Business Deals Foreseen as Soon Opening Over-the-Top TV Floodgates
SAN FRANCISCO -- The last barrier to over-the-top transmission of conventional TV channels -- program distribution rights -- will be swept away by business negotiations over the next few years, executives of Internet- TV box makers predicted. The dissenter among them on a TV of Tomorrow conference panel late Wednesday was Sezmi President Phil Wiser, a former chief technology officer of Sony Corp. of America. His company plans to offer a subscription service combining Internet video with licensed conventional TV channels flowing over its own national distribution network. The forecasts aligned with the executives’ technologies and business models.
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“We're moving past” rights barriers to new technology companies’ sending conventional TV channels from the Internet to customers’ TV and other devices, said Tara Maitra, TiVo’s programming general manager. Only a few programmers with little clout will fail to get out of deals tying their channels to pay-TV providers, she said. Technology no longer presents an obstacle to over the top, speakers said.
“Everything will be in the cloud” in two or three years, Tim Twerdahl, Roku vice president of consumer products, said. “It’s not all there, but it’s happening very quickly.” ZeeVee CEO Vic Odryna agreed: “It’s going to get there, and a lot of it’s already there.” The consolation for cable companies is that subscribers who switch to over-the-top video will upgrade their broadband service, he said.
Not so fast, other speakers said. “It’s getting better, but it’s going to be quite a while before you get traditional cable programming” online, Wiser said. Over the top is a big problem for the TV industry, said Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee, which makes media-center software. “That breaks the whole business model that has existed for years.” Media companies make big money licensing their programming to cable, and cable companies worry about subscribers downgrading packages or canceling if they can get professional video online, he said.
The Widget Channel that Yahoo developed with Intel for interactive TV is a foot in the door for broader involvement by the company in television, said Patrick Barry, Yahoo vice president of connected TV. Yahoo will have both platform and a la carte offerings, he said. Intel plans to offer a system-on-chip for video applications based on Atom, its low- power chip for netbooks and other devices, said Wilfred Martis, director of platform strategy and planning in the company’s digital home group.
Standards wouldn’t give over-the-top TV a big boost, a couple of executives said. They're slow to create and they hold back innovation, said Roku’s Twerdahl. ZeeVee’s Odryna agreed that standards aren’t needed.
TV stations confront a crisis, with geography no longer a consideration in the reach of a video outlet, speakers said. “Their syndication rights are not going to carry them forward,” Sezmi’s Wiser said. He said their only path is promoting hyperlocal programming and viewer-community features. Even local news is becoming a commodity, said Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO.