Alan Breznick writes at Light Reading that Time Warner has abandoned an 18-month trial of their broadband TV service. The service was available to 9,000 subscribers in San Diego and allowed them to watch 75 expanded basic channels via their computer. According to the article, Time Warner states that the service was utilized by less than 1% in any given day, which "...shows that viewers don't want their whole cable lineups on their PCs." Shocking! I don't even want to watch the entire cable lineup on television.

As I read this story, I couldn't help but get the feeling that Time Warner was more pleased than disappointed with the failure of this trial.

Honestly, what did Time Warner expect? If you have the option to watch the same content via your TV or computer, its clear which version you're going to watch. Time Warner perhaps missed the message that replay television, Internet-only channels, and user-generated content are leading the online TV craze.

One point left out of the article was whether users could watch the Internet TV while not on the Time Warner network.

Online video site, Veoh Networks announced its official launch today and revealed a slew of new features with it. There is no question that Veoh is It's clear that Veoh is wasting no time to catch up to its rivals and is branching out to share the wealth its publishers.

For video publishers, Veoh has expanded its syndication offerings that lets video publishers upload videos once to Veoh and automatically syndicate them to major video sites to include Facebook; the publishers' own blogs; RSS feed syndicators; iPod; and Windows Media players. Video could already be syndicated to many other large sites including YouTube, Google Video and MySpace.

Dan Rayburn at StreamingMedia.com has some good tips when shopping for a higher-end video hosting provider. The target audience for the article should be organizations that are looking to do some serious video streaming. Some of the potential providers include Akamai, Limelight Networks, and VitalStream, all of whom have developed significant content delivery networks.

If you're a smaller organization looking to put a few videos on the web, I would check out Brightcove.

Two points left out of the article that I would have mentioned (but are quite obvious):
1. Determine how much disk space you will need, is available and at what cost for expansion
2. Determine the costs associated with bandwidth usage

TV Guide Broadband will use Brightcove to publish and manage online video for syndication to Web site affiliates across the Internet. In addition, TV Guide Broadband's video channel on Brightcove.com offers users entertainment-focused video content, including: TV Guide's recommendations for the best shows, movies and music on TV; interviews with today's favorite stars; behind-the-scenes footage of the hottest TV shows; and highlights from TV Guide Channel's live programming such as Red Carpet interviews at the major Hollywood awards shows.

About.com has added 500 new videos to the site, significantly expanding its online video initiative. Consumers will have more choices in About.com's video content which spans several of the site's key channels including: Home, Autos, Computing & Gadgets, Food, Health and Parenting, in topics ranging from basic how-to's to more specialized themes. The expanded video offering has been created by About.com Guides and a team of carefully chosen experts.

While Disney came out and stated their bright outlook for streaming high-quality video on the web, Google, of all companies, warned at Cable Europe Congress that the Internet was not designed for web TV and that such services may cripple the Internet.

"The Web infrastructure and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect," said Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology.

Can this be true? Google and the cable companies actually agree on one thing? Or perhaps this is a big ploy to get more content on Google Checkout?

However, in an article by Reuters on the subject, Google said they would work with cable companies to "combine their video search and advertising technology" with the cable networks delivery of shows. Sorry? How does this better our situation for television delivery?

Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, spoke at Disney's investor conference today and said their ABC Internet TV player has already sold out its advertising inventory for the first and second quarter of 2007. According to Disney, about 50 million requests have been made since September for episodes on their player.

The ABC Internet TV player currently shows episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Ugly Betty, and other prime-time shows the day after they air. Disney has said they will expand on that and begin including national and local news later this year.

Disney also said they will enhance the broadband player to allow for picture size and bandwidth adjustment.

We missed an article in ZDNet published a few days ago about a not-so-new project out of Adobe Labs, called "Philo". Philo is an little Internet TV platform that Adobe has been working on and could prove a competitor for Joost or even Brightcove.

Kevin Lynch demonstrated the Philo project during his keynote at the Adobe MAX 2006 conference. If you fast forward about 36 minutes into the webcast, you can see a walk-through of Philo.

Alexander Cameron shares his views in "Cutting Off the Air Supply" on Narrowstep, Joost/The Venice Project, and BT's business of DSL backhauling.

To us, this paper was of quite interest both for Alex's industry insight into BT and the UK's DSL economics but also for his viewpoint on Joost and its hurdles.

While we have remained quiet with our viewpoints on Joost during beta-testing, our feelings are much like Mr. Cameron's in that Joost will present bandwidth issues for users and must win some significant content deals before becoming anything as ground breaking as Skype or Kazaa. Then again, were Skype and Kazaa really ground breaking or were they mere pedestals created by the media and large acquisitions?

Round three of this media grandstanding may be upon us with article headlines stating "Internet TV Has Finally Arrived."

Really?

Minus the serious bandwidth issue facing Joost, one would find it very hard to believe that Joost will be the "best of both the internet and TV worlds" unless they can sign on the entertainment or sports industry. If Joost can't produce some significant content agreements in these fields and others, then it becomes a software-based YouTube with a smaller bandwidth bill.

Now onto Alex's paper...

On December 22, 2006, TV 2 Norway became the country's first broadcaster to launch an all live online TV service. The new service enables Norwegian viewers to watch all the channels in TV 2's channel portfolio live online in high quality, including TV 2, TV 2 Zebra, the TV 2 Film Channel and the new 24-hour news channel, Nyhetskanalen, which is due to launch on January 15th.

All one needs in order to watch the live channels is a PC with a broadband connection. The live channels can only be viewed from within Norway while on-demand content can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

ZIM Corporation, a mobile entertainment and Internet TV service provider, today announced it has signed an agreement with G4techTV Canada for content broadcasting on Internet TV. Through ZIM's Internet TV (IPTV) network called "ZIMTV", consumers will now be able to watch past and upcoming episodes of the popular technology call-in show "Call for Help, with tech guru Leo Laporte".

NeuLion Inc. announced a new service agreement with Switch and Data, to support its iPTV customer network growth. The announcement was made at the 2006 SATCON Conference & Expo, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

NeuLion currently operates the largest IPTV Chinese Network with KyLinTV; the only global African IPTV Network with Africast; a groundbreaking IPTV service with the New York Islanders and an association with the NHL.

Digital Rapids, through Swiss distributor VCS, completed the multiple encoding and live streaming of the award ceremony surrounding United Nations Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan's receipt of the Freedom Prize from the Max Schmidheiny Foundation.

VCS was approached by Swiss TV to provide services for the ceremony, which was broadcast in real time to a worldwide audience over the Internet.

Narrowstep Inc., the TV on the Internet Company, announced today that the British Gymnastics Association and Sportsgate Ltd. has chosen its proprietary technology medium, telvOS™, to launch their broadband TV channel www.bgtv.biz. British Gymnastics TV will provide live coverage of some of the most respected events in the U.K., making them available to the huge fan base that follows this Olympic sport, as well as developing a full schedule of programs specifically for gymnastics enthusiasts.

Yahoo! Inc. launched Yahoo! Food, a comprehensive new lifestyle Web site that will enable consumers to discover food information and content online. The new site combines content and videos from celebrity chefs, a searchable recipe database and personalization features, as well as a built-in user community around the topic of food. Yahoo! Food is the company's latest example of developing a unique user experience through the combination of social media tools and high-quality licensed, original and video content that, in turn, creates additional marketing opportunities for advertisers.