In an article I wrote for GigaOm.com yesterday entitled "Content Offerings Only Reach a Few Million TVs", I broke down of the number of non-PC related products like the Xbox 360, Roku, PS3, TiVo Series 3 and VUDU devices that are really capable of getting movies and other online video content. For my sales estimate of the Netflix player by Roku, I estimated that to date, Roku had sold 10,000 units.

Since publication of the article, I've now learned that the accurate number of units sold is closer to 100,000. While it surprised me the number was that high, it does seem possible, as that would equal about 1% of Netflix's 8.2 million customers. Considering the price point ($99) and the fact that the product's marketing is very focused, to a targeted audience, Roku's penetration rate would be higher than the average product that has only been on the market for eight weeks. Plus, once you have the Roku box, the content is free.

At this rate, it will not take too long for the Roku box to outsell Apple TV. Apple TV has been on sale for 20 months now and based on published reports, has sold a bit less than 400,000 units. Roku has sold nearly a quarter of that in only 2 months time. And with the promise of the Roku player being capable of getting more than just Netflix content down the road, this little device has some real potential to make a real impact in the market.

While online video technology has been around for fourteen years, many companies and customers are new to the technology and are just learning about the benefits. Like most of us looking to educate ourselves about a subject, we use Google. And in Google, nearly every word you type in pertaining to our industry brings up a definition by Wikipedia as the first link. While some may think that is a good thing, the problem is that much of the information on those Wikipedia pages is just flat out wrong.

The biggest problem is that too many of the pages on Wikipedia that have to do with our industry start off by saying "This article does not cite any references or sources". Then what good is it? Seriously, how is someone suppose to know if the information it contains is accurate or is just being published because the person who wrote it has an a hidden agenda? A great example is typing the word CDN into Google. A few months ago, the Wikipedia page for CDN had text that said Akamai, Limelight, EdgeCast and Itivia were the largest CDNs. That’s not accurate. Yet, looking at the person who edited that Wikipedia page gives you no details about who they are and who they work for. If anyone can go in and edit a Wikipedia page to make the info reflect what is in their best interest, what good is that doing for those new to our industry when that info is inaccurate? Today it says the largest CDNs are Akamai, Limelight and CDNetworks. But look again in another month or so and I’m sure someone will have edited it again to have it reflect what they want it to say.

Taking a look at the Wikipedia page for the term webcast, there are so many references to the technology that are just plain wrong. For instance it says "The term webcasting is usually reserved for referring to non-interactive linear streams". That’s not right. Webcasts can and often do have a lot of interactivity. It also goes on to say that "However, webcasting does not bear much, if any, relationship to the idea of web conferencing which is designed for many-to-many interaction". This is what makes me really mad. The whole idea behind webcasting is that it allows for a one to many broadcast. Opposite of this is web conferencing which only allows for a one to few broadcast. Wikipedia’s page can’t even get the basic underlying definition of the technology correct.

The webcasting page also goes on to credit people by name who founded the term webcasting, did the first webcast, did the largest webcast etc…all while not providing any sources to back it up. And a few months ago when I looked at the page, different names than the ones who are listed now were supposedly the ones who invented webcasting. And back to the Wikipedia CDN page, a few months ago, there were over 20 CDNs listed. Today, many have been taken off the list and only 11 are listed. Who gets to decide what companies are listed or not? And when it comes to some of the data that is mentioned, nearly all of the references in the notes section date back more than 4 years.

And if you want to know the history of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, don’t rely on Wikipedia’s page. While they have a whole section on the "history" of the player, apparently whoever wrote it has no idea the player used to be called NetShow or that much of the underlying technology for the player came from Microsoft’s $75 million acquisition of VXtreme and their $5 million investment in VDOnet Corp. And don’t even get me started on Wikipedia’s page for the term streaming media or this post will never end. The bottom line, none of this is good for our industry. Fourteen years later, we need accurate info on the market and we need those who are new to the technology to be able to come up to speed as quickly as possible, with the right information.

I am asking all vendors, suppliers, bloggers and those in this industry not to use any links to Wikipedia from your website, training materials, articles etc… In my eyes, Wikipedia is the most overrated brand on the web today. Where is the value in any information when it is not fact checked, contains little or no sources and can be altered by anyone for their hidden agenda. Boycott Wikipedia. Don’t use it.

Note: Some many ask, why don’t I stop complaining and actually fix all of these errors myself? In many cases I have tried and either my edits don’t show up or they do but are then taken down by someone else a short time later.

While the news and media tend to focus mostly on consumer facing content because it is cool and sexy, the enterprise market continues to have very strong growth and demand for IP based video products and services. Webcasting platforms, capture cards, hardware encoders and content management systems, amongst others products, are still being bought and deployed across all enterprise-focused verticals. The nice thing about any vendor selling into the enterprise market is that they don’t have to show customers how to monetize their content. Enterprise companies understand the value of the video ecosystem and know that using video for communications, marketing, and general business practices is just another business tool at their disposal.

I talk to a lot of enterprise companies each week and get to hear first hand how much video they are using, the products and services being deployed and what challenges they face when deploying video inside their network. If I had to estimate, about 10-15% of the readers to StreamingMedia.com are from the enterprise vertical, which I classify as Fortune 1000 companies who are not trying to monetize content. The one problem with the enterprise market is that historically, these companies are very quiet about giving out details on what they are doing, whom they use and the volume and growth they are seeing. I get a lot of details from them but rarely am able to share numbers and data, and in many cases, can’t even use the company name. But rest assured, even with the economy being what it is today, they are still spending money for many of the products and services in the video ecosystem.

Whenever possible, StreamingMedia.com features case studies on some of these video deployments and we have a whole section on the site dedicated just to enterprise video. In the coming weeks, when we move our discussion lists over to an in-house web-based system, I will also be working hard to launch and build a new enterprise focused video discussion list. There is a lot taking place in the enterprise video market and we need a good forum to discuss what is taking place.

Speaking of enterprise video solutions, yesterday, video platform provider Qumu, formerly Media Publisher, announced it has raised $10.7 million in a series C round. To date, Qumu has raised just over $18 million since 2005. While Qumu is private and does not give out any details on revenue, I estimate they will do around $10 million for 2008. And last week, webcasting services company ON24 announced it had raised $8 million, bringing their total money raised to date to just over $46 million.

Amongst vendors who are selling into the enterprise market, the two biggest trends I am seeing them focus on is the entire ecosystem problem (capture, encode, manage, publish, deliver) and offering their web based platforms via software as a service (SaaS). Without a doubt, the hardest challenge for enterprise customers is the ecosystem since they tend to manage 100% of the workflow internally across their network. Vendors know this and have been working to solve this problem for some time. But the offering of their web based platforms on a SaaS model is pretty new. It is an interesting approach as many enterprise companies already buy other software services this way and typically it enables the customer to deploy and test the offering without having to spend a lot of money upfront.

I think it is too early to know if selling web based webcasting platforms via SaaS will be successful, but to date, companies who have been offering this to the market for a short time have said that they have started to see some traction from the model. Will be interesting to re-visit this topic a year from now and judge whether this new trend is really evolving with customers.

Over at StreamingMedia.com, we’re hard at work preparing for the next Streaming Media West show taking place September 23-25th in San Jose. Once again, we’ll be having a reception for the winners of Streaming Media magazine’s readers choice awards. Last year’s awards were a smashing success, with 92 companies nominating more than 120 products, and more than 3,000 Streaming Media readers logging their votes. Winners will be featured in a special section of the October/November
issue of Streaming Media magazine as well as a video feature to be
posted on StreamingMedia.com. The deadline for end users or vendors to submit nominations closes out today so get your nomination in!

The editorial staff at StreamingMedia.com will evaluate all submissions to make sure they’re legitimate and proper fits for the categories in which they’re submitted, and the final list of nominees will be posted on July 23. Voting will begin on July 23 and remain open until August 25. Winners will be notified directly after voting closes.

Please note: I am not involved in any awards decisions so all inquires should go to Eric, the Editor of StreamingMedia.com

Last week, numerous sites were reporting that Amazon would be storing and delivering the movies for their newly announced video on demand service from the Amazon cloud computing infrastructure. As of now, Amazon is not storing or using any of it’s cloud computing infrastructure to store or deliver any of the movies and Amazon has confirmed that their Web Services group is not involved with supporting the video on demand offering. While this could always change between now and when then product rolls out of beta, today, the streaming and storage of content is being done via Limelight Networks.

This really comes as no surprise since Amazon’s Web Services offering is not setup to do streaming, does not have a global footprint and as we saw this past weekend, still has problems with major outages. Not that traditional CDNs don’t have down time, but I can’t remember the last time an Akamai or Limelight was down for fours hours at a time.

I’ve also learned that even when the Amazon video on demand service rolls out of beta, HD quality videos will not be available. No one will confirm the time frame for when HD quality will be added, but as of now, it won’t be anytime soon.

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of speculation on what Amazon might be working on in regards to their EC2 and S3 service and whether or not their AWS offering is going to compete with content delivery networks. Adding to the confusion was the fact that Jeff Bezos made a brief announcement of a new upcoming streaming service but was scant on details.

Today, Amazon’s new video on demand content offering went into beta. The new offering is not a streaming service that has anything to do with AWS and is simply a new content offering that enhances the functionality of Amazon’s legacy Unbox service. The Amazon Web Services group is not supporting the new streaming content offering and the content is being delivered by Limelight Networks.

That being said, Amazon’s EC2 and S3 service continues to be a good option for developers who want to deliver their own video and provides a cheap and flexible way to do so. The Amazon service is not going after the same size customers the CDNs are and does not provide many of the elements a CDN does. Amazon is not going to be taking any major business away from the CDNs for numerous reason.

Amazon’s EC2 service is located in the U.S. and S3 is only located in the U.S. and Europe. There is no global coverage with either service although in an interview I did this week with Adam Selipsky, VP, Product Management and Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services, he did say that down the road they will expand into the Asia Pacific market with coverage. Many customers who use CDNs due so in order to take advantage of the global delivery. The average CDN customer is also not a developer, which is exactly who Amazon’s customers are. In order to use the EC2 and S3 service, you have to be a customer who wants to be very hands on, do a lot of the work yourself and in the case of streaming, license the server software from Adobe or Microsoft. Amazon does not provide any video specific reporting tools for raw logs and AWS customers have to deal with parsing raw logs through a third party system, specific for video.

The Amazon service also does not work well for live streaming as EC2 and S3 are not setup for edge delivery and was designed for storing objects, something that does not take place when the stream is live. There are also no additional content services in the ecosystem that many customers need like transcoding, authentication or stream protection. The bottom line is that right now, the EC2 and S3 products are for a very different set of customers than the CDNs are targeting. If you are a developer that needs U.S. based delivery, Amazon could be a really good fit and they publish their pricing on their website, something no major CDN does.

What I think Amazon should do is license the Adobe Flash Media Server directly from Adobe and then rent it out on an hourly basis like Amazon already does with other third party platforms. This would enable more developers who need the FMS server to look at Amazon as an option, instead of having to go and buy their own license from Adobe.

While Amazon’s AWS service is not a fit for most of those who use a CDN today, it is interesting to see how some of the CDNs are using Amazon’s service to their advantage. Digital Fountain is building their streaming only, U.S. based CDN on Amazon Web Services and other CDNs like Voxel.net have direct integration with Amazon’s S3 API.

Note: Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, will be one of our keynote speakers at the Streaming Media West show in September in San Jose. Registration is open and all keynotes are free. Register now for your pass to see Werner talk more about Amazon’s Web Services.

Updated Post: TiVo and YouTube announced a deal today that brings YouTube content available to TiVo Series 3 customers. While it’s good to see TiVo add more content to their box, something I think they have been severely dragging their feet on, unfortunately it won’t have any major impact for either company since it is only available for TiVo customers with a Series 3 box connected via broadband. While TiVo has about 4 million subscribers, only about 750,000 of those are on a Series 3. And out of those 750,000, how many are connected to a broadband connection and not just a phone line? I know of many friends who have a Series 3 but only connect to a phone jack as they don’t have a TiVo WiFi adapter and their phone jack is near the TiVo and easy to plug into. While TiVo does not give out exact numbers on how many Series 3 boxes they have sold, TiVo did e-mail me on 7/21 to say that they have 750,000 Series 2 AND Series 3 TiVo’s connected via broadband, excluding DTV and Comcast. Since they are more Series 2’s out in the market, the number of Series 3 TiVo’s that make up the 750,000 number is far lower than that. So while the new YouTube offering is available for less than 750,000 customers, a more realistic number is probably under 300,000 if you figure that half of the broadband connected TiVo’s, if not more, are Series 2. (NewTeeVee has a video of the new service here)

While this will be nice for some customers, the majority of those who view YouTube content will still do so from a computer and not from the TV. Since the Apple TV announcement with YouTube, I have not seen any reports by either company as to what kind of viewing numbers YouTube is getting on Apple’s device and clearly it is small. This new announcement is a nice to have option, but won’t enable TiVo to sell more units and will make no impact in helping YouTube try and make money from eyeballs.