The time has come, again to rant about the past year. However,
there are a variety of subjects to choose from. One could go on about
the current state of the telecommunications industry, and the future on
online viewing habits and venues, to the recent advances in
television technology.
However, there are bigger issues that need addressing. Such as Gun
Control, Mental Health, and fiscal responsibility of our government, and
the like. Its all fine and dandy to sit here in our techie towers and
ponder the future of telecommunications, which is important, but in the
final analysis, if the country has lost its moral compass and its roots
all the technology in the world won’t get it back on the right track.
It will just go down the wrong way in a technological blaze of glory,
which will keep people from seeing what the real problems are.
The shooting last year , prompted me to write about my views on gun
control, particularly concealed carry. I don’t belive new rules
governing guns are going to solve the problem. The majority of shooting
are done by people who have mental issues who were not treated properly
or at all. In many cases they were dumped from one organization back and
forth to another and no one took responsibility for making sure they
got what they needed, either treatment that worked or locked up for both
their and societal safety. The point is everyone who has any
responsibility in any level of government is too busy playing the blame
game, pointing their fingers at everyone elses when the Sh**t hit the
Fan, No one has gumption enough to stand up and say, he was my patient,
or our department was handling him, and frankly, we screwed up, and
we’re looking to see where we screwed up. No one has said anything
remotely like that, nor will they, because, the would be taking
responsibility for ones own actions, or in some cases inaction.
This country was founded on a principle that all men are created
equal, and should be given the benefit of the doubt, and along with
certain other rights, such as to vote, and pursue that which give us
pleasure, so long as it do no harm, to society . When the government
has become so big and complicated that many times one department doesn't
know what the others are doing, there is a fundamental issue with the
power structure, and delegation of authority, and who answers to who.
While it is clearly laid out in the constitution, and on the state
levels, Sometimes many things are lost in translation, and the people
who are responsible, tend to forget to whom they’re ultimately
responsible to, to the people who elected them to their offices. They
were elected and they can be unelected just as easy. President Obama
made history when was the first black president to be elected., again he
made history by being reelected, what his final role in history will be
remains to be seen, and will not be fully understood for decades. Just
as all of our past presidents have been judged through the eyes of time
and history to be kinder than they were at the time. One can hope
history and time will be as kind to President Obama.
Looking
forward to the new year, which has already started. Once again find
many things to talk about. The advances in media in the last ten years
or so have far outstripped sixty plus years of media that came before
it. From the time in the 1950’s when color TV came on the scene and the
movie industry felt threatened, to the next generation of TV, being
cable and satellite, there really hasn’t been a fundamental change in
the content itself, it was essentially still the same as it was in the
1950’s plus or minus a few little tweaks, depending on your point of
view. Then the VCR came along, and that was the beginning of the changes
which are still happening. The movie industry soon embraced TV, as a
way to reuse a huge backlog of movie content that had stored and
monetize it and get it to still make them money, which they’re still
doing, only today on a grander scale. The VCR became the DVR, Digital
Video Recorder,, in which we still say we’re “taping” a show or a
movie, and there is no actual tape involved, it all ones and bytes. Of
course with the surge of good relatively cheap fast broadband internet
across the nation, sites, like Hulu came along, which allowed us to
stream content directly to our computers. while it wasn’t a perfect
world, the content still had ads, but it was a small price to pay to be
able to see free content, we wouldn’t be able to see in places we
wouldn't normally see it.
After
that, came Netflix, one price a month, and all the streaming you could
watch. Best part no commercials. It was the right product at the right
time. They were aggressive with the marketing, and making content deals
to get more content as they went along, as they were doing that, they
also perused the hardware side, making deals to get their software in as
many types of consumer products as possible, making it easier for the
consumer to watch the content they paid for and as many platforms as
possible. Since then many other players have jumped into the video
streaming pool. It has become somewhat crowded. Amazon has their own
streaming service, Amazon Prime, for a flat rate you get to stream a
large catalog of material, however, having used it, I have to give it
mixed reviews.
To aid in the distribution of all of this video content online a
number of set top boxes have come out. The best of theses is the Roku,
its cheap their cheapest box is about 50. dollars, and their most
expensive is 100.00. Theres no fee for using it. Only if you are using
Netflix or other pay service, which you're paying for anyways. The best
part is all of the free channels they have available .
At present they have several hundred channels which you can add, 99% of
them are free, The ones that require a fee are relatively cheap. As
for subject manor, that ranges from many niche subjects such as
specialized cooking to various forms of tech , to a wide range of music
channels to stream almost any taste in music to you tv, and sound
system, If one is is looking for a good way to supplant their cable or
in a few cases eliminate it completely the Roku Box is a good candidate.
The discussions in Washington, about both technology, and gun
control, and health care, are important and far reaching. The right of a
citizen to defend themselves is paramount in the minds of many people.
While I am deeply saddened by the shooting that happened last year,
particularly the school shooting. I refuse to give up my right to defend
myself and my family and anyone else who is in danger at a given time.
As for limiting rounds in magazines that is just a first step to
working to take our guns away completely, If we give in to that, we’re
saying ok, fine you have my constitutional right, even if it only a
round in my magazine at a time, I’ll remind you of it when I need it
and I’m a round short to stop the situation and people get dead because
I couldn’t have the capacity magazine I needed to stop the bad guy and
he killed more people.
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Is 2012 the Year Media is Revolutionized?
The new year is upon us again. Many folks have looked back on 2011 in many different formats, and contexts, covering many aspects of the past year. Everything ranging from events that happened in current media, ala, ETv, to TCM, and their annual look at all of the actors, directors and other classic Hollywood personalities who passed last year.
Of course there are are obvious losses like Peter Falk, and Steve Jobs.
Much as been made of the loss of Steve Jobs. Yes he did revolutionize the way we think of and use media, even the hardware we use to work with the media.
His earliest days with Steve Wozniak , one of the co-founders of Apple Computers, lead to a great leap in technological advancement, not just in computers, but in anything that a microprocessor could be put into. As microprocessors got smaller and more powerful, they became more accepted by the general public.
Soon there were a handful of theses new devices that played a new digital music format called MP3, which is a compressed copy of the music, thus taking up less space on a hard drive , but still sounding reasonably good to the ear. What Jobs did in 2001 with the IPod was take the big clunky MP3 Players that were out there, and redesign them into a sleek elegant , easy to use, player that worked as good as it looked. Along with that he developed ITunes, to handle the interface between the music and the computer, Mac being the only computer it would work with for several years.
Eventually, ITunes was developed for the Windows platform, thus opening up the IPod experience to the rest of the world.
The Importance of Steve Jobs on the world can't be understated, However, its easy to forget at the end of the day he like the rest rest of us was just a man, but a man with a grand vision.
Many of us have “grand visions” of ideas or concepts that we would like to make happen. However, the reality is that very few of us have what it takes to articulate what they see, much less being able to lay out a plan or pull together a team to make it happen. Steve Jobs, was one of those rare few, who were in the right place at the right time with the right vision. Apple has big shoes to fill, to continue the grand vision Steve Jobs let us with. I read recently that Apple is working a new version of the Ipad, and Possibility's even a Apple Tv. All rumors, until they are announced. However, the upshot of the rumors is that Apple is still working to redefine the way we use and treat Media, preferably keeping as much as possible in their wall garden of Itunes.
The predictions for 2012 have been varied and interesting. The main point most of what I’ve read is centered around two things. Mobile, and tv content. There seems to be a drive towards making as much content available on as many mobile platforms as possible, which is good. However, content distributors need to figure out ways to keep the content available on as many venues and platforms as possible. Having ones content limited to one place is essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. If that basket falls through, your left with a mess. However, if you have several deals with different distributors, such as Netflix, Amazon etc, and one goes bad, you still have your content out there hopefully making my money in the other places. And a bunch a smaller deals taking less for each one could pay off in the long run. Eliminating pay walls, and sign in as much as possible is something consumers will appreciate. and help keep them going back and using a service that has the content they want, without hoops to jump through to see it.
CES is this week, Jan 10-13, For those of you don’t know what CES is, here are a couple of links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Show , http://ces.cnet.com/ This is the Be all and end all of consumer electronic shows. Held every year in January, in Los Vegas. It brings out the best and brightest and biggest, and even some very small electronic are showcased here. Everything from 55” and up tvs and a variety of tablet PCs will be seen including accessories to go with them. and items one probably hasn’t even thought of yet. many items will be prototypes or first generation. How many will actually make it to the consumer hands remains to be seen. The hype and clamor of CES is matched only by the Hulu of the Super Bowl, In many ways CES is the” Super Bowl “of the Tech Wold. The difference being, that there are usually no clear cut winners. There will be some who shine and bring products, that consumers need or at least think they need.. How many of those products will actually make it to market and how many consumers buy them once their there remains to be seen. And there will be many more with great concepts or products, that for one reason or another will never be seen again. Little companies who spent their last dime to get there and rent a booth at CES and in hopes to make a the right impression with people who can help them get their idea or product out of the development stage. Essentially do or die, and if they don’t get deals they need they go home very empty handed.
Television is something I’ve talked about on many venues and have expressed many ideas on the possible future of television. There is a lot of discussion about the break up of the traditional package programing models that we’ve been using for the last 25-30 years, starting when cable companies started bundling channels together to get deals for both them and the consumers. Problem is the bundles aren't getting better, and the prices for what one typically get in a bundle has continued to rise substantially over the last few years. This coupled with increased use of DVR and other time shifting tools has made it increasingly harder to get accurate numbers of who is watching what and for how long.The traditional “shotgun approach” to advertising is no longer working, not that it ever worked to begin with, but until recently there wasn’t a better way to do it. Now with content being migrated to the web and, new ways to counts views and exactly who is watching and for how long Advertisers are looking for ways to put this to use and, the consensus is that it will scale up as the year goes on. However, they need to consider the consumer, they are tired of being bombarded by commercials every few minutes as they have been on traditional tv for years. A few well spaced, and relevant ads will do more then a slew of ads they don’t want to see. This will drive them away quicker then anything. The ala carte’ model has been kicked around on and off for years, What that means instead of buying a bundled package of channels you pick and chose the channels you want. There are problems with that, same as there are problems with the way we do it now, so nothing is prefect.
The cable companies have been trying to avoid going to a model of this type for years for a number of reasons. A good article that I commented, on discussing tv and the future of IP tv is here. I read this site a lot and have commented on many of his articles over the last couple years.
http://www.videonuze.com /Disney-Comcast-and-Why-TV-Everywhere-Alone-Is-Not-Enough/&id=3346
Poke around their site they have a number of site that they link to that have excellent articles concerning a wide varieties of aspects of the media business.
On the subject of adding content to your tv, and competing with traditional cable/sat companies; there are set-top boxes that can stream a host of Internet based content directly to your tv. A couple of more widely known ones are the Apple Tv which brings the Itunes experience to your tv, allowing you watch your bought tv and movies, not only on you computer but now on your tv. and the Roku.
Having received a Roku Box for Christmas, I find that is much more varied and interesting then I ever thought. It does the obvious streaming Netflix, Amazon and Huluplus to your tv, its only a matter of activating the account on the Roku site and box. and your good to go. However, going though the on screen channel store, you will find a wide variety of channels to chose from that will keep you busy exploring content. If that isn’t enough, there are what are called “private channels” that you you can add. For those you will need to do a google search to find pages that list them and the codes that you need to enter into your account on the Roku site. once entered, they usually show up fast and work. Boxes like this and the Boxee that can add a large amount of nontraditional or mainstream content to the consumer are something the cable and content providers and creators need to take into consideration. If they’re smart they’ll make as much content available on boxes like Roku and Boxee as they can. The basic idea is they need their content in front of as many eyes as possible.
Consumers generally only have a limited time to spend watching tv. The choices of what to watch are almost endless. Cable and Sat companies are having to work very hard to maintain every viewer they have, and attract new ones, which is harder as the choices of content, and where to get it increase almost daily.
In the end the consumer has the upper hand; they can tell content producers and distributors what they want to watch and where and how they want to watch it by voting with their pocketbooks. If ventures like Comcasts idea of TV everywhere are left to fly and get started in a big way, we will have a very fragmented ecosystem of Internet tv. which should be avoided at all cost.
So whats the bottom line for this year?
Television is no longer a big wooden box in the living room with a 27’ screen that the whole family gather around to watch Jack par, and “I Love Lucy”, and later “Gunsmoke”, and “Whats my line?” and a host of other now classic tv shows.
Today. television is more of a concept. Yes there are still physical tvs although they don’t look or work like the tv of old. What would be a more accurate description of a television would be a monitor that plays whatever is piped into it it. be it your DVD or Blue-ray player, to your sat or cable box, or Roku or Boxee, even your computer, it don’t care. Its a content/media player. Much the same as other media/tech terms we use today. The oldest of those is probably the “clicker” referring to the remote control. The term Clicker goes back to first tv remotes which did in fact click when you pressed the button .
For a history on the long and varied story of our beloved remote control see this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control
Another term refuses to die is “tape” at least in terms of recording television content to be stored for later use. Tape as a recording medium goes all the way back to the 1950’s or so in studios to record records, the eventually there were consumer reel to reel recorders, and 8 tracks and cassettes. All for audio material only. In the late 1970’s into the 1980’s the rises of the VCR came about and suddenly everyone could get their favorite movies on tape. and as taping from tv became common place, the phase taping came to be. Fast forward to today. Our remote don’t click anymore, and can run a host of componets in a entrainment system. Also today the list of everyday household items that never needed a remote, and now come with at least a simple ir remote is growing everyday. Tape in the media world has nothing to do with tape anymore today its either to a hard drive, or a DVD. We use the term tape when referring to recording content to either a DVD or a hard drive.
As the media landscapes evolves over this year both consumers and content providers and creators, and advertisers will struggle to find the right balance of content distribution, advertising and control. Hopefully the consumer won’t get either caught in the middle, or left behind.
Of course there are are obvious losses like Peter Falk, and Steve Jobs.
Much as been made of the loss of Steve Jobs. Yes he did revolutionize the way we think of and use media, even the hardware we use to work with the media.
His earliest days with Steve Wozniak , one of the co-founders of Apple Computers, lead to a great leap in technological advancement, not just in computers, but in anything that a microprocessor could be put into. As microprocessors got smaller and more powerful, they became more accepted by the general public.
Soon there were a handful of theses new devices that played a new digital music format called MP3, which is a compressed copy of the music, thus taking up less space on a hard drive , but still sounding reasonably good to the ear. What Jobs did in 2001 with the IPod was take the big clunky MP3 Players that were out there, and redesign them into a sleek elegant , easy to use, player that worked as good as it looked. Along with that he developed ITunes, to handle the interface between the music and the computer, Mac being the only computer it would work with for several years.
Eventually, ITunes was developed for the Windows platform, thus opening up the IPod experience to the rest of the world.
The Importance of Steve Jobs on the world can't be understated, However, its easy to forget at the end of the day he like the rest rest of us was just a man, but a man with a grand vision.
Many of us have “grand visions” of ideas or concepts that we would like to make happen. However, the reality is that very few of us have what it takes to articulate what they see, much less being able to lay out a plan or pull together a team to make it happen. Steve Jobs, was one of those rare few, who were in the right place at the right time with the right vision. Apple has big shoes to fill, to continue the grand vision Steve Jobs let us with. I read recently that Apple is working a new version of the Ipad, and Possibility's even a Apple Tv. All rumors, until they are announced. However, the upshot of the rumors is that Apple is still working to redefine the way we use and treat Media, preferably keeping as much as possible in their wall garden of Itunes.
The predictions for 2012 have been varied and interesting. The main point most of what I’ve read is centered around two things. Mobile, and tv content. There seems to be a drive towards making as much content available on as many mobile platforms as possible, which is good. However, content distributors need to figure out ways to keep the content available on as many venues and platforms as possible. Having ones content limited to one place is essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. If that basket falls through, your left with a mess. However, if you have several deals with different distributors, such as Netflix, Amazon etc, and one goes bad, you still have your content out there hopefully making my money in the other places. And a bunch a smaller deals taking less for each one could pay off in the long run. Eliminating pay walls, and sign in as much as possible is something consumers will appreciate. and help keep them going back and using a service that has the content they want, without hoops to jump through to see it.
CES is this week, Jan 10-13, For those of you don’t know what CES is, here are a couple of links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Show , http://ces.cnet.com/ This is the Be all and end all of consumer electronic shows. Held every year in January, in Los Vegas. It brings out the best and brightest and biggest, and even some very small electronic are showcased here. Everything from 55” and up tvs and a variety of tablet PCs will be seen including accessories to go with them. and items one probably hasn’t even thought of yet. many items will be prototypes or first generation. How many will actually make it to the consumer hands remains to be seen. The hype and clamor of CES is matched only by the Hulu of the Super Bowl, In many ways CES is the” Super Bowl “of the Tech Wold. The difference being, that there are usually no clear cut winners. There will be some who shine and bring products, that consumers need or at least think they need.. How many of those products will actually make it to market and how many consumers buy them once their there remains to be seen. And there will be many more with great concepts or products, that for one reason or another will never be seen again. Little companies who spent their last dime to get there and rent a booth at CES and in hopes to make a the right impression with people who can help them get their idea or product out of the development stage. Essentially do or die, and if they don’t get deals they need they go home very empty handed.
Television is something I’ve talked about on many venues and have expressed many ideas on the possible future of television. There is a lot of discussion about the break up of the traditional package programing models that we’ve been using for the last 25-30 years, starting when cable companies started bundling channels together to get deals for both them and the consumers. Problem is the bundles aren't getting better, and the prices for what one typically get in a bundle has continued to rise substantially over the last few years. This coupled with increased use of DVR and other time shifting tools has made it increasingly harder to get accurate numbers of who is watching what and for how long.The traditional “shotgun approach” to advertising is no longer working, not that it ever worked to begin with, but until recently there wasn’t a better way to do it. Now with content being migrated to the web and, new ways to counts views and exactly who is watching and for how long Advertisers are looking for ways to put this to use and, the consensus is that it will scale up as the year goes on. However, they need to consider the consumer, they are tired of being bombarded by commercials every few minutes as they have been on traditional tv for years. A few well spaced, and relevant ads will do more then a slew of ads they don’t want to see. This will drive them away quicker then anything. The ala carte’ model has been kicked around on and off for years, What that means instead of buying a bundled package of channels you pick and chose the channels you want. There are problems with that, same as there are problems with the way we do it now, so nothing is prefect.
The cable companies have been trying to avoid going to a model of this type for years for a number of reasons. A good article that I commented, on discussing tv and the future of IP tv is here. I read this site a lot and have commented on many of his articles over the last couple years.
http://www.videonuze.com /Disney-Comcast-and-Why-TV-Everywhere-Alone-Is-Not-Enough/&id=3346
Poke around their site they have a number of site that they link to that have excellent articles concerning a wide varieties of aspects of the media business.
On the subject of adding content to your tv, and competing with traditional cable/sat companies; there are set-top boxes that can stream a host of Internet based content directly to your tv. A couple of more widely known ones are the Apple Tv which brings the Itunes experience to your tv, allowing you watch your bought tv and movies, not only on you computer but now on your tv. and the Roku.
Having received a Roku Box for Christmas, I find that is much more varied and interesting then I ever thought. It does the obvious streaming Netflix, Amazon and Huluplus to your tv, its only a matter of activating the account on the Roku site and box. and your good to go. However, going though the on screen channel store, you will find a wide variety of channels to chose from that will keep you busy exploring content. If that isn’t enough, there are what are called “private channels” that you you can add. For those you will need to do a google search to find pages that list them and the codes that you need to enter into your account on the Roku site. once entered, they usually show up fast and work. Boxes like this and the Boxee that can add a large amount of nontraditional or mainstream content to the consumer are something the cable and content providers and creators need to take into consideration. If they’re smart they’ll make as much content available on boxes like Roku and Boxee as they can. The basic idea is they need their content in front of as many eyes as possible.
Consumers generally only have a limited time to spend watching tv. The choices of what to watch are almost endless. Cable and Sat companies are having to work very hard to maintain every viewer they have, and attract new ones, which is harder as the choices of content, and where to get it increase almost daily.
In the end the consumer has the upper hand; they can tell content producers and distributors what they want to watch and where and how they want to watch it by voting with their pocketbooks. If ventures like Comcasts idea of TV everywhere are left to fly and get started in a big way, we will have a very fragmented ecosystem of Internet tv. which should be avoided at all cost.
So whats the bottom line for this year?
Television is no longer a big wooden box in the living room with a 27’ screen that the whole family gather around to watch Jack par, and “I Love Lucy”, and later “Gunsmoke”, and “Whats my line?” and a host of other now classic tv shows.
Today. television is more of a concept. Yes there are still physical tvs although they don’t look or work like the tv of old. What would be a more accurate description of a television would be a monitor that plays whatever is piped into it it. be it your DVD or Blue-ray player, to your sat or cable box, or Roku or Boxee, even your computer, it don’t care. Its a content/media player. Much the same as other media/tech terms we use today. The oldest of those is probably the “clicker” referring to the remote control. The term Clicker goes back to first tv remotes which did in fact click when you pressed the button .
For a history on the long and varied story of our beloved remote control see this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control
Another term refuses to die is “tape” at least in terms of recording television content to be stored for later use. Tape as a recording medium goes all the way back to the 1950’s or so in studios to record records, the eventually there were consumer reel to reel recorders, and 8 tracks and cassettes. All for audio material only. In the late 1970’s into the 1980’s the rises of the VCR came about and suddenly everyone could get their favorite movies on tape. and as taping from tv became common place, the phase taping came to be. Fast forward to today. Our remote don’t click anymore, and can run a host of componets in a entrainment system. Also today the list of everyday household items that never needed a remote, and now come with at least a simple ir remote is growing everyday. Tape in the media world has nothing to do with tape anymore today its either to a hard drive, or a DVD. We use the term tape when referring to recording content to either a DVD or a hard drive.
As the media landscapes evolves over this year both consumers and content providers and creators, and advertisers will struggle to find the right balance of content distribution, advertising and control. Hopefully the consumer won’t get either caught in the middle, or left behind.
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