By: Unknown
From: The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Tony Gnoffo, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Oct. 14--Now that millions of consumers have opened their homes and wallets for huge high-definition television screens, a new video revolution is afoot.
But this one is showing on much smaller screens, such as the new video iPod announced this week by Apple Computer Inc., not to mention cell phones and handheld game devices already on the market.
New technology and big media deals, including an effort by Comcast Corp. and Google Inc. to buy into AOL's video-rich Web site, are shaping a new world of on-demand video, available anytime, anywhere.
"We are in the middle of a revolution that's just picking up pace, and no one knows exactly where it's going," said Allen Sabinson, a former motion picture and network TV executive who heads Drexel University's Kal and Lucille Rudman Institute for Entertainment Industry Studies.
"There is going to be hot and cold running TV that's going to come at us from every direction," he said yesterday.
In this new world, cable-, satellite- and broadcast-TV networks will have to share the video audience with cell-phone and Internet companies. Hollywood bigs will surely participate, but small, independent producers might get a seat at the table, too.
Already, sports fans can watch game highlights from ESPN on their cell phones. And millions of Internet users are watching everything from video news clips to full-length movies on their personal computers.
MTV Networks, a Viacom Inc. unit, said last month that it would provide short video content to Sprint PCS customers on their multimedia phones. The shows will include video clips from Comedy Central, VH-1, Country Music Television, and Nickelodeon.
Voice services account for about 95 percent of wireless revenue, said a study by the Yankee Group, a technology research firm. But it predicts that revenue from non-voice services, which include messaging, Web browsing and video, will grow to 13 percent, or about $14 billion, by 2008.
"People want to watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it," said Stephen B. Burke, Comcast's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "And now more people want to watch where they want to watch."
What is emerging, he said, is a three-part video world divided into television screens, computer screens, and the small screens on cell phones and other handheld devices.
Comcast is already offering a rich library of short-form video on its Comcast.net Web site, much of it from the cable networks it owns. It makes the video content available only to its eight million high-speed Internet subscribers.
The video clips include news, entertainment features, and sports highlights. Comcast's OLN network, which recently acquired the rights to televise most National Hockey League games, announced it would also show 300 NHL games live on the Internet.
But as Comcast's chief broadband competitors, the regional phone companies Verizon Communications Inc. and SBC Communications Inc., set up video deals with Yahoo and others, Comcast wants to get even more video content. It would get plenty if it can strike an online deal with AOL, owned by Time Warner Inc.
Comcast has also been working aggressively with other cable companies to hook up with a wireless phone company, so it can serve up video on that venue, too, Burke said.
"The interesting part of this is figuring out what kind of content works in each of those three worlds," he said.
The big surprise in Apple's announcement on Wednesday was not that ABC would make episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives available for viewing on the new video iPod, but that the episodes would also be viewable on computers, said video industry analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
"I think most people are going to be watching this on their computers, or on their TVs connected to computers," Bernoff said. "Let's be real here: A show like Lost is going to lose a lot on such a small screen."
Conventional wisdom in the handheld video industry is that content should be short and readily viewable on a small screen.
Similar conventions have long been applied to video on the Internet as well. But new technology, such as "media center" PCs that are often connected to big-screen TV sets, is leading to longer programs.
Among those is a dramatic series called The Strand (http://strandvenice.com), written and directed by Daniel Myrick, who also wrote and directed the stunningly successful independent movie, The Blair Witch Project.
Not only is The Strand longer than most Web video programs, but it is also designed to take advantage of the Internet's interactivity. It includes video interviews with the actors in character, and allows viewers to send comments to the characters.
Myrick, speaking via a Web video connection to a media consolidation conference at Drexel University last month, said he first pitched the series to cable-TV networks. When they did not show much interest, he decided to launch the program on the Web.
That prospect was made much easier by a new video publishing software from a Cambridge, Mass., company called Brightcove Inc.
Because of Brightcove's software, Bernoff said, "video will flood the Web, video search will get more powerful, and TV's exclusive lock on video viewing will waver."
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