During my four days and four nights in the Nevada desert, I glimpsed
both the Promised Land and the Tower of Babel on the NAB show floor. I
saw inexpensive HD cameras from Panasonic and JVC, Apple and Avid
assaulting each other and passers by with dueling high-volume Black
Eyed Peas video, 4K projectors and VFX shots from upcoming films. The
lights, sounds and crowds made the casino floors seem like monastic
retreats.
The technology on display was impressive and at least one person
couldn’t wait to get a hands-on demo of an upcoming camera. Someone
stole an AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 camcorder from Panasonic’s booth. Good
thing the unit was only a wood-and-plastic mock up. If you see an
HVX200 on eBay, ask if the camera floats.
But it wasn’t clever engineering, hyperkinetic marketing or
kleptomaniac chutzpah that most impressed me this year. It was the
simultaneous arrival and possible passing of widespread IPTV. The most
significant announcement at this year’s NAB was made during the NAB
2005 All Industry Opening Ceremony keynote address. You are forgiven if
you’ve never heard of the All Industry Opening Ceremony. While most of
Studio/monthly’s editors and writers (and many of its readers) were
hunting and gathering on the trade-show floor, a parallel NAB
conference ran next to the equipment exposition.
This other NAB is filled with station owners, group managers, Wall
Street analysts, congressmen (no congresswomen this year), FCC staffers
and lobbyists—the people who run television, and by extension, affect
how we work. I typically spend a lot of time at this other conference,
and this year the folks there were talking about the keynote address
given by Ivan Seidenberg, CEO and president of Verizon Communications.
Seidenberg said Verizon spent 73 billion dollars over the last five
years expanding its landline and wireless networks, a figure he says is
22 billion dollars more than the top-five cable companies combined
spent on infrastructure.
By the end of the year, he expects its wireless broadband EV-DO network
to reach 150 million people, and its 30Mb downstream/5Mb upstream FiOS
fiber network to reach three million homes. There’s more growth planned
for 2006 and beyond, and Verizon isn’t alone. Other telcos such as SBC
and BellSouth are also after their own slices of the television pie.
E-mail isn’t going to get people to sign up for these services. Verizon
wants to get people hooked on Internet-delivered games, shopping,
interactive learning and television.
Verizon’s wireless V CAST service delivers games, music videos, sports
highlights and other video content that Seidenberg hopes consumers will
find "as indispensable as their mobile phones." Later this year its
landline FiOS TV service will offer "a video package that will deliver
the best possible customer experience," complete with HD deliver, DVR
(e.g., TiVO) and videoconferencing.
He said Verizon would "provide a true and compelling competitive
alternative to cable." Seidenberg hinted that, unlike cable carriers,
Verizon wants to carry every multicast channel a DTV station produces.
The plan isn’t a bad thing, but it’s still programming selected by and
delivered on a schedule set by someone else. At NAB, at least,
Seidenberg wasn’t talking about video on demand, or about limitless
choice and access.
Verizon is working to get the local franchises and regulatory relief
that will make it easier for them to compete with cable television.
Verizon, for example, may not want to be forced to deliver FiOS-TV to
parts of a city where they don’t deliver telephone service. And they’d
rather not have to deal with local governments at all. At NAB,
Seidenberg asked broadcasters, "to lend your persuasive voice in
support of clearing away this barrier to video competition." As good as
Verizon is at lobbying, the NAB is better. So we’ll probably see
widespread availability of services like FiOS-TV.
Telcos and broadcasters are figuring out how to make a business of
Internet video. As consumers, that’s mostly a good thing. But do they
view people like us as just potential consumers or also potential
partners? And are they willing to partner with us?
My network-engineering friends point out that at least some of
Verizon’s FiOS network might run as an RF video overlay similar to what
cable uses, rather than a standard IP network that moves all sorts of
data packets. If the telcos offer a service that is basically a clone
of cable, they won’t beat cable.
They need new content. Like the content broadcasters will provide on
their DTV multicasts. Like what readers of Studio create. But when I
tried to ask Verizon reps about how companies like POV Media could
distribute content on FiOS-TV, I couldn’t get an answer. Perhaps I’m
asking the wrong people. Or perhaps they don’t have or don’t want to
give an answer.
Can the telco managers, who are infrastructure and not content people,
see beyond their current TV sets and possibly Netflix? Do they want to?
FiOS-TV comes from the same Verizon that successfully lobbied to
prohibit Pennsylvania communities (besides Philadelphia) from rolling
out their own municipal Wi-Fi or landline data networks.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published two days
before his NAB keynote, Seidenberg said of San Francisco’s plan for a
free or low-cost Internet service, "That could be one of the dumbest
ideas I’ve ever heard." Telcos and the NAB, like all sensible
businesses, want to minimize competition. But unlike most businesses,
they have the clout to do so.
I Want My IPTV
So what does this mean for us? If you already sell all the programming
you can to television, are happy with the financial arrangements and
audience and don’t think much about Internet video, then don’t worry.
But now that big companies smell big money in Internet video, we may
see on the Web the sorts of access battles and financial barriers we
see in the broadcast spectrum. The free and open Internet might become
a lot less free and open. Or from another view, users and distributers
will be required to pay a fair fee for their Internet use.
This might all sound far removed from our video production issues, but
it’s not. I’m already sending video over the Internet and I’m part of a
group that plans to soon send a lot more (more about that in a couple
of months). I want the cost and access structures to get better, not
worse. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or IPTV
Cassandra. I’m not. But smarter people than me have worried about telco
and cable network owners differentiating between "good data packets"
and "bad data packets."
If you aren’t already swimming in the Internet video pool, dive in now.
Start using QuickTime, Windows Media and BitTorrent
(www.bittorrent.com)
to send approval clips and complete programs to clients and partners.
Put more and bigger videos on your Web site. Follow the legal issues
closely. Visit www.fcc.gov once in a while. The
Internet will change in the next three years and we need to participate
in that change.
It may seem that the Internet video genie is already out of the bottle.
But genies only grant three wishes, and we’ve used up our first two on
better codecs and broadband. We need to carefully choose our last wish
before the genie goes away.
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