Accompanied by my AV buddy Andrew, we attended Yaron Samid's densely packed NY Video Meet-up, where nearly 400 NY based internet participants heard presentations from 5 emerging internet video related companies. If you are interested in investing, or joining a video company, this is a monthly must attend forum.
Of particular note, keep an eye on the impressive progress of open source, not for profit entity Miro. Their recently introduced Miro 2.0 does a great job of bringing internet based HD video to your PC. With a built-in media guide, great codec support and BitTorrent availability, they provide wonderful access and search capabilities. The service seems to be attracting a nice audience. As an example of their market acceptance, here's Quantcast's estimates for Boxee.tv vs Miro:
Per the Miro presenter, they have not yet drawn the formal 'attention' that Boxee's received from Hulu. I suspect we will hear more on this topic as the year unfolds.
Showing posts with label boxee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boxee. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
To Sir With Love (Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant)...click here
One of my 'forever young' buddies, Mr Brahms, sent me two great videos over the weekend highlighting the incredibly uplifting interplay between two amazing artists. If you enjoyed the first, here's the second one . If these don't get you out of your chair, here's REM with the BOSS playing Born to Run.
While watching them over and over again, and forwarding to my rock 'n roll leaning friends, it appeared to me that we are in the midst of an accelerating shift in media consumption highlighted by young vendors, such as Tversity and Boxee. It seems that the market emphasis will accelerate its shift from ownership (bringing YOUR content to YOUR device) and towards access (bringing content from the CLOUD to YOUR device).
As the market shift accelerates, old folk (who still consume a disproportionate % of entertainment sales) will join our younger brethren in adjusting our consuming habits from primarily playing purchased content, to consuming streamed content from the cloud. In fact, absent a substantially enhanced consumption experience, you probably won't ever download it, and significantly, most probably discovered it from one of your 'forever young' friends. The social aspect makes it far more directed, and complementary to, internet based radio (where vendors such as Pandora balance serendipity with controlled discovery).
It is still murky how vendors concentrating on the discovery aspect of media sharing will make money, though let's harken back a few years to a time when the music vendors were staring at the abyss of their IP being devalued (stolen) to zero, and along came Mr. Jobs and gave consumers an experience where they preferred buying IP, to stealing it.
It is clear that one innocent link can launch a consumer (like me) on hours of joyful discovery. This has real value that I would pay for. There's a pony somewhere here worth owning.
Enjoy MLK day....it's a big couple of days in the US.
While watching them over and over again, and forwarding to my rock 'n roll leaning friends, it appeared to me that we are in the midst of an accelerating shift in media consumption highlighted by young vendors, such as Tversity and Boxee. It seems that the market emphasis will accelerate its shift from ownership (bringing YOUR content to YOUR device) and towards access (bringing content from the CLOUD to YOUR device).
As the market shift accelerates, old folk (who still consume a disproportionate % of entertainment sales) will join our younger brethren in adjusting our consuming habits from primarily playing purchased content, to consuming streamed content from the cloud. In fact, absent a substantially enhanced consumption experience, you probably won't ever download it, and significantly, most probably discovered it from one of your 'forever young' friends. The social aspect makes it far more directed, and complementary to, internet based radio (where vendors such as Pandora balance serendipity with controlled discovery).
It is still murky how vendors concentrating on the discovery aspect of media sharing will make money, though let's harken back a few years to a time when the music vendors were staring at the abyss of their IP being devalued (stolen) to zero, and along came Mr. Jobs and gave consumers an experience where they preferred buying IP, to stealing it.
It is clear that one innocent link can launch a consumer (like me) on hours of joyful discovery. This has real value that I would pay for. There's a pony somewhere here worth owning.
Enjoy MLK day....it's a big couple of days in the US.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Guilty as charged
During the past year I have been somewhat negative about the ability for young companies to build serious stakeholder value in the segment of internet video space so visibly pioneered by YouTube. My concern is that, despite plummeting costs, the value-add of recycling someone's proprietary content, or running adds against yet another silly pet trick was limited in an era of surging page inventory and limited innovation.
Yesterday, at Techaviv a gathering of Israeli entrepreneurs heard 3 companies present their offerings to a physical audience of nearly 50 people, plus a global audience of Techaviv members. One of the firms, Boxee, recently funded by Spark Ventures and Union Square Ventures, (HQ in NY and R&D in Israel) presented an innovative approach that automatically merges your personal digital assets with content available over the internet to present on your TV a greatly enhanced user experience. Complementing the merging of your data with external content is a social aspect where you are able to invite/follow your friends' media experiences.
The user experience seems neat in the demo (I have signed up for the alpha but not yet installed the service, so can't say for sure), but what really attracts me are three other attributes that are integral to building a wonderful business. The IP is built on top of the XBMC active open source community that minimizes core development expense, so they can devote their resources towards the application and UI (and license agreements with MP3 and other folk). Second, the company seems to be executing quite well on a low-cost viral seeding strategy hitting many influencer's and speaking at industry forums large and small. Finally, the small team seems totally driven and comes highly recommended.
I am not sure if this company will ultimately be successful. However, for a relatively modest amount of capital deployed against quite a large market opportunity, that interests many deep pocketed companies, it seems to be just the type of venture bet that the asset class should make.
One company is not enough to reform a skeptic; two though gives great pause. SundaySky is two year old company which has just released its initial product (company also started in Israel, and is moving HQ to NY), an infrastructure platform that enables a site to generate dynamic video on the fly. The promise is that professional quality video can be created for your site with no human intervention(other than professional services when you deploy the platform)...if this works, it will enable sites to substantially increase monetization of content or conversion rates for commerce; while lowering the costs associated with doing this. I am not yet sure if the business behind SundaySky will conform to the capital efficient model that is core to giving customers a true disruptive value proposition that I'm convinced will be embraced by true disruptor's, but at the next Techaviv session, the team will be presenting their solution and answering questions. SundaySky is funded by my friends over at Globespan Capital Partners and Carmel Ventures.
Yesterday, at Techaviv a gathering of Israeli entrepreneurs heard 3 companies present their offerings to a physical audience of nearly 50 people, plus a global audience of Techaviv members. One of the firms, Boxee, recently funded by Spark Ventures and Union Square Ventures, (HQ in NY and R&D in Israel) presented an innovative approach that automatically merges your personal digital assets with content available over the internet to present on your TV a greatly enhanced user experience. Complementing the merging of your data with external content is a social aspect where you are able to invite/follow your friends' media experiences.
The user experience seems neat in the demo (I have signed up for the alpha but not yet installed the service, so can't say for sure), but what really attracts me are three other attributes that are integral to building a wonderful business. The IP is built on top of the XBMC active open source community that minimizes core development expense, so they can devote their resources towards the application and UI (and license agreements with MP3 and other folk). Second, the company seems to be executing quite well on a low-cost viral seeding strategy hitting many influencer's and speaking at industry forums large and small. Finally, the small team seems totally driven and comes highly recommended.
I am not sure if this company will ultimately be successful. However, for a relatively modest amount of capital deployed against quite a large market opportunity, that interests many deep pocketed companies, it seems to be just the type of venture bet that the asset class should make.
One company is not enough to reform a skeptic; two though gives great pause. SundaySky is two year old company which has just released its initial product (company also started in Israel, and is moving HQ to NY), an infrastructure platform that enables a site to generate dynamic video on the fly. The promise is that professional quality video can be created for your site with no human intervention(other than professional services when you deploy the platform)...if this works, it will enable sites to substantially increase monetization of content or conversion rates for commerce; while lowering the costs associated with doing this. I am not yet sure if the business behind SundaySky will conform to the capital efficient model that is core to giving customers a true disruptive value proposition that I'm convinced will be embraced by true disruptor's, but at the next Techaviv session, the team will be presenting their solution and answering questions. SundaySky is funded by my friends over at Globespan Capital Partners and Carmel Ventures.
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