Remaking Today's TV into Internet TV

We will look back on the years from 2006 until the end of this decade, as the remake of television into Internet TV. I know people who have cancelled their cable TV contracts and exclusively watch TV on the Internet. We see better and better quality user-generated content too.

Big Cable vs. Ma Bell(s)
Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, and ilk are holding onto their hegemony for as long as they can, lobbying politicians and FCC officials, while Verizon and AT&T lay the fibers for a truly amazing high-definition experience (or so they promise). When there's a TV program I want to watch, even if it's not on Fox or ABC, I can go to Hulu (soon to YouTube too). However, I’m not a Hulu acolyte and use it only as a starting point when I need to find something I want. Hulu does well enough today, but it doesn't get me to YouTube.

Building the infrastructure is a tricky business
Quality streaming over varying connection speeds has now become a reality. Thanks to companies like Move Networks, we've got technologies like adaptive bit rate adjustment; now even the CDNs are starting to build this in. Watch something on Hulu and you'll see that the quality is pretty superb.

Monetizing content and paying for the infrastructure have proven to be even trickier.
At the end it all comes back to how everyone will make money, a subject upon which there has been hardly ant agreement, and relatively little success.

The experiments are fun to watch, though - especially from the receiving end. How is yours?

Wall Street Turmoil Claims Its First Internet TV Victim : LoftCity

URGENT NOTICE TO OUR MEMBERS AND READERS WHO SIGNED UP ON LOFTCITY:

Just received this sad email notice from LoftCity, whose debut I'd written barely four months ago:

"Dear LoftCity user,

Due to the current situation in the financial markets, we face difficulties to continue finance and operate www.LoftCity.com.

As a result, we will be shutting down our site, www.LoftCity.com, as of September 29, 2008.

Thus, we recommend you download or print any material or documents from your Loft and Projects folder including all materials essential to your work by Sunday, September 28, 2008.

After this date, there will be no access to www.LoftCity.com including your Loft and projects.

LoftCity will not keep a backup of any material uploaded or created on our site.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause and we thank you for your understanding.

Best Regards,
LoftCity Team"

Please make sure you remove your content by tomorrow midnight the latest!

I certainly wish the best of luck to everyone there. May we see you soon in a new reincarnation!

Plug and Play for MillionDollarWebTV.com

The plug is here, the play is still a few months off...we can't afford "Plug and Pray" experiences, unlike you know who.



MillionDollarWebTV.com will provide a guaranteed 10+ years of front page web video exposure for you in the "Pay Per Pixel" advertising format. You can display your image/ad/logo of your choice in the space you purchase,

AND

have the image click through to your own website, video page, or video blog,

AND

have your web TV ad/clip display in a separate player window. You can embed one or more links in your video to take your viewers to your website or blog. Cool!

BUT THERE IS MORE...

As an advertiser, you also receive a PROFIT SHARE certificate, entitling you for a proportional share of profits from the operation or sale of MillionDollarWebTV.com. That's really cool!

The pixels you buy will be displayed on the homepage permanently, which will not change. They will be online for at least 10 years, but hopefully much longer. Our aim is to make it into a kind of Internet TV time capsule. We think the web TV ads/clips will offer good value right away, especially if you replace them with new ones regularly. In the long run, the pixels will offer good value too. Internet TV is just taking off and you will have a piece of the action and a piece of internet TV history.

P.S. We are also testing distribution quality here from Blip.tv.
P.P.S. So far results are mixed at best, with the video and everything underneath disappearing in IE 6.x and 7.0. NOT GOOD!!!! Switching over to a feed from Veoh now...
P.P.P.S ...which crashed IE 6 AND 7, forcing me to test a bunch of other video sharing services and find a REAL GEM in vSocial. The result above speaks - okay, plays - for itself!

A Squidoo Poll Predicts the Future of i(p)TV

iTV aka internet TV, IPTV, Web TV, streaming video, web video...people, make up your minds!

As one of the resident experts on iTV at Squidoo, I find true morsels of wisdom there sometimes. Here is one, in the form of a screen shot I took from a slightly less than scientific poll by 7 - yes, seven - people on the future of TV. Here is some statistics even Mark Twain would like - this one doesn't lie. It's not biased either - so it might even be a good indicator....

Why make iTV?

Internet TV is in its infancy. We use this blog to share the joy, pain, and sometimes plain stupidity (ours) that creeps in while making it happen. Making iTV is new. Making iTV is exciting. Making iTV is fun and can be profitable. Let’s find out together.

You’ll learn what we learn. You’ll see what we see, mash up, or dish out. On Dish TV one day, that is. Join our blog and community. Add your comments, questions, tips, and stories. Use ours to shorten your learning curve. iTV is taking over the cyberwaves. Surf is up - surf with us!