More articles on digital media this week. ATT is launching a service that provides TV over DSL lines to compete with Cable TV. Cable TV is trying to offer video services to compete with websites. Oh what a tangled web we weave...
This article on Comcast is actually quite good and provides background on the industry and the forces at work to change the status quo. Hopefully Congress will pass some laws to protect our favorite monopolies - cable and telephone - before anything really changes.
Cable Takes On Web Video
Comcast to Expand Offerings, Route Programs From PCs to TV; Time Warner Also Makes Moves
June 29, 2006
The country's largest cable operators are entering the online-video realm to tap into new revenue sources and fight off ballooning competition from startups, entertainment companies and large Internet sites that offer video on the Web.
Comcast Corp., the biggest cable company, is buying new technology and accumulating broadband rights to a wide variety of movies, TV programs and other videos that it plans to make available on its Web site. It plans to enable subscribers to route all its Web-based video content to regular TV sets, a move that would greatly expand what's available to them on television. In addition, in a first among cable players, Comcast wants to make its broadband content available not just to its own high-speed Internet subscribers but to users of the Internet everywhere.
Meanwhile, Time Warner Inc.'s cable division has already begun to route Web-based video content, such as market updates from CNBC and personal photos, to the TV sets of its subscribers.
The initiatives are part of the cable industry's efforts to stay in front of the radical changes the Internet is making in the television landscape. The burgeoning supply of movies, TV programs and other video content on the Web has sparked a race among major media, entertainment and technology companies to develop new businesses while protecting their old ones.
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Meanwhile, Comcast's plans are sure to shake up the cable industry. They raise the prospect of two cable companies competing against each other for viewers, one providing traditional TV and the other offering videos to computers. Indeed, some cable operators have expressed concern about Comcast's plans, noting that cable operators currently work on ventures together and don't compete with one another. "It's one thing to compete with Verizon, AT&T and EchoStar," says Steve Necessary, a vice president of Cox Communications Inc. "It's another thing to compete with someone that you're literally partners with on a lot of ventures."
So far, the online video world has been dominated by four types of companies. Web giants like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and AOL are assembling videos from a variety of sources. Owners of content, from major movie studios to Major League Baseball, are selling their videos to consumers directly. Networks like ABC and NBC Universal have developed branded Web sites with their content. And startups like YouTube are posting thousands of "user generated" videos shot by individuals with their camcorders.
Most of these businesses make money by inserting advertising into their videos. But some have also begun to sell programs for a small fee to consumers who download them to computers or hand-held devices like video iPods. In addition, major technology companies like Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have begun to develop ways to link computers to television sets so consumers can watch Web-based video on their TVs.
