Streaming Media - April/May 2008 - (Page 59)

2006 OCT. 10 LICENSING SWEETENS DEAL AS GOOGLE BUYS YOUTUBE Last Friday, the rumors began in earnest regarding Google’s desire to acquire video networking site YouTube. On Monday, with market close approaching, the final offer—$1.65 billion in stock—was announced, along with YouTube’s agreement to the price, pending shareholder approval. —TS 2007 APRIL 16 NAB 2007: MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MICROSOFT AND ADOBE SHAKE UP THE WORLD OF ONLINE VIDEO Major announcements this morning at NAB 2007 from both Adobe and Microsoft find each one vying for the lead in the ever-more-lucrative online video market. Adobe announced its Adobe Media Player, a stand-alone video player that gives Flash Video DRM for the first time, while Microsoft introduced Silverlight, a cross-platform, cross-browser media and application delivery plug-in. —ESR JUNE 25 PANDO INTRODUCES STREAMING SERVICE Microsoft loudly announced a renewed emphasis on video when it introduced Silverlight at NAB in 2007. At this year’s Streaming Media East conference in May, there was plenty of buzz about P2P, and one of the names that kept coming up again and again was Pando. At the time, however, the excitement came with a caveat, as Pando didn’t allow content owners to deliver video via streaming or progressive download. Individual users could, of course, use Pando’s lightweight software client to send large files—including video—to each other, but not until the announcement last week of Pando Publisher did Pando Networks enter the realm of streaming video. —ESR JULY 30 AKAMAI’S TROUBLES: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Akamai continues to lose valuation—and Internap just reported a 2Q 2007 net loss of $1.7 million—but that doesn’t mean the entire CDN market is in trouble. In fact, if you’re really paying attention, you’ll see that the space is stronger than ever. Akamai continues to lose valuation, trading down to $35 per share today compared to $50 per share on July 19. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the CDN market as a whole is in jeopardy … Some industry leaders say Akamai’s troubles are not a cause for overall concern. StreamingMedia.com EVP Dan Rayburn, for example, in his BusinessOfVideo.com blog, says that it’s not a sign of weakness in the CDN sector. —TS AUG. 21 FLASH AND H.264: TOGETHER AT LAST Mark Randall, chief strategist in the Dynamic Media organization at Adobe Systems, was obviously excited about the pre-announcement conference call to announce the inclusion of H.264 playback in a new version of the Flash player, code-named “Moviestar.” H.264 support has been built into Flash CS3, so it’s possible to encode content into H.264 as part of the standard Flash workflow. —TS NOV. 22 APPLE SETTLES BURST LAWSUIT Back in April 2006, a little over a year after Burst had made the giant blink by settling antitrust and patent-infringement claims against Microsoft for $60 million, Burst made good on its claim to use its proceeds from the Microsoft settlement to “pay off long-term debts, enforce patent claims against other companies, and to pay shareholders.” The target of Burst’s second patent claim enforcement was Apple Computer (now known simply as Apple). In April 2006, several months after CEO Richard Lang told technology pundit Robert X. Cringley that Apple had broken off negotiations and filed a suit against Burst, Lang and company filed a countersuit against Apple. Lang’s comment that his company was willing to continue negotiations and that Apple’s actions were “an attempt to get the suit on their turf” struck a chord with those who felt Apple was moving in the same direction as Microsoft, thumbing its nose at a defensible streaming patent that had been in place from the early 1990s. —TS 2008 FEB. 14 BBC: CURRENT MOBILE VIDEO BUSINESS MODELS NOT SUSTAINABLE With the keen interest in content for mobile video, now that many of the technology hurdles have been addressed, some speakers at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week have focused on uniformity of content creation, licensing, and technology models. The BBC’s Peter Mercier, who heads the mobile arm of BBC Worldwide’s Digital Media Division—the new media arm of the British Broadcasting Corp.—warned that the current business models for licensing of content for mobile video aren’t sustainable. BBC Worldwide’s sales in the 2007 fiscal year were around $1.6 billion, but mobile services, including web sales and video on demand, accounted for only $2.4 million of total revenues. —TS WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 59 http://StreamingMedia.com http://BusinessOfVideo.com http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - April/May 2008

Streaming Media - April/May 2008 Table of Contents Beyond the Bottom Line Technology and Business Trends by the Numbers (Not So) Instant Karma MSN Autos Revs Up Video Production Dow Finds the Right Streaming Chemistry Why Video Is Changing the World A Decade of StreamingMedia.com What's Your Digital Media Strategy? Blasts From the Past: A Decade (Almost) of StreamingMedia.com Headlines Analyze That A League of Their Own: Streaming Media All-Stars Where Are They Now? Wanted: Sexy HDTV That Connects to the Internet and Services All DVRs Anystream Agility Inlet Technologies Spinnaker S3000

Streaming Media - April/May 2008

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