Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Welcome to our Freestyle Friday on technologyevangelist.com. We are doing this live on the Technology Evangelist website using Ustream, so you can watch our video stream. We are also doing a TalkShoe broadcast to allow you to join the conversation and ask us questions in real-time. Freestyle Friday, allows us to talk about anything we want, there is no set topic, technology related or not. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham with Technology Evangelist, in front of me I have got Ed Kohler and to my right I have got Jeremy Elfering, all of us are waving to the camera, hi camera – awesome, all right, let’s start this thing off. Ed, how are you doing today?

Ed Kohler: I am doing great, how are you doing?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am doing great, what’s your topic?

Ed Kohler: I don’t know, what we are going to start. We want to do this in any particular order …..

Jeremy Elfering: I say we go with the most important news of the day.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Don’t you dare say the spider-man musical?

Jeremy Elfering: The spider-man musical.

Ed Kohler: OK, moving on.

Jeremy Elfering: See Ed, you are such a bad geek, you do not watch science, science fiction movies of any kind. You don’t read fantasy novels. You don’t do any of these traditional geek things.

Ed Kohler: I know, but I get some.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But he is not …...

Jeremy Elfering: He gets some.

Ed Kohler: So, I might have made her geek cred a little bit, that’s OK, I am fine with that.

Jeremy Elfering: You do, I am sorry, if…

Ed Kohler: I guess I am the him-bo of the group.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They are calling you a poser geek, although maxim is with you. All right, tell us about the spider-man musical and make it quick.

Jeremy Elfering: There is a spider-man musical getting ready, they are casting right now as we speak. The music itself will be done by U2’s Bono and the Edge.

Ed Kohler: Where could I go to try out for this?

Jeremy Elfering: I have no clue, but anyway.

Ed Kohler: May be it will open in Minneapolis before it goes to Broadway, we can only hope.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t think it will open ever.

Jeremy Elfering: I disagree, because they have already done a musical based on superman.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Did it open?

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: How long was it, had at least one showing.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: How long was it in the theater for?

Jeremy Elfering: I don’t know, I only have a little blurb on it. It was actually opened in 1966.

Ed Kohler: I would get tickets as quick as you could, it might not play that many shows.

Jeremy Elfering: There might not be that many, we will see, it will be interesting.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Let’s do a "real" topic, Ed? Hit me with one of yours.

Ed Kohler: There has been a lot of buzz around the web this week about full feeds versus truncated feeds and publishers are dabbling about which way, what’s best for them as far as ad revenue goes. For example, John Battelle, who writes his Google blog, he just threw out a post just to get feel for the audience to find out what you think of, if I was switched to full feeds or from full feeds to just putting exerpts in my feed, would you kill me or what, because he looks at how much revenue he can make from people actually visiting his site versus the feed and he is wondering, would he be able to drive more traffic to his site, if he truncated his feeds. Well, he got a back lash from his audience, they are don’t seem to be fans and I don’t about you, but I don’t subscribe to very many non-full feeds, because there is enough good content out there, where you just don’t have to deal with clicking out to view it. So, Rick Klau from Feedburner, he came out with a post right around the same time saying that, they don’t have any good evidence at Feedburner that people who have truncated feeds get more click throughs than people that have full feeds. So, if that’s the case, why not take care of your most loyal readers, by allowing them to view your content however they want to view it and they are still going to have to click through if they want to add a comment or read the comments, so there is still incentives to click through.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I will say, I very rarely click through, I just read the story and if it is a partial story, many times I will just headline it and then move on, if I am really interested in the headlines then may be I will click through, but it is very rare when I do.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, even if you are, people don’t read every story that you write, first of all. So, if you have a full feed or a truncated feed, they are just going to skip passed a lot of it, because they just don’t have time to read everything that someone might write. So, if you are forcing people to click out to find out something was worth for you are not, they are just going to get sick of that I think so, I don’t see that as working very well. So, it is obviously true that you can not make as much money in a truncated feed or a full feeds advertising within the feed itself, but there are things you can put in there like Feedburner, they have basically have been suggesting that, the type of ads that you put in your feed would be different than it might put on your own website, because your advertising to your most loyal audience and these are people who trust you and follow you and read your stuff every single day. So, there is something to be done with branding tied to that, that are different from, say like just direct response type of thing that you might see in a paper click ad. So, you can kind of see that type of ads that Feedburner is been trying to find for their network. So, I don’t know, I think it is something where, I don’t think there is going to be a big up swallow switching over to truncated feeds, I don’t still see a go in that direction.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you hope it will go the other direction? Are you…

Ed Kohler: That there will be more full feeds?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, you sound like you are pretty much in the full feed camp and I know that you push pretty hard for us to do full feeds on Technology Evangelist. So, what do you think is going to happen there? Is just going to remain this split market forever?

Ed Kohler: I think, if some hard numbers come out saying that you really will make more money by driving traffic to your site, there will be more publishers of course who will opt for doing that, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: How much money really is in blogging? I know there is lot of money for the top bloggers like the Engadgets of the world, but there are only handful of those, everything else is really-really long tail, really-really far down the tail and I just don’t see there being more than $3.60 every month?

Ed Kohler: Well there are some bloggers are making pretty decent money of ads on their sites, but I think the other side of this I think that is important that I posted on John Battelle’s comments about this particular post, so on his full feed post where he wrote about this, I click through to his website from the full feed in order to add a comment to his site, so it was the quality of the content that got me to click in to view the rest of his ads, but my comment was “you need to take care of your most loyal readers, because they are also the ones who are most likely to have blogs and they are the most likely to write about stuff that you have written”, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Linky-linky action going around.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, exactly you are going to get more traffic indirectly because of that, so if there are times where always something in a feed reader and decide I want to blog about this and I haven’t gone to their site, yet. I will got to their site, so I can grab a snippet and things and link, but it wasn’t because of something I saw on their site that I decided to do that, but as soon as I write about it, now I would link to it, I am driving traffic to his site and all of those people are not going to the feed they go into the actual site. Some of them may end up subscribing to his feed, so I don’t know I think it is a short term mistake, if he does that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am going to bring Maxim from TalkShoe on the conversation, he mentioned that there is a lot of money in podcasting and I Sure had one of the only microphones at NAB and it was just a dinky setup, but doesn’t that just contradict what you said, if there is lot of money in podcasting, why didn’t NAB have just a ton of podcasting stuff?

Maxim TalkShoe: No, not a lot of money, I think I just tried that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: There is not a lot of money, there you go.

Jeremy Elfering: That sounds better.

Maxim TalkShoe: I picked this stuff from a Patrick Norton he had a whole thing about NAB and they said “Was there any podcasting this place”, they said, “Yes, one booth Sure two microphones that was it”.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If I saw that, that was on the latest episode of dl.tv, if I remember correctly.

Maxim TalkShoe: Correct.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It was a pittiful setup too, I mean it just wasn’t here, but at the same time NAB is a bit of different beast, they are used to selling quarter million dollar switches to companies that just shrug that off as I don’t know whatever that's nothin'...

Jeremy Elfering: NAB may not have been the best venue for podcasting, there are better venues to show up that podcasting stuff.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Look at our studio, we have got each one of these microphones is a Sure microphone and it is $1,300 mic, list price, we don’t pay $1,300 for these mics, we are not crazy.

Ed Kohler: Well, I think you got to show others like, there is like a niche that isn’t be a photo now of this prosumer type equipment where it is not consumer electronic, that’s not broadcast quality and this is both on the podcasting side and the video side as well. There is lot of people who are just looking for, they are beyond amateur, but they are going to throw some money at it, just like either lot of people who are just amateur photographers, but they are still want to throw a few thousand bucks in their rig, so where do they go to find out about that kind of stuff.

Jeremy Elfering: Well, there are some conferences I know on the video side. DV expo is one of them that is more for the prosumer and yet they have lot of professionals coming to talk, but they are talking at a more prosumer level, where they are talking about the HDV cameras, they are talking about the prosumer type cameras, I don’t know on the podcasting side what there is available now.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, the thing is the prosumer market has been pretty small until now, there is not been enabling technology to allow the prosumer content to hit the mass market. So, the consumer market, the smaller market, the YouTube guys that wasn’t able to buy YouTube and Google video, so you could take your consumer camera and get your video up there, that’s extremely long tale and you got this gigantic middle market that no one has been able to actually distribute content before. So, there is not a lot of equipment or content there yet and then you got the top end broadcast market and that’s been around since forever and so there is a ton of gear in the broadcast market, there is ton of gear in the consumer market, but there is not that much stuff in the prosumer market. Now, I believe that that’s going to be changing over in the next couple of years and we are going to see enabling technologies like HVX200. We are going to see other technologies in the prosumer market, because now using the Internet, I can distribute this content easily to my end users. I can send a 1080p video file or, well a 720p video file and have it play on my Apple TV and I can have hundreds of thousands of viewers of that file, I could have millions of viewers of that file and you actually start getting into Nielsen ratings at that point.

Ed Kohler: But, even with our large audience I think there are plenty of people who at home, they want their home movies to be home "movies". They want to do high production stuff of their kids eating cereal.

Jeremy Elfering: There is a market for that, but there is not that much for that market, I think it is more for the people who are doing small little video events, like weddings and stuff like that, we are actually selling.

Benjamin Higginbotham: See, I think the high-end prosumer market is a different price point, I think the high-end prosumer market is a $25,000 camera, right now find me a $25,000 camera that has 1080p. Now, I can find a $1,000 camera that has 1080p and I can find a $100,000 camera that has 1080p, but we are missing that middle market and I am OK as a high-end prosumer videocaster. Right before you hit broadcast $25,000 to get an excellent camera with real glass that will give me the real cinematography, so I can actually get that movie feel, so I can do real documentaries. I am OK with that, but there isn’t something out there for me to work on. Sony has some stuff and Panasonic has some stuff, but the time you price it out is $50,000 to $60,000.

Jeremy Elfering: Which is where the Red Camera comes in, little bit .

Benjamin Higginbotham: Sort of, but by the time you price out a Red Camera…

Jeremy Elfering: It is still at about $50,000.

Benjamin Higginbotham: $50,000, but the difference between that is, that the Red Camera at $50,000 is ten times the camera that a Panasonic $50,000 or Sony $50,000, in fact it is still twice or three times a camera that is CineAlta at a $150,000.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, that’s before glass.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is on paper.

Jeremy Elfering: On paper, we have not seen it yet.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: Now, Andrew mentioned over on Ustream that Nielsen is going to start tracking college dorms , which could have a big effect on, how numbers really can breakdown, Andrew do happen to know for that, if they are going to be tracking online views of content or is it just a TV content or anything that...

Jeremy Elfering: I don’t know if that Nielsen people know that the online really exist there yet.

Ed Kohler: Well, they have enough audience , but they have a Nielsen audience of the web although it is similar to Nielsen on TV where it is more of a sample of specific families that they have setup which I think is very…

Jeremy Elfering: It is very skewed.

Ed Kohler: It is very difficult I think to find a big market that way, compared to something like Alexa. Alexa is not exactly perfect, but it's installed on a lot more computers and I think they still need to do some corrections of the data to know deal with how over weighted text sites are.

Jeremy Elfering: Andrew is saying TV content only, I think right now.

Ed Kohler: OK, thanks Andrew.

Benjamin Higginbotham: The thing with Nielsen is that, these television stations put a lot of trust in the Nielsen net ratings that they get and what’s really interesting is, it shows like Star Trek the original series and possibly even most everything you ever saw in Tech tv probably would not have been canceled, if they had just been measuring dorm rooms. There was a lot of people that were watching Tech tv.

Ed Kohler: Or Family Guy would probably fall in to that category.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly and because of that if, it is actually it is not really the stations, it is more the advertisers, because tech.tv isn’t getting the ratings and the numbers, the other guys who going to becaus Neilson doesn’t measure, they just don’t update stuff.

Jeremy Elfering: And here is the thing is that, that is of major market that’s willing to spend money, it is an important market, it is not measured.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What’s interesting is OK, so they are adding dorm rooms, but they still need to add additional stuff, they can’t stop there, if you want to get an accurate sampling you need to spread way out, you need to sample as much stuff as you can, you need to get all the TiVo DVR’s, you need to get the direct TV stuff, you need get every television that you can get, you need to get you don’t want just the old lady sitting in their living room creating false positives on shows that hardly anyone actually watches but get these really high Neilson ratings for no good reason.

Jeremy Elfering: And it would be interesting be able to say, OK that’s great, you are getting TiVo information, how about all the content that’s recorded and watched later. You think that would be very easy to track, because you know that the TiVo is active at that time doing something.

Ed Kohler: So, there is lot of stuff that they get like satellite boxes as well, like that’s one of things that came out when Google talked about how they cut a deal with, was it Ecostar, I think they did for a TV.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I believe it was Ecostar and they are direct TV I think, is that Dish or direct TV?

Ed Kohler: I think it is Dish, but they are saying that they are not at this point going to be looking at individual user behavior to serve commercials, which I think that where they have to figure out a trade off, because if they can provide more relevant commercials to viewers that’s a better experience for the viewers and for the advertisers.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I know that viewers are probably concerned about privacy data and whatnot, but who cares what you are watching.

Ed Kohler: If they are going to be concerned about privacy data, then they shouldn’t type anything in to Google.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, exactly.

Ed Kohler: Because, it mean you are saying your thoughts there, that’s a lot more of a privacy issue than what you happen to be watching on TV.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And I think if you were to better track what’s been watched on television and as I mentioning in TalkShoe, I think it was Maxim also mentioned it as the Doglinks, if you could track additional stuff like what’s been downloaded and how these shows are actually would be, where these shows are getting played, you better improve what you can be able to watch, because now the content producers, like ourselves and like those who actually make shows, they are going to know what we actually want to see as supposed to guessing and again going back to 80-year-old lady watching the soap operas or game show network in her living room and skewing the ratings.

Jeremy Elfering: Exactly.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And as Andrew says in Ustream, this system is broken and it is.

Jeremy Elfering: It is very broken.

Ed Kohler: And he added a link to a story of new USAToday about how they are now getting into dorm rooms, well there is first group of tests students they are going to be knew Neilson families: 130 students they are going to represent the entire college demographic.

Jeremy Elfering: That sucks.

Ed Kohler: If they can scale that up that’s impressive.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right let’s change topics, I am going to Maxim back in on the conversation, he had a really good question, can I have you ask that live on the air, you had a question regarding the Zune?

Maxim: Yes, wondering if you gentlemen think that Microsoft is going to ride it out until it makes money like they did with the Xbox or you think they will finally give up on the Apple homogony is too strong.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, I think in my crystal ball looks forward approximately 30 seconds in time, so little further forward that I am able to look, I think based on what Microsoft has lot to lose here, they are losing the entire living room and they could potentially lose the codec wars because of it, there is like little background war going on that no one seems to notice and it is between VC1, H 264 and On2 VP6 codec through flash and VC1 is becoming less and less relevant and there is so much money in codec’s. There is just tons and tons of money in codec distribution and if Microsoft…

Jeremy Elfering: As Adobe is proving.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If Microsoft cannot get the Zune to work, if they cannot figure out a living room platform, if they can’t figure out a podcasting videocasting platform and a portable media player platform, they are kind of screwed and I think they know that and so I think that they are going to push forward. Now, I had to debate with Microsoft aide at the Technology Evangelist conference and he brought us some vary valid points which are Microsoft doesn’t think that way, Microsoft works in silos so the Zune department is one cylo the VC1 codec is another silo, the Xbox is another silo and they don’t really worried about what’s going on in the other silo.

Jeremy Elfering: Which is funny because of they actually did talk between the silos, they might actually get some good products out there, that talk to each other.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right and that’s part of the problem and as Doglink says Microsoft is like a government and that’s very true and I don’t know if they realized that they have a problem here, I am sure someone up in upper management goes “oh, this is not good”.

Jeremy Elfering: Because you would hope there someone in upper management saying “this is not good”.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Because, here is what happening in the iPod is dominating the market, the iPod does not play Windows media file, it does not play VC1, the iPhone will not play VC1, Apple TV does not play VC1…

Jeremy Elfering: And you know what, people are starting to not care?

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s exactly, the only place I really seen VC1 taking off today so far is in HD DVD’s and Blu-Ray, but I think as the H264 encoding tools become more mature, we are going to see lot more H 264 content encoded out there, well Microsoft will say VC1 is better than H 264. My internal test show that’s actually not the case and that H 264 just obliterates VC1. So, that’s actually what Andrew is saying is Ustream as well H 264 is already won in his eyes and they are also talking about how the Xbox 360 is a great living room device with downloadable content, but there is not enough content compared to iTunes and that’s the other battle is the content.

Ed Kohler: Yes, when I look at it today, I think Apple has won the music side of this, but I don’t think the video side is decided yet, so it is possible the Zune can turn into a great video player and may be could be Apple side of it.

Jeremy Elfering: It could be,

Ed Kohler: Right.

Jeremy Elfering: Now their screen in bigger, it has the potential for looking better, but again you don’t have the content to download to it yet.

Ed Kohler: Right, but they might be able to buy their way into that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They are asking the question in Ustream,  Guest887 is asking a question. Do we need a high-def mobile media, we actually talked about that in an earlier podcast and I am not sure we do, I think just hard drives and what not will work for that.

Jeremy Elfering: It is we were debating one of the Blu-Ray or the HD DVD is going to be the new, latest and greatest version of the High 8 tape, where it is in between media, it is here for now, just to make it work.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And they are talking about right now the conversation is going into, is HD DVD and Blu-Ray really going to be relevant or we just going to go straight to downloadable media and I don’t think we are, to be perfect…

Jeremy Elfering: It will be in between state.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And the reason I say that is try it right now, you have got an Apple TV, you got your iTunes music store and you got 720p content out there, actually search iTunes in podcast for 720p and see which you can find?

Jeremy Elfering: There is not much.

Benjamin Higginbotham: There is about may be, I will say a 100 channels, may be there is a little bit more, last time I looked which is about a week ago there were 100 channels and there were very few people who, this I am going to brag and I am allowed. At Technology Evangelist we saw where the market was going and we actually shoot almost everything in 1080p quality and we distribute up to 1080p as well. So, since the beginning we have had 720p feeds and since 2005-2006 we have had our videos out there is as 720p files, but we are one of the few that did that, so there is a lack of content out there. A little ad for myself.

Jeremy Elfering: Right and unfortunately lot of people are saying do we need to do HD yet? because people aren’t demanding it and it is a little chicken before there I got.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But people will demand it, the talk is most everything on the 360 is available in 720p, right and that is traditional media in movies and what not, but what about the new market is getting opened up, as high-end prosumer market that was never enabled before? What about these cool podcasts that are going out the door? Can you get those in 720p on your Xbox 360? You can’t and the reason you can’t is because it is a walled garden, because Microsoft puts these barriers up for entry to get your content on there, iTunes does not. So, what I can do like rocket boom, like us, like geek breif, like pick your podcast, get that on your Xbox 360. you have to push it through, you have to use your Xbox 360 as a media center extender and push it through your computer it defeats the purpose. Same thing with Apple TV, you cannot download content straight to the Apple TV and I don’t understand that. Same thing with the TiVo, the TiVo can do this, I am starting to spit my voice is going up an octive, I am very passionate about this, I don’t understand why these companies don’t get this, lower your walled gardens, allow us to get the content on to your devices and let us do it in the highest possible format, we can, let us worry about the bandwidth and the compression requirements. Let us get on your devices, let us sell your devices for you, why won’t you do this?

Jeremy Elfering: Anyway we have another question, the question from the Ustream, is does 1080p look visibly better than 1080i? and absolutely!

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, here is a very common miss conception. A lot of people think that the quality order of high definition television is 480i, which is standard definition, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p and that is actually wrong. The actual order is 480i, 480p, 1080i, 720p and then 1080p. Can you see a visible difference between 720p and 1080p? Sometimes. Now, a lot of people will say, “but I can tell the difference, when discovery broadcast in 1080i, I can see the difference”, well you forget the acquiring 720p. a lot of their stuff is acquired in 720p, a lot of their stuff is film, which is way above that. So, that’s exactly and the reason for that is, here is the best way I can describe it, unfortunately it is not entirely accurate, but it is a great way to describe it, which is interlaced means that half your data is on the screen at anytime. So, if we were to convert 1080i and do a progressive format, it would be 540p, so looking at pure progressive format, it will be 480p, 540p, 720p, 1080p and there is part of the reason why I don’t like interlacing. Now, if it is still content, like a still picture 1080i is going to look great, but the moment you put motion up there, you have to deal with interlaced artifacting and it is incredibly hard to compress and you can’t get rid of it.

Jeremy Elfering: Interlaced is for goons.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Interlaced is for goons.

Jeremy Elfering: Very good. Let’s remember P is good.

Ed Kohler: Stick to the P, then how did you search on iTunes, I would in the iTunes and music store and then I searched for podcast then for 720p…

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, search for Apple TV.

Ed Kohler: OK, I searched, a lot of people must not have 720p in their podcast titles because it only came up with 11 results and if you sort those by popularity we are at number 4 , we are behind mirror post that HD, but we don’t have any Bikinis in our shows.

Jeremy Elfering: We need to change that, the women too.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Anyone in Ustream want to see me in a Bikini?

Jeremy Elfering: I could tell you right now. No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Everyone is saying no, no, no…

Ed Kohler: We've got really good audience.

Benjamin Higginbotham: This is a great audience, you guys are awesome. No, search for Apple TV, because a lot of people put the Apple TV tag in their so that people knew that it was supported by Apple TV, which I think a smart move, by the way we will popup there as well, so our feed say 720p and AppleTV in it, so you will get a good number of results in iTunes, I forgot how many it is, it was like little over 100 I think.

Ed Kohler: OK.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, do we think that the Apple TV will support 1080p? Well, I think that the hardware codec that they used for decoding on the Apple TV seems to be, I am making some assumptions here, I don’t know this for sure. I think that it is being pushed in the Mac for 720p/24 and when I look at the quality of what’s getting spit out of the Apple TV versus watching that exact same file on my computer, it doesn’t look as good on the Apple TV. I don’t know why? And so what I'd like them to do personally is fix 720p, so looks good, support 720p/30 and 60, I see no reason why we are stuck at 720p/24, not that, we do 24, so we don’t care, but I would still like to see 720p.

Jeremy Elfering: It is still nice feed that there, especially for things that aren’t the toughest videos that we do, stay like sports and stuff 24 doesn’t look so good at sports.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, it does not and then in the Apple TV version 2, may be support up to 1080p, but right now, today they just need to make awareness of this high definition stuff, and the high definition podcast. We as content producers need to get our content out there, just at least in 720p and getting content out there in 1080p is actually much-much harder. How many cameras can you find that actually shoot 1080p, Sony’s new HDV camera they did, that’s just been released, it is like only couple of months old, it does 1080p, the HVX 100 does 1080p and I can’t think of a whole lot more in the under $10,000 price point.

Jeremy Elfering: Quick questions, that’s first gen, so we will be forgiving, which is really what it is, it is a first-gen box.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah and it is missing lot of stuff. I need direct download to the box, I should have to download through a computer.

Jeremy Elfering: Any know those features are going to come online down the road?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I have no idea. Apple does what Apple wants to do.

Jeremy Elfering: But, they do tend then the next generation box, they do tend to add features? So, it is not too difficult to see that coming…

Ed Kohler: We were at CES, when we were staying in front of that 108 inch Toshiba LCD, we were mentioning that 1080p might not be enough, when you get to a screen size that large, right?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: What will be the next jump after 1080p?

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, so in the video and film realm there is, well most in the film real, there is something called 2K and 4K, which is 2,000 lines and 4,000 lines and the cameras that…

Ed Kohler: So, that would be 20…what it would be?

Jeremy Elfering: 21/60.

Ed Kohler: 21/60?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Sound like that and the cameras that do that today are insane and crazy expensive and that’s once again where the Red Camera comes in to play and while it is by the time you are all said and done, may be the 50 to 100,000 dollars that camera on paper can be 4K files. So, they have an editing work for in Final Cut Pro, because it is not just, you can’t just buy a camera that does 4K, you need to have a work flow, so you can actually get it off of the camera and into an editor and produce a file, we are aways out for that, we are still trying to get high definition saturated in the market today and we don’t have that.

Ed Kohler: For those of you who are out there pushing a 108 inch TV in to your home, it is something to be aware of. Serious, there is probably like 2 or 3 of those right now.

Jeremy Elfering: Well, there is a feel of that, I did see advertising for Panasonics 103 inch plasma, recently. It was only $90,000.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, so that is shipping?

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, that is shipping.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, remember it is CES’s, last year CES 2007, the big-big booths had that Panasonic 103 inch plasma, kind of side like Microsoft had like 20 or 30 of them sitting out there and I was like hundred thousand, hundred thousand, hundred thousand, hundred thousand…it was pretty cool.

Jeremy Elfering: Well, see it is nice to actually hear these updates from CES in side and actually get to see the show floor this year.

Ed Kohler: We will show video for you.

Benjamin Higginbotham: One of the guests in the Ustream room likes to talk about the Red Camera little bit more and what it is for? What market is it for? That’s a great question, I actually very excited about the Red camera and I believe it suppose to be shipping this month or next month, although, I am going to still consider vaporware till it actually ships, but if we are really that close to ship date, that’s awesome. What market it is for? I think first and foremost , it is for independent film producers, because it really is designed to act like a film camera and it is designed to have the 2K, 4K resolutions in it. When you look at the accessories for the camera, it is really designed to replace a film camera, as opposed to the Indie-producer haven’t got, may be get a low end HDV camera and just pull their hair out, because…

Jeremy Elfering: It doesn’t have any of the features they are looking for.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, it is servo driven focus, I will tell you right now, my biggest complaint in HVX-200 is a servo driven focus, it drives me absolutely bonkers and you could get a Red camera for, in Indie-line a $50,000 camera isn’t that bad.

Jeremy Elfering: It is actually very reasonable.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And I see lot of rental houses, picking up Red cameras and they are renting those out to the Indie-producers, so that they can get the stuff going and do you know the cost of film, but outside of that, I am just looking at this from a bigger picture scenario, I talk about this big middle market, videocasting…

Jeremy Elfering: I think one of the bigger ones is not going to be Indie-films, it is going to be commercial production.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I think that too, but I really believe that there is middle market for a podcasting, videocasting it is going to open up and we are going to start to see a lot of really highly produced really great daily or weekly shows, that will replace your television broadcast type stuff and I think lot of this is going to be shot on Red cameras, if they live up to, what they are on paper and you look at the shots, you look at everything and it looks awesome, but it could be a big huge hype marketing engine as well.

Jeremy Elfering: It very well it could be, it is that we need to see it actually functioning, but it is getting there where it is actually finally get to see it after how many years they have been hyping it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly and we are getting very close to it is actual release and that’s pretty exciting. So, I see the Red camera really coming into the bunch of markets, all of them fairly high-end, but what they going to do is like the Viper, the Viper camera, the CineAlta camera, the new Panasonic 3000 camera. I looked the Panasonic 3000 camera which has five P2 slots and it is a pretty decent camera does 1080p and I can get that fully equipped for about 65,000, seems about right Red class or I could get a Red camera which goes up to 4K, it is lowest resolution, I think 720p and I can get that for 50,000 or 65,000, what would I get?

Jeremy Elfering: It is a question, but it is also a question of what you like to work with too? There will be…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, there are like 1,500 pre-orders to this camera?

Jeremy Elfering: I think it will be out there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yes and in the market where they build may be 300 F950 CineAlta cameras? 1,500 pre-orders of a camera and lot of people assume that this, lot of people not in broadcast think that it works like the consumer rhelm where the prices keep lowering and keep getting more features and it hasn’t worked that way. The HVX-200 came out two years ago?

Jeremy Elfering: Two years ago.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And it still I had around the same price that was originally released at…

Jeremy Elfering: Still on the same price and it has not been upgraded once.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And it is not going to be upgraded and it won’t be upgraded for a while, it is going to last five years and then it will all of a sudden just plummet because it will just continue it, that’s just how it works.

Jeremy Elfering: Right and that’s the way the broadcast world works, it is things don’t come out every year for something, because broadcasters would go nuts.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Very interesting comment in Ustream which is, FiOS fiber to the home will help drive the market around the Red camera and that’s a very good point, because if we can get more band width into the home, if we can get that fiber, as I love to say that beam of light right into the home, that changes a lot of stuff, because once you have the fiber going into home, all you have to do is change the hardware on either side and you can keep uping the bandwidth directly into the home. You are absolutely right, fiber into the home will change our ability to deliver this type of content to consumers and right now, we have a last mile problem and we all know this.

Ed Kohler:  Just because if Verizon gives you fiber, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to give you unlimited bandwidth on that fiber.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s true, that’s absolutely true, but if they have that fiber go…let’s just for a moment assume perfect scenario in every home has fiber going to it, at that point we have a few more options, we have the ability to bump up that bandwidth and we car peer-to-peer isn’t as big of an issue and we are also working on ways to increase the backbone of the Internet. They have got labs and testing now that are, I forgot what the actual bandwidth is it, but it can send 150 DVD’s in 1 millisecond down the pipe. So, it is insanecrazy fast, but I think it will change things and what is it right now, 20 megabits on, can anyone in either TalkShoe or Ustream, help me how to use a 20 megabits on the FiOS line, 30 megabits they are saying, 30 megabits per second, that’s a little bit faster than my roadrunner.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, little bit.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What you actually get, so they claim 30 megabits per second, but you never actually get that, what you really get on fiber?

Ed Kohler: Do any guys out there have FiOS?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I give props to Verizon for doing this, because they are actually really pushing fiber into the home pretty hard and they are taking pretty heavy marketing hips and whatnot, because they have been having issues doing it, but they are the only one standing up and trying to make this happen and good for them. Technical problems aside because it is a brand new technology, at least they are trying. I don’t see quest trying, I don’t see comcast trying, I don’t see anyone else trying, why not? They are doing exactly what they should do and I desperately want Verizon to come into our market and give fios, I will live with the growing pain.

Jeremy Elfering: You know why those people aren’t good, because just on an upgrade already and they don’t want to do another one right away. They want to make money for a little while and basically print money and they are not going to hold back the technology, so they can make money for a while.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And Andrew brings up a good point saying that most of the market isn’t demanding it and that’s a problem, they should be.

Ed Kohler: I guess on Verizon site it says for 30, it is 179.95 a month, but at 50 bucks a month they are already at 15, so that’s pretty good.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, yeah 15 megabits for how much 50 bucks a month?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it is two on the up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Two on the up?

Ed Kohler: For 179 it is 30 down five up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Five up really? They really still limit your upstream that much? That’s a really big gripe of mine as well, why do they do that? It is a full duplex line I would assume.

Ed Kohler: You probably want to sel business connections?

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, that’s probably why?

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s a consumer connection $200 a month is a consumer connection.

Ed Kohler: Yeah I guess so, consumer FiOS, that’s what I'm under.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I would totally pay the $200 a month too.

Jeremy Elfering: We had a note here, that Cox is only doing with business customers, consumers don’t even know it exists yet.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Verizon is doing a pretty good job of educating people in the markets that they are available in, because why educate people in market you can’t deliver, right?

Ed Kohler: Right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, they are doing a pretty good job of education, they are doing a pretty good job of making it go, but they have some growing pains and people have been pissed off and they have been canceling their fios subscription, because of that.

Ed Kohler: I think one thing they have found is, it is tough to cancel your FiOS subscription, because sometimes they are ripping out the copper when they bring in the light.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I didn't know that.

Ed Kohler: Yes, you can’t go back to DSL, because you no longer have the lines to do it. So, you have to jump with both feet…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Andrew in Ustream also mentions that most of the market is just now discovering podcasts, which is I would agree with that, but the beautiful thing about podcasts is that video caster for better or for worse, video casters are clumped in with podcast on iTunes and most of people I know, use iTunes to get this content, because little more difficult to use it, using windows technology or Microsoft technology. So, because they are all clumped together it is a lot easier to find that video content and because of Apple pushing Apple TV, they are really changing the market and they are really bringing awareness to the market, but yeah you can get your video content online and while right now it is only an iTunes extender, it needs to be something better than that. Good for them, there going to be the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to videocasting, it is going to be theApple TV.

Jeremy Elfering: It is going to be good thing, because it gets promoted, but on the other hand it is a limited piece.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah absolutely.

Ed Kohler: We are running over time here , so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, it is really great conversation.

Ed Kohler: Just to say one other thing on the podcast popularity type thing is, I would strongly suggest to people who have podcasted, make your feed unlimited where as you add new podcast, just let your feed get longer and longer and longer, because I don’t know how many times that I have done this, where I will stumble across a podcast where they have done 30 episodes or something and said “wow, this is really good stuff”, they do either great interviews or great tips or something like that and I will go download all of the episodes back to number one and then catch backup to where I am today.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes.

Ed Kohler: Like an example, that would be a qdnow.com where they have lot of grammar tips and manners tips, those type of podcasts, I am sure they get lot of that where, someone discovers it after certain episode that was particularly good or something and then next they know they are getting more hits on episode 2 and 1, where…

Jeremy Elfering: And I have seen the opposite and that annoys me where only a couple of episodes are out and it is like I want to go back to the first episode and listen from the beginning, now I have discovered this podcast, but I am not able to do it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, here is what we are going to do as an incentive for people to list to the live podcast and whatnot, we are actually going to end the recorded podcast at this time and like to remind everyone that we do this everyday at 12 o’clock Eastern, 11 o’clock Central, 9 o’clock Pacific. You can join the conversation live on technologyevangelist.com, we do stream using Ustream, which is available at Ustream.tv, we also allow you to join the conversation through TalkShoe, which you could find the information on the Technology Evangelist website or at Talkshoe.com, we are talkcast ID 23696. Please join us live, because what we are going to do is, we are going to stop the recorded conversation, we like to keep these at around 30 minutes, so you have an idea of what you are getting into, before you start the podcast and we are going to continue this conversation offline with everyone still in Ustream and still on TalkShoe. So, you guys don’t go away, we will be right back and thank you and we will talk with you Monday on New Media Mondays.