Video is King!

Video is getting consumed everywhere. We are not talking about network programming. It is more of consumer contributed videos.Even network programming is depending more and more on user contributed videos. Think of all those funniest videos, disaster videos, crime cam shots and so on. But what really is a tidal wave is the YouTube movement. YouTube and similar sites are supplying content to more and more consumers.

I had a pet theory for sometime now. According to that theory viewing video would become like our picking a book from a library, we choose of course, and view that at our convenience. The social media based video viewing fits that model perfectly. Look at the iTunes like stores, once again it is the library model. Video rental is becoming streaming based or downloaded. Now comes news that more and more consumers want an Internet enabled TV. That will let them view these Internet based streaming media at one's own convenient time. This Nielsen report points the following trends in video viewing. I quote form the report announcement.

• Online Video: approximately 70% of global online consumers watch online video; but North Americans and Europeans lag in adoption. More than half of global online consumers watch online video in the workplace.
• Mobile Video: is already used by 11% of global online consumers: penetration is highest in Asia-Pacific and among consumers in their late 20s.
• Tablet PCs: are expanding the definition of mobile video. Globally, 11% of online consumers already own or plan to purchase a tablet PC (such as an iPad) in the next year.
• Television: is a universally important platform for video consumption, with connected consumers in many markets spending 4+ hours per day watching television.
• HDTV (High-Definition TV): is improving the TV viewing experience for as many as 30% of global online consumers. Adoption is highest among older consumers and in North America, where HD content has proliferated.
• 3DTV (Three-Dimensional TV): will have a small but important audience: 12% of global online consumers own or have definite intent to purchase a 3DTV in the next year.
• “Over the Top” TV: televisions with Internet connections are gaining interest. About one in five (22%) global online consumers owns or has definite interest in buying a television with Internet connection in the next year.

Product Boundaries Blurring

In those earlier time products used to be very distinct. A TV was a TV, a PC was a coputer you used for computing and Internet use. A laptop was a laptop you lugged around when you hit the road and a cellphone was a phone you carried with you wherever you go!

Then things started getting complex. Cell phones started eveolving and email, net surfing became fairly common. A FM radio receiver, a digital camera, a music player are all sort of expected in a phone. What adds a new dimension is the capability to uncompress and play HD video on phone( see, TI OMAP 3430 Processor Handles Video For Smartphones). That takes a lot of processor power. It is also a short step to tag on some general computing tasks, run some applications. That's happening. In fact iPhone hyas a store dedicated to applications running on it.

Laptop meanwhile eveolved into netbooks. Smaller displays, less capabale processors, less power consumption and of course less costly applicaes came on the scene. This is the netbook category and being driven by the likes of Intel Atom processor. Can we not have a device then that is like a netbook and gives me the phone capability! Will it be any different than the smartphones! People have started promoting a category called smartbooks that fill this niche. So what is this device going to be like, going to eveolve into finally!

My own thoughts are it will be really nice to have a netbook, a little smaller, thinner format that is like a comuter, net surfer, a mobile phone of course. Otherwise it does not make sense to carry a phone, a netbook and such other multiplicity of devices. Ideally I should be able to carry one device and be able to take care of everything that we need to do on the road!

Cisco Acquires Pure Digital

Pure Digital is the maker of Flip Video cameras, very affordable video cameras. They have released a new high definition version too. One of the reason for their popularity besides the low price is that you can directly hook up on USB and upload the video to the sharing sites. Cisco has just completed a deal to acquire the company.

Combine it with the announcement that they are moving into the blade server space with their California offerings and it starts to look like these are bets against the recession by diversifying the portfolio. Thy'll have to go head to head against companies like IBM, Sun and so on. So the product they are going to offer better be good. Not only that, to be able to break into existing market they'll have to offer very clear differentiating features on their products. Interestingly IBM seems to be bent on acquiring Sun for a price of somewhere between $6.5 to $8.x billions!

Both are growth areas despite the recession. Particularly the video segment, the video share segment is growing hugely. Servers also should be growing. There's speculation Cisco is interested in personal/home video conferencing. Let's see how all this plays out!

Near HD conversion for DVDs

Toshiba lost out on the high density video recording war to BlueRay. But they have now announced a device that up converts standard DVD to HD resolution of up to 1080p. This would not be quite like HD video recorded on a media that can store it(like Blue Ray for example) but is an improvement on the standard definition DVDs. Standard definition being 480i/p resolution. The device should do well considering the Blue Ray take over of the worls is going to take tiime and until the time HD recorded media are universally available this transition product should do well. At $150 it is cheap enough to tempt people and give their collected SD DVDs a second lease of life!