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Today I read an article on SAI about how Online video that was re-posted from Dave Rayburn’s Streamingmedia.com.  The article inferred that online video will not replace TV in the near future because Akamai finally released some numbers on the actual number of live video streams during the World Cup and the numbers were underwhelming.

My thoughts are that there are some systematic problems with online video but this should not be confused with consumer demand for it.

Online video is pre-mature because of a couple things.  First of all you can’t get a decent stream.  Now this could be the CDN’s fault, the ISP’s fault for throttling bandwidth, or the content provider’s fault for purposefully not investing in decent quality video through the internet channels.  But the truth is it goes through the same line so it’s more of a business decision rather than a technical limitation.

The counter argument of, well people prefer to watch things on TV….. I’m not buying it.  Cable TV’s menu user experience is terrible.  Boxee, Apple TV, Hulu, Netflix, every one of them has a better UI, more selection and better customer experiences.  Also, now any computer can be plugged into a TV with an HDMI cable and give excellent picture and an iPhone or Droid can be used as the remote, so saying people prefer TV is just wrong.

Just like everything else in media it’s tied to advertising and the attribution model.  TV has a great racket going on for commercial spots.  The fact that you buy on a spot basis or TRP or GRP measurement basis is just silly.  The technology is there to buy and track it better, content providers, ISP’s and CDN’s are just choosing not to do it.  Right now they have created a similar setup to homepages online.  

The truth is Cable TV could be bought like exchange display advertising and the diversity and segmentation that’s going on in display will bring in a flood of new advertisers and faster moving transactions and I also believe competition will be driven up for the premium spot buys for national premier series like American Idol spots much like Yahoo’s homepage in Q4.

Right now companies like TidalTV and Simulmedia are working on solutions for this but don’t yet have access to do the transactions and sales (to my knowledge).  I look forward to this opening up, but I’m not waiting for them.

Attribution can be done on Cable TV right now and we will begin modeling it out in coming months and I look forward to integrating this attribution model with online.

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• Akamai Says Internet Demand for World Cup Viewing Doubled over 2006 (beet.tv)
• The Boxee Box is Un-Boxed [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• World Cup Streaming Numbers Show Online Video Not Replacing TV (streamingmedia.com)
• Panache Partners with Industry Innovators in The Rising Tide Co-Op to Deliver Superior Advertising Models to Publishers (eon.businesswire.com)

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About two years ago I was turned on to Jay Parkinson a doctor practicing in Brooklyn, New York.  Jay started out operating a practice without an office.  He did everything with Apple’s suite of products.  He would charge rates based on whether  you wanted a long email, video chat, house call, or if you wanted just a quick answer, it would be covered by a general fee.

I just checked out his now company, Hello Health and he has 17 doctors working in his program and I think it’s a pretty cool concept.  The problem is that it’s so simple.  It’s what we do every day in the rest of the professional world.  If you want to meet with someone, you call them, or schedule a conference call, or have a video conference or they email you a recommendation.

Welcome from Hello Health on Vimeo.

Why is the medical community so behind and why is Hello Health so brilliant?

From a recent NY Times article:

“

But despite its promise, telemedicine has failed to take hold in the same way that other, newer, technologies have. Not because of technical challenges, expense or insufficient need. On the contrary, the most daunting obstacle to date has been a deeply entrenched resistance on the part of providers.

New technologies in health care always require a reassessment of how patients and doctors best relate to one another, a judgment call on whether the relationship, and care, is helped or harmed by e-mailing instead of calling, updating Web sites instead of mailing out notifications, blogging and posting updates to Twitter instead of publishing in medical journals. And while most doctors believe that technology can help to strengthen the doctor-patient bond, that’s not the case for telemedicine. Indeed, for many doctors, telemedicine seems to depersonalize the relationship and sabotage trust.”

- NY Times Health http://bit.ly/8pduQr

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I found this fascinating quote today:

I have recently been a fan of both RedBox (and the iPhone app) and rentals on my Apple TV.  In browsing titles, I found myself wondering just how these new age distribution channels are working with movie studios to control releases.  Mainly, I was curious how some movie are only available for sale, some not in HD, and some seemingly non existent in digital formats, specifically given the news and what seems to be increasing control leveed by the studios.  See the TechCruch post for more on the NetFlix debacle.

Mike Treon, miketreon.com

You should read the whole article.