We love Mark Cuban because he is never afraid to speak his mind, even in front of a congressional panel:

Representatives from YouTube, Sling Media, HDNet and others appeared before a House Energy and Commerce telecom subcommittee to discuss the future of video entertainment. Providers and lawmakers have grappled with a variety of issues that could change the way consumers access online video content, including net neutrality, copyright concerns and bandwidth issues.

[snip...]

“In our current bandwidth constrained environment, the concept of Internet video replacing TV is laughable,” Cuban said. “Replacing high-definition TV [with online content] isn’t even on the radar. There is certainly a market for video content on PCs, but it’s a complimentary market, not a primary market.”

What’s even better is that when the officials raised the topic of net-neutrality, Cuban basically shrugged his shoulders and pointed out that it would not even be an issue if bandwidth was not so constrained. Unfortunately, tech companies and net video providers are in a tough spot. They are typically laissez-faire, pro-net-neutrality advocates but the only way to improve bandwidth is via government intervention which is anathema to them.

Tom Evslin points out that the bandwidth crunch isn’t necessarily in the last-mile to our houses:

But wait, you say, my Internet connection already comes into my house on my cable.  And so do all 200 channels.  So I’ve already got enough bandwidth.  You’re right; you do.  It just has to be rearranged a little.  And remember, you’re not even gonna need to bring in 200 channels at once, just the ones you’re actually watching. Maybe you should get a rebate.

His argument is that the real network crunch is further up the chain, back at the telecom end.

Not so fast said the Joost-ers, apparently we forgot to take into account how Joost could boost its content by playing off of the widespread hatred of YouTube. Especially after Google has taken such a snobby attitude towards the entertainment industry:

The agreement comes two weeks after Viacom demanded that YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google Inc., remove 100,000 clips that were posted without permission. Viacom will provide shows from MTV and BET Networks and feature films from Paramount to Joost, which is run by the same duo who started the Skype Internet calling service and the Kazaa music-sharing site.

``The Joost platform is in essence a closed system,’’ said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc., a market research firm in Stamford, Connecticut. ``The ability for piracy and content to be stolen is minimal.’’

Joost, based in New York, with offices in London and Leiden, the Netherlands, offers a ``piracy-proof’’ platform, the companies said. Content creators and viewers must both download free software, which limits sharing. YouTube, the fifth most- visited Web site, according to indexer Alexa.com, requires no software and places few restrictions on sharing.

In what is easily the most useful thing we’ve seen online in a long time, some blogger uploads the same video to 25 different video sharing sites and then places them side by side on one giant page so that you can all see the results. Want to know who will make your video look best? Look no further.

Marketwatch reports on what is the logical conclusion to user-generated content:

Comcast Corp., the Philadelphia cable-TV and Internet provider, is considering the prospect of sending user-generated content—including home videos run over YouTube Inc. and Revver Inc.—across its video-on-demand service, The Wall Street Journal Online reported. It has held talks with some of the largest Net-video companies, including YouTube, which has agreed to be acquired by Google Inc., the Journal reported.

Bridging the gap between the computer desktop and the television in the living room seems to be the obvious outcome of the death-of-television-as-we-know-it. But we wonder how Comcast will solve the problem of searching millions of short video clips from the web with nothing more than a TV remote.

As if to follow up on yesterday’s conspiracy theory:

After Viacom sent YouTube a letter last week asking the video-sharing site to remove some of its copyrighted content, the two companies appear to have reached an understanding.

Suspicious yet?

Mark Cuban recently reposted an interesting “insider” tidbit from the Google + Youtube deal:

Since everyone was reaching into Google’s wallet, the big G wants to make sure the Youtube purchase was a wise one. Youtube’s value is predicated on it’s traffic and market leadership which Google needs to keep. If they simply agreed to remove all unauthorized content and saddle the user experience with ads Youtube would quickly be a skeleton of its prior self. Users would quickly move to competing sites. The media companies had 50 million reasons to want to help. Google needed a two pronged strategy which you see unfolding now.

To sum it all up, they claim that Google set aside a large portion of the $1.65 Billion to “pay off” the big media companies in a secret escrow account. In exchange, they agreed to drop all pending lawsuits to prevent the type of demise predicted here on BBB (and several other places). It will be interesting to see how people react at such an accusation. Since lawsuits are public record, it should be relatively simple to show companies suing much smaller video competitors for content which is already on Youtube’s site.

We’ll update you, precious readers, as this story develops.

Are you old enough to remember Where’s the Beef? Now say it again but replace Beef with Money:

In 2007, U.S. advertisers will spend $5 million on online video ads. By 2011, the amount spent is expected to grow 160 percent to $1.3 billion. While spending on text ads will continue to represent a greater part of the total online advertising market, the segment is expected to grow at a slower rate—45 percent—over the same period, according to the Jupiter forecast.

Let’s ignore for the fact that their math is wrong (magazine writers aren’t exactly noted for their arithmetic). With all the buzz around online video lately you’d think that there was piles of cash just sitting around for the taking. $5 million? That’s it? There are a lot of new companies that are going to be out of business soon. The entire market in five years will be less than the entire amount Google spent on YouTube.

We roll our eyes at these stories:

Having fans type “Desperate sex” into their Web browsers was apparently not the sort of grassroots marketing campaign ABC was hoping for to hype one of its top shows.

The Alphabet Net is calling foul after a rough cut of a sex scene from the upcoming season of Desperate Housewives was leaked on YouTube, nearly a month before the steamy footage was
slated to air.

Is anyone really surprised by this anymore? Seriously, how long will it take intellectual property owners to sue the pants off of YouTube?

We know we’ve said it before but sometimes it bears repeating. 

This week can be summarized as:

The movie business is about to change: Apple Computer Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are in the final stages of building online services that allow easy, legal access to potentially thousands of movies on demand.

Isn’t it amazing that people (especially journalists) fail to take the lessons from one arena and apply it to another?

Example: when iTunes introduced TV downloads for the video iPod everyone heralded it as a revolution. Now within months, all the TV networks realized that they didn’t need Apple to sell their content for them. They cut out the middleman and allowed people to download content from their own sites, and sometimes the let the public have it for free with ADVERTISING. What a novel concept!

How long do you think it will take the studios to realize they don’t need Apple or Yahoo to sell their content?

Actually, they already have. Remember MovieLink and CinemaNow (if you are a regular BBB reader you do)? People, you can download movies LEGALLY off the ‘net for almost six years now. Get over it.

UPDATE: We tried to use Amazon’s service but got bitchslapped:

OPERATING SYSTEM: The Unbox Video player application is only compatible with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2, or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2. The Unbox Video player is not compatible with Apple/Macintosh operating systems.

We here at BBB live in Linux land.

Unless you are live under the proverbial rock, the talk of the town has been Apple’s negotiations with studios to finally sell feature films on iTunes. What is interesting is that most people haven’t been discussing why this has taken so long. You see, unlike the music industry, Apple doesn’t have the studios over a barrel:

ITunes was the first etailer to start selling songs and TV shows online, but when it adds movies, it will enter a competitive market. Movielink and CinemaNow already sell permanent downloads of films. BitTorrent has a deal in place with Warner Bros. and is in talks with other studios. Amazon.com also will start selling movies online soon, possibly through its IMDb Web site.

<big> + </big> <big> = ? </big>

Loyal BBB readers may remember a little gem we posted back in August ‘05 about Tivo starting to roll out TV-downloads-from-the-Internet. It seems that today Tivo has the first true fruits of this endeavor:

TiVo will unveil Tuesday a deal that will enable about 400,000 subscribers who have their machines connected via broadband Internet access to use their TVs to watch Web videos delivered by Internet video and ad sales service Brightcove. Specific programs to be offered — possibly as early as June — have not been named, but Brightcove clients include Discovery Communications, MTV Networks, Reuters, The New York Times, National Lampoon, SmartMoney and Farmers’ Almanac TV.

While the details haven’t quite been worked out yet, the writing is indeed on the wall. Since the deal between the two is non-exclusive, we can see a future in which TV watchers can start downloading video podcast-like content from the ‘net without any kind of middleman at all.

Tivo: give us a call when we can add RSS feeds and we’ll talk. Until then, we will have to settle for hope.

One day we’ll all look back on this bubble and laugh:

YouTube is rumored to have quietly raised another $25 million in venture capital after raising two rounds totaling $11.5 million from Sequoia Capital. The hit video-sharing site might need it: YouTube’s bandwidth fees are said to be approaching $1 million per month.

We don’t get it. YouTube is Napster for video. While they have slyly introduced some advertising onto the site, this hardly constitutes any long-term business model. Unless that business model is “we’re going to get bought by Fox.” Welcome to the bubble 2.0…

You’ve probably already heard:

Introducing Yahoo! Go™ on your TV

Now you can take Yahoo! off your computer and put it in your living room for everyone to see. View photos, search for video clips and watch movie trailers on your TV. Plus, your own digital video recorder (DVR) lets you record and watch your favorite shows anytime for free.
Be part of the Yahoo! Go for TV Beta!

If Google, Fox, and Apple are doing it you can bet that Yahoo is not far behind. Interestingly, Yahoo’s service actually hooks up your PC to your TV in a sort of Tivo-esque blend. Definintely a novel approach considering the traditional firewall between TV and PC.

Unfortunately, everyone in the BBB labs are left out:

A Windows®-based PC with minimum system requirements

* Windows XP® operating system (Yahoo! Go™ for TV is not compatible with Macintosh® or Linux)

One of you will have to give it a try for us and give us an update in the comments.

We will not bore you with the details as you’ve probably read this quote eight different times today already:

“Conventional wisdom, it’s an enemy at a time like this,” said Beth Comstock, president for digital media and market development at NBC Universal, part of General Electric. “In media today, I don’t think there is a single rule that can’t--and frankly, probably shouldn’t--be broken.

“This isn’t just about driving growth,” she added. “It’s about staying in business.”

Normally we’d just chalk this up to hype but then we learned that even the Emmys are changing their tune:

“iPOD” EMMY NOMINATION!

We just got word that It’s JerryTime has been nominated for a 2006 Emmy Award in the brand new “original entertainment programming created specifically for non-traditional viewing platforms” category. The award ceremony is on April 22nd. Orrin and I wanted to share this great news with you and to thank you for your support!

Yet another IPTV announcement, this time from Fox:

News Corp.’s Fox network has signed a six-year agreement with its 187 affiliated stations that will let it show reruns of its television programs on the Internet, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Thursday.

The revenue-sharing agreement allows Fox to make 60 percent of its prime-time schedule available online the morning after the shows air, the Journal reported.

The formula is complex, but stations essentially will get a 12.5 percent cut after costs, the paper also reported.

It is interesting that Fox managed to convince the skeptical affiliates to allow such a deal. Fox is also smart to move away from the iTunes pay-per-download model towards an advertiser supported model.

Pretty soon this will just be the normal course of business.

It is just another in a long string of TV-over-IP announcements:

CNET Networks on Monday said it will launch “CNET TV,” a new video on demand network over cable, on digital video recorders made by TiVo and on the Internet as it broadens its reach to viewers.

It is unclear yet how exactly this content will be distributed but the inclusion of Tivo in the deal gives us a clue. Those of you who follow BBB regularly will realize that Tivo has long been the trojan horse for IPTV in the living room. Since every Tivo is essentially a fully functioning Linux computer it has always been possible to bypass people’s cable and satellite providers and download directly to the box.

Perhaps now Tivo is ready to push this into regular usage.

Those folks at Reuters sure are perceptive:

The widely hyped merging of the PC and TV is finally taking shape in a way that only a few people imagined in the late 1990s Internet boom.

From independent producers like Mondo Media to big media companies like MTV, and even kids who post videos on community sites like YouTube.com, the World Wide Web is becoming a sort of worldwide TV network for audiences seeking offbeat entertainment not shown on mainstream television.

Where do we even begin? During the dotcom boom years, full-motion video over the internet was so overhyped as to be a self-parody.

But we’re glad that Reuters takes the time to correct themselves:

...the late 1990s when the dot-com boom fueled the notion that eventually all TV would be delivered on the Web, on-air broadcasting would become wired webcasting and computers would be the TV sets of the future.

“Really, I had this vision 6 years ago,” said Mike Tuinstra, chief executive officer of Joecartoon.com Inc. “It’s just now kind of happening.”

So remember that you read it at Reuters first: TV is coming to the internet. If only we listened to Mike Tuinstra in 1999! 

In a victory for PR and Marketing:

Several major film studios are announcing plans Monday to make movies available for download onto PCs.

Consumers would be able to save the films to watch any time, and would pay between $10 and $30 to download, depending on how new the film is. New movies are expected to be released for download the day the DVD goes on sale.

The industry has been moving toward online distribution for a while, though just how eagerly is subject to debate. The new services, available through MovieLink and CinemaNow, should prompt repercussions along the distribution line, from DVD sales to cable TV to the video rental business.

Those of you who are regular readers of BBB will recall that MovieLink and CinemaNow (gotta love those iNterCap names) have been the long forgotten stepchildren of hollywood and the tech industry. What is amazing about this story is that it is a story at all. These services have been available for years (although the details have changed a bit) this is nothing new. Perhaps in light of the success of the iTunes Music Store selling tv downloads, the ugly stepchildren feel a little more confident these days.

We tried to checkout the details at the MovieLink site but encountered a stern:

Sorry, but as of May 2, 2005, Movielink no longer supports Windows 98 and ME operating systems.

Movielink also does not support Mac or Linux.

In order to enjoy the Movielink service, you must use Windows 2000 or XP, which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies.

And a similar warning pops up at CinemaNow:

You must use Internet Explorer Version 6 or higher on a PC running Windows 2000 or later in order to use the CinemaNow service.

Uh oh, we think we can predict how successful this Microsoft DRM‘d crap is going to be already.

Netflix hits pause on movie download plan:

However, due to problems obtaining license agreements with Hollywood studios, the test phase of the service has not been postponed. Hastings said the company would hit the play button on its plans “when the content climate beings to thaw.”

The studios’ reluctance to let Netflix squirt their movies down the wire is no great surprise. Because of its paranoia about unregulated distribution of its content Hollywood is currently about as keen on the internet as it is on thoughtful, foreign language dramas featuring real, unaugmented people. Perhaps Netflix would have more success if it courted Bollywood instead of Hollywood.

It seems funny how far apart Silicon Valley and Hollywood can be. They are only a little over 300 miles apart in sunny California but they might as well be on opposite sides of the planet. The software geeks are stumbling over themselves to create new video distribution sites too numerous to mention while the studio execs struggle to find new ways to restrict digital distribution.

The only solution is the California Republic civil war. North vs. South. We’ve got front row seats.