Jennlog

A few months ago I was excited to learn that Denver Airport’s WiFi was free.

On my second visit to this service, they appear to break the Web by encapsulating websites within a Sub-frame so they can display persistent text ads from Google.

This framing not only obfuscates the actual location of a web page (It seems stuck on the initial request location and never varies from that page address), but it destroys almost every webpage dashboard layout I attempted to view.

Denver WiFi forced frame breaks Yallery

Even the Yallery pop-up window was corrupted. This negated the only solution we could find that would allow people with 1024×768 sized displays, but on browsers crowded with toolbars and sidebars to display Yallery.

Cookie? What Cookie?

This “man in the middle” encapsulation also kills IP-based identification as a result of proxying the request and removing all state.

Blah.

I was in Canada over the holidays and hoped to keep my Curve off the entire trip so I wouldn’t be charged the infamous AT&T International roaming fees.

I happened to need to turn on my Curve twice on one day to look some old email and negotiate a meeting place over several voice calls. The bill for this extravagance was over $30 + “regulatory” fees. Voice was $0.79/minute and god knows what they were charging per byte for data.

I dream of the day when handheld wireless IP devices will enable an international traveller to send and receive voice calls and send and receive data without the telcos smiling at you while they explain how they absolutely must charge you $0.79 a minute to transport less than 4 kb/s around the neighborhood or they’d go out of business.

A new network protocol for authenticating/authorizing wireless IP roaming devices is likely needed before cell phones can be replaced. Requiring a person to actively submit credentials every time their VoIP device passes between wifi networks will drive even the most technical savvy device owner over the edge so the protocol would have to be passive and seamless. This protocol needs to be aware at both the network layer (Registry based DHCP on steroids?) and at the application layer (SIP? H.323? Something new?) and tied to distributed subscription access-aggregation service.

With such a solution in place, taking into account administration expenses and roaming deal overheads, a VoIP-aware international IP hotspot aggregator could be profitable while making it worthwhile for hotspot owners to participate in such a service.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d make sure that everyone who worked for me read Courtney Love’s speech from the Spring 2000 Digital Hollywood conference in New York. This is probably the single most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard or read about the music business in the digital age. Read it.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that artists were successful before labels existed and will remain successful after labels disappear.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d realize that the product I had been successful in selling until digital distribution harshed my world was not music, it was a container — and we were great at making, selling and distributing containers but mostly suck at understanding music as an intangible medium.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that the businesses of manufacturing and distributing music containers were essentially commodity businesses that relied upon scarcity and/or saturation in the marketplace. If an artist didn’t have access to containers, the odds of them ever having their art available to the world were slim — and container listening folks were only able to to access the containers presented to them in their local record/cd store.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d go out of business before demanding or requesting ISPs and Countries support my quickly disintegrating business propositions with blanket subscription fees. I’d know that in most “blanket” music levy situations, only a select few highly promoted artists (and subsequently their publishers and labels) are disproportionate recipients of the collected funds. Recipients of 50% of the Canadian blank media levy are identified by their presence in an annual 14-day sample of commercial and state-operated radio stations across Canada.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that the only music-related business to improve it’s control over the consumer in the digital age has been the ticket scalp^H^H^H^H^Hbroker. I’d work with artists on improving or optimizing the ticket-buying experience of people attending their live performances.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d forget everything that I and my industry had ever done to control the productization, packaging and distribution of containers and focus on helping my artists connect to and maintain a relationship with people who appreciate their art. There is no such thing as a “used” relationship.

This proposed service has so many vertically integrated layers of wrong it is nearly impossible for me to believe HBO is the creator of this service.

I suspect the real brain trust behind this service is Time Warner and I suspect HBO was selected as the Cable Producer-Programmer launch partner because of its familial relationship with Time Warner Cable and an obligation to participate in corporate-mandated “innovations”.

Time Warner Cable and the other cable operators who could sign on to this service have the most to gain if this this service becomes successful. It will enable cable operators to extend the influence of their walled garden infrastructure onto media distributed over their Internet services.

In the world of cable television media production and distribution, there are five roles that “touch” a piece of media before the consumer sees a picture in their home:

1. Producer - creates the content for a
2. Distributor - sells the content to a
3. Programmer - orders the content into linear channels for a
4. Packager - prices the channels for distribution by an
5. Aggregator - sells subscriptions to consumers

HBO is the Producer of its own award-winning shows and series and also the Programmer that positions these shows amongst the many channels it operates between films and other content it purchases from Distributors.

Time Warner Cable packages the HBO channels into tiers and aggregates the content in the tiers to set top boxes leased/owned by subscribers.

The Time Warner Cable subscribers who will be eligible to receive this service are required to also subscribe to the Time Warner-owned HBO premium pay TV package and pay for the Time Warner-owned Broadband Internet service.

This announcement is less about a customer facing media product and more likely the proof of concept for a middleware solution created for cable operators, enabling them to tie the monetization and delivery of Internet media to their legacy conditional access/CRM databases.

In an optimized Internet-based media production and distribution ecosystem, there are fewer roles:

1. Producer

There is no need for ordering and positioning of media as these are roles assumed by the consumer and the distribution of media is negotiated at the transport layer like all Internet communication.

There is no reason why an Internet-focused service should demand a subscriber presence and investment in a non-Internet infrastructure. A small number of highly technical HBO subscribers may find this service useful, but with so many restrictions and conditions on the media, the average family will probably just rather find media through the Internet with the least resistance.

Why is this service ultimately going to fail? It relies upon obfuscating the efficiency of transport-layer distribution with application-layer legacy cable conditional access technology (and infrastructure). The service is marketed to cable systems rather than consumers as a solution to reduce the churn of premium HBO subscribers. Ultimately, this service requires that a “Packager” role be reconstituted by MSOs on the Internet, and that’s just messy.

I predict this service will die within a year.

During the last few days, much has been written in the popular tech blogs about the throttling actions of Comcast vs. the proposed metering actions of Time Warner — suggesting that metering might be the preferred and fairer approach to restricting subscribers’ growing bandwidth usage habits. That discussion only focuses on a small part of the bigger picture, however.

From the network operator perspective, degrading service and metering service are mutually exclusive actions that create opportunities for monetization on each side of their operation at the application layer.

In the media distribution food chain, cable companies and telcos have always monetized either side of the communications relationship they are facilitating — at the application layer. Connectivity and access at the transport layer are not monetized by legacy communications infrastructure as it is with IP networks.

Cable companies charge, demand ad revenue opportunities or otherwise negotiate remuneration from television networks requesting availability to their subscribers and then turn around and charge subscribers for access to the television networks.

“Network Availability” (what AT&T and others are suggesting they need, in opposition to “Network Neutrality”) is about restricting and monetizing media availability to subscribers.

“Conditional Access” and DRM are about restricting and monetizing subscriber access to media.

In an application layer monetized world, if an operator can’t negotiate a revenue stream from a media producer or aggregator, availability of the media producer’s product is degraded or disallowed — If revenue can’t be obtained as a result of a subscriber request of a media product, access is prevented.

With the Internet, network operators have been left out of the media delivery monetization pie, other than deriving income by supplying “Naked” transport in to and out from their infrastructure.

Comcast and Time Warner are approaching the monetization of Internet-delivered media completely differently.

If Comcast can successfully negotiate frees from media producers and aggregators in exchange for not degrading their Internet-delivered media, Comcast has successfully generated a huge stream of perpetual income that didn’t exist until that deal.

If Time Warner can successfully implement fees from subscribers in exchange for delivery of their Internet-delivered media, Time Warner has successfully generated a huge stream of perpetual income that didn’t exist until those subscribers signed on.

This week, NetFlix and Apple launched online film distribution services and Time Warner Cable reluctantly announced their metered Internet trial. In context, this was a turning point in the evolution of home entertainment.

The future of film and television is definitely going to rely upon the world of IP networks. Between the NetFlix and Apple services, consumers will begin to relate to films and other visual media online, just as consumers learned to relate to television through a box of buttons when cable services began to dot communities.

Speaking of cable, Time Warner has set itself up to be the first sacrificial lamb of the MSO infrastructure evolution in response to the growing amount of bandwidth used by its subscribers. In my previous post on the Time Warner experiment I suggested that TW customers should bail on their broadband provider. In the near-term, I still suggest they find more lubricated pastures (I.e. unmetered, unlimited service).

As media products evolve to an online state, the infrastructure that delivers media must also evolve or become inoperable or obsolete. Cable companies really operate two competing video infrastructures:

1. The original RF-based television feed of 24/7 content pushed into the homes over 300+ simultaneous channels, and;
2. A newer IP-based “Broadband Internet” connection facilitating the pull of attention-derived content into the home.

The old television feed infrastructure is not optimized for the realities of an “A La Carte” attention-derived media. It’s interesting to note that even with 300+ channels of content available the average american television viewer rarely strayed outside of their five favorite television channels to view programming.

1990’s Cable Spectrum

Clearly, cable as a business and an incumbent infrastructure is no longer efficient or relevant and must eventually be sacrificed as consumers adapt to Internet-based media delivery.

The cable evolution has been helped along by federal mandates declaring the end to analog-based television signals. Cable operators have been repurposing their Analog spectrum into their digital tiers

2000’s Cable Spectrum

In the next decade, Cable operators will need to abandon their philosophy of spectrum slice segmentation that dates back to the early RF days of television and open their entire operation to packet-based organization.

2010’s Cable Spectrum

Cable has a phenomenal amount of bandwidth capacity deployed, the challenge for them is adopting a consumer-friendly business model and organizing and optimizing the capacity going forward.

Cable will eventually adopt “metering” industry-wide, but as they open their entire networks to IP, one will hope that they will learn how to productize “unlimited” and “capped” services once again.

(As a comparison, here is the typical incumbent telephone carrier network spectrum allocation:

1990’s Telephone Spectrum

Unlike the fiber coax hybrid-based cable networks, telephone companies rely upon a mesh+star configuration of fiber and twisted copper. The available spectrum of twisted copper is far lower than coax, influenced by the frequency footprint of the legacy service of the telephone company, voice communication — exponentially narrower when compared to video. This is why telephone companies are the champions of fiber to the curb [fttc] and fiber to the home [ftth] initiatives.)

This week two major Internet-based video distribution overlay services were announced for consumers in the US — And predictably, the first major operator reaction occurred today — not far behind.

Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable system operator in the US after Comcast, announced that they will “experiment” with use-based pricing on their Internet Access products, virtually guaranteeing extra service fees for anyone contemplating video delivery to their home over the Internet.

Hopefully Time Warner customers who use the Internet for more than stock quotes, email and the occasional lolcat move to a competitor.

Yesterday, Apple officially launched their new iTunes Video Rental service.

The film rental service is built upon the existing content management and distribution system that facilitates the sale of audio and video products across the Apple CE line, including a newly untethered and upgraded IP-based AppleTV set top product. I presume it will also work on iTunes for Windows.

Is this service revolutionary? No. Evolutionary? Yes.

Cable operators in the Americas and Europe have offered VOD-based rentals for almost a decade (in Asia, almost two decades), but have not expanded their focus beyond their prized set-top box — some have started developing parallel stream-based services on the Internet, but there is no cohesive product relationship. Cable-delivered services have started and ended at the television set.

In relation to online services, Disney’s MovieBeam and film industry venture Movielink both offered film rentals by all the major studios in the same price range as the new Apple service, but their products were not very accessible and alienated consumers.

Apple’s agreement with Hollywood enables iTunes to rent movies 30 days following a DVD releases. This is presumably done for the same reasons that Hollywood fragments their DVD distribution amongst several region codes.

Apple operates the world’s most popular electronic media distribution service and is clearly the manufacturer of the world’s most popular portable media players. This dominance feeds directly into the adoption of their iTunes audio and video manager/player, compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Apple’s own OS X — and closes the loop on a single-provider “fully integrated” Virtual Walled Garden Overlay.

Apple will be the first effective solution to bring wide-scale video from the Internet to television. On the other hand, YouTube and its clones that drive traffic through novelty and news will not escape the immediacy of the social media-driven browser universe — regardless of mobile and television-focused efforts.

While this product will be the service to popularize electronic film rentals to the general public, other services such as the unlimited electronic streaming delivery products from Netflix will equally share this vanguard, but in a more constrained and restricted manner.

After an agnostic media management and delivery infrastructure reaches the edges of the Internet, Hollywood will pull back control over their media and begin to pursue direct delivery of media themselves

Hollywood has a history of taking control of media delivery channels that cross over the boundary from experimental to mass market — acquiring their video tape manufacturers and distributors. Affiliate television stations are finding the territorial relevance that solidified their existence in the traditional television delivery value chain has been erased by the global and direct reach of the Internet enabling the parent networks to deliver television directly to consumers through websites.

Eventually, the proprietary FairPlay format of Apple will also be superseded by a consumer-friendly format, popularized by consumer media generation — enabling/allowing consumers to integrate their own personal media with acquired media across consumer-chosen devices.

Apple’s iTunes Rentals service is evolutionary — as a stepping stone. It’s not going to kill DVDs or DVD rental services because the majority of the movie viewing public won’t immediately change their habits to pay apple $3-6 to watch a movie.

Apple will see the world to the time when Hollywood (and all media producers) will be have the capability to deliver media directly into consumer’s lives with commodity technology, infrastructure and players with flexible billing/usage models allowing for purchase, rental, subscription, advertising-support, gifting, freebies, exchanges and situations not thought of yet.

Today, Netflix announced they are offering their subscribers “Unlimited Streaming” of movies and TV shows “on their PCs” — beginning today their “unlimited” DVD rental subscribers (tiers beginning at $8.99/month) may start streaming unlimited movies and TV shows.

The Netflix press release specifically refers to PCs as being the destination device for their unlimited streaming plan, but depending on the formats and encryption selected, a “PC” could mean any IP-based device connected to a television — an AppleTV or Mac Mini, Tivo, Slingbox or Microsoft Media Center. But, this information is conspicuously absent from the Netflix site which has me suspecting it’s a not-so spectacular Windows-only format.

The announcement of a “Hollywood-fed” full-feed pay-one-price video streaming service is huge, but only if the format is eventually transportable and compatible with mobile and wireline devices. If it is tied to Windows or restricted to a specific player, it’s just another proprietary footnote on the pathway to a useful service.

The number one loser in the market today due to this announcement has to be your local cable company. Cable companies will try to launch stream-based services, to keep their customers inside “The Garden” while they are out and about in Internet land, but will largely fail because cable doesn’t have the mind share when consumers start thinking of feeding their IP-based video devices.

If Comcast scrapes through the FCC hearing on their practice of degrading P2P services used by their subscribers unscathed, you can bet that they (and other operators) will start degrading all third-party streaming services on their networks unless direct per-sub revenue shares are negotiated.

None of the streaming deals are exclusive as far as I know, so as soon as someone in Hollywood starts to see a winning model emerge, they will start feeding the streaming channel directly. Netflix should enjoy their market success now, while it lasts — they will be in Blockbuster’s shoes in three to five years unless they develop some extreme competitive technical and marketplace advantage (highly unlikely).

In my recent post about not attending CES, I referenced an idea I have about a conference I’d love to attend, but doesn’t exist — sort of a “Whole Communications Show and Conference.” Later, I shared a little of my philosophy about media relationships and how devices and infrastructure play a facilitating role rather than a central role.

Media relationships are rare in today’s communications environment — In fact, media producers seem to have been actively trying to avoid them. The cable system operators and telcos have amplified this inclination, by locking media and communications products behind Walled Gardens.

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However, both audio and visual media have reached the point where their consumable and broadcast formats are universally available on one hand and universally usable on the other. This optimal state enables the media products to escape proprietary devices and networks and exist wherever the format is understood.

The recording industry has been very slow to adapt to this development and the motion picture and television industries appear to be a little more cognizant about their future, but seem to be hesitating when it comes to fully embracing change.

There are several high-profile examples of television networks developing Windows-only media download services and film studios still encourage the formation of operator-based exclusive content deals.

Tethering media products artificially restricts media’s availability to consumers and conversely constricts a consumer’s access to media — this is why “Network Neutrality” is important. However, if media producers were truly invested in neutrality, they would be enthusiastically pursuing the formation of media relationships, and they aren’t — yet.

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Under the misnomer of “Convergence,” media producers have been sold on a vision of the future that advises them to adapt their existing products from one old media device or infrastructure onto another old media device or infrastructure.

The “Triple Play” concept invented by the incumbent infrastructure operators is a perfect example of the linear thinking and tunnel vision behind “New Media”.

Media producers are best to forget about Triple Plays and start conceptualizing media products for features that exist across platforms and networks — there are no more televisions or stereos, there are players.

The days of remonetizing assets across and upon new platforms are also over, as demonstrated by the fact that everyone has re-encoded their music collections for use upon audio players — it’s only a matter of time before consumers start re-encoding their film and television collections for use upon video players.

“Mobile Video”, “Mobile Web” and “Mobile Commerce” do not exist — short of operators obfuscating access to their platform to inflate the size of their Walled Garden. There will be no logical reason why IP video, web or commerce can’t exist natively within a mobile environment as it does on any other Internet-connected device.

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There are a couple dozen media industry conferences produced worldwide. Most have been around for decades, begun as their respective industries took shape. Until the 90s, most of the media industries were segmented along proprietary infrastructure — For example, cable television shows were all about the newest set top box, largest head ends and widest coax cable and mobile telephony shows were focused on how to deliver more voice calls, of a higher quality through a matrix of smarter cell towers from smaller portable telephones.

As the Internet gained users and growth, an avalanche of digital media applications were tacked onto the formerly-proprietary networks and devices courtesy of IP-inspired technologies. The trade shows however, remained very linear in their focus. Even their “New Media” context was all about identifying and segmenting off the newest digital services within their old, proprietary business models.

I believe there will always be a need for shows for device manufacturers, for media producers and game developers to meet separately amongst others in their field to formulate standards, discuss best practices and whatnot.

Infrastructure operators across platforms need to begin thinking of meeting together at a large IP Network shindig (less NetWorld + Interop, more outward-facing) or else become naked transport against their will. Whole Media will commoditize incumbent infrastructure into raw transport, they will need to become the best, most efficient transport they can to compete effectively in a Whole Media economy.

The Whole Communications Show will give media producers a place to spend a little time at the 50,000 foot level with device manufacturers and work on products that create media relationships independent of infrastructure and allow for license federation across devices — Whole Media.

Producers that ignore Whole Media will find their existing and planned business models and partnerships disrupted — and eventually, their assets outside of their control.

Consumers are quick to understand that they can move abandoned media wherever they desire with or without the producer’s participation. Whole Media is about grabbing hold of the media relationship with consumers and actively working with them to facilitate a relationship wherever it may go.

Whole Media is a relationship without segmentation — concerning products without boundaries.