Earlier this week I outlined why I think cable (and by cable, I mean satellite, telco TV, etc.) are doing a great job with innovative new products like their iPad apps that include both on demand and live content. 2011 was a pivotal year where we saw that the future is not tied to a set-top box or a single device. Unfortunately, there is less innovation happening on the business side of things. We are still years off from a free market for TV programming. The film industry offers some compelling options now for digital distribution beyond even Netflix.

Today we announced the general commercial availability of App Cloud, our second major product. You can learn all about it here. This post is the back story for why we built it.

Let’s begin with a few somewhat controversial assertions:

I was on a fun panel at Digital Media Wire’s Future of TV conference just before Thanksgiving. The panelists were a mix of old and new media.

Mobile content consumption is on the rise, and online video is a big part of this, driven by the propagation of smarter mobile devices, Wi-Fi, as well as faster and more affordable 3G data plans. Morgan Stanley found that video already accounts for 69% of mobile data traffic globally. 

According to analyst firm Telsyte, nearly 90% of all mobile phone users in Australia will have a smartphone as their primary device in 2015. up from just under 50% in 2011. That equates to 18.5 million smartphone users.

Apple drew a line in the sand when it announced that iPad and other iOS devices would not support Flash runtimes. That decision had a big impact as far as web-based video is concerned. At the time, nearly all online video was built on Flash, and in response, video producers like ourselves scrambled to provide alternative solutions to support mobile playback on whatever device video appeared on.

The Brightcove Product team is pleased to announce the release of Brightcove 5.2.2. We are excited to provide your end users with a better viewing experience on Apple devices.

Everyone is a-buzz with excitement for Apple's latest announcement: the iPad 2. Over at Brightcove, we're pretty excited by fact that so many of the new features contribute to video activities on the device, whether it's watching, producing, or sharing video. 

Today we announced that Mobile MUM has chosen Brightcove to launch a new edutainment service for children. The interactive content available through Mobile MUM will be delivered across Apple and Android devices via Brightcove and includes a variety of popular family-oriented shows licensed from NCircle entertainment, the nation's largest independent distributor of children's programming.

Brightcove CEO, Jeremy Allaire, was interviewed earlier this week by the Washington Post to get his perspective on the growing net neutrality debate and about how Internet service providers should be able to create faster lanes and charge consumers or content providers to improve the quality of service.

The Q&A article with Jeremy, published today on WashingtonPost.com and also in this Sunday's print edition, hits on several important issues:

A few weeks ago, Google released an online guidebook to help answer some of the most basic (and therefore most important!) questions about the nature of the web today. Illustrated by Christoph Niemann and written by the Chrome team, "20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web" is an interactive web-based book built using only HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS.

It's Cyber Monday, everyone! And this year, the online holiday retail boon seems to be spreading out over the entire holiday season, as consumers become more comfortable making their purchases online.

Back in March, Brightcove announced early support for HTML5 experiences. And Brightcove has supported HTML5 in a basic form since 2008, when we introduced support for the H.264 format.

Brightcove recently announced the release of Brightcove 4.2, a substantial revision to our platform. Among the product changes (which you can read about here), there’s one in particular that is tremendously valuable for Express customers: HTML5 smart players.

Today, we released an updated version of the Brightcove iOS SDK (version 1.2.1).

I really enjoyed this article over on Silicon Alley Insider, the commentary and Henry's sweet double-negative quote which pretty much says it all. "I see almost no chance that this is NOT the future of the TV business." Similar to something our founder Jeremy Allaire said to me in late 2004 when he convinced me to leave Comcast for what would become Brightcove. TV of the near-future, which is already here for some, will look a whole lot more like the rest of the Internet than TV of today.

It's another milestone week for Internet TV.  A few thoughts on two important introductions, and how Brightcove differs and enables themes from both.

NBBC is NBC's effort to move from the packaging/programming business as a broadcaster and into the realm of distribution for other media programmers.  Following a model we pioneered starting last year, NBBC seeks to offer content owners a means to distribute their content through third-party websites, and gain a share in advertising revenue sold by NBBC or the third-party sites themselves.

Coupled with some recent national press, and with Apple's spectacular announcements, the amount of interest and discussion about the future of Internet Television has really exploded. The popular son, the iPod, has garnered most of the press, but I personally found Apple's entrance with Frontrow to be a lot more exciting.

"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position." - Bill Gates, May 12, 2005.

Trent Reznor has recently released a song from the upcoming NIN album "With Teeth" packaged together in GarageBand format. (Download from here)

by Russell Beattie
1 March 2005

"TiVo plus NetFlix might be nice if it ever comes about. But honestly, I don't need another hard drive and low-powered computer sitting on my TV, I just need it to play the video that my computer is serving up. Is there a device out there which does this already?"