How Can ISPs Maximize Utilization of Internet TV?
Yonatan Sela 27 Aug 08
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Internet Service Providers (ISPs) used to merely offer their clients access to the internet, but for a while now ISPs offer much more than that. As broadband connection prices constantly decrease, ISPs must find new, additional revenue sources in order to stay profitable in the long run. Engaging in the Internet TV market is a great opportunity for ISPs to leverage their existing infrastructure and at the same time strengthen their brand presence. These Internet access providers can profit from their advantages, and generate revenues from VOD websites using two alternative methods: either by renting out their own video content online or by incorporating video advertising and sponsorship.
In the first revenue generation method – renting out premium video content - ISPs can use their existing data base of user-accounts and leverage existing billing systems in order to avoid the need to ask users for credit card numbers and other details. Users’ Monthly bill can include their video usage on-site, and make the rent or purchase process intuitive and efficient while minimizing operational costs. In addition, an ISP can take advantage of its human resources on the web by utilizing trained personnel, experienced both in technical support and in sales of the company’s other internet services in order to sell monthly subscriptions and other packages to video viewers. Most internet companies do not have this already-existing advantage of direct, personal contact with existing customers via telephone (and at times even in person). Tvinci’s TV Portal is a great platform for content owning ISPs to realize these potential advantages in an engaging, user-friendly VOD environment offering easy discovery of "top-shelf" premium content, designed to efficiently integrate with existing billing systems among its various features.
Alternatively, ISPs can use Internet TV to strengthen their brand presence and encourage new subscribers through video advertising and sponsorships, even without actually owning content. An example of an innovative utilization of video online by an ISP is seen in a sponsorship agreement a leading Eastern European ISP has signed with one of Tvinci’s major clients. Our client’s major video site, scheduled to launch in October, offers premium video content and magazine content including exclusive interviews. Some of the new videos and most interesting interviews will be initially available only for VIP users. In addition to various tools for brand recognition throughout the site, the sponsoring ISP’s subscribers are the only ones able to view the VIP video content, as only IP’s of the particular Internet Service Provider are granted access to view it. This is a great example of how ISPs can take advantage of their existing infrastructure in order to build their brand with new audiences and encourage new subscribers. The website’s content editors enjoy complete control of video content on site using Tvinci’s Media Management platform (TVM), including flexible and automatic availability rules for effortless management of the VIP videos.
Tvinci’s Platforms Glowing in Light of the Social Networks Fatigue
Yonatan Sela 27 Aug 08
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At first it was only whispered by some, later on it has been more widely discussed, but only in the past few weeks it has become official – people are getting bored of the big social networks. Not long ago, around the time of the magnificent $15bn valuation Microsoft set for Facebook, the social networks hype was at its peak. Nevertheless, analytics of the past few months show a slowing and for some networks even declining growth in users (e.g. after peaking at October 2007, MySpace - the largest social network at the time, saw a decline of 3 million unique visitors in the
It would be wrong to say the social networks are rolling downhill, but it’s becoming clearer that the users of social networks that carry no "useful information" or premium content are likely to spend less and less time using it after the initial enthusiasm. I believe social networks will remain very powerful, but they can stay more attractive over time if they revolve around some sort of content.
While the numbers are dropping at the big social networks, Google’s Youtube has doubled its unique visitors within a year (going up to over 61 million users) and Yahoo’s Flicker has shown a growth of 88% in the number of users (now over 14 million). In spite of the essential difference between Youtube and facebook – one revolves around video content, while the other revolves around the interactive-social experience it provides, both are extremely powerful and attractive for users. Here at TVinci we’ve realized the potential infolded in combining these two experiences quite some time ago… It is therefore not surprising users gradually add more videos to their profiles. Our view has long ago been that impersonal video content alone is simply not enough for contemporary users. Lately, we see that over time, neither is the interactive social experience alone (as the social network fatigue shows).
Accordingly, we have been leading a paradigm shift in the world of premium content: content is no longer the sole king, Viewing Experience is the new king. We believe that the key to successful Internet TV is providing a superb viewing experience offering innovative ways of discovering new premium content and featuring social, personalization and interactive capabilities. Moreover, we believe that enriching video content allows video content owners to increase viewers’ engagement with the video content in their sites (both frequency and length of visits), thereby helping them to maximize monetization of their assets.
We’ve started working on the MTV Israel website in March 2007 with this holistic approach toward content experience in mind: on the basis of Tvinci’s media management platform (TVM), the site uses three different kinds of tailor-suited video players and a social network that revolves around MTV’s premium video content. The ability to comment, rate and share premium content (as well as the ability to upload and edit UGC) within a social network that has been created for that purpose has evidently drawn more users for more frequent, longer visits. Viewers with similar taste in music/other video content are more likely to become friends on site, and discover new content through each other – both result in longer engagement with the content and other parts of the site like the social network and the magazine. Users in the leading Israeli websites powered by our platform watch an average of nearly 7 videos per visit – an increase of nearly 400% since the implementation of the platform.
Users are more adaptive to new templates, and inevitably get bored faster. They are therefore more demanding. It’s the combination of quality content with a social, interactive viewing experience that’ll keep them coming and staying longer on site. There are many innovative efforts to improve revenue generation from online video (as well as from Facebook), but they’ll be worthwhile only if there are enough people, staying long enough in order to watch it.
I hope we’ll keep foreseeing the viewing trends on our soon upcoming VOD initiative, designed in light of these ideas and developed in cooperation with NDS (scheduled to launch on October 2008).
Tvinci vs Joost?!?!
Ido Wiesenberg 29 Nov 07
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Are we competing with Joost?
The answer is no, but in any case we thank Orly Yakuel, who thinks we’re better :).
We really appreciate the people over in Joost, we think they’ve made a large and incredible step in favor of revolutionizing the video world and that they help us change the standard of viewing experience over the internet. On the other hand we are not competing with Joost and even watch it on occasion.
The essential difference between us and Joost is that we are a media management platform which enables any content owner to integrate it and supply a viewing experience for his/her users without downloading software, while Joost is a downloadable program, and serves as an aggregator of content that wants everybody to reach it.
Our emphasis is on content accessibility – the users will continue to reach the destinations sites they’re used to in order to consume their content and, thanks to Tvinci, they will be able to enjoy a viewing experience without downloading software and without changing their surfing habits.
It is important to us that the user experiences an intuitive and experiential usage and that is why we design the interfaces in a simple and user-friendly way with an emphasis on a user experience that is familiar to surfers from their operation system, such as minimize and maximize of any object and the ability to ‘drag’ it.
In summation, the surfers want to continue consuming their content in the sites they are used to.
Joost is held in very high regard by us and will undoubtedly succeed in influencing the world of Internet TV.
Our platform will grow alongside Joost, and the content owners that want to maximize the monetization on their content will deliver their content to Joost and at the same time, integrate our platform (or another) into their site and strengthen the community and the link between the video content and the additional contents on their site.
As evidence, ‘Punked’ can be seen both on Joost and as a content channel on MTV Israel.
FLV (Flash) vs WMV (Microsoft)
Ido Wiesenberg 27 Nov 07
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One of the first questions that pop up in any encounter we’ve had with a potential client is the question – which video format is better for playing? FLV format (Flash) or WMV (Microsoft)?
The decision is not a simple one since each of the formats has its own advantages.
We will try to make the decision of choosing the right video format for your site a bit easier:
WMV ruled supreme in the market, but in recent years we have watched it lose its place to the FLV format.
The main advantage of the WMV format today is in its DRM ability.
The WMV comes with the built-in Microsoft DRM and so their contents can be protected. Indeed, many say that the DRM is dead, but let’s see you convince a Hollywood studio to bring you choice contents without DRM.
The FLV format does not have real DRM these days (there are all kinds of substitutes), but tenacious rumors in the industry tell that a DRM will be launched soon by Adobe, which we will already get to see in HULU project.
In addition, there are those who say that the WMV format has a higher quality; it supports multiple bit rates, which means that the same video can be transmitted in various qualities according to the internet connection of each surfer.
Both formats aim high in direction of HD, and promise to support those formats. The wider the bandwidth gets, the more we will see sites crossing over to transmit MPEG files (one of the large portals in Israel already means to do so).
The transmit method of the WMV format is also different from the FLV format. Most of the use of WMV is done through streaming. It is possible to jump to the end of the movie and then only the part you want to watch will load and not the whole movie.
The use of FLV is usually done through progressive download, which means we download the whole movie to our computer; it is not possible to jump to a point at the end of the movie if it hasn’t been loaded yet.
Full screen is another interesting point. The WMV uses the user’s video card and so charges the transfer to full screen without burdening the CPU. Flash, on the other hand, burdens the CPU but the transfer to full screen is smoother. On the other hand, in three months a new version of Flash will come out that will also use the video card and so this advantage will disappear completely…
That’s it for the advantages of the WMV format, for all that, why do more and more clients prefer to go with the FLV format?
The FLV plays based on Flash, Flash is a reliable multi platform that works on all the operating systems and on all the web browsers without problems or bugs.
The main advantage of Flash is the option of adding layers over the video, while watching video. We will see it more and more in the area of advertising, instead of pre and post advertising, we will watch less irritating advertising on top of the video. Flash gives additional options of motivation to action on top of specific areas in the video while watching it. In addition, many more widgets can be added on the screen, as you can see in the variety of interfaces we’ve developed.
In a world of UGC, we all use Flash today, even Microsoft (link).
Coding to an FLV format is quicker and more reliable.
As a response to Flash, Microsoft has been developing ‘Silverlight’ for a few years now. On paper it seems that ‘Silverlight’ should knock Flash out and give answers to all its advantages. The problem is that, until now, the ‘Silverlight’ versions that have come out were not reliable enough; a special plug-in must be installed in order to watch the video (Flash is already installed in over 95% of computers in the world), and it seems that it will take at least a year until ‘Silverlight’ version 1.1 will come out to the market and stabilize. A year is a very long time is internet terms; it will be interesting to see what market share Flash will hold in a year…
In summation, our recommendation these days is to go for the FLV format unless the contents must be protected with DRM. In any case we recommend to our clients to code to both the FLV and WMV formats and to upload both formats into our systems, and so on the day ‘Silverlight’ comes out it will be possible to transfer to it with the push of a button.
The Tvinci Code
Ofer Shayo 25 Nov 07
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It’s been an exciting few months – and we’ve been enjoying the attention from new clients, potential partners and bloggers.
That’s one of the reasons we put up this new website, to offer more information about what we are doing, now that people are asking.
But just to be clear… we (and this website) will change.
Tvinci is all about helping the user get the most out of existing content – really offering them the best possible experience.
It’s not completely altruistic.
Our clients – content owners and publishers – will profit most when they have a clear understanding of what content their customers want, and how they want to experience it.
We know that this changes all the time, so…so will we. If you have feedback and suggestions to help us along, please send them on.
Submit an suggestions And keep watching this space.
We’ll keep you informed.