Business Week has an article about the announced deal between Apple and Google.

As writer Arik Hesseldahl suggests, "it's apparent Apple has big plans with regard to downloadable video in the living room, and it's natural to expect that the relatively low-quality video available on sites like YouTube will only improve".

YouTube and other lessor UGC sites have become what CB radio became to another generation; crowded, poor quality, basically content for the lowest common denominator, oh and one more thing, NO sustainable business model, unless you were Radio Shack selling radios and antenna's.

That Apple sees the living room as the battle ground for consumers is, well Dah, of course it is but while the people who create this stuff (cat's falling out of trees and Mentos shooting in the air) and might want to see it on their 50" plasma I think the rest of us will pass. Also, the notion that quality will improve is counter to everything I've seen, if people want to create quality content for on-line they are already doing it for CurrentTV or similar sites, not YouTube.

As Yahoo! is busy assimilating the top management team and their technology from Meedio, it seems Yahoo! while having taken a big step back from content creating is seeking to leverage their core asset, the portal as all things and places Yahoo!

Since they already have such a deep bench in terms of content distribution in IM, Flickr, LaunchCast and their portal bringing them all together via a pc hub seems a rational move.

While, the beta leaves Mac and Linux users on the sidelines for the moment, it will be interesting to see how compelling the experience will be for users as they move physically from place to place and move content from room to room. I am looking forward to seeing their UI after having had a brief flirtation with an LG equipped Microsoft program guide unit. I would gather Yahoo! would make the system work with their extensive TV listings.

What you may notice on their TV listings site is a link to schedule on a Tivo, which one would now think a competitor? in addition, since my Humax unit is already connected to my network I can move video, audio and still content to my DLP. More to come.

Part of the announcement from Yahoo!

Bring Yahoo! into your Living Room Introducing Yahoo! Go for TV (Beta)
The Digital Home team has launched a beta version of Yahoo! Go for TV.
Yahoo! Go for TV is designed as a remote-control-friendly experience,
Giving consumers access to Yahoo! on their television sets without needing to pick-up a keyboard or touch a mouse.

The Yahoo! Go for TV beta is available today through an easy to install
downloadable application that will run on any PC connected to a TV. The
beta is initially available in the United States only on Yahoo! Next.
Yahoo's can download it from http://go.connect.yahoo.com/go/tv/index

Key features of Yahoo! Go for TV includes:
. Yahoo! Video Search
. Watch featured and most popular searched video content from Yahoo!
. Find videos using Yahoo!'s industry leading video search technology\
. Yahoo! Photos and Flickr
. View photos from Yahoo! Photos or stored on a local hard drive
. View Flickr photos from communities around the world
. Yahoo! Movies
. Watch the latest and top box office movie trailers
. Get movie info and Yahoo! ratings and recommendations
. Get listings for local theaters and show times
. Yahoo! Music
. Listen to LAUNCHcast radio, including customized stations
. Watch music videos in stereo
. Yahoo! TV
. Built in DVR for recording and managing TV shows and movies
. Integrated TV listing guide that allows consumers to browse by
channel or time

Logo is ™Tivo

The announcement from Lloyd Braun that Yahoo! is scaling back on creating originally produced content is unfortunate, however, not that surprising given its history when they walked away from Finance Vision™, the killer IPTV platform of its day. Granted there were differences between then and now (on the technology, content and user side of the equation). Certainly, the costs associated with ramping up a production unit can be huge, perhaps also there were concerns Hollywood might feel threatened.

Mr. Braun went on to say, "I didn't fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like". He said, "This is not about creating one-off hits like in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term."

Rocketboom is an interesting example of how original programming can grab market share with a claim of 100,000 views a day. Yahoo! has had some success with their "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone", a well-produced news site of international hot spots. Yahoo! could create Mow's (perhaps not every week), Mini-Documentaries, or team with established Producers to co-create programming for their different audience segments.

This would also have achieved a short-term objective taking the high ground in IPTV as the first company to stake out the Internet to offer fresh content on a scheduled basis and allow users to be in control of original and customized content delivery, it is hard to be first.

Mr. Braun also said, "Original content is the salt and pepper on the meal. It is certainly not the engine driving this." I guess it is then up to people like MTV, ABC, AOL and Indie producers to cook the meal themselves.

"The Internet is such a niche content environment that the broadcast model does not really work". Mr. Braun said. If this is true, then it will be interesting to see what the established networks see as the future of IPTV and how they create content for it.

Stay Tuned.

Yahoo! was ahead of the curve!

Back in early 2000, Yahoo! rolled out a delivery platform for streaming live video and text content targeting financial viewers during market hours. It was unique yet I'll bet you never heard of it. The Vision™ platform was innovative in that it allowed users to create a customized My Yahoo!™ type page, which consisted of a multi-pane browser. This contained a live video feed, data pushed into another pane by a person referred to as a Data Wrangler, as well as the user's own stock or email information and lastly another pane for searches and displaying web pages.
There were two field reporters, Bertha Coombs and Mary Snow, one at the NYSE and the other at the NASDAQ, reporting on stories throughout the day. Feeds were sent from small booths at the exchanges to a local New York City fiber hub, which then sent the content to the main Yahoo! studio in California via a Vyvx™ MPEG-2 compressed TV-1 circuit, at 3Mbps as memory serves. Content was edited in some cases or fed raw via tape playback down the line.

The delivery side of the user's page was somewhat customizable as you could view the entire browser, parts of it or collapse to see only the video window, which was 288x216 pixels. The content was streamed at 56 Kbps or 100-300Kbps. Both WM and Real players were supported.

What made this early attempt at IPTV so remarkable, aside from the fact that it ran five days a week, was it had significant interactivity for the user to view live or archived content as well as participate by answering polls or emailing questions, which could be addressed to someone being interviewed live from their California studios. In addition, the Data Wrangler would push text content and links into the data window during a live interview so that viewers could obtain more information about the story as it was happening, it was not passive viewing. Also, it had advertising spots and the final product looked like television.

Why did Yahoo! pull the plug on FinanceVision? I was not in the room so to speak, however, there was no major advertising for it (many people I knew in the financial markets had not heard of it), some complained about the laid-back style of the California based studio anchors, they were competing for eyeballs along with the likes of CNBC, and lastly perhaps Yahoo! did not yet possess the Vision of what FinanceVision represented to their viewers: the first example of prime time IPTV. It was ahead of its time, from the application of the technology and the UI, to the people who were working in a brand new medium. In the end, it failed to reach a sustainable market share to make it profitable.

Perhaps it will rise again in a new form.

Also See, Return of Y! Vision Platform