At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) social TV and smart TV guru Jeremy Toeman (see his Future of Smart TV news feed), who is also the CEO of Dijit, is moderating an entire track on the challenges cable, studio and digital distribution executives face when it comes to the connected TV landscape. Jeremy’s leading 5 sessions on the topics of:

• Social TV: Where’s the Money?
• Is there a Killer App for TV, Or is TV the Killer App?
• Smart TV or Dumb TV?
• Deconstructing Content Offerings for the Second Screen
• Virtual Coffee Tables and TV App Graveyards

Some of the questions that will be discussed include:

• In a world cluttered with badges, check-ins, stickers, hashtags, likes, plusses, apps, and so many other terms, is there any real money being exchanged in the world called Social TV?
• What are the current content, distribution, and consumer-facing challenges of TV in an app world?
• Can  second screen offerings really complement some content, like sports and reality TV shows?
• Is there a one-size-fits all answer or approach to TV apps? Is there an uber-TV app coming, or are we destined to have a dedicated app for each TV show we like, each network we watch, each movie we see, etc?
• Do people want smart TVs, or do they just want “feature” TVs? Will fragmentation kill the industry before it even really gets off the ground?
• TV is inherently a social medium, and people are tweeting and liking things, so there’s some smoke – but where’s the fire?

With speakers from Roku, Sling Media, Turner Sports, Snappy TV, Trendrr, DirecTV, Revision3, LG, Sharp, 2nd Screen,  BET Networks, the Connected TV Marketing Association, and others, the Streaming Media West show is the place to be in LA next week. And if you can’t make it to the sessions, stop by the show floor on Tuesday October 30th for the networking event. It’s free!

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

As the industry rushes to make HTML 5 video available on more devices, there are many things to consider when attempting to do this in a scalable manner. At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) Brian Griffin, VP of Video Product Management, Global Digital Media, for Viacom Media Networks will present the end-to-end life cycle of building and deploying HTML 5 video solutions across multiple properties. Attendees will learn about GUI considerations, integrating advertising, reporting, attribution and QoS solutions, and secure content delivery. In addition, technical details of building and compiling HTML 5 video code, managing encodes, and distributing to multiple platforms will be covered.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) Nathan Dye, Software Development Manager at Amazon Web Services, will demonstrate the best practices for measuring and monitoring the quality of your videos streamed to end-users. Nathan will provide practical guidance using external agent-based measurements and real user monitoring techniques, and discuss CDN architectures and how they relate to performance measurement. Finally he’ll walk through real-world CDN performance monitoring implementations used by Amazon CloudFront customers for video delivery.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) Dylan Armajani the Streaming Manager for HuffPost Live we will present a case study of the recently launched HuffPost Live, which generates 12 hours of live programming five days a week. Attendees will learn about the challenges faced in launching a long form community driven live streaming platform. Learn about live streaming workflows, quick VOD turnaround, community based collaboration technology, and Huffington Post’s attempt to break away from standard broadcast methods.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

On Tuesday, Boxee introduced a new $99 box called the Boxee TV that has dual-tuners, WiFI, ethernet and connects to Boxee’s cloud based DVR platform. Consumers can get local unencrypted basic broadcast channels over-the-air, record them in the cloud with no storage limitations and also stream video from premium content services like Netflix and Vudu. Launching on November 1st in eight major cities in the U.S., the monthly DVR service will cost $14.99 a month and Boxee also plans to offer what they are calling a “freemium” option, allowing users to get a limited number of DVR cloud recording hours and streaming hours to devices, before they have to sign up for a monthly service.

While there has been a lot of talk about the new hardware, little has been mentioned about how the service will record, store and stream content. Boxee’s been working on the new cloud-based service for 18 months and has an exclusive partnership with Amazon, building out their entire video ecosystem using Amazon’s platform. Unlike previous cloud based DVR services from cable companies that simply recorded everything in the cloud on their own, Boxee is relying on end-users bandwidth to record and upload content to Boxee’s network. Boxee’s says they have spent a lot of time optimizing the way they buffer the stream being sent into their network and the way they optimize the upload and storing of content. Boxee says that as long as consumers have 1Mbps of upload throughput, the Boxee cloud system will work in a very reliable fashion.

Video will be recorded using the H.264 codec, at 720p and playback will be somewhere between 1-4Mbps using HLS and delivered by Amazon’s CDN service, CloudFront. Boxee says they won’t initially use adaptive bitrate streaming, but will move to that over time. Playback will take place using a HTML5 web player, which means Boxee won’t need to develop apps for any mobile devices. While Boxee will still offer support on their current Boxee box by D-Link, the company will officially stop selling the unit. Boxee plans to offer a special promotion to existing Boxee Box customers for the new $99 Boxee TV to make the transition easier, the details of which will be announced shortly.

As to how many $99 boxes Boxee expects to sell, the company isn’t saying. But in a discussion I had earlier in the week with Boxee’s CEO, the consensus is that Boxee hopes to sell a few million boxes in the next two years. That’s a number I was happy to hear them tell me as it means Boxee’s management is being very realistic about the market opportunity and setting correct expectations. With Roku having sold under 4M units and Apple around double that to date, I think Boxee has a very good shot at selling at least a few million in the next 24 months.

Updated 10/22: Boxee said that there will be a limit on how long recordings are stored for non-paying users, but that paying subscribers will be able to keep their recordings in the cloud for as long as they like. Also, Boxee will enable 5 concurrent streams per account, so multiple people in the household can all stream different content at the same time.

Boxee will release additional details shortly on where the box will be sold and which big box retailers and online websites they have partnered with, with some being an exclusive partnership.

I’m no Facebook guru, so others should chime in here in case I’m missing something, but within the past day or so, public Facebook pages I use to be able to read, are no longer visible unless you have a Facebook account and sign into it. When I visit a public page, a pop-up window instructs me to login to Facebook or create a Facebook account. If I don’t login, and close out the pop-up window, the scroll bars on the page disappear and I can’t read any of the posts on a public Facebook page. I tried this on multiple pages, including Coca-Cola’s and they are not readable, which also means I can’t watch videos.

If this is Facebook’s new policy, it’s bad news for content owners, especially for those who want to promote videos on their public pages. While I realize Facebook is huge, not everyone has a Facebook page and Facebook shouldn’t force users to have to log into a Facebook account just to be able to see videos or other content that’s on public pages. And as usual, it seems Facebook make this change to their system without announcing it as I can’t find any kind of news of the change anywhere on their site. I don’t care how many users Facebook has, the company has no respect for their users.

The MPEG-DASH Industry Update Speed Networking Event at Streaming Media West Show in two weeks, will provide face-to-face access to the forces driving the adoption and success of the DASH standard. Attendees will be introduced to leaders from each of the attending MPEG-DASH Industry Forum member companies and given a chance to have a quick 1 on 1 conversation regarding what the member company’s DASH rollout plans are and how they “fit in” within the overall DASH movement.

The Event will be held on Tuesday Oct. 30th, at 6:00PM in the Beverly Hills Room at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, in Los Angeles CA. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Attendance to this event is limited to speakers, full conference pass attendees, and the MPEG-DASH Industry Forum special guests & panelists. So go online and register for a conference pass, enter my personal discount code of DRF1 in the box, and save $300 off the regular ticket price.

MPEG-DASH has gained a lot of attention over 2012 and this is the ultimate opportunity to engage on the topic. Conference sessions covering the topic at the show include:

C102: The Current State of MPEG-DASH in the Industry
The industry has been buzzing about the potential offered by MPEG-DASH as a complementary format that brings together the various adaptive bit-rate (ABR) specifications in use by the industry today. This panel discussion takes a fresh look at the key questions that were posed when MPEG-DASH came on the scene and sees what answers we have found. Panelists also tackle the next round of topics as we head toward mainstream adoption of DASH technology. What’s the technical reality in terms of encoding and players? Who is deploying DASH? Are there any early results in? And what can we expect over the next year?

• Moderator: Matt Smith, VP, OTT Strategy and Solutions, Envivio
• Kevin Towes, Sr. Product Manager, Adobe
• David Price, Head of TV Business Development, Ericsson
• John Griffin, Senior Director, Online Services and Gaming, Dolby Labs
•  Joe Inzerillo, SVP, MLB.com

A103: Making DASH Workable, The DASH-264 Recommendation
To make the DASH standard useful in the real world, a number of key industry players are defining a practical subset of the standard to serve as a baseline for device implementations. In this session, attendees learn what feature capabilities are available with DASH (multi-bitrate, multi-language, multi-channel, common encryption, trick modes) and how these are being defined and presented as a set of conformance and interoperability tests. If you need to ensure that DASH will work with your encoder, CDN, playback device or website, this is the session for you.

• Moderator: Michael Luby, VP Technology, Qualcomm
• Michael Stattmann, Managing Director, CastLabs
• Will Law, Principal Architect, Media Division, Akamai Technologies
• Jan Nordmann, Director, Marketing and Business Development, Fraunhofer USA Digital Media Technologies
• Andrew Popov, CTO, BuyDRM

A202: HOW TO: Creating a DASH-264 Player
With all the device fragmentation in the market, it is getting increasingly difficult to provide content to all of them equally. The MPEG-DASH specification promises to unify the field and provide a ubiquitous format, which can be used by most devices. Within the DASH specification, several different Codec’s can potentially be supported, but among the most promising is DASH-264, which uses H.264 within the DASH standard. This technical session explores how to build a DASH-264 player using OSMF. This will be most useful for ActionScript developers familiar with Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework.

• Presenter: Jeff Tapper, Senior Consultant, Digital Primates