Working Backward to Move Forward

A few weeks ago if you would’ve asked my opinion about 4k I would’ve said that it’ll stay mainly in very hi-end acquisition but that’s about it for the foreseeable future.  HD as we know it was nearly a decade in the making and 1080p60 is still a rare bird let alone 4k.

That was until CES 2012 rolled around.

First off, at CES this year multiple consumer electronics companies showed off 4k displays that looked more showroom ready than prototypes wheeled out of a lab.  Second, Sony revealed a Blu-ray player that upscaled to 4k.  Finally, JVC released a prosumer 4k camera for $5,000.  JVC, if you may remember, was the first to get an HD prosumer camera out the door as well.  That’s when it dawned on me.  Consumer electronics makers need the next ‘it’ thing to keep selling gadgets and 3D, still mired by problems, isn’t catching on like they had hoped.  I don’t think they’ll be abandoning 3D efforts quite yet, but they seem to be priming the pump for 4k.

I think 4k will come to be in part the same way that HD came to be.  Consumer electronics companies will just start making 4k gadgets and start phasing out HD gadgets.  They phased out SD to force people into HD and I don’t see why they wouldn’t pull the same trick again.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is going to happen overnight but I think in another 5 years or so 4k will be fairly common.

Unlike the move from SD to HD (which was also burdened by the move from analog to digital) the move to 4k won’t have to rely on figuring out a way to cram 4k signals into devices that were originally designed to carry analog SD signals (like communications satellites in space).  IPTV, be it YouTube, Netflix or Hulu, is growing and only will continue to grow.  In 2005 YouTube launched with sub-SD quality videos, by 2008 it supported 1080p and in 2010 it supported 4k.  Imagine where we could be in 2017.  I mean, the broadband speeds of 10yrs ago are on par with 3G cellular speeds of today.

Of course there’s no certainty that broadband speeds will keep increasing like they have and the manufacturing costs of a 4k screen will have to come down substantially to hit a mainstream consumer price but I feel like this is going to happen.  In labs four layer Blu-ray discs have been created that have a capacity of 100gigs.  I’m sure those are a far cry away from being sold to the public at a cost effective price but the proof of concept is there.

Live sports was one of the big factors in HD adoption ( I’m not a pixel-peeper but even I get excited about sports in OTA HD) and that’s certainly a place that IPTV could struggle.  Broadcast distribution rights for major league sports is a multibillion dollar investment and traditional distributors that have ponied up the cash aren’t going to want to share which means we will have to rely on the broadcasters themselves to stream their own games.  NBC has been streaming its Sunday Night NFL game for a couple of years now and just recently streamed the Super Bowl to 2.1 million viewers.  Hopefully others take notice and we start seeing more simulcasts on the internet.

Overall, I don’t think broadcast is dead I just think the internet will become more and more of a viable alternative as time passes on.

I read an interesting article at MarketingWeek.co.uk called Own-branded TV channels boost consumer engagement and that got me thinking that we might be entering a golden age of corporate video.

For many people, myself included, the term “corporate video” conjures up images of rather dry business-to-business talking heads and groan-inducing company training skits.   If a company wanted to talk directly to their customers /  potential customers they would need to make a commercial, buy ad time and hope that when their commercial aired at least some of the audience was their target demographic.

Now with the prevalence of  video streaming, companies aren’t limited to a 30 second long shot in the dark on broadcast or cable TV.  They are freed up to create everything from traditional 30 second spots to video guides showing people how to use their products and host this content either on sites like YouTube or their own servers.  This really opens the doors for how companies can use video to not only sell themselves but also educate their user base.

Leak shows Gannett stockpiling thousands of iPhones, iPads for journalists

I don’t think news departments are going to toss out all their full-sized cameras, but for ‘breaking news’ quick, dirty and mobile is most likely going to win the day more often than not.  If, for example, a reporter gets to the scene of a fire before the camera truck I wouldn’t be surprised to see live reporting courtesy of the iPhone’s FaceTime function.

Of course as a single journalist is required to do more and more what is going to suffer?  If a reporter is tasked with setting up the gear, making sure all the devices ‘see’ each other and that the up-link is stable will they have less time to asses the scene and find the story?  I don’t know, but as they saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

Louis C.K. tops $1 million in sales of $5 comedy special

Not a bad haul at all and certainly another example of the best case scenario potential of self distribution.  Of course you still need talent, $250k for production costs, and a huge following to pull it off.  I’m curious to see if any other big comedians give this a shot.  I mean, why pay a middle man (whom apparently never cut Louis a royalty check) when you can have your audience pay you directly?

What do the movies November, 28 Days later, Open Water and Murderball all have in common? They were all shot in DV and had theatrical releases.
That’s right, S-freakin’-D projected on the big screen for all to see! One of them, November, actually won Best Cinematography at Sundance.

From Canon’s T2i to Sony’s EX-1 to RED’s EPIC there is almost a glut of cameras across the whole spectrum. It looks like a filmmaker’s wet dream yet some people aren’t happy. The T2i doesn’t have good enough specs, the EX-1 doesn’t have interchangeable lenses and the EPIC is too expensive… Really? Cameras are dropping like manna from heaven yet some people only see a few reasons why they can’t use a specific camera instead of all the reasons why they can.

I guess that is the difference between the people that want to make films and the people that make films.

As I’m sure many of you have heard, Netflix stock has been plummeting since this summer’s Qwikster fiasco. The stock is currently trading in the mid-70’s and less than four months ago it was at a record high of about $300. Ouch. I would be surprised if the stock ever got that high again and I think the golden days of Netflix are in the rear view mirror. I’m not saying this because I think Netflix is doomed or anything that extreme, but the world of streaming premium content is changing and I don’t think Netflix will be able to attain such a lofty spot again amidst increased competition and costs.

At least one analyst, Michael Pachter, has predicted that the cost for Netflix to license content to stream could increase by a factor of ten as their current contracts with studios come up for renegotiation. Back when Netflix first started streaming it was a more experimental time but now it’s abundantly clear that streaming is going places.

On the competition front, Amazon is aggressively growing its streaming library and with the release of Kindle Fire is hopping to give customers a mobile, direct connection to a library of books, music, movies and TV shows. Hulu, even though its parent companies seem not entirely sure what do with it, is still the poster child for monetizing premium streaming content via ad revenue. The Hulu+ service also recently hit the 1 million subscriber mark, but that is still tiny compared to the nearly 24 million subscribers Netflix has. Finally, there is Apple and its AppleTV plus iTunes Store combination. Although the AppleTV has only attained ‘hobby’ status within the company this wouldn’t be the first time Apple came out of nowhere to steal the spot light.

If the old adage of competition being good for the customer holds true then the next few years stand to be pretty exciting ones for video streaming customers.