eric rochow : social media handyman

Recently most of what we hear is the porting of all sorts of media to be played on an iPod or cell phone, and being a content creator myself, I’ve been thinking: maybe not all content works with that small screen.

I don’t see us becoming a nation solely of iPod watchers, besides, we would then have to re-purpose all those media rooms we built into our homes.

“Streaming video in a browser has its place, but there are certain forms of broadband entertainment that will be more appropriate for your TV screen.”
Adam Berrey, Brightcove’s vice president of marketing and strategy, from Red Herring

Brightcove and Tivo have teamed up to play high quality web video on your TV thru your Tivo box. You log on to Tivo’s website and select the Brightcove hosted web shows you want to watch. The shows are then downloaded to your Tivo.

This makes the Tivo a content delivery and storage box, and could make its original purpose, to record programs broadcast at a specific time, less important to its growth. Transforming the Tivo from a video recorder to a video aggregator.

What this also does is allow content creators (both large and small) to bypass the networks, move past the laptop onto the bigger screen, and in the process, attract more advertisers. Niche programming that has been rejected by the networks has a home here.

One drawback I see right now is the Brightcove system uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect videos from unauthorized re-distribution. Because of this, you can’t burn any content onto a DVD to play in a regular DVD player, nor play it on a Mac.

Brightcove does offer content providers the ability to sell their content thru Brightcove to consumers, but once the consumer purchases and downloads the content, it can only be played on a set top box or PC that uses a Windows Media Player. I don’t have a DVD player that can play Windows Media, I doubt many do right now.

TIvo is known for its ability to fast forward past commercials, with its deal with Brightcove, will it allow fast forwarding past broadband advertising?

http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=16836

http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=16823