• Will YouTube and Friends Kill Television?

      A post about by Josh on February 1st, '08

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    • “It won’t be long before some geeky kid can put his well-made clip next to a movie trailer and actually show it up.”

      When will YouTube and its ilk take TV’s thunder?  Networks have already decided that it’s futile to resist the world of online video sharing.  Unlike the music industry, they have mostly come to the conclusion that Web 2.0 sites can be used effectively for marketing television shows and films.  I often peruse video sharing sites to find the latest trailers and show excerpts.

      But here’s where YouTube has the upper hand: Choice.  Sure, there are 900 and something channels available from your friendly cable company, but even that can’t compete with the millions of videos I can find online.  Yes, there is a lot are crap to sift through sometimes, but the cream usually rises to the top.  And, once you become a well-versed YouTube surfer, said cream is only a few clicks away.

      Say I want to see something about cooking in Ghana.  I wait until the No Reservations episode featuring the West African nation to be broadcast or become available On Demand.  Or I can search for this rather obscure subject on YouTube and find some decent quality videos.

      So will I cancel my cable and figure out how to hook my laptop up to the big screen in the living room?  Probably not yet, but it seems clear where all this online video stuff is going.  It’s more convenient, more accessible, cheaper to watch and produce, and so one, and so on.  Video cameras and editing software are getting less and less pricey.  It won’t be long before some geeky kid can put his well-made clip next to a movie trailer and actually show it up.  It will take a new method of distribution before the upstarts can start challenging Hollywood, but, if people start demanding to see these “homemade” movies in a different format, on a larger screen, I’m sure someone will figure out the means to do so.

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    • Downloading Your Favorite Shows

      A post about by Josh on January 10th, '08

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    • “Right now, iTunes is top of the heap as far as downloadable TV....”

      The internet is changing how I watch TV. The days of planning my schedule around a favorite show are long gone. Though I fought it for a long time, I now use iTunes regularly to download an episode or a whole season of a show. It is infinitely easier than waiting for Netflix or searching through the fine print of my cable contract to find out if I have to pay extra for the On Demand version of a show. The picture quality is good on iTunes (I can hook my laptop up to a large monitor or to my TV for a bigger picture).

      Another plus of iTunes, shows release individual episodes there soon after they air on TV. There’s no need to wait six to twelve months for the DVD to come out. Of course, unlike Limewire or Bittorrent, downloading a show from iTunes is not free ($1.99 per episode, though buying an entire season brings a bit of a discount).

      Amazon’s Unbox seems to be the major competition for iTunes as far as downloadable TV shows go. They don’t have iTunes’ selection, but are still pretty stocked. However, I use a G4 Mac, which, for some reason, Amazon thinks makes me a bad person. They won’t let me utilize Unbox unless I come to the dark side (I mean, buy a P.C.). Netflix has also begun an On Demand service, but, again, only for Microsofters.

      So, there you have it. Right now, iTunes is top of the heap as far as downloadable TV shows goes. The DVD seems to be headed out the door, so I’m sure some more reasonable competition is coming sooner rather than later. Hopefully that will mean cheaper prices for consumers.

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    • BBC going HD at last

      A post about by Chris Garrett on November 19th, '07

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    • Imagery relating to BBC going HD at last

      The BBC’s had a test service of it’s HD channel available on Sky and Cable for 18 months and now it seems they may finally be doing something with it.

      Today, the BBC trust has approved an increase in broadcast hours and content. They’ve also given the go ahead for the BBC to begin bringing it’s HD offerings to freeview.

      The BBC had planned to breach the Freeview divide by borrowing space from BBC parliament and BBC four’s overnight capacity, but the Trust quashed these plans. Apparently broadcasting HD content over a non-specific channel will cause confusion to viewers, so the wait will continue for the UK’s first freeview HD channel.

      Lucky Cable and Satellite viewers will get 9 hours of HD content a day after the increase and the channel will also be used to provide supplementary content during major sporting events and will also be used to screen definition-simulcasts of films.

      The Trust has insisted that if bandwidth cannot be found for the channel on freeview, the BBC will not be permitted to replace BBC parliament with the channel. Is it me or does it stink that the BBC is launching a channel specifically on Sky and Cable platforms? The channel will be funded by the license fee, just like BBC 1 and 2, but will only be available to those paying for commercial packages. What’s worse is that there’s no guarantee that the channel will come to the freeview platform, atleast with the iPlayer it was stipulated that cross-platform versions must be released in a reasonable time frame.

      I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on this, perhaps if we get enough negative feedback about this situation the BBC might get into gear and sort it out!

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    • NBC signs it’s own web-series

      A post about by Chris Garrett on November 19th, '07

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    • Imagery relating to NBC signs it’s own web-series

      Following CBS signing “We need Girlfriends” and stealing it away from it’s youtube followers, NBC has taken it’s own slice of the pie and signed up Quarterlife. Quarterlife is a series made for MyspaceTV by the producers of “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life“.

      Quarterlife follows the lives of six 20-something creatives and is broadcasted every week in the form of an 8 minute webisode. So far, 36 episodes have been planned. The deal with NBC gives them the right to broadcast the remaining episodes of the run.

      This is interesting because it looks as though they may be using the show to help them survive the writers strike. The shows producers and script-writers are likely not WGA members and as the scripts for a number of un-released shows have already been prepared, NBC would completely undercut the effects of the strike (obviously they’d need to buy a heck of alot more shows like this).

      This is the second “made-for-web” (not first!) show to be bought by a mainstream broadcaster and it looks like a trend that will only grow as a result of the Writers Strike. If you know of any emerging web shows, I’d love to hear from you. TV 2.0 is a topic I’m really starting to explore and would love to be writing more posts on independantly produced shows which are exploiting low production and distribution costs via the web.

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