An Alternate Reality?
Seems that I wasn’t persuasive enough in my discussions at IBC 2009 with Ben Schwarz at VideoNet where we talked about extending pay-TV models into Internet delivery. Overall, I’m happy to be described as living in an alternate reality where sites like today’s Hulu do not represent the entire future of video services. I hope that I can offer a view about broad choices in video entertainment sources and business approaches, even where these contrast with the fashionable view of the future where everything will be “free”.
An alternate reality like this might well be considered alongside those of recent times in which house prices don’t go on rising without limit, Iraq had no hidden nerve gas or nuclear weapons and revenue-free Internet companies were unworthy of billion dollar IPOs. What would a content security company be doing if it did not help its customers extend their businesses and find ways to monetize OTT? Follow the herd, avoid the issue and jump into the middleware quagmire?
I am happy to continue this relevant industry discussion.
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Steve,
I am a Dr Who fan and love alternate realities.
The idea came from the fact that we all end up walking around in a bit of a haze at the end of the day at IBC. It was a cheap joke that you Verimatrix folk must be fed-up with about being *very* much like The *Matrix* movie. Maybe I should have been more explicit casting your company as the Nebuchadnezzar and yourself as one of the Oracle, Morpheus or even Neo the “chosen one” to save not humanity from the machines but the content industry from oblivion ;o)
More seriously Verimatrix is a really interesting CAS vendor for a journalist/blogger to speak to at the moment. I agree with what you say about Hulu not being the final destination.
Through my gentle teasing I hope you saw that I think you are still in the front of the pack.
Oh & BTW I think you’re onto something really really hot with your white paper on “Adaptive Rate Streaming: Pay-TV Inflection Point”.
It probably is the technology to bring in another paradigm.
Ben
Ben – now you are making me blush! I’ll dust off my leather coat and/or go buy a bag of Jellybabies right away…
Steve