Thanks to the very generous folks at Sling Media I have another Slingbox PRO-HD unit to give away to a lucky reader of my blog. To be entered into the drawing, just leave one comment on this post with your full name and a valid email address and I’ll pick one lucky winner at random on June 30th. You must have a U.S. postal address as I will not ship these overseas. Congrats to Jim Doyle who won the last drawing. HUGE thanks to Sling Media for the boxes!

For as far back as I can remember, nearly every video clip on the web has given the viewer the option of deciding if they want to do fullscreen and have the video fill their monitor. This option has been considered the norm in the industry for many, many years, yet for some reason, Apple does not allow videos played back in the browser via the QuickTime plugin to support fullscreen.

When you watch any of the videos on Apple.com that give product demos or visit their popular movie trailer website, there is no option to watch any video in fullscreen unless you first download the video to your hard drive. Why isn't Apple allowing web based videos to go fullscreen? For all the talk Apple keeps doing about "standards", fullscreen playback of videos on the web has been a standard for more than a few years. Maybe not a standard in terms of a programming language like the term is widely used today, but it is a standardized function that's supported by all plugins for video playback, except Apple's.

It's logical to think that Apple was originally doing this simply to force people to pay $29.99 to purchase a QuickTime Pro license, but that only solves the problem for local media. Much of the content on the web can't be downloaded to your hard drive so even if you have a QuickTime Pro license, you still can't make any videos played back in a browser fullscreen. And starting with the QuickTime 7 player, Apple made fullscreen one of the options supported in the free player. So this does not seem to be about pushing people to the pro licenses anymore.

For all the talk Steve Jobs does about the great "experience" you get from Apple products and platforms, that's not the case when it comes to QuickTime videos on the web. Watching videos from the Apple movie trailer page on only a quarter of my 15" screen, when the content is encoded for HD, is not my idea of a great web experience. It's no wonder that content owners don't use the QuickTime plugin for playback of their web based videos. Steve, you need to fix this. We deserve fullscreen video.

Yesterday, Australian based Telstra announced the initial launch of their new content delivery network across their IP backbone with nine nodes deployed around Australia. The company also detailed their plans to spend $14M over the next three to five years to further expand their CDN and cloud computing efforts by building out twelve "network and media centers" at some of their existing ethernet aggregation points. The company's new CDN was deployed over the past nine months with help from Cisco.

Telstra executives commented that the new CDN will enable them to reduce their backhaul costs, lower their network latency and give them a footprint to put content closer to the customer. Michael Lawrey, executive director of network and technology at Telstra Operations was quoted as saying, "We also have flexibility building our own CDN that we wouldn't have with the likes of Akamai."

While some might interpret this quote as an indication that telcos and other carriers are moving away from using or working with the pure-play CDNs, that's not the case. For a regional carrier like Telstra, who only delivers content in Australia, it makes a lot of sense for them to build their own CDN in-house. Setting up a CDN to cover one region is not that costly nor difficult for a company that already own the network. But trying to do it on a global scale, across many different product lines, that's a completely different story. I expect we will continue to see more announcements of regional carriers and ISPs building out their own CDN services, but we have yet to see any indication in the market that the global carriers and telcos plan to follow suit. From what they are saying, that's still a few years off.

This morning Sonic Solutions, best known for the backend white-label platform that powers Blockbuster and Best Buy, announced plans to acquire DivX in a cash and stock deal valued at $323M. The deal, which is subject to approval of the shareholders of both companies is expected to close in September.

For DivX, it marks the end of a long effort to find a buyer for the company and potentially positions their technology as part of a larger service offering in the market. The biggest concern with a deal like this is that both Sonic and DivX
are relying on the studios in order to be successful. Studio executives need to change their thinking and start offering
movies in the quality consumers want, at the price they want, and for
playback on multiple devices, but have so far been reluctant. While
DivX has a great track record of getting on lots of devices, their
commercial success has been limited by the fact that content owners have
not exactly made a lot of their content available for purchase in the
DivX format. It's been less than a year since some of the major studios
finally put some content online, but there hasn't been much mentioned
from any of the companies since then.

While I do think that there are some synergies for both companies on paper, some of the benefits that Sonic lists in their press release don't make sense to me. I see the value to Sonic in wanting to get their platform on devices, something DivX has been successful at, but don't agree that it now provides them with a, "more extensive solution for Internet video delivery including the dominant tools for content preparation in the cloud." DivX has never been successful as a stand alone video format on the web and that's not a market it can win. In fact, for all the video I watch each day, I've personally never had to download the DivX player to see any of it.

For DivX, web based video not been their focus and their success has really been on the device front where they say their technology, "resides on over 300 million devices shipped into the global market". The "cloud" based services that Sonic mentions in their release simply refers to where content is stored and how it is delivered, but that's not an area DivX has ever been involved with. Sonic may use DivX's technology to try and get into that market, but I suspect they will be best served only focusing on using DivX's deep relationships with the CE manufactures to get their RoxioNow platform on devices.

The thing that worries me when I see a deal like this though is how the release and associated documents that go with it make it look like the two companies now cover 100% of the market and somehow rule the world. The Sonic press release mentions over-the-top (OTT) video, cloud based services, retail storefronts and every type of device you can think of. I get the sense they want to be everything to everyone, for every device that can play back video.

On paper, some of the synergies between the two companies clearly makes sense. But Sonic's success or failure as a company is going to come down to whether or not the studios are willing to truly adopt digital offerings and start listening to consumers. Today's video offerings are not being held back in any way because of technology or any kind of platform limitation but rather by the studios themselves who still have not truly embraced digital.

Related:

– Sony's Day-And-Date Strategy: Stream Movies For $24.95, For 24 Hour Rental

– This Is Just Stupid: Digital HD Downloads Still Cost More Than DVDs

– Movie Studios Just Don't Get It, Part IV: Pay More For Movies On USB Drives

As a FiOS customer, I’ve been a big fan of Verizon’s service and have written about my experience with the product many times over the past few years. Recently, Verizon has been using quotes from my blog in their marketing materials for direct mail pieces as well as on the Verizon.com website. And recently, I started guest blogging on Verizon’s website and Verizon sent a video crew to my house to film how I use my FiOS service to consume video to all the different broadband-enabled devices in my living room.

With a series of three video commercials now showing up on the web, I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately from folks asking me if I now work for Verizon. It’s a fair question and one that’s easy to answer. I don’t work for Verizon in any capacity and don’t get any free services in exchange for them using content from my blog or highlighting my use of streaming in their commercials. Of course, that’s going to have some asking me why I spend time promoting a service from a vendor I’m not getting paid by? The easy answer is that Verizon’s FiOS service is just that good and frankly, I can’t think of another technology innovation over the past five years that has had such an impact on how I work and how I use the Internet as a consumer. So I’m happy to promote something that works so well.

On a day when the FCC says the average residential download speeds are typically only half as fast as the maximum speeds advertised by U.S. broadband providers, it’s nice to know that with FiOS, consumers never have to worry about what they are getting. Thanks to Verizon spending billions to bring fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), their FiOS service always delivers what they say. So while I don’t work for Verizon, I’ll continue to do anything to help promote their FiOS service as long as it stays as good as it is now.

For those that haven't already heard, the 2010 Streaming Media West show will be in a new city this year, taking place November 1-3 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, CA. This will mark the 13th year for the West Coast show and with the move from San Jose to Los Angeles, we expect the show to be bigger and better than ever.

While the show is not for another six months, I'm already actively working on the advance program and the call for speakers is now open. In addition to speakers, I'm also looking for moderators and potentially one or two workshop instructors. One of the workshops I want to add this year is on HTML 5 video, so if you can present on the topic and have prior training/teaching experience, please contact me ASAP.

I'm looking for all ideas, listening to all proposals and looking to pay
one or two people to help me program some of the show. If you're
interested in getting more involved on this level, please contact me ASAP.

With the move to LA, some might be concerned that the show might now only focus on media and entertainment subjects. But rest assured, we're still going to cover all of the business, technology and content topics we've covered at our previous shows.

With the show now in LA, and with all that goes on in the city, we're also looking to involve and work with as many local video organizations as possible. So if you know of a meetup group or association based around video, content creation etc. we'd love to hear who they are.

In addition, we're pleased to announce that in conjunction with the Streaming Media West show, we're once again having the two-day Online Video Platform Summit that was such a success last year. Hit up the website for more details on speaking and how to send in your speaking proposal.

Each year I go to plan a show, I get tons and tons of calls and emails from companies last minute who want to be involved in the event and are upset when the program is already filled. We do tons of marketing months before the event and a lot of the program has to be planned far in advance for these marketing purposes.

The bottom line is that NOW is the chance for you to have a say and make
an impact on the program. So if you have an idea, want to run something by me, have a question, want to moderate or get paid to help with the West show, the next 4 weeks is the time to contact me. You can send me email or call me anytime at 917-523-4562. I look forward to hearing from you.

If you want more details on the OVP Summit, contact Eric at 920-342-6263.

Last week Engadget reported that Apple is working on their next-generation Apple TV, described as an "iPhone without a screen" saying it will retail for only $99. The report says the device will have capacity for 16GB of storage via flash memory and will support 1080p streaming. While any Apple device priced at $99 will sell well, if Apple offers a monthly subscription service similar to Netflix, then this truly could be a game changer for the industry.

Clearly the big difference with this new Apple TV is the fact that Apple is going to focus on delivering movies via streaming for rental or via some kind of subscription service, rather than consumers purchasing the content for download. With only 16GB of storage, the new Apple TV can't hold many movies but can act as the streaming gateway between iTunes and your TV. This also make sense since Apple has already said they plan to bring a lot of their content into the cloud when they open their new data center in North Carolina later this year.

If Apple does not offer some kind of subscription based service, the device will sell well if priced at $99, but will not truly be a game changer. Just renting one movie at a time is not a big deal and won't draw in a new group of consumers. From a hardware perspective, the original Apple TV wasn't lacking any functionality, it was simply too expensive and didn't have any kind of content service consumers wanted. But in the three and half years since the Apple TV was released, we've seen Apple launch each of their new devices with some kind of content lineup.

The hardware specs for the new Apple TV is not the big story, instead, it's how Apple plans to package their content lineup in the iTunes store for the device and what content owners will let them do. Apple can't make any money from a $99 device, so we all know there is going to have to be some kind of content based service offering and my guess is that it will involve some kind of subscription service.