Making Sense Of Online Video

If you are like me, you are coming out of CES with online video confusion.

Who is doing what with whom and how?

Tristan Louis has done us all a favor by putting it all down on paper (actually on the web) and outlining the details of each of the major online platforms' video strategy.

I particularly like this table:

	Apple	AOL	Google	Microsoft	Yahoo!
Allows use on iPod	Yes	No	No	No	No
Allows use on PSP	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Allow use on Windows-Media devices	No	No	No	Yes	No
Allows use on Nokia phones	No	No	No	No	Yes
Allows use on Treo	No	No	No	Limited (Treo 700w)	No

As you can see from this table, nobody is offering anything close to ubiquitous distribution across consumption devices.  As I look at this table, I kind of like where Yahoo! sits.  They seem to be taking the most practical approach, devoid of proprietary interests like iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Google seems to be relying on flash (at least according to Tristan), and that seems great for the web but lousy for everywhere else.

In any case, it will be interesting to watch all of this play out. In the meantime, I am going to work on getting my Tivo and DVD burner to produce unlocked content that I can put anywhere I want.  In the near term anyway, that seems like the best approach to me.

Comments

[stochastix]

According to their announcement (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/video_marketplace.html) Google will offer downloads in formats that will work on iPod and PSP (in fact, even specially optimized for those devices).
"iPod and Sony Playstation Portable users will also be able to download and watch any non-copy-protected content from Google Video, and even get it specially optimized for playback on their devices. Google Video Store will be available throughout the world, however purchasing premium content in the Google Video Store will only be available in the U.S."

Obviously given that all the tech companies including Google don't seem to get DRM issues right... they all want proprietary formats and that is going to make multi-platform playback near impossible.

[Justin Mason]

'iPod and Sony Playstation Portable users' ... 'non-copy-protected content'. so you'd really need another column, for "google + non-copy-protected". ;)

[Dave C]

If you want to move your TiVo content around, here's a good resource:

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/ttg.htm

Basically, you use Tivo ToGo to move the files to your PC. Then use this to free the .tivo files into an .mpg:

http://prish.com/etivo/tbr.htm

From there, the file you created can be converted for use on an iPod with this:

http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/

For PSP:

http://www.pspvideo9.com/

Windows Media Devices:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx

[ipod video converter]

Which one kind of ipod video converter software is well?