Venice Project Aims For TV/Web Convergence

PreacherTom writes, "The founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are offering a sneak peak into their newest venture, The Venice Project, a video site that combines professionally produced TV and user-submitted videos with the interactive tools of Web 2.0. So, what will Venice offer to combat YouTube's dominance? Streaming video with DVD-like controls, on-screen menus of preset channels, and interactive tools to share video playlists are only the beginning. Venice's Beta will be expanded by the middle of November, with general release by New Year's Day." The article notes that "Venice" is a placeholder name and that the project will launch with new branding.

Lousy timing...

with general release by New Year's Day

Their consumer gadget will be made available right AFTER the biggest consumer buying season of the whole year? Brilliant.

Eben Moglen Quote

I love this so much:

"You don't know what the world you're living in is going to be like but you can guess some things about it: there will be no music companies in it."

*also, with any luck, no -- or fewer -- TV companies

"Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."

http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/eben-moglen-dmca-a nd-you.html [compsoc.com]

Venice offers..

So, what will Venice offer to combat YouTube's dominance? Streaming video with DVD-like controls, on-screen menus of preset channels, and interactive tools to share video playlists are only the beginning.

So, Venice will offer nothing that YouTube doesn't already offer then? It'll be all fancy with Web 2.0 controls though. Big deal. The interface is of little consequence, and arguably Venice will fall flat with their Web 2.0 gimmickery because you'll not be able to embed it in a MySpace profile like you can with Flash. The challenge to overcome with a video content site is .. well .. content. Maybe the professional content will win out, but I rather doubt it.

cheap production costs

The cost of video recorders goes down and their quality goes up. This is going to lead to the democritization of video entertainment. The only barrier to making something will be time, not money and finding distribution channels. Anyone will be able to publish. There will be an unbelievable amount of crap out there, but it will allow some really talented folks to 'break in'.

The ad companies have to be sweating bullets. If I want to watch a series, I will get the DVD. I've not seen a commercial in about 5 years. They are going to have to up the entertainment value of commercials if they want people to see 'em. Traditional TV is dying.

Content and Marketing

As long as it doesn't make any major marketing mistakes and presents its product in a reasonable manner, there's a good chance that people will buy into it (after all, the ill-conceived "WebTV" had quite a few members in the late 90s).

The real thing that will separate it from the flock is the content. I wouldn't underestimate the value of being able to watch your favorite TV shows in a reasonable quality on the web. While most geeks (i.e. Slashdot users) will say "Get a DVR!", the vast majority of people (i.e. the rest of the world) don't own DVRs and don't have the foresight to record their favorite shows consistently (or maybe they want to catch old episodes of shows that they missed, who knows?). The ability to watch any show from the past season at any time would be a great selling point. Same with being able to watch a new episode early (like the recent "Heroes" preview). If this so-called "Venice Project" can offer those sort of things, then the idea can easily sell... all of those MySpace kiddies will be posting links to their favorite episodes of "Lost" and "BSG" in their sig.

Web 2.0???

Web 2.0? Pfft. I've been testing Web 3.0 beta and it's pretty sweet. They should just upgrade now. C'mon guys, get out of the stone age.

Democracy TV

Streaming video with DVD-like controls, on-screen menus of preset channels, and interactive tools to share video playlists are only the beginning.

Oh, you mean like Democracy TV [getdemocracy.com] already has?

oh yay!

yet another non standard application to have to install and run for this content.

if it does not work without special software (I'll allow a codec install) it is crap. If I cant watch it with my favorite player or on my television via my MCE or mediaportal or whatever I choose then it will not grow very fast.

I hate skype because of the "special" damned app. phone calls on your PC is for the birds, give me a SIP hardware device instead.

Too little too late?

They're already starting out behind the gates because of the Kazaa disaster. They've been running a limited beta test for a while, but there are many other options available out there like GD [getdecocracy.com] for web based tv, or VideoPaste [videopaste.com] for adding video to your site. Also, from TFA, the line I don't care for is: "The Venice Project is designed as a vehicle for high-quality video-based ads." ... so, they go back to Kazaa, and are going to try a more "legit" way of advertising? One of the things I prefer about watching Internet Based shows is not having to sit through advertising. That's why I run a mythTV box... I just don't see this project getting too high off the ground.

University of Wisconsin doing this now

We're providing commercial TV channels, university content, and some foreign language channels to the University of Wisconsin - Madison community (in cooperation with our local cable operator):

http://tv.wisc.edu/ [wisc.edu]
http://tv.wisc.edu/about/ [wisc.edu]

The project was a pilot that turned into a production service, and is in the (slow) process of being expanded to 78 channels and adding more foreign content, including recorded foreign content so international students can watch programming that might be on at odd times in the US.

We also created a player with TV-like controls, dynamically updated channel listing, and closed captioning support:

http://tv.wisc.edu/player/ [wisc.edu]

And, for about three years, we've been doing a pilot of capturing all closed captioning content and still image thumbnails every minute from all channels, and making it searchable. It's an excellent research tool. Through a new partnership with the UW General Library System, we just added 7TB of storage and will begin archiving the video for academic use as well. (This has already been cleared by the University's legal services group, as we fundamentally believe we have the right to store content that we have already paid for (for the same population) for academic/research/library purposes.)

Information about the project, and a PDF of a recent presentation with much more information, is available here:

http://tv.wisc.edu/about/ [wisc.edu]
http://tv.wisc.edu/about/DATN_WWDC_2006.pdf [wisc.edu]

Wordplay....

So from the founders of a company that portmanteaus the words "scalp" and "hype" to give you Skype, we now get the Venice project. A project that although once being very pretty is now slowly sinking into unpleasant smelling heavily polluted waters?

sneak peak

You'd think they wouldn't be able to hide something as big as a mountain.

web and TV?

web tv web tv webtv? just like grandma and grandpa use to send their internets through the tubes.

vague buzz words

Web 2.0.

Convergence

Interactivity

Video!!

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I'm just all tinkled with excitement (yawn)

Placeholder...

"The current code name [Venice] will be replaced with a new brand..."

Well, I should bloody well hope so [sourceforge.net]!

(Though I haven't really hacked on the code for awhile, my Venice is still powering Electric Minds [electricminds.org] to this day...)