GigaOM » video broadcasting

Netflix looks to kids to make its UI more fun

Janko Roettgers — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:00:30 +0000

Don’t be surprised if the Netflix website looks a little more like your five-year-old’s favorite toy soon. Netflix is actively looking for a Senior User Experience Designer for Kids & Family, according to a job opening posted on its site. Potential candidates are supposed to be able to “envision kids’ interfaces that are friendlier, simpler (and) more fun” as well as be “passionate about creating fun, easy-to-understand interfaces that communicate with kids on their level.”

Does that mean Netflix will launch a separate website just for kids? Probably not. Netflix has in the past experimented with delivering different UIs to different devices, but never specifically targeted any slice of its audience with a separate site. However, it’s entirely possible that Netflix wants to internally experiment with kids-specific designs to eventually incorporate some of those elements into its main site.

Netflix has added a lot of content specifically targeted towards the needs of kids and their parents in recent months, with full seasons of shows like Sesame Street, Yo Gabba Gabba, SpongeBob SquarePants and iCarly being added to the company’s streaming library. Netflix has also been toying with the idea of separating its queues and recommendations by introducing multiple user profiles for each account, which would help parents keep their Netflix front page free of too many suggestions for Strawberry Shortcake. However, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said during a recent earnings call that this change “is not going to happen in the short term.”

Netflix is famous for its data-centric approach towards design changes, with each potential tweak being vigorously A/B tested before it is rolled out to a wider audience. Some of its UI decisions have nonetheless been met with resistance. The company revamped its home page in early June to offer subscribers more instant access to streaming titles, but the changes immediately provoked thousands of negative comments. Netflix eventually rolled back some of the changes a month later.

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Sorry Hulu, Netflix still rules the living room

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:10:14 +0000

Netflix squarely dominates game consoles and other connected devices while Hulu still heavily relies on PC-based streaming. That’s the gist of some new data Nielsen published Wednesday that looks at the way viewers use both video services. It turns out 58 percent of all Netflix users now watch programming on a connected or mobile device, compared to only 11 percent for Hulu. Check out detailed device-specific data in the infographic below:

Two things are worth noting: The difference isn’t as surprising when you take into account that each and every one of Netflix’s 25 million subscribers has access to the service on connected devices. For Hulu, the picture looks a little different, because non-PC streaming is restricted to those who pay for Hulu Plus, which is only about 1 million subscribers to date.

Also noteworthy is how dominant the Wii is in the data, which doesn’t quite match up with data we’ve recently gotten from Sandvine. (PDF) The network management company revealed in a recent report that Sony’s PlayStation 3 console is now responsible for around 30 percent of all Netflix traffic, followed by the Xbox 360 with around 25 percent. Sandvine had the Wii pegged at just 10.75 percent of Netflix streaming. The discrepancy with Nielsen’s data is likely explained because the Wii doesn’t support any HD streaming, which means Wii users consume much less bandwidth.

Regardless of whether Netflix streaming gets dominated by the Wii or the PS3, Nielsen’s data serves as an important reminder that devices like the Apple TV and Google TV don’t matter all that much to the average consumer.

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Vidyo Takes Broadcasting Into the Cloud

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:45:40 +0000

Video conferencing startup Vidyo introduced a new business unit and product offering today aimed at reducing the cost of broadcast video production by making it IP-based rather than satellite-based. With the launch of its new VidyoCast product offering, Vidyo says it can reduce the cost of broadcasting over satellite by 90 percent.

Vidyo first came to market with plans to take on industry giants like Cisco and Polycom in the telepresence market, with a high-quality, desktop-based video conferencing solution based on H.264/SVC video compression technology. By pricing its desktop, touch-screen video conferencing products under $1,000, the startup hoped to beat the competition on price while retaining the same video quality that they offer for telepresence solutions.

Now Vidyo is extending that same technology to the media world, with an IP-based product that seeks to undercut the cost of delivering broadcast-quality video streams via satellite. VidyoCast can take in video feeds from any source, whether it be from a remote camera crew, affiliate studio or even a desktop or laptop video camera, and enable the production team to assemble those feeds with a central control panel and distribute them to affiliates — all from one cloud-based product suite. The startup says VidyoCast can do all this at one-tenth the cost of satellite.

To lead the new initiative, Vidyo has hired broadcast veteran Jim O’Brien as general manager of the new business unit.

Vidyo has raised a total of $63 million since being founded in 2005, including a $25 million Series C round of financing announced in April. The startup was recently awarded a patent on its VidyoRouter architecture, which it says can be used over any IP network, including the broader Internet as well as LTE, 3G or 4G mobile networks. While enterprise telepresence may be its key focus, the company also licenses its video compression technology to Google for its Google Talk video chat application.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Report: The Enterprise Videoconference Landscape, 2010 – 2015 (subscription required)

Flixwagon Does Live Vidcasting on iPhone

Chris Albrecht — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:06:30 +0000

Sure, we were a little crestfallen this week when Apple didn’t announce a video camera in iPhone 2.0. But who needs one when the industrious folks at Flixwagon just rigged up the current iPhone for live video broadcasting? Here’s the maiden footage:

It’s an unlocked iPhone, so it’s not something you can rush out and use right now, but the Flixwagon crew is hoping this proof-in-the-pudding will become more official once they get their hands on the SDK. You can check out more examples at the iPhone section of Flixwagon.

Update: Want to join the Flixwagon alpha? We’ve got your hook up. Just email newteevee@flixwagon.com and tell them what phone you have. Once Flixwagon supports that model you’ll get an invite to open an account.

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