Full Transcript:
Cariann Higginbotham: Technology Evangelist Podcast for May 7th,
2007, New Media Monday. Today we talk about The Zune, the mushy middle video
market, can the Internet backbone take media 2.0 applications? And with
SilverLight will Windows Media make a comeback? Recorded live with audience
participation.
Benjamin Higginbotham: This is Benjamin Higginbotham with
technologyevangelist.com with me as usual is Ed Kohler.
Ed Kohler: Hi, Ben.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Hi, Ed. We have been having a lot of fun in the
pre-show today, just working with everyone in the Ustream chat room and the
TalkShoe room, we went live about an hour earlier and we have been singing and
dancing, we actually did the chicken dance earlier.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, it was awesome.
Benjamin Higginbotham: It was awesome, so if you want to be part of the fun,
make sure to join us live on technologyevangelist.com everyday, Monday through
Friday that’s at 12 Eastern, 11 Central, 9 Pacific. Today is New Media Monday
as the intro said, we have got a bunch of interesting topics on the table. The
first one I would like to start off with is, I am not sure why, but I
purchased a Microsoft Zune.
Ed Kohler: You did?
Benjamin Higginbotham: I did.
Ed Kohler: Costco I imagine?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Costco, yes, it is going back later today.
Ed Kohler: It sounds like a good idea, because I was doubtful about whether it
is something I'd actually want, I mean you have seen them before, played
around at CES, I am sure you have read tons about them, so why the heck did
you get it?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, what I really needed to do is we have got all
these HD videos that we produce and part of my goal is to get these videos on
the every device know to man, including iPods, Zunes, PSPs, any PMP cell
phones, so whatever device you have you should be able to play our video on
very, very easily. It should be optimized for your device and I wanted to make
sure that our content worked on the Zune. In theory you should be able to take
your iPod H.264 video and just move it over, but Microsoft…
Ed Kohler: How did that workout?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Actually extremely well, you believe it or not.
Ed Kohler: Yeah?
Benjamin Higginbotham: It worked without me having to adjust anything on the
compression profile, whatsoever. It is like the first time ever, I didn’t have
to make any tweaks or changes of the compression preset, made me
happy, however, the Zune not so much.
Ed Kohler: Just the product itself?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I hear like on Digg that they were talking about
they had on a video iPod, they went to their Zune and then they try to go back
to video iPod and couldn’t do it, because of the screen. The screen is so much
better, so much bigger, so much greater, and I'm looking at this
thing and when you first look at it on it's side it looks like, it might
be a wide screen, like slightly just not a quite wide screen, but it is
not.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, it is actually disappointingly small, it’s deceptively small,
I guess you would say?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.
Ed Kohler: I thought I was going to see more screen than I did want to
actually turned it on.
Benjamin Higginbotham: And when you hold it, it first kind of like “wow, this
feels good in your hand”, but then you realize it is just cheap plastic. They
are like flexes in your hand, and I am just not used to that, I am used to the
iPod build.
Ed Kohler: My first turn off was the fake click wheel.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, that too.
Ed Kohler: Why did they make it round and with the button in the
middle looks good click wheel to me, but it doesn’t spin or anything, it
act like, it doesn’t behave like a click wheel from that other company
makes the white products.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I am not entirely sure, now the cool part where you
have to see is, it is a social device, so if I were to find anyone else in the
face the planet that had a Zune, I will let you know when I see someone with a
Zune, because I have yet to see anyone other than myself with the Zune. You
could squirt songs back and forth, between the two Zune’s.
Ed Kohler: Is that why it is really called squirtting?
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think Palmer said that on stage once, now I just
refer to it as squirtting songs, because it is freaking hilarious.
Ed Kohler: Dirty. I don’t know if that’s really that cool, because there is
pretty lot of restrictions on that, squirt too, isn’t there? You can only play
the song three times or something?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, as guest 921 said, great name “guest 921”.
Ed Kohler: Oh, yeah.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Three plays – three days, but at least you can still
get a feel for the song without having to go in, you can get the whole song.
On the iTunes music store you get that 30 seconds snippet, that doesn’t give
you, I mean it is not enough.
Ed Kohler: Can you score a podcast?
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, see that’s just it.
Ed Kohler: Well, that’s like the thing that you would actually, you would only
need to play once.
Benjamin Higginbotham: And the other weird thing is, well it is not really
weird, they don’t actually support podcasts, out of the box.
Ed Kohler: Really?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, what they do is that, they'll move anything from
your audio directory, but there is no RSS support in the Zune software at all.
So, basically what you have to do is install other softwares, for example, I
don’t know, iTunes and it will download your podcast and then make sure your
Zune is monitoring that folder will pick it up and move into the Zune
The irony.
Ed Kohler: You have to pick a folder and make that your podcast folder and
sync off of that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, it is not actually going to say “podcasting”
here, it is just going to say “music” and then you've got and pick it out from
music. So, it is just not the video iPod is essentially the same price, I
think it is like 10 bucks more, for 10 bucks you get a more sturdy device, the
screen I think is as just as good and you get podcast support and frankly I
think it is a better device all the way. It doesn’t flex in your hand.
Ed Kohler: I don’t think Zune is for me than, because I use my iPod for
podcasting more than anything. So, if it doesn’t support that, “well, no
thanks”.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, moving on…
Ed Kohler: Did you do any hacking around with different types of
things you could do with it, because of the operating system or anything like
that or see anything cool done?
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I didn’t really look at it too much, I just played
with it and said “oh, not really for me, not my thing” and just a side of
that, the device is clearly a Rev-1 product and it needs a little love at this
point. Now, I can see potential here they need to make it a lot thinner and
fix the scroll wheel and fix up the VUI so supports podcasting and video
casting and actually if they really wanted to over take Apple, if they really
want to get my support, breakout podcasting and videocasting into
separate objects in the VUI and make it at the front part of the screen, so I
can go to my audio podcasts or my videocasts, plus I want…
Ed Kohler: Right, because you are in different situations and you will listen
to those.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, I am not going to be driving and watching
my videocast at the same time and any of you in the chat room are doing that,
shame on you.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, you should be checking your email instead. What you think
about, who is buying the portable video devices today? Personally, I am rarely
in a situation where, I mean sit down and say watch video iPod or if I had a
Zune, it seems like I am in front of a computer or I am some where, where I
can listen the stuff, but not actually watch that, but may be if I was using
some of our transit system like somewhere with subway system or bus system,
then I would do that, but…
Benjamin Higginbotham: Like PRT?
Ed Kohler: Yeah, personal rapid transit would be one option that doesn’t
exist, but…
Benjamin Higginbotham: Whatever, I think that’s actually a very valid point. I
see lot of younger kids watching videos, but they are usually quicker videos.
Ed Kohler: Kids these days?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, kids these days. Otherwise, the group that I hang
out with - you have a very valid point. Most of us just don’t watch videos on
mobile devices, we will watch them on our Apple TV, we will watch them on our
computer, but ultimately not a whole lot on the mobile devices.
Ed Kohler: So, cafn8ed is in on that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, we have cafn8ed and just said stop watching video
on the iPod when you got this Apple TV. And Apple TV is a just fricking
awesome device, so that really does change everything, it really bridges the
gap between the computer and the television monitor and the HDTV and with
videos, for example, like Technology Evangelist or any other HD video podcast
out there, it looks stunning, it looks fantastic on the Apple TV.
Ed Kohler: I am with Samsung video, I am content with my Nano as well. I have
the 8 gig, and I don’t, but it works great for me and I had problems with
regular iPod’s before the hard drive kept crashing on me, but my Nano has been
great.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, you used to run with your iPod, didn’t you?
Ed Kohler: And I would have it on my bike riding on gravel trails
and just hu, hu, hu...
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, yeah. Hard drive is not like that so much.
Ed Kohler: Weird?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, strange.
Ed Kohler: Well, that’s how I use stuff, so I guess it is not for me. cafn8ed,
I wish I will drinking your coffee rather than sysco generic coffee from our
little corporate kitchen here.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I got to give pops to cafn8ed, I visited his coffee
shop, when was that, last Friday I think it was?
Ed Kohler: Yeah, Friday night.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Friday night and there was a music night, we streamed
it live on Ustream, frankly I had some of the best coffee ever, it was
amazing, I think even Twittered that unlike “best coffee ever”, it was
awesome.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, you did. You said at a rocky road or rocky mount…
Benjamin Higginbotham: I have no idea, I walked up to the counter and I said
to the barista like “I don’t know what I wanted, give me something good”
she is like “chocolate?” I said like “whatever your favorite is, give me one
of those?”
Ed Kohler: Do they call them baristas out there?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, what do they call them?
Ed Kohler: I thought that’s a Starbucks term.
** Barista definition: a person who works at the counter of a coffee shop; a
coffee bar server. Plural would be baristi**
Benjamin Higginbotham: It could be. My wife used to work for Starbucks, so I
just referred…
Ed Kohler: So you had hazlenut mocha.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, there you go.
Ed Kohler: I think it sounds good.
Benjamin Higginbotham: It is delicious, I've got to get another one of those.
We should stop out there, when we are done here.
Ed Kohler: I think, I am going to bike out there sometime.
Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s a great idea.
Ed Kohler: It is a good trip. OK, let’s move on, what we have going on here.
Mushy middle video market, what the heck is the mushy middle video market?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I don’t what’s, that’s just I don’t what it is
called, so what we have got traditionally is high-end broadcast that’s one
market. We all know high-end broadcast, we watch television at night, that’s
high-end broadcast. We have got low-end consumer that’s your YouTube videos,
your home videos and whatnot and there are…
Ed Kohler: Where whichever camera it might be on, 200 bucks or something.
Panasonic or Samsung, Sony and things like that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, no tripod, it is just for home movies, it is
just for the quick little snippets.
Ed Kohler: Good for cats.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Good for cats, exactly, with little lazer in the camera
so you can make the cat follow the laser and off you go, that’s what it is,
but there is this middle market, in between consumers and broadcast,
traditionally called prosumer, but up until now there has not been a really
great way to deliver prosumer content, so the market has been incredibly tiny.
Sliver, sliver small, there are only a handful of cameras in the prosumer
market and even those cameras not that good. I would consider them more
consumer cameras than broadcast cameras and I don’t know what to call this
middle market, but as we have more technology coming out to enable this
market. Internet being one of them, fiber into the home being another one,
Apple TV being another one, the Red camera being another one, I think we are
going to see this middle, this mushy middle market expand and become this
absolutely gynormous market.
Ed Kohler: What you think like serious hobbyist, would that be part of it, or
is it beyond that?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, it is all encomposses that as well, so the serous
hobby is, look at this from a photography standpoint, it was only a few years
ago, when we started getting SLR cameras or whatnot and the serious hobbyist
could afford a camera that was really high-end and have that good pictures,
but it was still like 5 grand, right? And they still are. That’s the entry
level into this new market, is that 5 grand price point and I think that from
the equipment standpoint, price wise, it is going to be starting around $5,000
to $10,000 and moving up to about $50,000 and anything above that is going to
be considered broadcast at that point or professional video. Right now, there
is really only HVX 200 in couple HDV cameras and I am not a big fan of HDV, I
still consider that to be a consumer format and it is, it is a retched horrid
format that needs to die. Yeah, how is that?
Ed Kohler: Wow…
Benjamin Higginbotham: But, we don’t have anything in that upper tier, so I am
not able to go out and do a really good documentary for a fraction of the
price at the other guys are able to, because nothing exists in that market,
yet and I am excited to see all these different pieces of equipment and gear
in this enabling technology come together to enable this mushy middle market
and I love to give it a name, I love to coin a term for this market, I
just don’t know what it is yet.
Ed Kohler: Well I can see a market for that even with home hobbyist who has
kids in sports and stuff and wants to create just incredibly
produced videos of their cross country running team or whatever it may be, it
is always the parents who is like into the digital photography, but also on
video, where they have the money, if the equipment existed, but what do you
think is the hold up as far as bringing down the cost of that mushy middle
from say from a $50,000 down to $5,000, is it the lenses, there is the guts of
the camera or…
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think it is the lack of the market itself, up until
now there has been no-way, like said, there is no way to distribute that, so
there hasn’t been a market. So, I as a user, let’s just say for a moment there
was a $30,000 camera out there, so the high-end of the, let’s say there was on
that did everything I wanted, so I shoot my show, now what would I do with it,
how do I get to the people, do I press DVD's, that’s not very good thing, if
they are home marketing, do I broadcast it on television that’s going to
cost me millions of dollars, until the Internet came along, it wasn’t even the
Internet, we needed the Internet, then we need a broadband, then we needed a
device like Apple TV. Now, with all those things in place, now I have
something I can deliver my content to.
Ed Kohler: Sure, I could see someone pressing 50 DVD’s for, if it is like that
high school situation I talk about, you know for their team and stuff like
that…
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but you are not going on, that might work for the
low-end. The really high-end consumer, really low-end prosumer…
Ed Kohler: Well, it depends on the audience they are trying to
reach?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, but you are not going to spend $30,000 on a
camera for something like that.
Ed Kohler: Well, some would.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Some might, but you are not going to do that and then
press 30 DVDs.
Ed Kohler: People would spend that take picture of their kids growing up.
Benjamin Higginbotham: $30,000 on a single camera?
Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think so.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Really?
Ed Kohler: There is a market for that. I mean there are people who are
passionate about this stuff and have, it is just there are people who are
passionate about both, they will spend a $100,000 or more and above without
thinking about it. It is something they are passionate about those. You could
have other people who are passionate about digital video.
Benjamin Higginbotham: It could, but it will be a niche, that would be a
niche. If there was no easy way for them to distribute and actually monetize
and make money of that, that would be continued to be a niche market.
Ed Kohler: You don’t monetize a boat.
Benjamin Higginbotham: A boat is a leisurely…
Ed Kohler: That’s how the video is other people. People will spend $30,000 on
lenses for their cameras and stuff and…
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but for not a large enough percentage of the
market, I don’t think. And that’s part what’s keeping…
Ed Kohler: You are not going to see it in Best Buy in anytime soon, that price
point.
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, you are not and we are not talking Best Buy. You
are not going to see the really high-end digital SLR cameras are best buy
either, I don’t think, may be you do now, but I don’t think you do?
Ed Kohler: No, I don’t do.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think they are pretty much stopping around a grand or
may be 1200 or 1500.
Ed Kohler: Just a point shooter.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Your point shooter, yeah so am I got.
Ed Kohler: I point, I shoot.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Off you go. My point is though now that we have this
enabling technology, whether we agree/disagree on that, I think we are going
to start to see a lot more equipment in this middle market, this mushy middle
where because now there are lot more people who can distribute and monetize
and this market is growing before our very eyes. It is the videocasting
market, it is watching this HD content on iTunes as it expands and
grows and I am excited to see shorter form documentaries. Start to be created
that you will see distributed online put on HD DVD and possibly even shown in
a movie theater, but we are only talking like 20 or 30 minutes for this whole
thing and may be in the movie theater you would string two or three of
them together.
Ed Kohler: Right, I think there is a market for that. It is kind with that
channel102.net is doing out New York and I don’t if you guys have seen that, I
will just drop it into the chat rooms quick. It is like a local group of
people who create short form, like serial content of different types of
movies. Like there is one out there right now call the
“The Defenders of Stan”
it is awesome. It’s about a ...
Benjamin Higginbotham: It is awesome.
Ed Kohler: It’s about like a world with Stan where everyone except for Stan
has become a superhero.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Overnight.
Ed Kohler: Overnight. Yeah.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Overnight superhero.
Ed Kohler: And then, Stan is the only non-superhero in the town, so it
gets kinda rough for him but it’s -- they’ve done about eight
episodes of it now and I guess they have screenings like once a month where
that show along with a lot of other shows that are all shown but I think there
definitely is a market for that where people are creating interesting stuff
like that that'd be sweet.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, and I think that the technology to enable
them to do this well and without having to spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars on HD gear from the broadcast market but not wanting to go all the way
down to HDV that mushy middle hasn’t existed and I’m excited -- like again
it’s going to be the Red cameras, Panasonic has got some stuff coming out,
Sony has got some stuff coming out, I’m really excited to see what they’re
going to do with that because this is going to really change; It’s not only
going to open up a market but it’s going to change how we watch video, where
we get our video and this is going to build we’re going to watch an entire
segment grow before our very eyes and this is going to go very, very quickly.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, and there I think there’re a lot of interesting stories we
have been told or if you have the right gear to tell them or it, this is not
home video stuff. It’s people who at home are creating interesting video, not
just of their kids blowing out candles and stuff.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right. No, it’s like the Channel 102 content over
network two where you’re telling a story or you’re doing a documentary or a
sitcom of something along those lines. Absolutely.
Ed Kohler: Telling your following every time. Now what about on the software
side? Is it something -- are people going to be using iMovie for this or are
they going to be buying Final Cut?
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I think Apple did a really good job of already
pushing the cost of software editing down. When you look at how much
an Avid system used to cost and how just wretchedly horrible adobe
premier used to be, apparently it’s a lot better now, but I migrated before I
-- where they switched to a Premier Pro. They came out with a $1,200 package
that includes your 2D compositing, your editing, your audio, your color
correction now, your compression, I mean it’s everything and that’s a stellar
price point and I doubt that we’re going to see -- I think the target price
for that should probably be $999, but we’re really talking at $200 difference.
I don’t see a whole lot of change there. You get a lot of bang for your
buck. I think that’s pretty much bottomed out at this point. I don’t think
we’re going to see a lot there.
Ed Kohler: Do you think there’s a market for something that is a simpler
application where Final Cut can do a zillion things to the point where it can
be paralysis just trying to figure out how and where to start, where iMovie
obviously is not nearly as powerful but it’s pretty simple. You have your
timeline and you slap stuff in there and that’s what to do but lot less
effects in layering of content.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, that’s where Final Cut Express comes in, 300 bucks,
it does DV and HDV and off you go and it’s a lot like Final Cut Pro but the
advanced codec support simply isn’t there. I personally just go for Final Cut
Pro because you get a heck of lot more bang for you buck but that’s me.
It is a lot more complex to use though because instead of just learning Final
Cut and some titling software, you basically have to learn everything and
there’s this giant brick wall you’ve just run full force into when you try to
learn that stuff because it’s not easy.
Ed Kohler: So how do you learn it?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Trial and error. You just got to actually go in there
and at least that’s what I did. I used to go in there and try to do something
and at first it takes hours to a very simple task and then you wither that
down to a few minutes and then eventually just take seconds you optimize your
work flow and if you’re total newb, who has never done video before, you work
up the chain, get the basic concepts in iMovie and then may be move to Final
Cut Express and once you’ve got those concepts, if you want to move up the
chain again, and move until DVCPro HD, the Red Cinema Camera or something
along those lines, you move into Final Cut Pro that way you string it out a
little bit. They have upgrade paths for everything, so you’re not having to
spend all your money over and over, over and over and over and over again.
Ed Kohler: As soon as we are to know about the differences between Final Cut
and iMovie or -- we just touched on that but you have more…
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, you’ve a lot more control, you’ve layer control
in Final Cut Express, you’ve got -- it’s a little bit more like Final Cut Pro
actually it looks a lot like Final Cut Pro. It’s a different code
base oddly enough but you can go and you’ve got full titling
support, you can add third party effects, you can do all that in iMovie, it’s
just more of a pro editing solution where you can go and you can do rolling
edits, trim edits stuff like that, you can’t do that in iMovie at
all. So, if you’re serious about making video you use Final Cut Express or
Final Cut Pro. Depends upon your formatting, if you really you doing DV and
just doing some cuts, there’s really no need for Final Cut Pro.
Ed Kohler: I’m just drop in the rooms right now. Linda.com or if I don’t know
if you were once familiar with that but if you’re looking for a starter
on a lot of different types of software apps, they have a for like I
think like 25 bucks a month, you can subscribe and they have screen cast, so
you can watch off different software and they have Final Cut Pro as one of the
options there I think even iMovie one as well.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I just found an interesting one and I listen
to twit and and twim. This week in tech, and this week in media and part of
they talk about the PixelCore quite a bit, and I just say that yeah, that’s
cool. I actually they running a promotion and for those in the video industry,
that are listening right now, I do suggest taking advantage of this because I
most certainly did and it seems to be a really great deal and that is it’s 50
bucks for three months, it’s usually 50 bucks a month, so at 50 bucks, you get
your months and it’s a community of video professionals so they purposely put
up this walled, this wall to for barriered entries so that
no schmuck or no 8th grader is going to walk in and just start
talking but there -- anyone from the Newbie who really wants to get into
this stuff, we just need some basic questions they ask, answer all the way up
to the guys who do effects and Star Wars and you just -- Hollywood movie type
visual effects type stuff and everyone in between and you can ask your
questions, you can read what they have to say, you can say this is – they will
talk about the software and things that excite them and how they do certain
techniques and what not, and I was just tooling around there for I signed up
and I was like well, let’s see how this goes and it has to take out,
I just tooled around for a couple of hours and just within the first -- I’d
say, 30, 40 minutes, I got my money’s worth out of it. It’s just a fantastic
-- Alex has created something really cool, I think Alex once ….. I don’t know
honestly who created it but he promotes it so kudos to them, I think they’ve
got a really great community over there and I would suggest everyone hitting
PixelCore.com.
Ed Kohler: Yep, cool, so it’s a more a professional group so.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, it is, it is more of a professional group. You
don’t want to be going over the going, how do I use iMovie? Because they’re
going to go.
Ed Kohler: Not really their crowd.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but if
you’ve got some questions on Final Cut Pro or how to composite something or
you’re trying to get an alpha channel to do something you can’t make it do or
the big one that I always have a hard time with this trying when you’re doing
a key, so you’re trying to remove the color background from someone and if
you’ve got fluffy hair, how do you make it so that the hair remains fluffy and
doesn’t get cut away by the key without going out and spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars on an Ultimat solution and they went you through all that
they say “this is the techniques we’ve use, not everything works everywhere.”
I think it’s really, really cool, so everyone check it out,
pixelcore.com.
Ed Kohler: Right on. Do you have a
favorite publishing solution for a web based content now, I mean we have been
dabbling with a lot of these on the web and even trying…
Ed Kohler: BrightCove, blip tv, there was obviously there’s Youtube,
Google Video, there’s tones of them.
Benjamin Higginbotham: For some reason, and I don’t know why, I’m partial to
BrightCove and I think part of it is I just like the look of the player. I
like the way it integrates, I like that I have so much control over the
medium, the problem with BrightCove is that I have so much control over the
media, then, it’s actually all is I want to do is post one simple video and
it’s a 15 minute process to make that go. Blip, upload, walk away, come
back, they're like "here's your code", off you go. BrightCove
definitely not setup that way but if you’re willing to spend the time, I think
the experience on BrightCove and the power of BrightCove is better than
anything else I’ve seen to date. I still have a lot of gripes. I have not
found a perfect publishing platform, I’m missing -- I need to have close
caption data included, I need to have AJAXy type chat that’s linked to the
timeline so I can make a comment specific in time, I’ve got to have -- or an
comment on the transcript itself.
Ed Kohler: You’re so demanding!
Benjamin Higginbotham: I am. I need to be able to jump to any moment in time
in the video, just by doing a Google search or by clicking on any object
inside the page, may be able to jump back and forth in time that way and I’m
waiting for that player to come out that’s cheap or free that will do
everything I want it to do. It also has to make me breakfast.
Ed Kohler: I did like one when we were at that Killer App Expo and I still
have the cards in my pocket. No, I don’t have in my pocket. I put them back in
my pocket after washing my pants. But Vodium they have a cool platform there
where it’s...
Benjamin Higginbotham: Expensive. It’s expensive
Ed Kohler: Yeah, it’s very expensive. It’s as not a consumer thing but if you
want to see, what can be done, then probably will be other place as
eventually, you go to Vodium.com, I want to drop that into chat.
Benjamin Higginbotham: What we were just talking about is a lot of what they
can do, they take it to the next level where they have humans transcribe
everything and they may -- they all even trying to do like what the scene is
about so you can not only search by what’s in the transcript or what’s in the
scene too, not like red horse ran across the screen, but like the general gist
of the scene itself and so that’s pretty cool.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, once you have the transcripts, then they use voice
recognition software to tie the transcript to the timeline. So then you can
then the transcript get indexed by Google or whoever and you can click through
the transcript and start the video right at that point of the transcript that
you’re interested in.
Benjamin Higginbotham: And I think it’s very powerful because you’re doing
like you’re doing a Google search and I search for “Ben is awesome” and I said
“Ben is awesome” in my demo.
Ed Kohler: I can't imagine how many hits there are for that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: There’re thousands upon hundreds of thousands of hits
for that every minute, it’s one of the most popular Google search
terms. That’s Ben credible. It was Ben credible. So if I’m searching for
that and I don’t want a -- 45 minute video, I don’t want to have to sift
through a 45 minute video. I’ll go jump.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, it’s like if you know it’s there somewhere, that sucks...
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, yeah.
Ed Kohler: It's almost worse, that’s like torture, that and I know
the Vodium of they do a lot of government stuff and lot of corporate stuff
where if you’re doing like corporate training videos and video might be
relatively long and people know that they went to this thing and they saw a
demo done on some aspect, how to do something for their job. If they can't
easily retrieve it, they may forget it, but now you could, actually it can be
done, that’s pretty sweet.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Next question is can the Internet backbone take media
2.0 applications, video-video conferencing Telepresence and stuff like that.
Ed Kohler: Which those are bandwidth hogs?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yes. All of them, see all the above, the Telepresence
probably the biggest hog but those are usually dedicated lines from building
to building, I don’t want to say usually I have no idea. I would assume that
dedicated lines from building to building because they require QoS, and some
pretty beefy stuff to be sitting on top of them.
Ed Kohler: Because of the investment these people made, they don’t
want to be looking at choppy video.
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, no, that takes away from the presence part of it.
It should be fluid, 1080p, 60 frames a second type just fluid motion.
Ed Kohler: Rocking!
Benjamin Higginbotham: So the next to our video and video conferencing, it’s
Technology Evangelist’s pushes our 1080p videos out there and the bit rate
keep going up and up and up because I keep to many more quality. The file
sizes keep getting larger and let’s say we had 500,000 people download a video
all at once, that’s going to hit us and the back; it might not hit the
backbone that hard, but that’s a good amount of bandwidth, well actually
500,000 at 6 Megabits, that’s going to hit the backbone, that’s going to hit
the backbone.
Ed Kohler: Well, I think if you just take -- I don’t know what percentage of
internet users today are just always running some sort of torrent
software in the background.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Probably like 80. and whether they know it or not.
Ed Kohler: Well, I mean I always have Democracy running like right now it
looks like I have 243 videos in queue in Democracy and going to be hup again
an airplane to Croatia in a couple of days and may be I’ll catch up on a few
of those, but it’s a thing where I’m always using some bandwidth, no matter
what I’m doing as long as my computer is connected to the internet so but
that’s a lot of people who are like that, who are just
constantly pulling stuff down all the time. So, and that’s
using a ton of bandwidth, that’s not even where I’m demanding any sort of
quality service as just trickling things in.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yep, and as we move in to more applications like
uStream.tv where it’s just it’s a one to one model, I don’t think that
particular model can survive unless the Telco's start pushing in third
generation fibre, if we start putting in OC 768s and above, I forgot what the
one above that is, where you can just push I forgot what -- 150 DVDs in one
mili second I think it is the latest strand and that they’ve working in labs
and what not. Until they start pushing that technology out there, we’re going
to have issues with their backbone, we’re going to start flooding it and I
know that -- the reason I brought this up and put in the show notes is that
there are two issues we have today. One is we need to have fiber into every
home in America, if everyone is here in America I know we’ve got some
Canadians but you need to fiber into every home into Canada too, or Canadia if
you like to call Canadia. So you need that’s issue one because that last mile
is a bottleneck and that bottleneck needs to be solved in that fiber should
get you not just Megabits but Gigabits eventually, doesn’t have to be Gigabits
upfront, may be it’s only 30 or 50 Megabits and that’s fine, but it has to be
upgradeable to Gigabit. It has to. But then, you’ve got a Gigabit going into
every home in America that backbone is going to strain. Oh man, think of the
zombies and drones out there that are going to be like excellent. Yes. So we
need to figure out a problem, a way to solve that but we also do need to
upgrade the backbone, we need to put the latest and greatest infrastructure in
the U.S. and make this stuff go so we can deliver video, video conferencing,
high definition video online, Telepresence, right over the internet and QoS or
non-neutrality forcing packets down a layer, that is not the solution, that’s
not what they need to be doing, that’s an interim step, that’s a stop gap
measure and they need to make this happen and so I’ve been looking at my local
city council and I’m going to start attending some meetings and really making
the issue known as to fiber because it really has to be done on a city wide
level, it’s not going to be a state wide thing, it’s not going to be national
thing, go to your local city council, figure out who they are and start
harping on them, say what’s your fiber plan? Realize it may be they don’t have
one, may be they just need to be educated, don’t be mean to them but educate
them on why it’s important, what they need to do and how long this whole
process is going to take because this is not something you can just be like
“You know what, let’s do some fiber now.” And then tomorrow you’ve got fiber
going into every home.
Ed Kohler: Oh, some cities are doing is they’re writing in that any new
developments have to put fiber in when the developments are put in. That’s a
good idea for getting things going.
Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s a great idea. But in communities like ours we’ve
got Quest to has -- from what I can tell, no fiber strategy whatsoever,
so we need to bring in third parties
differences like some and
whatnot, that can actually do it because I don’t believe Quest will do it. I
hope that they will, I hope that I am wrong and hopefully someone from
Quest will come back in be like “No, no, no, here’s our plan and clearly
detailed for you.” But as I look in their website and as I try to surf the
internet trying to find Quest's plan they had some beta test they were doing
once and then I never heard of it ever again. It just died so.
Ed Kohler: Minneapolis is in the process right now of rolling out city-wide
Wi-Fi and they have come out with pricing for it and it’s going to be for 1
Megabit, 24.95 a month.
Benjamin Higginbotham: That seems really expensive to me.
Ed Kohler: It does to me too.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I wouldn’t do that.
Ed Kohler: I’m trying to figure out who their market is for this because
for 20 additional dollars you can get cable modem.
Benjamin Higginbotham: For 8 Megs down and like 5 twelve up.
Ed Kohler: Right. So.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Which is more stable. You can have your own
Wi-Fi, of course the advantage is, let’s say you work downtown and you live
downtown and you just want to move around, you want to go to a restaurant, you
want to go wherever, now that works anywhere downtown so what was it 25 bucks
a month you can go anywhere you want with your laptop downtown Minneapolis and
be online.
Ed Kohler: I wondered about that because if you want to go out of house, there
already are a lot of places you can go to and get on the darn internet. Coffee
shops and restaurants or at least in this town or they have the web.
Benjamin Higginbotham: And I think this is something not only do we need
fiber, we need -- cities need a wireless strategy and a wired strategy and in
order to do that as I was saying before that does require education and not
like super "I’m better than you" education, your city council members want to
know this stuff, they want to learn this stuff, they’re there, they’re elected
officials to help your city and they want to know if this is an issue they
want to know about it but it’s really confusing right now for us techies we --
it’s like “duh" fiber to curb why would you ever do that, that’s just stop
gap, I mean you need to go into the home but there’re.
Ed Kohler: No they’re also looking at Wi-Fi, WiMAX fiber to home -- there’re
always different ways you can get it done.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely and a lot of my think thinks is one or the
other the other and actually it honestly I believe it’s fiber to the home,
it’s Wi-Fi now and WiMAX in the future. I think it’s what is this all free,
and there’re just tons of acronyms that they need to know and it’s just an
education process and it helping them along to standing up citizen here, boy
I’m on a little soapbox here on that. Yeah exactly. But standing up and
helping it out.
Ed Kohler: Techies unites!
Benjamin Higginbotham: Techies unite and get fiber into every home. This is
critical if we want to stay competitive in a global market place, we must have
this. This is not like a may be we should have or it sounds like it might be a
good idea, and a lot of home users don’t get it because they check their
email, they surf the web and they go to bed, they don’t think they need it at
home.
Ed Kohler: Oh that’s because it’s all they can do on their dial up connection.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly. Exactly, even on their broadband connection,
it’s really hard to push that HD video down, it’s really hard to get good
video conferencing and your Vonage connection just doesn’t work very well,
whoever’s fault that happens to be.
Ed Kohler: There was definitely something came up at that Killer App
Expo was once you have a lot more broadband it really just changes the way you
use the web, like once you have a decent computer, you can do things like
video editing that you never would have considered doing before like I may
want the click wheel mouse first came out and I thought it was completely
worthless because my computer was so slow at that time that it just didn’t
respond to it but of course now it’s like ……. so but that’s kinda how the web
is, you start to use it in different ways and then eventually one day you have
to go to your relative’s house and it is developing like “Oh my God I used to
use a web like this”. So.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Cafn8ed in the UStream chat room asked why not EVDO?
Isn’t it better? Why not city wide EVDO? I would actually say no, EVDO was not
better, EVDO has a much longer latency, it has a much, much worse upload speed
and EVDO is a fallback plan, if you can’t get other technologies to work.
WiMAX on paper promises to fix the shortcomings of EVDO and hopefully Sprint,
Verizon, Cingular all those other companies will implement WiMAX in their
tower, so they will take care of it and it doesn’t have to be done on a city
wide level.
Ed Kohler: EVDO or Wi-Fi should definitely be faster than EVDO but it really
comes down to what that Wi-Fi connection is connecting to.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, absolutely, where there tons of variables when it
comes to wireless technology that could be upon a billion different things
that are interfering with it and creating problems and raucous and havoc. Same
thing with EVDO. EVDO is wireless and we try to do that road trip to
Killer App Expo and it only worked about 10% of the time.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, you really started to realize how different it is throughout
the country and we were pretty lucky because we’re in a big metro.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So anyhow. Become be a model US citizen and go to your
city council meetings, educate the city council members and your mayor and get
the conversation going, start that conversation and if you have success, join
us back in the Technology Evangelist rooms. Let’s know what is working and
what’s not working. Let’s start a geek wide conversation on this topic. I
think it’s important enough for we should just bring this up once a week and
just say how’s it going in what cities and who is doing what I know there’re
some cities in Minnesota but let’s get this thing going, let’s make it happen.
Ed Kohler: If you want to see the process at work I think Boston right now is
going through the process and I think it’s called the Open Air Boston, try
searching for that and you may find the whole -- that’s where the city council
is trying to make all of these decisions about Wi-Fi, WiMAX and all the
different options so, should the city provide it as a free service or is it a
paid service like in Minneapolis, people were pushing for it to be free
but it didn’t go through that way so there’re lots of options out there to
check.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Let’s finish up the show with Silverlight and will it
help Windows Media make a comeback? I was listening to -- and what was I
listening to last night? I forgot. I was thinking geek justice.
Ed Kohler: Geek?
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, Justin on…
Ed Kohler: Geek Riot.
Benjamin Higginbotham: GeekRiot.tv. Thank you. GeekRiot.tv and there was a
great show and we got talking about Windows Media and it’s place in the market
place and there’s a little bit of a debate going on as to what do you see
online. Do you see WMV files online at all? Or do you see MOV files?
Ed Kohler: A lot more MOVs than there used to. Like Crooks and Liars
should be one site that actually publishes both when they put content out but
you know what, getting more rare.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, exactly, and so I think what’s happening is
Windows Media is becoming more and more irrelevant in the market place and
there may be a place for a enterprise but essentially it’s just going away.
Well, with Silverlight, you’re able to do, as I understand, and please correct
me if I’m wrong someone, you’re able to do VC1 directly one in there, you’re
able to do your windows media high definition files directly in Silverlight
which is your flash competitor, it competes with the online dynamic graphicy
type stuff. It’s bigger than -- it’s an entire environment actually, and I’m
just wondering if that really takes off and if the codec is better than
what they’re able to do today in Flash, is that going to make Windows media
relevant again?
Ed Kohler: Well, this is case where there -- if you’re going to be actually
viewing this content through the Silverlight player, can like you would
have an embedded Flash player plugin where it’s not that Windows Media Player
they client app is igoing to making a comeback here.
Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I’m more referring to the Windows Media codec
itself. I don’t think the client app in and of itself will make a huge
comeback. I don’t want to call it dead, but they don’t support RSS, pick
a technology that you want to use, it doesn’t have it. So, I just unless they
do a colossal overhaul of the windows media system infrastructure I don’t see
that coming back but I think it might make the windows media 9 the VC1 codec
relevant again in the market place. It might. I don’t know I think it might be
a little bit early but I just think I pose the question see what– see what
UStream has to say, see what TalkShoe has to say. Is it going to change
anything? Or is it just going to all just continue down this Quicktime path of
H.264 which isn’t really Quicktime but
Ed Kohler: Lot of people thing -- if publishers get better quality and they’re
going to go for it as long as people can actually see it, I think that’s going
to be the challenge at least in the short term for Silverlight if nobody has
it installed as a plugin, so who is going to watch it?
Benjamin Higginbotham: But the developer seem to like it and as Samson Video
says in the UStream chat, it also ties into .NET 2.0 platform which gives it
amazing power that flash simply doesn’t have and I would agree with that if
the developer -- if you’ve got a .NET developer, it makes it much easier for
them to develop using Silverlight than it does in Flash, you typically have
your .NET guys in one room and your Flash guys in another room duking it out
with each other, each doing their own thing but now you can just have one
group of people that make that will happen.
Ed Kohler: That makes sense and there’re certainly lot more .NET developers
coders where Flash has a lot of designers who can do some code but they’re not
coders in the .NET sense of the word by any means but may be that will lead to
some other more advanced players that we’re talking about earlier where you
can do things like the time coding and various aspects tied into the player
itself that’d be pretty cool.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Cafn8ed asked how much bandwidth it would take for HD
streaming in Silverlight, that of course is dependent upon the content creator
and what they choose to encode their bit, their content at. I personally have
been playing with VC1 versus H.264 and what not and H.264 I think is more
efficient at a lot of stuff. They all have their trade offs but H.264 is more
efficient so it actually take I think a little bit more bandwidth on VC1 to
get the same quality as H.264 but you can always dumb that, I mean you
could do a 720p video or 1080p video at 512 Kilobits per second and it would
work. It might look like poo but it would work but that’s how I -- the
content creator choose to encode, I’m pounding my chest right now, that you
and UStream can see that . That’s how I choose to make that go, so I just I
wonder what’s going to happen there. I ask the question is that actually going
to happen and Samsung Video says at Channel 9 that’s a Channel9.msdn.com, the
wpf/e which is the Silverlight infrastructure and what not. They’ve got some
experiments there, so that out see what they've got going on, there’re some
interesting shows that Microsoft has got to put on. I think the issue is right
now are no market penetration.
Ed Kohler: That’s where I think the -- at least in the short term and the
first thing is we’re going to see our internal communications could be really
powerful on a intranet sites things were they have more standardization than
the whole world wide web.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Thank you everyone for listening today on New Media
Monday almost said New Tech Tuesday is New Media Monday day, tomorrow is
New Tech Tuesday. We’ll be doing this live as we normally do. Are you going to
be here Ed?
Ed Kohler: I’ll be here tomorrow and then I’m gone.
Benjamin Higginbotham: You are gone. So, we’re going to actually need a guest
host once you leave for the rest of the month essentially.
Ed Kohler: Yeah. I’m not going to be calling in from Croatia.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, come on. If you’re listening and you like to be a
guest host, while Ed is gone, if you like to dial in by a gizmo or what not
make that happen, please let me know. My contact information is at
TechnologyEvangelist.com/ben.html and we’ll end the show right here. I think
it was lot fun thank you, Ed, so much for your time.
Ed Kohler: Good times.
Benjamin Higginbotham: For those of you in UStream and TalkShoe, stick around
we’ll talk and have fun after the show, otherwise, thank you so much for the
listening. We’ll talk with you tomorrow at 12 Eastern, 11 Central, 9 Pacific.
