Interview with Gary Croke, Director of marketing, for Symmetricom's QoE Assurance Division. Gary spoke to the test measurement market specific to IPTV content delivery and quality issues facing Telco's and Cable operator's. Interview with Gary
IPTV Video Quality Study
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Perceptual Video Quality Management for Video
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With the announcement that Nokia has teamed with Spike Lee to create a series of shorts for the UGC community is certainly a positive step for the handset maker seeking to extend into more diverse markets.
Certainly, UGC is huge and the goal of converting millions of eyeballs into dollars has been Holy Grail for YouTube and a slew of smaller companies. That Nokia is using their platforms; I gather the N95 along with a name director is certainly a good marketing strategy. Certainly, this is not the first company to seek to work from the top down.
According to Mr. Lee who has admitted to being technologically challenged said, "I'm interested because it's a great collaborative effort," Mr. Lee said. "Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these."
I agree, but made by whom? A couple of years back Nokia had what I thought a killer platform for production, namely the N93 that unfortunately did not gain traction as was discontinued. While not consumer friendly enough, an updated version of the N93 would make a great little platform for Indie Producers for shorts, or even perhaps as Second unit camera for some projects.
Nokia N93 Camera demo
According to the New York Times article today, John Stratton, the chief marketing officer of Verizon Communications who works closely with media companies to offer content to customers, said he did not expect films shot on phones to become their own genre. "But the notion of shared media is powerful," he said.
Mr. Stratton should become acquainted with Fun Little Movies which has for the past several years done just that, created and distributed shorts for the worldwide mobile handset market featuring accomplished actors such as Peter Dinklage.
There is also an Elephant in the room that nobody is addressing, namely that U.S. cellular carriers restrict the amount of video content a user can upload to a site and in the case of AT&T, and it is 300kb per clip. If the goal of such collaborations between Nokia and Mr. Lee is to leverage the immediacy of mobile devices as more then simply smaller versions of existing camera's then the bandwidth will have to be opened to make it a more useful and rich user experience.
While this is a good strategy for Nokia and Mr. Lee, what about Indie Producers? Talented Producer's like Tiffany Shlain and accomplished shows like Alive in Baghdad would benefit greatly if they could strike deals with companies like Nokia or better yet gain traction with selling their content online?
A concern that many of us have with ITV in its current form is namely that it will become the platform for established media outlets and name Directors to pitch their wares at the expense of smaller Producers of varied backgrounds.
Solaiemes is a mobile start-up focused on delivering live handset to web experiences, this via their web page widget pushed through custom configured servers. Currently, only operating in Europe, they are positioning themselves for the U.S when upstream speeds improve beyond 64 kbps. They see market opportunities in law enforcement and real estate however, other ideas would certainly develop. I spoke with Juan Mateu, CEO from their offices in Madrid where he provided a real time demo of their platform mobile section.
Overview of the company
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I spoke with Anthony C. Naughtin, President and CEO of GridNetworks about his company which is a hybrid between a traditional peer-to-peer and CDN provider. Aside from the mystery surrounding that shrouded Cisco as an investor, what is notable but not available today is the integration of their GridCast Connector software sitting as an application layer or plug-in on top of cable boxes and other Internet appliances. If the company is going to scale to "Nielsen-sized audiences," as Tony has alluded to, the company will need to move swiftly to embed in devices while pushing the limits of HD, i.e. beyond 720p to the home.
With a Series B round of financing planned for late 2008, the company will ad to it's coffers of 9.5 billion from their first round, their burn rate however, could be significant especially as they have to move on several fronts at once.
New York, NY - (April 9th 2008) IpTV Evangelist today launched its production services division geared towards companies in the ITV and IPTV space.
With ITV and IPTV companies, seeking to enhance market share the addition of on-line video demos will break through the static giving potential customers compelling video examples as soon as they enter the company's site.
IpTVe will offer a wide range of production services in both SD and HD delivery, such as
Product Demos
Tradeshow Panels
Video News Releases
Executive Briefings
Sales Presentations
Video Case Studies
Media Training
Principals Gilbert B. Hammer, Producer/Director of Photography and Adrian Smith, Director of Client Services are both Television veterans each with twenty years in the Broadcast and Corporate video space and has studio space with Fiber connectivity, located in Downtown Manhattan.
In addition, IpTVe is has production personnel located around the country to help offset travel expenses.
IPTV Evangelist's charter has been to bring our writers diverse slant about the IPTV and ITV markets to our reader's and our name reflected this public familiarity. As some had been fierce in their opposition to this sandbox approach, or (it takes a village) or (People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?)
Anyway, we decided to update our logo to reflect both delivery methods. After all, all video content traverses over Ip in some form, we are most interested in how people create it and use it when it gets where it's going and that's no joke...
