Free video hosting service at Telemak

The success of free video sites such as YouTube (Google), Yahoo! Video, DailyMotion (France) or GarageTV (Belgium) has led Telemak to provide a new service offering the best quality online videos via a single distribution service to a variety of popular video sites. Contact us to see how our streaming engineers can help you optimizing the distribution of your professional videos.

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Broadcasters and not operators should finance Mobile TV

Ingrid Lunden reports after her interview with a Vivendi executive that the battleground between telcos and broadcasters for Mobile TV domination is emerging. According to Vivendi, the broadcasters, and not the mobile operators, should be financing and distributing Mobile TV.

Most of the mobile TV initiatives that have been launched so far in Europe have been spearheaded by mobile operators. Telemak has built and still operates the very first Mobile TV platform in Belgium. Mobistar (France Telecom) currently has over a dozen of Mobile TV channels in the mobile air.

Although Mobile TV services have not made a lot of profit to the operators, it is in the hands of the broadcasters to work closely with the operators on mobile advertising models in support of a free service and new television formats which appeal to a generation of urban and mobile users.

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Telemak is an official Apple QuickTime Service Provider

Telemak is mentioned on Apple's website as one of their QuickTime Service Providers. Telemak is one of the only companies listed in all 3 categories: Content Delivery; Production and Encoding. What Apple says about there service providers:

A host of QuickTime service providers can assist you with any QuickTime task, from content creation to delivery. Whether you need to create a multimedia CD or webcast a corporate speech, these companies can provide valuable expertise.

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Mobile Video Services Worth $17 Billion By 2012: Report

By James Quintana Pearce

ABI Research has predicted that the global market value for mobile video services including video mail, video calling, and video sharing services, will grow from $1 billion in 2007 to over $17 billion by 2012. This represents a compound average growth rate of 74 percent. That's a pretty good figure (although I'm not sure if it includes pure content services), but it's a lot less that ABI was quoted as predicting two years ago when the figure given was “250 million people are expected to be watching mobile video by 2010, generating some $27 billion in sales”. Interestingly, if you do an unsophisticated calculation of multiplying the $17 billion figure given by 74 percent you get about $27 billion for the year 2013. Anyway, hopefully it indicates some of the hype is going out of the market and the predictions are coming down to reasonable levels.

According to ABI, the industrialized regions of North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific will command 90 percent of the video services revenues. (release)

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Telemak staff at BBQ

Some days you just need the time off. We went for a great BBQ in Ecaussines and had some extra fun. As people say, no comment...

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The Real CDN Market Share Numbers

Dan Rayburn writes on his blog about the real market shares of the CDN (Content Delivery Network):

In his eyes, the worst data that is routinely quoted in the market in all forms is the percentage of market share that any CDN vendor has in the market. None of those numbers are accurate because they are not backed up by any real data simply due to the fact that CDN providers and content owners do not release the majority of their data to the public or to research houses. For all those research reports you see about the size of market share, the number of streams delivered etc... all of the CDNs will tell you if you ask them that they provided ZERO data, other than what is already public, to the analysts who write the reports.

In two different articles about content delivery vendors last week, one said Akamai had 60% of the CDN market share and the other one said 80% market share. Which one is it? That's a big difference in a market that is a few hundred million dollars. I see reports that say Limelight Networks has 10% market share and I also hear numbers up to 25% market share. So which is it? The answer is, no one truly knows. And the question we should be asking is why does anyone care? Does size or market share equal long term success?

Recently, when speaking with CDNetworks they said they had 8% of the market share for CDN services and that Limelight Networks had 9%, based solely on revenue. When I asked where those numbers came from, the said from a Frost & Sullivan report on CDNs and they included a slide in their presentation showing the data.

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Web 2.0 in under 5 minutes

See how Web 2.0 affects your life already today. Is it really the future or just another marketing scam?

DVB-H Mobile Video Standard Gains Support Around the World

Plenty of challenges lie ahead, but the recent push to settle on the standard in the EU gives a boost to DVB-H's viability and long-term prospects.
In mid-July, Viviane Reding, the European Union’s commissioner for information society and media called on member states to agree upon the DVB-H standard for the delivery of mobile broadcast television.

DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld, in its simplest terms enables the delivery of television to mobile devices via the broadcast paradigm of over-the-air TV, which supports any number of simultaneous users, vs. streaming or downloading, which are often limited by the capacity of servers delivering content. (See a more detailed definition here.)

DVB-H isn't the only technology vying to dominate the potential multibillion-dollar mobile TV market, and as such the EU's decision has met with criticism, especially from the camps of competing technologies, as noted in this article. Their claim is that the market should determine a winner, and that government intervention may stifle innovation.

One of the first casualties of this announcement looks to be the UK-based Movio mobile TV service offered by BT through a partnership with Virgin Mobile. The Lobster phone that offered access to this service was built on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), a competing standard for the delivery of mobile television. While other concerns plagued the service, this recent announcement by the EU was its proverbial nail in the coffin.

Elsewhere in the world, there's been a rush to invest in DVB-H networks:
— A pilot launch in Hungary by Antenna and T-Mobile Hungary
— Trials and deployments across East Asia powered by UDCast
— A build-out of a DVB-H network in Moscow by VimpelCom
— The launch of the first commercial mobile TV service in the Phillipines
— The introduction of a new Nokia phone with DVB-H support in India.

Despite all this investment, DVB-H does have hurdles to overcome, in particular having the right spectrum available through which to deliver its broadcast signals. This article dives into what's going on in Australia regarding trials of DVB-H and the eventual launch of commercial services.

The challenge with spectrum is that DVB-H wants to ride in the 700MHz range, but in most countries that spectrum is already tied up with analog over-the-air TV broadcasts, including the United States.

Change is afoot, though, as countries that have not yet made the transition to digital broadcast TV are making moves to do so. This is perhaps best evidenced here in the U.S., where Tuesday FCC announced the rules for the upcoming spectrum auction, which will sell off that valuable 700MHz spectrum that's opening up with the upcoming transition to digital broadcasting to the highest bidder.

The U.S. isn't sitting around waiting for this spectrum to open up, as there have already been efforts to get DVB-H off the ground, though so far with limited success.

Earlier this year, Crown Castle International began testing its DVB-H-based Modeo mobile TV service in New York City, delivering six channels of live video and eight channels of audio. Despite a push to invest millions of dollars into this effort, last week they closed up shop, leasing access to the spectrum they were going to use to two private equity firms.

There's still hope for realizing success with DVB-H here in the States, though, through an upcoming trial by Aloha Partners of a service they call Hiwire in Las Vegas. On July 17, they announced their initial roster of content, which includes seven channels from Discovery Communications, six channels from MTV Networks, two channels from Turner Broadcasting, and a handful of others, including Fox News, the Travel Channel, and the Weather Channel. You can download a PDF of the release here.

No word yet on when this trial will actually launch, but with the high profile failure of Modeo, anyone interested in realizing DVB-H here in the States will need to pay close attention to the outcome herein.

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Christophe Lenaerts at IBC 2007 MPEGIF Master Class

Christophe Lenaerts, Founder & CEO of Telemak, has been asked by the MPEGIF to participate in the IBC 2007 Master Class.

The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) will present an informational Master Class at IBC2007 focused on “Next Generation Television Technology and Business Models”.

Operators of new IP-based television services and the technologists enabling them will exchange their views on trends and technologies that are changing the way digital multimedia is created, compressed, stored, delivered and monetized. IP is the technology that is finally creating the converged information delivery infrastructure and an ecosystem is emerging, with new video and audio codecs, new middleware and content protection methods and completely new viewing experiences.

IPTV was initially associated with PTT and Telcos video services delivered over DSL. However, cable operators’ implementation of IP-based Switched Digital Video (SDV) provides the same unicast-based personalized services to compete with IPTV over DSL while at the same time, freeing up further bandwidth for High Speed Internet.

However there are still questions surrounding Next Generation Television that delay investment and launch decisions. This Master Class, as in previous years at IBC, will provide information to help organizations make important decisions. Service operators adopting new IP-based video technologies will share their experiences to date. This session will be an interactive session in which heated debates are expected and audience participation is encouraged.

Christophe will join the speakers of the 3th roundtable:
New Video Applications & Services

Next generation media creation and delivery technologies are enabling new services, which include, Improved Video and TV on Demand (ranking, positioning, sponsoring, preferences, interactive, self produced etc), Seamless integration of traditional TV, Personal & anticipated content (local and regional, educational, affinity and special interest etc), Video Advertising (relevant & transactional), Mobile TV, Mobile VOD and many other applications. Can we assume that the most compelling content for video while away from the home or office will be live content? Or is cached content such as movies going to be the way to keep the kids quiet in the back of the mini-van? Can standards really help simplify an increasingly complex ecosystem?

Information:
FREE FULL-DAY CONFERENCE
Room A, RAI Convention Center, Amsterdam

Press release
Thursday, 6 September 2007, 10:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

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Mobistar selects Telemak to develop their mobile TV platform

Mobistar, a Belgian leading telecom operator, part of the Orange group, has renewed the trust in the knowledge and services of Telemak. Recently we increased their live mobile TV offer with “Cartoon Networks” & “Playboy TV” on top of the 40 (20 UMTS, 20 EDGE-technology) other TV Channels already distributed via Telemak. More channels are being deployed as we type. If you are interested make sure you are a Mobistar customer, buy a Edge or 3G phone with video streaming capacity, and get started.

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Welcome to the Telemak blog

Telemak has created a new blog. We will use it to post company information and industry news. Come and check regularly.

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