As a fan of MLB.TV, it really pains me to have to write this, but MLB completely failed by not having a service that works on opening day. Since about noon Eastern, their main MLB.com website has not been loading at all, or just gives me a background image. Nearly ten hours later, it's still not working.

And aside from the website being down for hours or now directing me to a
"narrowband" version of the website, video streams on the iPad using
the MLB iPad app look really bad. Video is extremely choppy and that's
even if I can get the stream at all. Most times I get errors of "we are
having technical difficulties processing your request" and even short video highlights don't work. Team sites, like Mets.com and others are giving me timeout errors or if they load after a really long time, the video clips aren't work and deliver blank pages.

For a company like MLBAM, who leads the industry with some of the finest quality video and user-experience, when it is working, not having everything function properly on opening day is really unacceptable and is going to create a lot of really upset fans and video subscription customers. MLB has been offering a video based service for more than half a dozen years now and having this big of an issue on opening day really gives them a black eye.

I've put in a request to MLBAM to find out what the problem is and I will review the MLB.TV app on the iPad once its working.

Update: Also interesting to note is that MLB.TV on the Roku, which worked last year, will not be working until "mid-April" this year, which came to light from an email Roku sent to customers earlier today. I don't know if the problem is on Roku's side or MLB's, but it was working just fine last year.

Update 2: I am also just now remembering that back in January I broke the news on how Swarmcast, the company who's technology powered MLB.com's Next-Def Plugin, laid off half their staff and was down to ten people. When the news came out I asked MLB if that meant they were no longer going to use the Swarmcast technology for the 2010 season, but I never heard back. I wonder if some of today's problems are due to MLB using some new technology for the first time?

Thanks to some good reporting by Jessica Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal, she's gotten Brightcove to confirm for her article that the company has raised a fourth round of funding totaling $12M. With this latest round of funding, led by Accel Partners and General Catalyst, Brightcove has now raised a total of $99M.

In a call I had with Brigthcove's CEO Jeremy Allaire just after the company confirmed the funding on their blog, I had the chance to ask Jeremy what the money would be used for and why he felt now was the right time to take another round. Jeremy said that, "now is the time to really accelerate and scale the business even faster and this round gives us even more room on our balance sheet." This round is all about acceleration and going faster and investing more aggressively this year."

While Jeremy would not talk in detail about Brightcove's balance sheet, in an interview I did with Jeremy last year, for the first time, he went on record to say that Brightcove was profitable in 2009 and cash-flow positive. Whether or not that's still the case in 2010 we don't know, but with the company growing their revenue by 50% last year and doubling the number of their customers over 2008, Brightcove clearly wasn't in a position where they needed this latest round.

While the WSJ article includes some revenue projections for Brightcove in 2010, Jeremy said Brightcove didn't comment on the "rumors" the WSJ published in regards to projected revenue, as the company does not disclose details about their balance sheet. Jeremy said the company will use some of the new funding to, "expand in more geographies, add more sales and marketing, ramp their Brightcove Express business, add additional products and look at potential M&A."

While some competitors are going to be quick to jump on Brightcove's fourth round of funding and try and portray it as negative, since it now totals a big number ($99M), Brightcove's latest round of funding is good for all the vendors in the online video platform space. In the WSJ article, which I was interviewed for, I estimated that the online video platform (OVP) space was less than $200M in 2009 with the potential to grow to $300M in 2010. There is a lot of growth taking place in this vertical of the industry and content owners are asking more and more about how to ingest, transcode, manage, monetize and track their content as opposed to just delivering it. That's all good news for any OVP vendor and the market still has a lot of growth in it.

UPS just delivered my iPad and I spent some time talking to the driver to get a sense for how busy he is. In my small community, north of NYC, he said he's already delivered about 40 iPads and has a bunch more to go. He said today he feels like he "works for Apple, not UPS". Also interesting to note is that he's not my usual delivery guy and is only working today to help out with all of the iPad deliveries.

Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications for Netflix just did a quick post on the Netflix blog saying that Netflix is in fact working on a Netflix app for Apple iPhone and iPod users. Steve doesn't say when the app will be available or how far along they are in development, but at least users now have confirmation that Netflix will be coming to more than just the iPad. While the news is not surprising considering that Netflix has plans to be on more than 100 devices by the end of the year, it's great to see them set future expectations with their customers.

This morning, San Francisco based Episodic announced via their website that they have been acquired by Google. Terms of the deal have not yet been announced and I will update this post if I hear how much Google valued the company at. While Episodic had been operating in the market for a few years, they were a small player and it's clear that this was a technology acquisition on Google's part. I've reached out to Episodic's CEO and will update the post if I hear back.

Updated: I heard back from Episodic's CEO Noam Lovinsky who sent over an email stating that, "I don't have any additional info to share right now". The email looks to be a prepared email they are sending out to anyone who asks about the deal, which comes as no surprise considering it involves Google.

In my post yesterday entitled "Many Content Owners Can't Afford To Make Their Videos Available For iPad", many readers left comments making it clear that they blame Adobe for the lack of Flash video support on the iPad. Too many simply want to disregard the additional costs a content owner has to support the iPad by blaming supposed shortcomings in Flash, even though we've seen data from tests to show that these shortcomings do not exist.

Reading many of the comments on my post it's clear that some just want an excuse to bash Flash, yet if my content was in Silverlight, I don't think they would be saying the same thing. If someone does not like Flash, that's fine, they have every right to. But their dislike for a platform gives them no grounds to stand on to say that there are no additional costs to content owners to support video on the iPad.

Yes, Brightcove and other online video platforms can re-encode the content for free, but StreamingMedia.com only has that option because Brightcove nicely gave us a free account years ago. Before that, we had to encode our content like many content owners do, without using a video platform, which is the way a lot of content owners still do it today. None of the folks who commented addressed any of the additional hosting costs that can be associated with video for the iPad. They imply that it's easy and cheap to re-encode, yet many, but not all, video platform providers charge content owners based on the number of assets in their system at any given time. So in many cases, content owners would be paying for 2x the number of video clips each month.

And for those that said I can just hire someone some college kid to re-encode the content for cheap, that's my point, I still have to hire someone to do it. Even if I only paid them $10 an hour, how many hours will it take to re-encode thousands of clips? It's not cheap no matter how you slice it.

Too many people also have this notion that "open standards" exist with video, which is flat our wrong. H.264 is not open as it is owned by MPEG LA and encoders and decoders require licensing which is something no one seems to talk about when browser support is debated. To imply that there is no cost to a content owner or that converting lots of videos for support on the iPad is easy, quick or cheap is ignoring the facts.

If Safari on the iPad supported Flash, as a content owner I would have ZERO costs. As one person said in the comments, "to purposefully want to break the whole web for your gadget is absolutely disingenuous just to stick it to Adobe." And they are right. Apple wants us to believe the reason they don't support Flash is because it's a "CPU hog", yet based on testing we've seen, that's not accurate.
This is simply Apple's way of trying to deflect the issue to Adobe when
it's has nothing to do with Adobe, the problem lies with Apple.

Yet some want to agree with Apple and complain about how "poor" Flash is by talking about CPU issues, call it "bloatware" or complain about security patches. As a Mac only user, how often does Apple put out OS X security updates? Very often. But I don't see them complaining about that. Many of these folks are probably the same people that have said that the growth we have seen in the industry over the past few years has been thanks in part to Flash and sites like YouTube. So they are quick to say how seamless Flash has made viewing video on the web, but then want to take Apple's side as to why the iPad should not support it.

If you don't like Flash, fine, don't support it and don't use it. But as a content owner, when Apple comes along and says they will keep their ecosystem closed, not allow any third party platforms and force content owners to jump through hoops just to have the "privilege" of having their content available on the iPad, that's wrong. That's not good for content owners, nor is it good for the consumer and it contributes to a poor user-experience with the device. Content owners should not be letting Apple get away with this. They should have a choice to support multiple platforms if they want to, yet no choice is given.

Without content, the iPad is useless. Yet many content owners are so quick to bow to Apple's demands and fall all over themselves just to be on the iPad that they don't look at the bigger picture of what this means for the rest of the industry. They are setting a really bad precedent.

I responded to many of the comments from this post in a new blog post entitled "Lack Of Flash On The iPad Is Not Due To Any "Shortcomings" With Flash, Blame Apple".

Updated April 2nd: Reading many of the comments on this post it's clear that many just want an excuse to bash Flash. If my content was in Silverlight, would you be saying the same thing? Probably not. You want to bash Flash, go right ahead. But you have no grounds to stand on to tell me there is no additional costs to content owners to support video on the iPad.

Updated May 28th: Sources cited by The New York Post's Claire Atkinson say that Time Warner and several other "large media companies" are forgoing what they claim is an expensive reformatting of their video libraries. So clearly there is a cost here, even many non-content owners want to argue that their isn't.

——–

Yes, Brightcove and other online video platforms can re-encode the content for free, but we only have that option because Brightcove nicely gave us a free account years ago. Before that, we had to encode our content like many content owners do, without using a video platform. So those numbers I outline are in fact very real for a lot of content owners. Many of you are also not addressing the issue of cost with regards to
hosting. You imply that it's easy and cheap to re-encode, yet many
video platforms charge content owners based on the number of assets in
the system each month. So now I am paying for 2x the number of video
clips, EACH MONTH.

And for those that say I can just hire someone some college kid to re-encode the content for cheap, that's my point, I still have to hire someone to do it. Even if I only paid them $10 an hour, how many hours will it take to re-encode thousands of clips? It's not cheap no matter how you slice it.

Too many people also have this notion that "open standards" exist with video, which is flat our wrong. H.264 is not open as it is owned by MPEG LA and encoders and decoders require licensing which is something no one seems to talk about when browser support is debated.

To imply that there is no cost to a content owner or that converting lots of videos for support on the iPad is easy, quick or cheap is ignoring the facts.

If Safari on the iPad supported Flash, as a content owner I would have ZERO costs. As one person said below, "to purposefully want to break the whole web for your gadget is absolutely disingenuous just to stick it to Adobe." And they are right. Apple wants us to believe the reason they don't support Flash is because it's a "CPU hog", yet based on testing we've seen, that's not accurate. This is simply Apple's way of trying to deflect the issue to Adobe when it's has nothing to do with Adobe, the problem lies with Apple.

——————–

April 1st: While news sites are very quick to highlight some of the big websites that are making their video content available for the iPad, what about all of the smaller content owners who don't have the resources or money to make that happen? All the talk on the web is about what CNN, New York Times and the other big broadcasters or news sites are doing, yet each day, the majority of websites I visit aren't in the top 50 list of largest portals on the web. What about all of the small and medium sized websites? Why is no one talking about how Apple's lack of support for Flash will impact them?

At StreamingMedia.com, we have roughly 2,500 hours of video in our portal. Video is a big portion of our business, yet it would cost us roughly $15k to have all of our videos re-encoded for the iPad. And we're a small site, with not nearly as much video content when compared to some of the mid-size portals. In addition to the cost for encoding, we'd also have to spend additional dollars and time to make our website available on the iPad, a cost we simply could not afford.

While the large portals can afford to be iPad ready, most video based websites are not going to be able to spend the money to reach a yet undetermined audience for a device that may or may not sell into the multi-millions in the first year. How can a site like ours justify spending upwards of $25k to support just one device on the market? While many large sites have said they will provide support for the iPad, what about sites like Zappos that by the end of this year, will have 50,000 product videos? Or how about eBay? They allow sellers to create and upload their own videos, yet I don't see them rushing to support the iPad as of yet.

For all the talk of how good the "user experience" is on the iPad, I wonder how so many people have forgotten so quickly the enormous reach that video has on the web today. Nearly every website I visit, large or small, has some form of video. What kind of user experience is the iPad going to provide when only the largest websites can display their video content? As a content owner, I want my content to be available via a web browser on as many devices as possible. Having someone like Apple tell content creators that iPad owners can only access their content if they jump through hoops and spend money for development, simply because Apple does not want to support technologies that are already ubiquitous, is bad for both content creators and consumers.