Consumer takes Control

Gary Baker is not surprised to see video content exploding on the Internet — he saw this trend coming. Two years ago, Baker founded ClipBlast, a company whose business model is based on helping consumers navigate that video content explosion.

ClipBlast's system constantly crawls the Web in search of video content and captures metadata about that content, then indexes it and qualifies it for later searches. Until three months ago, the company had found about 1000 producers of video content.

Now, Baker said, “We've gone to upwards of 50,000 producers of video content. What it comes down to is the following: The Web is quickly becoming the largest video distribution source ever known.”

That explosion of video content doesn't just include publicized sites such as YouTube but also a rapid proliferation of re-purposed content, such as the ABC-TV shows offered free on the Web the day after they are broadcast on the network. According to the Associated Press, ABC streamed more than 2.5 million individual episodes of its most popular shows, including “Lost,” “Grey's Anatomy” and “Desperate Housewives,” in the first two weeks of availability. There is also content created just for the Internet such as “Geek Entertainment TV,” an original series of interviews with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that is part of blip.TV's video content.

The availability of a wide range of original, re-purposed and so-called “long tail” or niche programming, available free on the Internet is having an immediate impact on the video programming plans of major service providers, including cable companies, satellite TV providers and IPTV players such as telecom service providers.

Industry observers say the Web video explosion is speeding the pace at which video programmers and distributors must give their customers more control over their programming choices, including when and how to watch specific content, and pressuring them to offer more programming options such as access to Web-originated programming.

The Web video explosion is driving service providers that want to sell video services to immediately address how they will combine the richness and quality of digital television with the freshness, variety and on-demand aspects of Web video, and package it all in a consumer-controlled service that is multi-platform.

“We are definitely watching and enjoying the Internet video piece,” said Paul Bosco, vice president of cable and video initiatives for Cisco Systems, which not only sells core network gear needed to increase bandwidth but also, through its Scientific-Atlanta acquisition, video gear from head-ends to set-tops. “Clearly, we see the broader shift beyond video as we used to think of it where six folks or a family would sit around the TV set in the living room. Even on the TV, there is a transformation taking place that parallels what's happening with the PC, portable video products and other mobile devices.”

That transformation includes the rapid acceptance of digital video recorders (DVRs), which allows time-shifting of broadcast and cable content, as well as the viewing of content in digital format on multiple types of devices such as video iPods, mobile phones and PCs, and the integration of multiple types of video that will include user-generated content.

“There are the high-end DVR users, and there is a whole category of folks that are very interested in Web-based delivery of video,” said Tom Kennedy, director of product management for Motorola, which developed the Follow Me TV technology Verizon is using to offer multi-room DVR service over its FiOS TV. “All of this is accelerating an environment that is much more user-driven. It's watching what I want on my time, on my schedule and not just on my TV or my PC but across platforms, as I choose.”