent speakers. This was an interesting panel as it provided the perspective of the nation’s largest cable operator and their plans for VOD.
Comcast’s Perspective – Make TV on Demand Work Better
Sony Digital Perspectives – Clean up with Soaps (Future Issue)…..
Comcast’s Perspective – Make TV on Demand Work Better
Comcast has launched to over 50% of footprint with VOD, while over 80% of their passings will be able to receive VOD [video-on-demand], SVOD (subscription VOD) and FOD [Free video-on-demand] by the end of the year. Scilingo suggested that 11 million Comcast subs will have on-demand capability by the end of the year. These numbers do not seem to add up at first glance, but they make the point that on-demand is a serious endeavor for Comcast.
They are using on-demand to upsell their linear channels. This summer, they will be trialing a feature that will allow subscribers to order HBO via their remote control. They see music videos as an effective method for getting people used to using the technology. Once people are used to purchasing “free on demand” they are more willing to try other offerings. She suggested that 60% of the Philadelphia market has used on-demand at one time or another.
They are increasing their storage to something like 10,000 hours by the end of the year. They are offering standard definition on-demand at 3.75 Megabits per second (Mb/s), while High Definition VOD is encoded from 14 to 16 Mb/s. I also inferred from her comments that they are looking at some way of mixing physical and electronic distribution to move the date a movie is available for VOD. Hmmm, this is one comment worth watching closely.
They believe on-demand is all about providing product bundles. They want to offer consumers the ability access content in a way that the consumer wants. Their main focus is the TV, as their belief is that the most compelling content will be TV on Demand. They believe that greater usage leads to more product stickiness; that is, less churn.
One of the ways to drive usage is by making the product easy to use. This is a challenge as making something simple can be complex. A simple to use User Interface (UI or commonly known as an Interactive Program Guide, IPG) is a way to help drive “clicks”. Being able to implement search engines that are easy to use will be important to both driving on demand video, as well as being able to help drive T-commerce applications.
They are also looking at new features to drive usage. They are looking at networked DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) as a way of providing new content. In a related effort, they are looking at adding more SVOD product. One of the interesting things is that they believe that chapterized VOD, sort of an on-demand DVD, is something that will be of great interest to their subscribers.
Ad insertion will be integral to their future on-demand plans. In their view, it will be about providing targeted advertising (e.g. diaper commercial for the parents of a 2 year old). As such, splicing ads into the on-demand stream will be very important and the ability to rotate ads in and out of the VOD stream will be critical. This area is one that Comcast believes they need more experience.
All of these efforts will be driven by meta-data. How content is tagged for television needs to be consistent between the television world and the broadband world (high speed Internet) or else it will be be much more costly to have an integrated offering that can serve both television and broadband platforms. Scilingo pointed out that the CableLabs 1.1 specification works only for the TV on Demand World and there is no tool that bridges these applications at this point.
Authoring tools that can be provided to content providers to help drive the promotional chain will be very important. Content providers will not want to develop for multiple platforms. Some other pieces of the puzzle that are critical from Comcast’s standpoint include:
- A session resource management platform that will allow an operator to use multiple different video pumps (i.e. VOD servers) will be important. These resource managers will also need to support CableLabs’ OCAP standards
- MPEG-4 is another piece of the puzzle. It will be the key in ensuring that High Definition on Demand can be reduced to a manageable size.
- Conditional Access is necessary. Comcast has accepted Digital Rights Management as another must-have that is required for the long-term.
- Industry Reporting: Content licensors want to know what happens to their content. Accurate and timely reporting will be important to content licensors (and licensees) as it will help show how on-demand helps add value to content.
In summary, a telco should benchmark against Comcast as to how they compare in their on-demand service offerings. Comcast may not have all of the answers, but they seem to know all of the questions. As they continue to try new things, they will be getting answers that will allow them to differentiate themselves from their satellite and telco competitors.
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