At the Streaming Media West show, on November 8-9 in LA, (#smwest) we've got Rob Roskin, Senior Manager of Video Operations and Emerging Technologies at MTV Networks doing a hands-on presentation entitled "How-To: Technical Set-Up of Live Streaming Production". This was one of our best rated sessions at our last show as Rob will provide tips and tricks, best practices, and lessons learned regarding the technical set-up of live streaming production.

Learn how to stream multiple formats from a single encoder, use social networking overlays, leverage adaptive bitrate streaming, and transition between live streams from multiple camera angles using multi-encoder synchronization. Come learn how to deliver interactive, high-quality experiences for your next live event from one of the leading content companies on the web today.

I've been a customer of Verizon's FIOS service for more than five years and I've written a lot of posts here on the blog talking about how just good their Internet and TV service is. As good as it may be, in today's fragile economy, cable TV is a luxury for many people. The economy isn't great right now and consumers are trying to save money whenever possible and cancelling cable or downgrading their service to a lower tier is one of the many options they look at to save costs.

But apparently Verizon seems to think the economy is great right now and has decided it's time to raise rates by $15 a month. For my triple play bundle, the price is jumping from $95.99 a month to $109.99 a month. Verizon isn't offering any extra bump in speed for that price and in fact, when I called the company, they suggested I could keep the price I currently pay by downgrading my Internet speed from 25Mbps to 15Mbps. What a crappy sales pitch. So Verizon is basically saying that my rates don't have to go up, but I can now only get about half the speed I use to, for the same price I have always been paying. This is Verizon's best sales pitch? This is how they value customers who have been with them for years?

When companies make really bad mistakes like this, at a time when the economy is doing so poorly, you really have to wonder how the execs who make these decisions get to keep their jobs when they are so out of touch with the market. I guarantee that plenty of Verizon customers are going to cancel their service and switch to someone cheaper or downgrade their service and pay Verizon less each month. It's one thing to raise rates by $5 a month, but to raise them by $15 a month, that's simply bad business and it's going to come back to bite Verizon you know where.

I use to tell people all the time how good Verizon is, how they should use FiOS and that cable was really no alternative. But when Verizon thinks they can raise rates by $15 a month, and only guarantee that rate for one year, not two, they can no longer be trusted.

Update: Someone suggested I try calling a supervisor, which is always a good idea. So I called back to speak to one, but after waiting on hold for 2 hours and 9 minutes, I hung up.

Update 2: I called Verizon the next day and complained about the rate increase and they gave me a $5.99 credit each month. So at least now the rate increase is only $9 a month instead of $15 a month.

Asian telcom provider KDDI has announced it will spend $167M to buy an 85.5% stake in content delivery company CDNetworks. The company said it will use the acquisition to strengthen its online content distribution services in Asia. CDNetworks did about $99M in revenue last year and said that revenue has grown 20% a year since 2007. CDNetworks had been looking for a buyer for over a year, so the deal really doesn't come as much of a surprise and it makes sense that a company based in Asia would be the likely buyer. Last year, CDNetworks changed the focus of their company from delivering video and CDN services to focusing mostly on web acceleration solutions.

The speaker lineup for the Streaming Media West show (#smwest) in LA next month is now finalized and we've got an awesome lineup of confirmed executives. Content owners, syndicators, over-the-top platform providers, CE manufacturers, enterprise organizations and more will all be on hand including:

• Facebook, Netflix, Hulu, Starz, Miramax, Amazon, Disney, NBCUniversal, CBS Interactive, PBS, Turner Sports, Sony Pictures, AOL Video, Yahoo!, Hearst Interactive Media, MTV Networks

• Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communication, Shaw Communications, Western Digital, TiVo, Roku, Fanhattan, Sling Media, Samsung, Chumby, New York Times, Nielsen
  

• Google TV, Revision3, MLB, VEVO, Adobe, Cisco, Google Search, Ericsson, comScore, South Park Digital, Break Media, Microsoft Advertising, Adap.tv, Qualcomm, blip.tv, Sony Entertainment

• Relativity Media, Funny Or Die, Fine Brothers Productions, Machinima, Mekanism, Olga Kay, Gorilla Nation, OMD, Ensemble, IGN Entertainment, Feedcompany, DBG

• Toyota, GE, Oracle, NASA, Genral Motors, Wells Fargo, Lockheed Martin, Kaiser Permanente

To go along with our lineup of speakers, I've also got some great moderators at the show including those from CNET, TechCrunch, GigaOm, CableLabs, ReelSEO.com, Variety and WatchMojo.com.

We will have OTT platform demos, CE device demos and of course, lots of hands-on sessions on how to create, capture, manage, protect, monetize, deliver and track video, live and on-demand.

Early bird registration prices end in three days but you can still register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which will save you $300 and get you a ticket for only $595. We're also giving away a free Roku 2 HD player with each platinum, gold or combo pass ticket purchased – while supplies last.

This morning, enterprise webcasting provider Qumu announced it had been acquired by the Rimage Corporation (RIMG) for $52M in a cash and stock deal. (Disclaimer: I was a minority shareholder in Qumu. More on that below.) With Qumu expected to do around $15M in revenue this year, the deal values Qumu at roughly 3.5x revenue, not a bad valuation in today's market. Founded in 1997 under the name Media Publisher, Qumu focuses on selling a software platform for creating and managing live and on-demand video inside the enterprise, with more than 100 clients globally. This is a very similar acquisition in size to the one we saw in March when Polycom acquired Accordent Technologies for $50M.

This time around however, the company doing the acquisition is probably one that most people have never heard of. Until this deal, I had never heard of Rimage but after speaking to the company over the weekend, on paper, this deal makes a lot of sense. Headquartered in Minneapolis and founded in 1978, Rimage provides hardware based digital publishing solutions to archive, distribute and protect content on CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. The company also has a virtual publishing platform to allow their customers to securely deliver videos, documents, audio files and images to multiple devices.

Rimage has more than 20,000 customers and specializes in the retail, medical imaging and law enforcement vertical markets in North America, Europe and Asia. The company's digital evidence and surveillance solutions are of particular interest from agencies including the Dept. of Justice, Hamburg Police and the Minneapolis PD. With the acquisition of Qumu, Rimage estimates they will do about $87M in revenue this year and the company is currently profitable.

Qumu will be a wholly owned group of Rimage and will keep it's own branding and identity as well as the current management. To date, Qumu has primarily focused on business in the U.S. and thanks to Rimage, will now be able to go after a much larger market, including companies in Europe and Asia. At Frost & Sullivan, we just published a report on the market for live webcasting inside the enterprise, which we are expecting to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 24% in the next two years, giving it a market size of more than $250M globally. That's a lot of business for Qumu to go after and with the resources Rimage has, not to mention the deep customer base that Qumu can now cross-sell into, Qumu has a good shot at capturing a larger share of the enterprise video market.

Disclaimer: In 2005 I sat on an technical advisory board for Qumu and was given a minority share of stock in the company. All of my shares were sold to the Rimage Corporation and I no longer have any ownership in either company.

Updated: I've added a photo below of the new WD TV Live player with the Roku 2 on top so you can compare the size.

For awhile, Roku use to be the only $99 streaming media player in the market that had built-in WiFi, support for 1080p and a great lineup of content. But this morning, Western Digital announced an updated version of their WD TV Live streaming player which now trumps Roku in terms of functionality. The new WD TV Live media player has built in WiFi, versus their previous model which didn't, full support for 1080p and supports local playback of content via USB.

While the Roku also has a USB port and supports the local playback of content, the WD TV Live supports more media formats than the Roku including AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/ MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS and WMV9. Wetern Digital's player also has content apps from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Facebook, YouTube, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Pandora and others and also says they are the first device in their category to support Spotify.

I've gotten my hands on one of the new WD TV Live units and will be doing a full review of it shortly. Also, if you will be at the Streaming Media West show in LA on November 9th, executives from Western Digital will be doing a demo of the new device at 1:45pm. You can see those details on the show's agenda page here and that session will be free for anyone to attend.

This is a great time for consumers as there are now three new $99 streaming devices in the market with the Roku 2, Sony SMP-N200 and now the WD TV LIve player. And that's not all. Before the year is out, there will be two more $99 streaming media players released to the market from some other companies, details of which I will talk about when I am allowed.