Codec conversions: something, anything
The New York Times has a fairly detailed look at the options available for converting video files into various formats — cell phones, games, iPods — and the alphabet soup of codecs that render the data. The Times has been paying more attention to alternative video output platforms in recent months, a good thing since they’re usually on target. That’s why they’re The Times.
At the end of the piece comes this bit of wisdom, more or less what I have been prophesizing for ages. (My own enlightenment came via an arabesque chat with video visionary Todd Rundgren
Over to the Times:
All this effort could become as passé as dubbing to a cassette tape. Steve Perlman, the chief executive of the San Francisco media and technology incubator the Rearden Companies, thinks that the technical snafus and the legal debate will disappear when the average household gets a much faster Internet connection that can download movies in real time.
“While adults may listen to music tracks hundreds of times, they are unlikely to watch movies more than once or twice, so there is little point in storing movies,” he said. “You might as well watch movies live as they stream from the Internet.”
So it’s going from physical software ownership (CDs, DVDs, games), to downloaded content, to streaming everything. Count on it!
‘Transformers’ live from the ‘Web Carpet’
CBS Radio is going Hollywood with online video coverage of today’s “Transformers” premiere.
This is the debut effort of the network’s “Live From the Web Carpet” series. All the glitz, glamour and ass-kissing will be streamed live on affiliate web sites, then archived. They’re showing highlights from the movie, interviews with Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and the cast. 9:30 p.m. EDT. If you care, there it is.
CBS Radio affil 670 The Score just launched a chatroom with video streams from chatters who are using webcams and the DJs. So users can interact with the sports station’s jocks via text, audio and video. The provider is Paltalk, which says it offers the largest online video chat community.
Washington Post down on downloads
The Washington Post isn’t buying movie downloading in its current form.
Here, Rob Pegoraro takes a shot at MovieLink and CinemaNow:
If you must obtain a movie in the next few hours but can’t leave your house or have anybody else pick up the flick, these two Windows-only stores might work. Otherwise, it’s unclear who would bother with them: They stock far too few movies, charge too much for them, offer them at a quality inferior to any DVD and grossly restrict your use of these purchases.
But, he allows:
Movielink is less annoying than CinemaNow, but not by much.
And the kicker:
Collectively, these sites amount to the most hostile movie-procurement option since the video store in Kevin Smith’s comedy “Clerks” (which, by the way, you can’t rent or buy at either site).
The movie downloading business has some serious PR campaigns to wage — most of the coverage I read is either clueless or hostile.
All in the game: downloads via Xbox 360
The best player for movie downloads on the market: the Xbox 360
From setup to signup, to selecting a title and starting the show with a press of the remote’s play button, the Xbox 360 is simple. It is as easy to use as the on-demand and pay-per-view services familiar to most watchers of cable or satellite TV. … But at $400 for the model that includes a hard disk, which is needed to download movies, the Xbox is a big investment. If you aren’t a gamer, it is hard to justify spending that amount just to watch a few movies.
Writer Joe Hutsko notes that Xbox Live has 165 titles available for “rental.” A Microsoft spokesman vows there would be at least a title every day added to the service. The Xbox 360 elite, due this winter with its 120-gig hard drive, will make more video-related activities possible.
The story is pretty basic but a decent roundup of movie download options. It goes through the alternatives — the usual suspects such as MovieLink, CinemaNow, Vongo, the Unbox and the only Mac-friendly system, Apple TV.
There are scores of alternatives, but at this stage the movie selection is a factor for each one. Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said: “Whether it’s Netflix or Apple or Amazon or Wal-Mart.com, we’re all facing the same constraint: title availability.”
Not mentioned is the other advantage to the Xbox 360: its ability to play HD DVD movies. The format is on the run from Blu-ray, but this should be handy for a couple of more years anyway. The add-on HD DVD player
The television empire strikes back
“The noise and the hand-wringing that have come because of the launch of companies such as Joost, and from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple claiming that your PC is the next television, are wrong.” So says Michael Kokernak in MediaPost’s Video Insider column.
Kokernak points out, correctly, that the television industry is fighting back. The networks and their software-hardware allies are pouring money into redefining that medium for the digital age. Nielsen, my former employer, has been under tremendous pressure to greatly improve accountability in its performance measurements for TV advertisers. TiVo changed the TV picture forever, and each day offers previews of the type of interactive techniques we’ll be seeing for direct marketing.
Kokernak adds:
With the move to digital in 2009, along with the arrival of new technology systems that will build on the legacy of television advertising, the advantages that television on the Internet has for advertisers will evaporate. So, beyond security problems and having to pretend watching “Heroes” on a small computer monitor is just as good as watching it on an high-definition TV, new “television-killing” Internet portals have nothing that television will not be able to offer advertisers in only a short time.
