Internet connected Digital TVs are making their first big splash in the TV market and DTC is forecasting a rapidly growing market in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific markets.

How these TVs will be used by consumers isn’t entirely clear but they are marketed as a way to pull in Internet video content independent of any gated TV services. The result is a competitive threat to gated TV service providers. What is also unclear is how consumer would manage an ever-increasing growing and fragmented line up of programs.

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Disney took the wraps off its Keychest initiative for online digital distribution last week, as the company seeks to temper the effects of the growing slump in DVD sales (down as much as 25% at some studios). While this particular initiative seems unlikely to achieve that outcome, the shift in thinking from device based content security to device independent content security is pretty radical from such a major media player, and bodes well for the future of digital distribution.

To read the rest of this entry, please check out the Weekly Riff at:
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We’ve come a long way. I remember waiting for my parents to set up the Betamax camcorder on Christmas morning. We had to wait for hours as batteries recharged and lights were set up. And in the 80s no one could even imagine uploading their video onto a computer to share with the world.

Today’s camcorders are small, quick, easy to use and high-def. And the video software is so simple a child can use it. Leading the charge for camcorders and desktop software are products that use the AVC/H.264 video compression standard. AVC offers greater efficiency than many other compression technologies and can deliver the high-def pictures consumers desire.

But can AVC/H.264 save any portion of the camcorder industry?

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Smartphones are responsible for giving consumers one of their video fixes these days. They’re not just for early adaptors or businesses anymore, but are now being toted around by teenagers, poor twenty-somethings and every other segment of the population. And now that smartphone shipments are seeing some growth, what new innovations will they bring to the table?

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The future of TV, with the promise of unfettered access to any and all programming through increasingly sophisticated TV receivers, has a kind of utopian ring to it (if utopian and TV can be used in the same sentence). Fewer and fewer gatekeepers, a lineup of programming choices that will make current multichannel offerings look stingy, cheap production and distribution for aspiring film/TV producers, and greater access to programming unencumbered by security measures.

Sounds downright idyllic, doesn’t it? Maybe my glass is half empty, but it seems more anarchic to me. Untested business models, unfiltered programming choices, uncertainty (or disregard) of copy rights, and a lack of order or organization. At the very least, it’s going to be messy.

To read the rest of this entry, please visit Myra's blog here:
http://www.dtcreports.com/blog2.aspx.

Consumers of new media are apparently the old dogs who are learning new tricks. Now that mainstream content providers are starting to loosen their death grips on their content, new viewer habits are emerging. The folks who distribute that content via old pipelines are hopefully paying close attention because viewers are changing the rules of what it means to watch TV.

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Advanced Video Optical Disc PC sales have suffered during the recession. Instead of opting for the traditional PC with an internal Blu-ray Disc (BD) drive, consumers are favoring netbooks. Netbooks ship sans internal optical disc drive, allowing for a smaller form and lower price tag. Perfect for the current economic storm we are weathering.

But don’t fret if you are a fan of the traditional PC experience, DTC expects shipments of BD PCs to gain traction starting in 2010.

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There’s been a lot of controversy in recent months over DtA STBs, but is it really much ado about nothing?

Cable operators, led by Comcast, are looking to DtAs (Digital-to-Analog adaptors) as a low cost way to transition networks to all digital, thereby reusing spectrum currently allocated to bandwidth hogging analog channels for more standard and HD digital channels. A key element of this cost savings is the lack of separable security in DtAs, eliminating costly CableCards and pushing prices below $50 per unit.

http://www.dtcreports.com/blog2.aspx

Imagine you've just completed the Thanksgiving feast – turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie: The works. Your body sinks into the sofa as the tryptophan and alcohol sends you gently in-and-out of consciousness. Just as you enter REM sleep, you're blasted awake by a loud shriek: "Time for dinner!"

Dinner?! You just stuffed yourself!

Like the after-effects of a big holiday feast, America is sleeping off the long digital TV transition. Instead of turkey, we've consumed a bellyful of dire government entreaties to make sure we have a tasty new HDTV, a side dish of digital cable box and a digital converter desert. After this HD smorgasbord, we are now happily dazed in our digital torpor.

Wake up! Panasonic (and presumably the rest of the HDTV/Blu-ray equipment and content selling contingency) want us to do it all over again, this time to transition from 2D HDTV to 3D.

To read the rest of this entry, please visit Stewart's blog here:

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No doubt in response to Netflix’s popular video-on-demand set-top box (the Netflix player by Roku), Blockbuster debuted its Internet VOD service/STB to much fanfare late last year. But after almost a year of luke-warm reviews Blockbuster has been conspicuously silent about shipments of its branded set-top boxes or customer usage, leading many to question the long-term viability of the effort.

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