Today I attended the Pacific Crest Digital Media & Entertainment Forum at the Palace Hotel in New York City.

Representatives from Akamai, Macrovision, Sonic Solutions, Sprint Nextel, Revision3, Qualcomm and others spoke to the overall business issues and trends in on-line and mobile entertainment space for both music and video.

There were several sessions that addressed DRM. The consensus was the music and film industries must have some form of right management in place if consumers are going to have choices in how they obtain media; this is light of Steve Jobs recent comments.

On the video side, the domestic and International Broadband landscape was addresses from a technology and legislation perspective in addition to sales, for example; Electronic sell-through is going to blossom in the next two too three years.

Stay tuned for an interview I had with Jay Adelson, CEO of Revision3, which should be online in the coming one too two weeks after my holiday.

Back in the mid Nineties, at one of the largest financial firms on the street our team was charged with rolling out Streaming Media worldwide to the firm. It was the Go, Go Nineties and among other Internet deals, the company did the Broadcast.com IPO, whose founder Mark Cuban netted about 1.5Bil when Yahoo! later bought the company, so don’t complain about the YouTube deal Mark! Of course the roof fell in which must have come as quite a shock to the Queen of the Internet (not Pamela Anderson, if you did a Google search) as well as the rest of us, it was a wild time with equally wild stories.

It brings to mind the expression about history repeating itself which I was reminded of when I read Tony Perkins recent article where he warned of the potential crash for companies, like Brightcove.

From the outside, Brightcove has been successful in creating alliances and opportunities for large media outlets. The deal announced on February 12th with Time/TV Guide indicates these companies see the value in leveraging an existing platform to syndicate their originally produced media content across many sites. According to Time’s press release

“Brightcove will make it far easier to get video up on our sites and allow us to concentrate on what’s most important: creating the great video you’d expect from some of the best brands, journalists and editors in the areas of celebrity, entertainment, sports, news, business, style, food and home.”

Having used the Brightcove platform, I can speak to the following, it is easy to use, is generally reliable and their tech support people have been very helpful. I do not think it makes economic sense for this site however, since we do not want third-party pre-rolls, nor is the monthly cost without spots comparable with other solutions.

On the technical side, I have concerns since they have bet the farm on Flash, which currently has limited DRM capabilities. On the business side, one producer expressed concerns about their high CPM.

“We like Brightcove, but being a member of the platform as opposed to the network has made monetizing this a lot more difficult, simply because of what we feel are Brightcove's relatively high CPM's (by our calculations, about $9 dollars)”.

If I were speaking with Tony, I would ask him to elaborate about his concerns and to address mine. What is it about Brightcove that despite many corporate wins, healthy funding and well-known board members makes it a likely for major layoffs or a down investment round?

Looking back at my experience at the financial firm, there were companies I wish I’d bought into and other’s I’m glad I did not. Net, net it was at times easy to be caught up in the irrational exuberance sweeping around, but more difficult to see the road ahead.

Mirco Pasqualini has created an interesting UI for his Flash based player, which he calls personalized WebTV. Called a Streamcast Player it allows site developers to integrate various feeds using an RSS play list of streamed and live video content, managing adverts, parental controls and other options. According to him, it will work over fixed as well as mobile device platforms. Currently, the player is free for site use, I have used the on-line demo however, have not downloaded to test it further.

Below are some supplied screens of the player. You can navigate through the deck by clicking on the right side of each image, or left side to go back.

While the StreamCast Player is a fine example of what the technology can accomplish, what is less clear is the business model for this or any other customizes player. The company, Personal Screen Media comes to mind. They have an interesting player with implicate product placement of items within the frame, where to purchase products in addition to actor back-stories, etc.. However, have they licensed it to any companies, is it in use? If not then it is simply fine technology in search of a home...and we all know the housing market is flat.

I am sorry to hear that Randall Bennett and the staff at DV Guru have decided to close shop, no specific reason was given for going dark. The site lists its contributor’s future plans. The site has added a positive voice to the community, with knowledge and intelligently written articles covering a broad range of production issues.

As Pvt. Vasquez said in the movie Aliens “Vaya Con Dios”

According to a GoFish press release, User generated sharing site GoFish will acquire Bolt Media as part of a stock swap.

GoFish Corporation (OTCBB: GOFH), the leading publicly-traded online video company where millions of people come to watch, upload and share videos, today announced it has agreed to acquire Bolt, Inc. (aka Bolt Media) in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at up to $30 million. The combined company will develop an online video network for the creation, distribution and monetization of made-for-Internet programming that is ideally suited for advertisers targeting the 18-34 year-old demographic.

However, the New York Times cited in their article that the sale has as much to do with the need to raise case since Bolts settlement with Universal Music Group for allowing some of its users to upload videos, which contain Universals' music.

To pay for the settlement, which will combine cash, stock and advertising credits, Bolt has agreed to sell itself to GoFish, a smaller rival, for as much as $30 million in GoFish stock.

Not withstanding the legal motivation for the deal, I think there will be more of these acquisitions as second tier type YouTube sites seek differentiation and profitability. To use the phrase, Don't try to boil the ocean, I think these on-line sites would do well to partner with companies like Akimbo, TiVo and others to broaden their reach into the living rooms of America, Perhaps there they will find the road to profitability.

As reported in the New York Times today, Amazon and TiVo have partnered to make Amazon content available over TiVo devices. The venture aims to improve on the Unbox, which Amazon rolled out last year to less then stellar reviews. The services will not work over satellite or cable TV systems, which use set-top boxes running TiVo software.

According to the article, "Videos rented from the site must be watched within 30 days, and once a video starts playing it must be watched within 24 hours".

On another note, 2007 is going to be the year companies like Akimbo, Apple, NeuLion, Sling, TiVo and others who currentltly offer IP too TV solutions, or soon in the case of Apple, who will flight for market share. The goal as I see it will be to sign up as much diverse content from small to larger producers as possible while collaborating with delivery players and peripheral companies. In my recent interview with Jim Funk, Co-founder and VP of Marketing for Akimbo, Jim indicated their plan to offer DVD burning via a partnership with Roxio and a deal with SanDisk. “Device Manufacturers and Service operators are going to be announcing their Internet video initiatives and will stake out their position this year” according to Jim.

I think the time is at hand for small content producers to be making the rounds with companies like Akimbo who are active in courting Indie producers. The living room is the battleground for conversion towards changing peoples viewing habits from the current bland fare offered by the entrenched media conglomerates too rich content from the likes The Burg and Alive in Baghdad, I'd like to order my media content the way I order my food, À la carte and don't forget the fortune cookie!

Remember the artist formally known as Prince? Well as of January 16th The Venice Project became Joost. If you recall, TVP (The Venice Project) promises a new UI and more intuitive mediphore to watch TV content over ITV.
Using screen icons to drive other on-screen guides, the user can enter a “channel chat section” presumably to talk with other like-minded Jossties.

Currently, the application (beta) by invitation works under pc and Mac, this via Bootcamp, but not under Parallels. The site also indicates a Linux version is in the works.

To view screen shots of the UI click on the image below, you can more forward or backwards in the slide deck.

I recorded a phone interview the other day with Jim Funk, the Co-Founder and VP of Marketing at Akimbo. Jim discussed the companies’ platform and services, working with smaller content creators, finding content on-line and what Akimbo has in store for 2007.

As reported by Chris Tew at WebTVWire, the BBC has thrown open its library doors to the public. Namely, programming that goes back as far as 1937 can be searched for and hopefully at some point viewed.

Using their newly named iPlayer users will be able to view programs from the previous seven days and store them on a PC for 30 days. What BBC has done is ratchet up the stakes and put the ball squarely in the court of U.S. networks. Since the BBC does not have to be concerned about advertiser based funding it gives them a significant competitive advantage over the "free networks" here in the States.

According to Ashley Highfield, their forward thinking Director of New Media & Technology,

“At any time, you'll be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and then watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone, to watch it when you want”. He went on to say that the BBC was "Unlocking our archive is one of the biggest challenges we face and, potentially, one of the richest gifts we can give to the nation”.

Beyond iPlayer, BBC2.0 seeks to make the entire web video experience more meaningful for viewers as well as production personnel. According to BBC's Chief Technology Officer John Varney, says:

"Over the next few years the BBC will revolutionize the way production teams view, share and prepare content. Our vision is to have a fully open, accessible and interoperable network to enable production teams to gain access and share assets across the whole of the Corporation."

I believe these efforts along with IP too TV technologies such as Akimbo and others will have a disruptive effect on what personal media will come to mean to the public and what users will demand from media outlets.