Welcomed by Kevin Shively, TVWorldwide

Streaming Media East 2010 – the day after report:  What is it about technology conferences that makes them so exhausting?

The exhibit floor this year was smaller then last years and I heard from the exhibitors that real “customer” presence was light, but of course for my purposes… that doesn’t really matter.

Selfishly I have to say, I am only interested in technology innovations that are easy to integrate or deploy, that are affordable and of course, that actually work.  There was a lot of discussion around scalable technology, SD to HD workflow transitions, adaptive (bit rate) streaming… and of course, highest on the list is the promise of “unified systems” (as it is referred to in the Enterprise) or single [video] signal transmission to multiple devices, something along the lines of TVEverywhere type availability of broadcast content, but specifically one feed that can play back on any device (i.e. Mobile, Desktop, Set top box, etc.).

That’s a lot to think about, but I was able to pin-point my priorities and focus on putting together a package that would work for me and my budget… and here is that journey.

The conference took place at the New York Hilton, as it has for the last several years.  Upon arrival to the show floor, one flight up via escalator, one was greeted by Kevin Shively at the entry and his A/V crew set up & ready for live interviews (you can view the replays here).  I couldn’t help but notice that this year Kevin and his trusty A/V crew (Pete) were equipped with the NewTek Tricaster TCXD850, this is the model that supports HD workflow (and will easily plug & play SD so you can ease in as you upgrade equipment and peripherals).  The Tricaster still runs on XP OS and I was a bit concerned about Microsoft’s recent announcement that they would no longer support Windows 2000 and XP O.S.

TriCaster™ TCXD850

In light of this concern I made sure my first stop on my updated workflow mission was to hit the NewTek booth and ask a guru.  I interview Will Waters, a NewTek Systems Integrator who was doing live demos on the show floor, and he assured me (*party line*) that NewTek is working with Microsoft to ensure support, however the unit is released to market on Windows XP.   This does concern me for the long term, but if one needs a workflow solution now I believe the Tricaster is the “best” studio in a box for the buck.  Of course, I would recommend not using it as your live encoder while producing a live webcast nor would I recommend going on the road with just one (I would prefer to have a back-up unit or solution like having a UStream.tv account with their UStream ProducerPro which is switcher ready and is pretty inexpensive for what you get.

On a side note, the Tricaster comes configured with UStream presets, however when I asked Will about this he was quick to redirect and position the product as being more “ubiquitous” so I suspect that relationship may have changed somehow, at least “politically”.   Just an interesting note. (And I did not see anyone from UStream.tv present at the conference, so… do the math!)

NewTek TriCasts™ America: Varsity Tour. From May 11-June 9, 2010

NewTek was plugging away at the capabilities of the mobile unit and their up-coming “Varsity Tour” (vehicle seen in the picture to the right), of which they boast:  NewTek will visit multiple cities to host live events, inviting audiences to check out the benefits of a giant live HD TV truck that fits in a backpack.

The strategy is this, they know that the trick to keeping their products relevant is attracting talent and expert users of their products, so they are hitting the Education trail to get kids hooked on their products early!  Makes sense…

At this point I have myself a nice little plan, Tricaster with a UStream.tv backup/failover plan… now I needed to figure out what to do with my transmission and how to send it out to the world.

My eyes usually glaze over and mind fog sets in at these events, I was lucky enough to run into Lisa Larson-Kelley (follow @lisamarienyc on Twitter) who was on her merry way to the A105: HTML5 and Web Video Standards session, moderated by Tim Napoleon, Co-Founder, President, Alldigital with panelists:

Jennifer Taylor, Director, Flash Content Creation and Distribution, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Monty Montgomery, Director, Xiph.Org Foundation
Greg Harris, Chief Creative Officer, Daily Interactive
Justin Eckhouse, Senior Product Manager, Video and Mobile, CBS Interactive

A105: HTML5 and Web Video Standards

The session was packed, standing room only!  It turned into (or tired to turn into) an Open Source vs. The Man type of debate that didn’t really go anywhere.  Here is how I read the session:

CBS = We wait & see to drive innovation

Adobe =”Hello, my name is Adobe & Flash is a CPU hog” “Welcome Adobe” – The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem [and, scene!]

Daily Interactive = I don’t remember anything this guy said, and I wasn’t even drinking yet.

Xiph = Stop talking & Just do it! [or something like that! You know, something really Open Sourcey and philosophical....]

Bottom line, I am looking at the HTML5 specification and it’s really no harder than HTML/XML but it has a fancy number – did you know the the number 5 is the most graphically desirable number since it contains both curve and straight line and it also represents my favorite Mambo?

The technology that really caught my eye this year is the ever affordable, pseudo non-political, ubiquitous, codec agnostic product engineered by team Wowza.  Their party line:  Wowza Media Server is the world’s first platform that lets you stream from one H.264 encode simultaneously to multiple players and devices. It unifies the multi-protocol, multi-player H.264 streaming into a single workflow, eliminating the need for multiple player-specific encoders and servers. And Wowza Media Server 2 delivers all that at an unbeatable price — 75% less than the single-protocol Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS) or Microsoft Windows Server® with IIS.

Wowza Media Server demo - live streaming video to an iPad

I spent quite a bit of time with the fellas from Wowza trying to figure out what their party line is, we even broke bread… So, maybe I came close to drinking the cool-aid but the fact of the matter is simple:  I said it had to work.

FACT:  I was able to view their demo on the floor and they went in depth into how they used the VLC player as an encoder to get the video off of the server (running on an HP laptop) and over their “lab” network were able to just play back the url in the browser on the iPad.  I could “see” it working and accept the fact that this was just a demo.  They were honest about that.  Good.

FACT:  I really think the benefit of their product is in the price-point and ease of deployment, as Alex Dobrushin, Chief Marketing Officer, walked me through the set-up on say… An Amazon ECS account… the CMO described how all I have to do is take the Wowza pre-configured server image and load it up to my ECS instance.  Wowza offers a free demo that I plan to download from their site in order to build out my first Amazon Wowza media server.  This right here is the foundation of what a CDN is.  Of course I don’t want to be a CDN, I just like to stream the media to the people!

I did a round of interviews with A.M. Arno of Bandwidth Bastard fame and will be editing some clips of my exploits for your viewing pleasure shortly.

Last Word:  I got what I needed out of this conference and I hope that you got something out of this post, now go brush up on your motor skills and get some exercise!

Photo by Kelly Samardak: An Online Minute... Burgeoning Women's Networking Event Flings It For Spring At Armani/Ristorante

The most recent Digital Diva shin-dig inspired me, a little vino and a lot of chit-chat about social experiments and live streaming… all good stuff.

The ladies in the fabulous picture to the left, and I, were discussing live webcasting and what makes a live experience more compelling than just watching an on-demand web video?  Perhaps, we get a sense of intimacy that we share with the other viewers – when you know you are not alone in the “room” so to speak…  it is an intimate feeling, with the audience and the speaker, augmented by a sense of being there.  It makes the “viewer” more of a participant than a passive set of eyeballs.  Take that and top it off with some real-time interactivity and you have a fabulous recipe for attracting a real audience.

The best live webcast experience I ever had was at the launch of “Progressive Networks” first live

streaming media experiments (a.k.a. Real Networks).

I guess it was 1996 and I can remember the haunting feeling as I listened to the audio streaming live, it would slow down and warp as I watched the “counter” go up on the webpage as people tuned in and down as people were dropped, folks from all over the world tuned in and shared in this sense of wonder.  They could be anywhere….  I was somewhere.  Who was listening in with me?

That was the very moment when I felt it in my gut, that somehow I was going to be a part of this thing… this magical thing we call streaming media.

Of course now a days we expect and need a lot more to go with the live experience, warped audio ain’t enough to let us know we are not alone in the “room”.  Now, we need to share thoughts and reactions, have the speakers respond to our concerns in real time and to top it off, we want our snarky comments to twitter and retweet to the global cesspool.

That is all well and good, but the real challenge is finding all that is live broadcasting in one place.  I am considering creating a “what’s live now” Media Portal that only announces live webcasts (live online video broadcasts) from all over the world – I could suck in feeds from Ustream, Livestream and the FCC.. and even The YouTube and Hulu.

It’s the vision I have for 2011 and I’d like your feedback on this effort and of course any developers interested in this project are welcome to join in the conversation.

I will be in and out of the Streaming Media East 2010 conference, I will have my Zoom recorder and may take some interviews to post to my new blog, by the way…

Do you like it?  Getting better, isn’t it?

Another erratic take on the exciting world of Enterprise Video!!  Read how I predicted trends that came to fruition, the right and wrong of how 2009 became a “banner” year for our industry in the Enterprise:

2009 - A Banner Year

The basic concept most enterprise organizations fail to acknowledge is that, as with any documentation or resource they use to communicate or to perform the organization’s day-to-day business, streaming media is in itself a digital record, and it is critical content that needs to be archived and kept relevant for future business efforts. And with media assets that bring to life the spirit of an all-staff meeting or that show a sales team how dynamic a speaker was when presenting a product or a service to a new prospect, we have the essence and the spirit of that success to reflect and build on. It’s also where we can evaluate our flaws in brilliant color and sound with supporting materials, feedback, and relevant metrics.

Read full article here

I really have come to loathe the quality of Time Warner Cable service in NYC – they deny any knowledge publicly of the constant packet dropping, jitter, channel freezing and the spontaneous ”reboot” of their STB’s – of course ignoring a problem doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  In search of better service, I am doing a little comparison shopping for TWC vs. DirectTV.  I am a New York gal, born, bred and buttered in this land of love & fine dining… I need NY1 to kick off my work day… Direct TV does not carry NY1 and that is a big turn off.  As I am trying to find out what service providers do carry NY1 that are NOT TWC, I couldn’t find the provider list on the NY1 website, but what I did find was a whole lot of DirectTV ads.  Who was the brainiac who came up with that media buy??

What are your thoughts, if I have to leave Time Warner Cable and want to keep my NY1, where should I turn???

Direct TV media buy on NY1 - irony or bad choice?

In this episode I muse on the topic of the “mobile internet” and “net Neutrality spurred by a recent report; Time Warner Cable asked the FCC to lay off the Net Neutrality conversation, stating “Now is not the time to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations.” But if we don’t start out with equal and open access, how would we go backwards?

[brightcove vid=42057598001&exp=1344656541&w=510&h=550]

Thoughts?

It was a wonderful frenzy of speculation and doubt when a simple leak on Twitter caused an entire industry to go up in arms about an acquisition that should/could/would never happen, here is why:

1.  Google does not need Brightcove

2. Google has enough exposure to entice Broadcasters and Media companies to use their “platform” to distribute video media online on their own, without just buying a company for their client roster

3. Google has enough resources to create their own CMS within their eco-system such that it wouldn’t make sense to buy something that is built on antiquated operating layers

4. Brightcove is not even in the same league as The Google – if I was Google I would go directly to a Tremor buy out and skip the middle man… just a thought.

Tremor

5. It would only make sense if Google were looking for a vehicle to unleash their own brand of a triple play offering, i.e. True marketing power will come from an entity that “owns” an individuals behaviors from ISP, Mobile and STB (Set Top Box or Cable TV, etc.) – I would add GPS but it is yet to be seen how deeply GPS usage will be opted in to for tracking on mobile devices.  It is apparent that the use of NetBooks and Smart Phones could take down the need for what we accept as our “in vehicle navigation”; However, I predict this will change and devices such as TomTom will be made obsolete by devices that are more mobile and able to multitask.

*Google has pieces of the requisite triple/quadruple play in their ecosystem – take Google voice/phone, google maps, youtube, insight (all their tracking and metrics) – so what is missing?  The STB, so it could make sense if there were a means by which one could inject live targeted ads into Video Broadcasts across STB’s with a micro-behavioral focus, but I don’t think that Google BUYING a CMS like Brightcove would be useful.

Sources tell me that there will be a new release of the Brightcove CMS that will include better turn-key metrics, a more resilient transcoding system and HD players, but I am not clear on if this is a total rebuild for a product that was originally developed to live in flat layers prior to cloud computing and db sharding… approaches to architecture that Google has excelled in from the get go!  The fact of the matter is, Google is in the perfect place to build the better CMS.

I use YouTube and despite a few limitations on video length and some traffic issues at various times of day (to be expected) – it works!

Last of all, we saw what happened when Yahoo! bought Maven Networks, there are many reasons why a company such as Yahoo! would have been better off hiring some developers and building their own CMS with a brilliant Architect at the helm, rather than make yet another half-assed acquisition of a product that barely served it’s purpose.

Between Maven and Brightcove CMS’ there is barely a difference in the backend – and I have seen both – personally monitored and tested – due diligence – and found them to be built on core technologies that are suspiciously similar and that yielded the same issues, weaknesses and overall clumsiness…

IMHO:  Google should not and would not BUY a CMS when they can build their own.  End of story.

Of course this was all rumor-mill to begin with, what this says to me though, Brightcove players (pun intended) are tired of working so hard to bubblegum and paper clip their product and want out.  Who else would start such a rumor, Google?  HA!  I think not…

Look, when Maven “players” were ready to move on, they were the first ones to whisper about who will acquire them.  Alas, I speak not out of ignorance but real, life experience.

What do you think?

In a Press Release issued today, (Dallas, Texas, September 10, 2009) AT&T Inc. announced they will webcast a presentation by Randall Stephenson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AT&T Inc., at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference in New York on Thursday, September 17 at 9:30 a.m. ET.

The webcast will be available live and for replay at www.att.com/investor.relations

They used TalkPoint:

http://cc.talkpoint.com/gold006/091509a_mg/?entity=9_C13CNXF

Check it out, UStream.TV rented a Tricaster Studio from me yesterday for the live edit from Times Square, LIVE in the heart of  NYC! You can bet that this is going to be a celeb-fest, No doubt! I see Katie Couric on the scene already and it just started.
The Fans are restless!
Here is the link to the Channel page: http://www.ustream.tv/Ashton

In case you missed it, it was fine… Bloomberg was there, Demi and moore… (get it?? LOL!)  Sorry guys, I should have grabbed the footage for you and posted to YouTube

Promise next time!  Here is more info on what was going on, an effort to raise awareness for Volunteerism -a good cause indeed!

http://www.eifoundation.org/press/release.asp?press_release_id=244

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS92321+10-Sep-2009+PRN20090910

Enjoix!

The FCC is looking for data, analysis and perspectives from participants across the entire Smart Grid ecosystem. They want to know what works and what doesn’t, and want the data to back it up. The data they gather through this process will be an important part of the analysis their team is undertaking.

The deadline for responses is October 2, “but we’re hopeful that many will begin submitting facts and findings to the record right away. We’ll be presenting some preliminary findings at the Commission meeting on September 29.” according to the FCC Blog at http://blog.broadband.gov/?p=232

“Our team is intently focused on identifying the best ways to support and accelerate these developments. These ideas will be an important part of the National Broadband Plan.”

The problem is that the FCC does not yet have the authority to dictate with impunity the Best Practices for the implementation – I personally wouldn’t mind if they were granted the right to pull a trump on Private interest to make this happen, right now the “committee” is just too big and too full of self interest to do any good for our grid, our country or our Broadband.

Too much pressure from big Telcos and not enough action taking place.

According to the post.

On Tuesday, September 8 — the first day of school for many students — the President will talk directly to students across the country on the importance of taking responsibility for their education, challenging them to set goals and do everything they can to succeed. We want to make sure that as many schools and classrooms nationwide can participate in this special opportunity, so we are making the President’s address and all the information that comes with it available as widely as possible.

Go here:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/

NOTE: The satellite feed, it will be available beginning at 11:00 AM (EDT) using the following coordinates:
* Galaxy 28/Transponder 17, Slot C (9 MHz)
* Uplink Frequency 14344.5 Horizontal
* Downlink Frequency 12044.5 Vertical

The President’s prepared remarks, read his message encouraging students to take personal responsibility for their educations.

More WhiteHouse.Gov Media Resources available here:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/