Barack Obama: Live on NBC, somehow

obama zucker spoofTime for the thanks of a grateful nation to go to the Peacock Network and Jeff Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC Universal.

Despite great temptation, Zucker  and Co. decided not to tape delay Barack Obama’s historic nomination speech for West Coast viewers.

Sure, NBC could have just plastered a “Live” notice on the delayed broadcast — hey, it worked just swell during the Olympics. But this time out, NBC went with actual events in actual real time. Take a bow, Zucker.

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democratic convention silverlight video warningMicrosoft’s Silverlight video platform went straight from its exclusive online debut on NBC’s Olympics site to an exclusive online encore on the Democratic National Convention’s site.

Again, owners of PowerPC-based Macs users were shut out if they wanted the latest and greatest video stream — as in real time, in high def.

Why the hell would the Democratic Party — of all organizations — limit its online video content to an proprietary and exclusionary technology when many all-access solutions were available? No mystery: Microsoft money doesn’t talk, it screams.

You got it: Microsoft was “the Official Software and HD web content provider” for the DNC.

At least this sellout didn’t reek as much as the Olympics online video deal. This time, there were other live feeds (of lesser quality) on CNN.com, C-SPAN.org and several other nets.

UstreamTV had an “unofficial” stream of the DNC and is the official RNC online video provider. “Anyone with computer and Internet access will be guaranteed a front-row seat to history,” Ustream vows. Now that’s American.

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2014 olympics logoESPN wants the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, a possibility that’ll have sports fans cheering. Here’s what ESPN exec vp for content John Skipper told the New York Times about NBC and its tape-delay shenanigans:

“Our DNA is different than theirs. We serve sports fans. It’s hard in our culture to fathom tape-delaying in the same way they have. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t the smart thing for them to do, but it’s not our culture.”

Skipper reminded the Times that if ESPN had the Olympics TV rights, it would employ the ABC network, multiple ESPN cable nets, espn.com and extensive video-streaming outlets. “There’s nothing that NBC has that we don’t have the assets to replicate and do better,” he said.

Let’s make the leap of faith that doing better means ESPN will, at least, apply basic news judgment.

Our pals over at Sports Couch Potato examined this mess and declared:  “It’s clear the days of the taped-delayed Olympics have become a thing of the past.” You gotta believe.

Bad mojo at Vudu: 20% of staff axed

Vudu downloading movies logoThe suits at Vudu are saying the things investors and subscribers would like to hear, but it’s hard to find much good in the news that the movies-on-demand outfit laid off something like 20% of its staff.

The company’s line is that the layoffs were “just a normal process” for a start-up, which has to adjust to market conditions in the early lifecycle.

National dealer channel manager Mark Donnigan has made the rounds of the tech sites, denying any internal crisis and pointing out that Vudu is aggressively rounding up high-definition films to feed its premium set-top box.

Only four months ago, the New York Times hailed the online movie service under the headline “Vudu Casts Its Spell in Hollywood.” Perhaps, the author wrote, the black box meant a “goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies’ much narrower video-on-demand offerings.”

Chris Watts, formerly of eBay, has just come aboard as CFO, with his predecessor leaving for “personal reasons.” The layoffs were reported as 16 or 18 staffers out of 100. At the same time, the Vudu jobs page cites various positions “coming soon” and eight current jobs in marketing and sales.

Vudu slid into the porno business earlier this month, partnering with AVN for VOD sales of SD and HD movies from Vivid, Hustler and Wicked, the big-name creators of adult content. Some tech bloggers cited that move as one of desperation, but it seems more like giving the heavily male early adopters what they want.

The layoffs come a few weeks after movie-download service Vongo bit the dust.


CinemaNow goes multiplatform with DRM

cinemanow movie imageCinemaNow, the pioneering online movie service, is taking on Apple with a new iTunes-like application that’s said to work on Macs, iPods, iPhones and potentially a host of consumer electronics devices.

Previously, CinemaNow customers were locked into using Microsoft’s Windows operating system and its far from flexible digital-right management system. Now the content can be downloaded or streamed to devices operating off Mac, Windows or Linus software — Mac or PC.

The change comes as CinemaNow adopts a multiplatform copyright-control system made by Wildevine Technologies. Wildevine says its DRM system allows consumers “to securely enjoy Hollywood feature films,” a safeguard that’ll certainly help us all sleep better at night.

More from the DRM folks:

“CinemaNow will be one of the first to securely distribute premium content on all major consumer platforms running Windows, Mac or Linux. Customers will have unparalleled flexibility in accessing the portal using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or the Opera browser.”

The plan is to have consumer electronics makers preload the CinemaNow/Wildevine set-up into their products, which would include high-end TV sets and DVD players.

Wildevine gave an L.A. Times tech blogger a list of companies ready to incorporate the movie software — whose interface reportedly is similar to the iTunes Store, of course — but CinemaNow issued a retraction, saying the deals were not done.

CinemaNow’s wider reach comes within a week of the death of rival online movie service Vongo.

Disclaimer: Your friendly movie download blog runs affiliate ads for CinemaNow.

Vongo pulls the plug, nukes your movies

vongo logoThe movie downloading service Vongo has to go. A notice on the site says, “We are no longer accepting new subscribers for the Vongo service.”

Current members will be able to use Vongo through the month of September, then it’s curtains. The nasty part is, all downloaded movies in customers’ possession will self-destruct at that time. Cheapskates. The death of Vongo had been expected.

Interested parties are referred to Starz Play on the Verizon Store, a licensed version of the old Vongo download operation. (Starz Entertainment will continue to distribute movies download via third parties.) The new service will charge $5.99 a month for access to more than 1,000 movies.

The Vongo/Starz Play FAQ says the services remain the same except for pay-per-view movies. Fortunately, they’re waking the dead, so if you’re a Vongo subscriber you have to uninstall that application and install the Starz Play files.

Meanwhile, the Intel-backed ClickStar also faded out, Home Media magazine reports. It sought to bring the theatrical/video window down to a couple of weeks, but didn’t have the product to make it happen.

Vongo had been in operation for two years, working with major studios such as Disney and Sony. It experimented with one-price access to a batch of VOD movies (many of them junky).

Its download software had been preloaded on various Toshiba laptops and portable devices. Starz is an offshoot of cable overlord John Malone’s Liberty Media.

Look for the movie download shake-out to continue, as iTunes and Co. run off the smaller pioneer services.

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Movie Downloads. 100% Legal. No membership fees.

Olympics online video: Forget it, Mac

Olympics TV logo 2008NBC has gone live with its “Olympics on the Go” online video service, now active with footage from the Games’ trials.

I eagerly called up the site, now up at TV Tonic’s Olympic page, hoping to find the promised “near HD”-quality video, delivered via files that download semi-automatically onto the computer.

Here’s what I got instead:

nbc olympics online video imageBasically, you need Windows Vista and the latest version of Windows Media. I fit the profile on my laptop, and will report back. But for now, this post points to the absurdity of NBC and the Olympics not accommodating the many Mac owners, a demographic quite similar to that for sports programming.

Microsoft, of course, is in the mix, as a major ad sponsor and partner in the video operation. Microsoft, as in the creator of Vista and Windows Media.

For the “lucky ones” with (the widely disrespected) Vista, here are the system requirements.

Operating system:

Hardware:

“If you meet the software requirements above then you most likely meet these hardware requirements as well.”

Bandwidth:

“NBC Olympics On The Go delivers large video files; it may use a lot of bandwidth. It is not recommended for people using dial-up or metered broadband accounts.”

Here’s a link to the Olympics video quick start guide.

Incredible to find major media acting as if the Mac were still a second-tier computer system. Hulu, owned jointly by NBC Universal and Fox, doesn’t have sports as part of its deal with the NBC network. Prospects for the files showing up on that browser-based video service don’t look good.

The set-up is coming soon to the official NBC Olympics video page, which has some feature footage up there now.