YouTube puts premium on moves, TV
Google bought YouTube more than two years ago. Now the bill has arrived.
YouTube’s upcoming redesign will dump its current navigation scheme using “channels” and instead funnel viewers into more traditional categories such as “Movies,” “Shows” (TV) and “Music.”
Looks like Google thinks amateur content, YouTube’s lifeblood to date, isn’t enough — or maybe just not good enough. Advertisers have felt that way for some time, given the video site’s history of failures in the ad arena.
Meanwhile, YouTube has cut a deal with Disney for limited content from its television unit, including the networks ABC and ESPN. Content will be mostly clips that will appear on branded pages, meaning this is largely a promotional pact. In order to watch ABC network shows, for example, you’ll sit through an ad, watch a teaser and then follow a link over to ABC.com for the real deal. Disney reportedly is near a deal to buy part of Hulu.
The web site ClickZ broke the story of YouTube’s redesign and shift to premium content.
“It’s totally a Hulu approach, but that’s best practices right now,” an ad exec told ClickZ.
The idea is to segregate premium (Hollywood, network) content from the works of the rabble. Three of the four navigation tabs will point to movies and TV shows, while the amateurs get one tab. The overall page designs could mitigate this imbalance, or make it worse. We’ll see soon enough as launch is set for April 16, after a delay.
The new YouTube player also will follow Hulu’s lead, the report said. YouTube went to a widescreen format for its video player at the end of 2008. (The Disney deal also brings its first third-party video player, from ESPN.)
TV.com’s redesign recently “borrowed” Hulu’s layout and presentation for its redesign.
The ad presentation for YouTube also will be similar to Hulu, with the spots in-stream so most viewers will sit through them.
YouTube’s monstrous traffic of 100 million monthly visitors hasn’t coverted into revenues, as the user-generated-content site struggled with various monetization schemes and annoying advertising placements.
“They need the money,” Mike Vorhaus, an online media consultant, said of YouTube and ABC. The move to premium content is “how they’re going to get it,” he told the New York Times.
Advertisers will feel more at home now, since they don’t think much of populist video presentations, UGC long being a dog for revenue.
Ad execs were said to be enthusiastic about the YouTube redesign previews. Let’s hope Google isn’t putting its stamp on the design scheme: Big G’s page designs have always sucked like it’s 1999 and at least three of the top Google designers have walked in recent weeks.
One problem with all this: YouTube’s premium content consists of mostly studio and network catalog retreads.
My prediction for launch date April 16: viewer firestorm.
Blockbuster joining TiVo’s VOD lineup
Blockbuster’s online movie gallery soon will be playing on TiVo boxes, under a deal the two companies will announce today, the New York Times is reporting.
The struggling home video rental giant plans to sell TiVo boxes via its 4,000 retail stores in the U.S. The service via TiVo begins in the second half of the year, the Times reported.
“We are excited to be teaming with TiVo, the company that created the DVR, to make Blockbuster’s entertainment content readily available to their millions of subscribers,” Jim Keyes, chief executive of Blockbuster, said in a nicely canned statement. “Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our On Demand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well.”
TiVo already has a deal with Netflix for its Watch Instantly VOD service. Amazon’s digital movies and TV shows also flow through the TiVo interactive DVRs. In order to rent Blockbuster movies, consumers will need an Internet connection to the TiVo box. The DVR company sells kits that allow for wireless hookups.
Netflix, meanwhile, has cut a deal with Facebook in which subscribers can inflict their movie ratings on their online pals. The subscribers’ ratings appear on their Facebook page and link off to Netflix’s web site via the marketing-driven Facebook Connect. What a terrific idea — for the marketing guys at Netflix. Please tell me I’m missing something here …
iTunes Store gets serious about HD
The iTunes Store is open to all for high-definition business, starting with the highly anticipated videos “Quantum of Solace” and “Twilight.”
iTunes actually started selling high-def titles more than a year ago, but the proposition was too squirrelly for most of us to worry about — HD movies and TV shows were only available for rental, and then only if you used the Apple TV box to get them to a monitor.
You now can rent or download an HD movie and play it on your Mac or PC. That’s high-def* with an asterisk because the resolution is 720p, unlike Blu-rays at the full 1020p.
The latest hit HD movies will sell on iTunes for $19.99 (a bit of a price break over Blu-rays). The HD downloads also come with a standard def version for playing on iPods and iPhones. You’ll need the latest iTunes update, 8.1, Apple said in a press release on the high-definition movies.
HD rentals are $4.99. They’ll go live within a month after the Blu-rays street, Apple said.
“Customers have made HD content on iTunes a hit, with over 50 percent of TV programming being purchased in HD when available,” flacked Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services.
The new Bond movie and the teen vampire romance are now on iTunes as pre-orders, with the actual files downloading next week. Step right up, quantities are unlimited.
The iTunes store has some HD movies up there now, but they’re mostly marginal entries such as “Bangkok Dangerous” and “Disaster Movie.” Anyone up for paying $20 for “Religuious”?
March Madness streams cleaned up
Like green beer, stinky cabbage and your office NCAA pool picks, CBS’s live streaming presentations of March Madness proved to be a bittersweet March tradition.
Herky jerky video, pointless viewer registrations and the purgatory of a bandwidth “waiting room” all irritated followers of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Still, 4.7 million tuned in, and at least it was free — unlike on DirecTV.
This year, though, it looks like CBS Interactive has a chance at cutting down the net. Starting today, all NCAA tourney games will be flowing with what CBS says is plenty of bandwidth for all, no waiting, no b.s.
Also, a higher-quality (HQ) stream will flow via Microsoft’s Silverlight video platform. You’ll recall that was used last summer for NBC’s Olympics. This time, look for better results: Silverlight works for Macs and presumably a lot of the bugs are toast.
Webmasters not opposed to promo freebies can use the new “March Madness on Demand” links, popup players and widgets to offer links and popups to game coverage. (View the popup player below, use the link.)
The iPhone and iPod Touch also are in the game with a $4.99 app that brings in all games, but only if you’re currently on wi-fi. (Of course, if the iPhone is in wi-fi range, you’d probably be watching on a computer, right?) For those on Edge or 3G, the iPhone basketball app delivers audio of all games. Odd, because CBS Interactive already has an iPhone app that runs on 3G. Looks like the NCAA iPhone app is a low seed, but someone somewhere will find it a godsend.
Online video provider Joost tried a P2P version of live NCAA coverage last year, but there’s no sign of a repeat on its new browser-based service. The noble Joost “experiment” received mixed marks from viewers, at best.
CBS said it has nearly sold out advertising for its NCAA live streaming content, with something like $30 million from 35-plus sponsors. In the online video world, that’s big money. Last year’s MMOD revenues were about $23 million, Media Week reported.
None of that good news will get my Gators out of the NIT. Ugh.
(Ever wonder who came up with the term March Madness?)
Check out the March Madness popup player
TV.com looking good with 1080p HD
CBS’ TV.com says it’s streaming high-definition video in 1080p resolution. The evidence, which looks quite good, can be found on the page Beta: True High Definition Video.
So far, the TV.com page only has a couple of clips — from “CSI,” “Survivor,” “The Pink Panther” and Letterman. But the text promises, “This is Blu-Ray DVD quality, right here on TV.com — and there’s about to be a whole lot more of it.”
Of course, most people still don’t have the capability of displaying true 1080p video on their computer monitors. If you have a good CRT monitor, you’re good. Owners of Sony “Full HD” laptops (such as the VAIO) seem to be getting the true 1080p experience. Some widescreen LCDs will deliver the full monty as well. (Check the manual.) I don’t know if computer-to-HD TV schemes work, but an HDMi chord would have to be in the loop. (Anyone?)
At any rate, the 1080p offerings on TV.com seemed a clear step up from the site’s regular HD offerings. (At least the clips didn’t have the ads.) The images were clean, with the sharpness way high, flirting with jagged. There was a satisfying 3D pop to everything.
I experienced some odd and annoying stuttering as the clips played, especially when the live-action survivors were running around. In the Letterman clip, with U2 butts-down for an interview, there was almost no stuttering.
Silicon Valley Insider had worse luck with the halting images: “Their HD videos looked more like HD slideshows.”
The vintage “Pink Panther” toon looked OK, but you wonder why they didn’t include a contemporary bit of animation for show-and-tell.
Check it out for yourself: This seems about as good as it gets in online video.
TV.com recently lost content from NBC and Fox as Hulu halted feeds to the CBS site, which seeks to display shows from all networks.
