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Syrian citizen journalist Rami Ahmad Alsayeed was killed by the country’s armed forces today, according to a blog post by live streaming provider Bambuser. Alsayeed was using Bambuser to report out of the besieged city of Homs, which has been under heavy attack for days. Some of his footage from recent weeks has been used by major news networks BBC World and Al Jazeera, who have been barred from the country.
Alsayeed and some of his friends had located their camera on a rooftop in the Homs neighborhood of Babaamr, according to Bambuser. Very graphic footage of his body has since shown up on YouTube, and Bambuser relayed one of his latest messages on its blog. It reads, in part:
“Babaamr is facing a genocide right now. I will never forgive you for your silence. You all have just give us your words but we need actions.”
Live streaming was an essential tool in the Arab spring, but has also been under constant attack by the embattled regimes. Last week, Bambuser reported that its site had been blocked by Syria. Ustream and Livestream told us that they hadn’t seen any interference from the Syrian regime so far.
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Updated. Comcast is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to subscribers that pay for its high-end double- and triple-play packages. For those who subscribe to more basic packages, the streaming service will be priced at $4.99 above their current rate.
Importantly, Comcast has no plans to make Streampix available as a standalone service: To get it, you must subscribe to both Comcast’s TV and broadband video services. That means so-called cord-cutters, or Internet-only subscribers, need not apply. But the Xfinity Streampix offering can be seen as a direct shot at streaming services like Netflix and Hulu Plus.
Over the past few years, there’s been some debate about whether those services could be cable killers, but lately it’s been mostly accepted that they serve more as a complement to user’s existing pay TV services. Now, Comcast is making a good amount of similar content available through its own service, at a price that’s lower than the $7.99 those streaming services charge, and even giving it away to its highest-paying subscribers. That means Comcast subscribers could have less reason to pay for an additional streaming service.
Comcast will be launching the service later this week, adding thousands of movies and TV episodes to its already expansive library of streaming content available through XfinityTV.com and on its XfinityTV iPad app. To launch the service, Comcast has done deals with Disney, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Cookie Jar (which does kids programming like Inspector Gadget and Paddington Bear).
While Comcast’s XfinityTV offering has always had recent episodes of broadcast TV shows through a distribution deal with Hulu and CBS, the new service will expand its library by making available older, back-catalog content. At launch, StreamPix content will include previous seasons of TV shows like 30 Rock, The Office, Grey’s Anatomy and Lost, as well as movies such as Brokeback Mountain, Ocean’s Eleven and The Big Lebowski. A Comcast spokesperson told me that the company plans to add more titles as time goes on.
Comcast will also be making the service available on multiple screens: In addition to putting Streampix on the web and on its Xfinity iPad app, the titles will be on Comcast’s cable VOD platform. It’s also planning to expand availability to “additional screens and devices” as time goes on, which will include Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Android devices.
Update: An earlier version of the story said that subscribers needed both broadband and TV services, but they need only pay for TV.
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Mobile operators might as well give in and work with web companies when it comes to delivering services via mobile broadband. That’s the conclusion of the latest report out from Allot Communications, a company that aims to sell software and gear to companies like Verizon and AT&T. Allot’s latest mobile traffic report indicates that the big web players such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Skype are still racking up gains, while newcomers offering similar services to operators are also on the rise.
For example, voice-over-IP and texting services are up 114 percent from the first half of the year, presaging a future when the line items of texting and voice plans could disappear. Already companies are declining to buy texting plans for their employees, rightly recognizing that they can communicate via text without going through the carrier’s SMS system. It is a phenomenon already cutting into revenues at European carriers, and it will be felt soon here in the U.S.
Meanwhile, VoIP calling services, whether they are via Skype or Viber, are on the rise as well. And while carriers that are transitioning to LTE networks will eventually move their voice calling over to IP calls, it is unclear if the price paid for voice plans will see a subsequent drop. But data plans will only represent almost 40 percent of the average revenue per user (ARPU) by the end of the first quarter this year, according to Chetan Sharma, an industry consultant. This is a problem for two reasons, the first being that if people stop buying voice or texting plans, operators have a large hole to fill in ARPU. Second, the per-gigabyte price of VoIP calls or IM would not fill that hole but would also replace a higher-margin service with a lower-margin one.
So is compromise in the air?
In the wake of these losses in revenue, Allot’s recommendation to carriers is now compromise. A few years ago Allot was selling new types of pricing plans to help carriers cut down on bandwidth-hogging video applications while some carriers were trying to curb usage of new service by changing their terms of service to forbid users from streaming video to their phones. Allot called it. A backlash to the terms of service changes and carrier’s realizing that pricing was a better and more profitable carrot to use has reshaped the industry. It is becoming difficult to find someone with an unlimited mobile broadband plan.
I will take Allot’s recommendation that carriers should work with over-the-top providers pretty seriously. Already Skype, whose business comprises 79 percent of the VoIP traffic that Allot notes is rising, has a deal with Verizon that could represent the new breed of compromise. Unfortunately, details of their arrangement are hard to ferret out, but it seems to benefit Verizon over the consumer.
Also, we still waste a lot of time on YouTube
Aside from predicting the future for mobile operators, Allot’s data shows how much of our present we spend surfing YouTube on mobile networks. Globally, almost one out of every four packets (24 percent) traversing the mobile network was from YouTube, and it also accounts for 62 percent of all streaming traffic.
It appears from the report that the next big worry on the horizon will be HD video streaming traffic. YouTube’s HD-streaming traffic has increased by 300 percent from the first half to the second half of the year. Better and bigger screens are to blame for this boost, according to Allot, but I think faster LTE networks that are rolling out around the country play a role. Faster networks mean we can stream higher-def content, although we may end up paying for it in overage charges later.
And in those faster networks, along with our tendency to guzzle video content, may lie the secret to mobile operators’ success. Customers are already used to paying a set amount for voice, texting and data, but right now more than half of that amount is voice and texting. The challenge for carriers will be in shifting their pricing so customers pay about the same amount per month but “see” more of that going to data and less to voice or texting plans. Perhaps consumers would pay a bit for a VoIP plan that exempts Skype from counting against their data plan or ensures they could make a call.
For carriers, the worst thing that could happen from a pricing perspective is that consumers begin dumping voice and texting plans and acclimatizing to paying them less overall. But if operators cooperate with VoIP, IM and even video-calling services to offer an easier on-ramp to IP communications as well as plans that shift more of the costs paid by a consumer over to data, they may win. Companies like AT&T might be able to keep the same amount of consumer wallet share, co-opt their competition and probably eke out a few quarters of higher margins.
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Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise, in the company's West Hollywood offices.
Drama is usually a tough sell for web audiences, but in 2011, Machinima used its primary YouTube channel to distribute three high-profile series: Kevin Tancharoen’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Felicia Day’s Dragon Age: Redemption and David van Eyssen’s RCVR. The first episode of Mortal Kombat currently has 16.3 million views, with following episodes averaging four to five million, while Dragon Age and RCVR‘s premiere episodes each racked up over a million views, with subsequent episodes earning solid six-figure viewcounts. In addition, all three shows were nominated for awards at the inaugural IAWTV Awards last month, with RCVR picking up best drama.
While it’s true that both Kombat and Dragon Age are both video game-inspired, the three shows — a gritty martial arts thriller with some supernatural elements, a high fantasy epic and an X-Files-esque conspiracy drama — are relatively diverse in style and content. However, what they have in common, according to Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise, can be categorized as “extraordinary characters in an extraordinary world.”
In a sit-down interview, DeBevoise attributed the company’s success with drama online in large part to its audience of video game enthusiasts. “It’s an adrenaline-oriented audience that engages with mythologies. Other companies have a demographic that’s more random — but we have 95 percent males, and we know there’s content they care about,” he said.
Two elements were key to Machinima building that following — first, its approach to platforms, focusing exclusively on YouTube instead of diversifying. “We decided not to put all our content on every platform, instead saying ‘let’s just get this one right,’” DeBevoise said. Machinima currently has over 4.1 million subscribers on the platform, and is one of the participants in YouTube’s Made For Web channel initiative.
In addition, rather than trying to appeal to all video game fans at once, it started with one small specific audience and then grew outwards. “First, we focused all our energies on Halo [gamers], then grew to shooter games, and then we went broader,” he added. “Machinima now stands for game-centric programming — not just gaming.”
That doesn’t mean Machinima would ever attempt a pivot, though: “Our core gaming audience will be something we never abandon,” DeBevoise said. “But we don’t have to give up gaming content to bring in a new audience. The shelf life on YouTube is essentially unlimited.”
Machinima has room to evolve, though; DeBevoise looks to premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime as inspiration. “We want to become a more consistent global entertainment commodity. There are always two or or three shows going on on HBO — are we doing that in every category? No, not yet,” he said.
He also looked to the importance of establishing franchises: “What’s our Simpsons? What’s our Sopranos? We need to figure out what our big franchises are.” Zombie comedy Bite Me is returning for a second season March 6, but followups to RCVR, Mortal Kombat or Dragon Age have yet to be announced.
Most importantly, though, DeBevoise expressed interest in finding content that taps into the zeitgeist of this current generation, reflecting upon the way movies like The Godfather resonated during their time. “We think about what would be The Godfather for us — really compelling but really rooted in our audience,” DeBevoise said.
DeBevoise pinpointed several elements that might connect with the Machinima crowd — the CGI aesthetic that permeates both modern gaming and much genre filmmaking, the distinction between a virtual world and the real world — and also the fact that in order to achieve that goal, the company needs a talent base. “We can’t be HBO without great writers or directors,” he said.
It’s overstating to say that what Machinima is doing is the future of all entertainment. But it does represent one of the most important trends of the evolving digital age — content that achieves success by knowing its audience intimately.
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Vanity Fair has an interesting article about Netflix, Reed Hastings on Netflix's Recent Rise and Fall.
“We weren’t doing the price change to raise profits or something,” he elaborated to me. “We were doing it because we were so focused on becoming the streaming company and the global streaming company that we always wanted to be, and always have wanted to be.” He said that he sees the future of Netflix similarly to how big telephone companies see their futures in wireless, rather than in landline, phones. “Most companies that are great at something—like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores—do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business,” he wrote on the blog.
Hastings took the blame for the failure to communicate better with customers. “In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success,” he wrote. “But now I see that given the huge changes we have been recently making, I should have personally given a full justification to our members of why we are separating DVD and streaming, and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.”
The long article is an interesting read, and concludes with the following:
During our interview, Hastings insisted on putting the whole mess into perspective. “When I look at the challenges that Gandhi had, or the various leaders through history, our challenges pale in comparison to this,” he said. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve read a ton about Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun. It’s not been the Civil War of 1862. That was dark, and how you hold things together at a time like that is completely different than what we experienced. When we had our stumble—in comparison to a health crisis—I slept well every night. I didn’t get all tense. Our issues were ones that were unfortunate business judgments, not of morality or ethics or scandal.”
Netflix announced a new multi-year deal with the Weinstein Company that will bring titles like The Artist, Undefeated, W.E., Coriolanus, and Bully to Netflix streaming exclusively within a year of the theatrical release.
"We couldn't be happier to be working again with Harvey and Bob, who have an unmatched track record of creating critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies," said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. "'The Artist' is a symbol of the Weinsteins' triumphant return to the top of the film business. Through deep passion, great taste and phenomenal vision, Harvey and Bob continue to surprise audiences and make history."
"It is a fantastic coup for Netflix to acquire 'The Artist' and the package of additional titles," said TWC Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein, "With this deal, a company that loves movies, Netflix, joins forces with a company that is built on that same love. It's exciting that we can offer consumers a supremely convenient way to see the kinds of movies that made us want to be in this business in the first place."
If you're wondering how Netflix is spending the money they would have spent on Starz, this is a good start.
Thanks to Stephen, Jack, Nathan & everyone else for sending this in.
The PlayStation Blog announced that the Netflix app is now available for the PlayStation Vita.
You’ll also be excited to see the first wave of apps for Vita hit with Live Tweet, Flickr and Netflix arriving with today’s update. Starting today, you’ll be able to find all the above PS Vita experiences easily viewable from the PlayStation Store on your PS Vita and PlayStation 3. There is now a special PS Vita Games category on the PS3 PlayStation Store as well.
Does anyone own a PlayStation Vita?
The LA Times reports that Netflix is in discussions with ex-HBO Films president Colin Callender about producing titles for Netflix.
Netflix is discussing a partnership with former HBO Films president Colin Callender to produce original content, including mini-series and movies, for the online video service, according to three people with knowledge of the talks who are not authorized to speak about them publicly.
Should a deal be reached, it would accelerate Netflix's growing resemblance to pay cable network HBO, where Callender worked for two decades and played a pivotal role in its award-winning programming success. He left amid a management shake-up at the Time Warner Inc.-owned cable network in 2008.
If Netflix wants to be more like HBO, working with ex-HBO execs is a great place to start.
