[opendtv] News: DOWNLOAD on Demand
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2005 08:48:50 -0400
DOWNLOAD on Demand
September 1, 2005 12:00am
Source: Broadcasting and Cable
There's a rapidly developing option for TV audiences hungry for a
wider range of content: download-on-demand. Thanks to recent deals
involving upstart video-download service Akimbo and TiVo, subscribers
can download everything from baseball games to cooking programs over
a broadband pipe and into a digital video recorder hooked up to the
TV.
Last week, Major League Baseball Web site MLB.com announced that it
will deliver highlights and condensed games to subscribers'
televisions via Akimbo's DVR system. And TiVo has tapped three IFC
original series (Greg the Bunny, Hopeless Pictures and The Festival
) for the trial of its new service, which allows viewers to download
content over the Internet and save it to a DVR for viewing on a TV.
Download times aren't exactly VOD-quick: 3- to 5-megabit-per-second
(Mbps) connections can download an hour-long program in about an hour.
"Our download service isn't about instant gratification like regular
VOD," says TiVo Senior Product Manager Evan Young. "This is similar
to setting up a season pass or wish list, in that you set it up and
forget it until the content is actually available for viewing."
The deals hint at what could be an important complement to cable
operators' get-it-now VOD services. One of the daunting issues
operators face is, as VOD grows in popularity, they need to add more
streams to handle increased content. And while a VOD library with
100,000 hours of content sounds like a great way to keep subscribers
using the service, it's costly-especially when 100,000 hours is
replicated across hundreds, if not thousands, of systems.
But, for Young, it's more than distribution or storage. "We see this
as a complementary service for our subscribers and also for program
producers and networks," he says. "This gives programmers who are
concerned their show will be lost in the 500-channel universe a
chance to draw attention to it."
IFC General Manager Evan Shapiro concurs: "This is more of a
promotional effort. This is about reaching viewers and having them
tell others to get season passes for IFC shows."
Download-on-demand could save cable operators millions of dollars,
believes Akimbo CEO Josh Goldman. They could use their VOD servers to
distribute popular content, while using their broadband pipe to
deliver a download system that can access content that appeals to a
smaller group of subscribers. "With the cost of Internet transport
falling and the codecs that compress the content improving," he says,
"this is ultimately a good thing for cable operators and networks
because we can offer a vast amount of content."
But not everyone's convinced what role download-on-demand will serve.
Adi Kishore, media and entertainment strategies analyst, The Yankee
Group, says it isn't so much a threat to cable's linear channel
offerings as download-on-demand is to advanced services like VOD. He
says if cable operators charge $15 a month for VOD access and other
services, customers could find less expensive online delivery
services more compelling.
Yet he finds the concept intriguing nonetheless. "The prospect of
unlimited video online and the ability to watch it on TV rather than
the PC is attractive," he says. "And while most content so far has
been very niche oriented, the MLB deal raises eyebrows because there
is nothing niche about baseball's appeal."
Another significant aspect of download-on-demand is that, as program
producers and studios begin to store their archives as digital files,
it becomes possible for download services like TiVo's or Akimbo's to
tap into that archive server. "The amount of content we could offer
is limitless," says Young. "It can be hosted anywhere."
IFC's trial runs through October, and Shapiro expects IFC to learn
lessons that it can apply to its launch of regular VOD services in
2006. Downloading on demand, coupled with the more mature VOD, is
further proof that the network model is changing, he says: "In an era
when PVRs [personal video recorders] are rolling out quickly, the
linear-network model becomes very quaint."
Akimbo, meanwhile, continues to expand its library and now has more
than 4,000 titles available via download from networks like CNN, Food
Network and BBC. It's adding 1,000 each month and just added baseball
to the mix. Akimbo delivers content over broadband to boxes that hold
150 hours of content and cost subscribers around $199. Users also pay
$9.99 a month for access to both free and pay-per-view content.
MLB.com pricing is still to be determined.
Business-model flexibility is one of the reasons Akimbo's Goldman
believes the service will continue to gain traction with content
owners. "We have a revenue-share agreement and take care of the
hosting, selling and delivering of content for our partners," he says.
The deal is about more than just exposure and new revenue, he adds.
It's about providing a mutually beneficial service to content owners.
"For MLB.com to do this themselves, they would have to create a
different user interface for every type of set-top box and
set-top-box software available," says Goldman. "But we'll encode the
video, fix the metadata, and aggregate it behind a user interface
that can work with the cable operator's systems."
While downloading old ballgames and episodes of Emeril is all well
and good, everyone has an eye on the bigger prize: targeted
advertising. "Targeted ads will allow us to make more [content]
available for lower cost or even free," Goldman says. "Once the
advertising world comes to grips with VOD and digital delivery, we'll
move from a 30-second spot to something that is more targeted."
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