Excellent, excellent article by David Kappos today over at BusinessWeek Online talking about the need for patent reform. David gives details on the upcoming ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that is likely to have big implications for everyone affected by patents, including the online video industry.

I have been doing a lot of work for the past few years on patent litigation issues as it pertains to patents covering many different forms of digital media distribution to many different IP based devices. Having worked on numerous cases, I’ve been able to see first hand just how much our industry is being affected by patents and more importantly, the patent system. Without a doubt, the U.S. patent system is hurting many industries, not just our own.

Please read the article and keep yourself informed of what is taking place regarding patent litigation for our industry. It not only has an affect on you but in many cases it also affects your customers. I get many calls from your customers asking me patent related questions or even just a general overview of what is taking place. While I am happy to answer as many of these questions as possible, you still need to be aware from at least a high-level of what is going on and should be able to speak to your customers about what is taking place.

The call for papers for the Streaming Media Europe conference and exhibition taking place October 4-5 in London is now open. I typically receive ten times the number of speaking submissions I have available so I strongly suggest you submit your proposal early, as they are reviewed and possibly confirmed upon receipt. The submission deadline is May 11th.

We are seeking proposals and case studies from people who use and manage streaming and online video solutions and services in their organisations.

If you are working on an innovative project or if you are willing to share your practical tips, tools, or strategies for business applications of streaming technology, please consider volunteering to speak at Streaming Media Europe.

As you are all aware, the online video market is hotter than ever and our shows continue to grow each year and continue to attract more and more speakers. The demand continues to grow for speaking spots so I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your submissions in on time.

Next Saturday, April 7th there is a great event taking place in NYC about podcasting. PodCamp NYC is a FREE new media conference dedicated to podcasting, blogging, vlogging and other new/social media. Sponsor driven and led by a group of organizer volunteers, the April 7th event will feature 80+ sessions on topics ranging from how-to create online media to monetization and philosophy of Internet 2.0 technologies.

I’ll be speaking on a session talking to the business side of podcasting looking at how companies are trying to monetize their content. You can register and attend at no cost. The event is being held at the The New Yorker Hotel.

If you are producing or putting on an event in your area that ties into the world of online audio and video, let me know. In most cases, I will happy promote it here on the blog at no cost. Anything that helps to educate users and the industry is good for us all.

My earlier post got me thinking about why, in 2007, the average bitrate for a video file delivered via streaming media is still encoded in 300Kbps? Is it purely because content owners don’t want to pay more money to delivery their videos at higher bitrates? Or is the trade off between quality and price acceptable for the current content business models we have today?

Over the past 10 years, we saw the bitrates increase from 20Kbps to 37Kbps, to 80Kbps, to 100Kbps and then to 300Kbps. Yes, there is some content available in 500Kbps and 750Kbps but still very, very little. We’ve been at 300Kbps for years now and I don’t yet see a shift in that bitrate being bumped up to say 500Kbps. Why is that? Are you content owners satisfied with the quality you get now and the cost to deliver that content? Are you happy with the trade off of lower quality content delivered for a cheaper price? If that’s the case, I think that’s ok. Some trade-offs are acceptable. But it has me thinking about what is stopping the increase of what we classify today as broadband video content?

I don’t think it is a lack of capacity on the networks of the CDNs who are delivering most of this content and I don’t see the viewers having any computer or end-mile limitations stopping them from getting a 500Kbps stream today. So what is stopping the adoption of high bitrate content?

I’d love to get some thoughts and feedback to this question.

I keep reading articles and press releases that use the term "bandwidth bottleneck" and talk to how the lack of available bandwidth is somehow the factor that is stopping the adoption of online video. What are these companies talking about? There are more broadband customers than ever before, the average DSL or cable modem is between 3-6MB and there are plenty of folks like me who have 20MB or those who are accessing the Internet via their corporate LAN. Bandwidth is NOT the problem.

Yesterday, IBM put out a release about a new prototype optical receiver chipset that is at least 8x faster at 160 gigabits of data/second, than currently available optical components. I think that’s great and I’m sure down the road it will become useful. But instead of stopping there, IBM had to then use the analogy of "That’s fast enough to download a high definition feature-length film in one second, versus at least 30 minutes using the fastest available technology today." No one is even downloading movies in any volume in non-HD today, let alone HD. And if they were, it would take the average person about 3 hours to download a non-HD movie.

It’s the business models behind the creation and consumption of content that the industry is working on and at this point in time we assume nearly all of our viewers have a broadband connection capable of them getting at least a 300Kbps stream. When was the last time you even saw content, other than audio, encoded below 100Kbps? Yes, we do have some bottlenecks in this industry, but nearly all of them are ones pertaining to business and consumption, not bandwidth.

Last week, a judge ruled against Cablevision in a suit filed by Hollywood studios and broadcasters who claimed that Cablevision’s new network based digital video recording device would have broken copyright laws.

Last year, Cablevision announced plans to network digital video recorders which would have allowed cable customers to be able to record and playback shows through a regular cable box without the need to have a DVR cable box with a hard drive.

In the suit, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, CNN and Turner Broadcasting System claimed that Cablevision’s service would amount to an additional re-broadcast of their programs which they have not given permission for. Cablevision argued that since the the customer was in control of the recording and playback of the programs, and not Cablevision, that the devices were compliant.

Once again, the movie studios refuse to let customers decide how and when they consume content. When are these content companies going to realize that if they don’t give customers control, they won’t grow their business? The major studios keep complaining about the decline of DVD sales, the decline of theater ticket sales and the problem of illegal movie downloads, yet their own greed is keeping them from growing their business since they refuse to listen to what consumers want. Content isn’t king, the customer is king.

Why can’t MSNBC.com get it’s video to work for Mac users with the Firefox or Safari browsers? Everyone says that using Flash solves the cross-platform issue but it doesn’t when a site like MSNBC.com who is using Flash, still doesn’t support Mac users. I am trying to watch the briefing on the pet food recall and had to leave the MSNBC.com site to go watch it with CNN’s pipeline service. I like MSNBC.com for getting my news each day but it’s dumb that they make Mac users leave their site and force them to go to a competitors news site to get video.

There is no excuse for MSNBC.com not to be able to support Mac users when the other news sites out there have been supporting them for years. Wake up MSNBC! You are losing eyeballs like mine when I can’t get the news I want from your site. Do I really need to tell you how people are getting news on the web today?

Update: I forgot to mention. In addition to the above, MSNBC makes you sit through a video advertisement BEFORE they tell you that you can’t see the video you are after. So while they know the browser is not supported, they don’t tell you that till after you have watched a video ad, which of course seems to work just fine in the browser.