A VC: Television

Feb 18, 2012

ClearQAM - What It Is And Why It Matters

There are millions of homes and apartments around the country that have a TV connected to a cable but have no set-top box and no video service from their local cable provider. These TV viewers either moved into a home or apartment where the previous owner had cable and the wire was still lying around. Or they are getting their broadband Internet over cable. Either way, when you connect a cable directly to most modern TVs, you can get the broadcast channels in HD without a set top box. And in doing this, you are not breaking any laws. This is perfectly legal.

The technology behind this is called ClearQAM. QAM is a modulation scheme that allows the transmission of digital TV channels on an analog RF cable. Because of a number of rules and regulations, cable televesion companies are required to provide access to the broadcast channels in the clear - thus the name ClearQAM. This whole thing is outlined pretty well in this Engadget post from a few years ago.

There are other ways to get the broadcast channels without a set-top box. You can put up an antenna and pull down them over the air for free. But for many locations, the cable is a better way to get the broadcast channels reliably.

Why am I telling all of you this? Because the cable industry is currently lobbying the FCC for a rulemaking that would allow them to encrypt QAM and shut down this whole bypass mechanism causing millions of TVs to go dark. And there aren't many voices out there opposing this rulemaking request. Our portfolio company Boxee's is one of the few that has spoken out. Their presentation to the FCC on this matter is online and is worth a quick read.

Getting rid of QAM isn't a bad idea in the long run. But encrypting the broadcast channels is not the best way to do that. Putting direct IP access to the broadcast channels on the cables is a much better approach.

It has always been the policy of our government that the broadcast channels are meant to be freely available over the air and by other means. There is no reason to change this policy now just because the cable companies want every home and apartment to have one of their set-top boxes and a paying subscription from them.

If you would like to reach out to the FCC and let them know what you think of this proposed rulemaking, you can do that here.

Comments (View) / posted in Television, Web/Tech /

Jan 29, 2012

3D Movies

I've been to a bunch of 3D movies now. It seems to be all the rage in the movie theaters these days. I have to say that I am not a fan. I have yet to go to a 3D movie where I didn't want to take the glasses off and watch in 2D. That doesn't work, but I sure wish it did. And I've been to the films that people say are the best of the 3D medium (Avatar, Hugo). So it's not that I haven't been to the right films. I just don't think 3D improves the experience in any meaningful way.

What's worse is that 3D films cost more to see in the theaters than 2D films so you get a worse experience for more money. And judging by trailers I've seen in the theaters recently, it seems that Holywood is using 3D as an excuse to reissue some old favorites with a 3D facelift.

I feel like 3D is a gimmick. One the other hand the new HD display technologies like OLED and quad-HD are getting us to crisper and higher definition displays that produce some of the same effects of 3D without the gimmicky stuff.

I'm hoping 3D will turn out to be a fad and that wearing glasses in the theater (and god forbid at home) will be something we look back on in ten years and say "did we really do that?"

Comments (View) / posted in Film, Television /

Jan 19, 2012

Boxee Live TV

Last week I stopped by our portfolio company Boxee's offices to catch up with the team. On the way out, they gave me a "dongle" and an antenna to put into the back of the Boxee Box in the conference room in our office. I did that earlier this week and now we have live HD TV coming into our conference room over the air.

Boxee showed this off at CES last week and here's a short one minute video from The Verge showing how it works (with a 20 second pre-roll).

When I set this up in the USV conference room, the Boxee Box found 53 channels being broadcast in HD over the air. We have the basic broadcast channels, CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, plus channel 9, 11, 13, and a whole bunch of other channels I never knew were broadcast.

If you don't have cable and are relying on the Internet for your video entertainment, this is a great way to get additional content for free. It reminds me of my childhood when we connected a TV to an antenna and turned it on and we were watching TV coming in over the air into our home.

The Boxee Live TV dongle and antenna will be available shortly. You can pre-order it here. You do need a Boxee Box to make this work.

Comments (View) / posted in Television, Web/Tech /

May 20, 2009

Best Thing I Saw Today

I saw this clip today from Peter Hirshberg's TED talk from a few years ago. I don't know the exact context of this interview. But they were talking to 14 year old girls about their thoughts on computers and TV. My favorite part is where they ask the girls if they want to run a TV network when they grow up.

Comments (View) / posted in Television /

May 17, 2009

Youtubing

Yesterday afternoon Josh and his friend Harry were hanging out after coming back from playing basketball all morning. They were on the couch in the family room but the TV wasn't on. They had the kitchen laptop on the couch with them and were watching videos on youtube. The Gotham Gal and I looked at them and observed that we were looking at the future of television.

Later, after Gotham (as Howard Lindzon refers to her) and I got back from a wonderful dinner at John Dory we sat in the family room and fired up the mac mini and Boxee on the big screen TV. We had seen a cute film yesterday early evening before dinner called Management and there was a Three Dog Night song in it called Never Been To Spain. So we searched YouTube for Never Been To Spain and watched a few videos of the song, including a 1972 live version by Elvis Presley in Vegas.

That led to an hour and a half of me VJ'ing our way through dozens of great YouTube videos. We watched the New Pornographers do a great live version of Adventures In Solitude (also featured in the Management film). That led naturally to Neko Case doing Letterman and a few other Neko Case live videos.

Then we watched a bunch of old videos of MGMT when they were called Management and were students at Wesleyan.

And from there it was a romp through a bunch of Of Montreal live shows.

And then we ended up at La Blogotheque for about a half dozen of their videos ending with the incredible version of The National's Start A War outside under the stars after a wine soaked dinner in france.

#40.3 - The National - Start a war
by lablogotheque

As we headed off to bed, I remarked to the Gotham Gal that we had just participated in the future of television.

Comments (View) / posted in Television /

Technorati Tags: boxee, music, television, youtube

Feb 18, 2009

Why Hulu Should Embrace Boxee

For those that don’t know, Union Square Ventures is an investor in Boxee and I am on the board. For the past several weeks I have watched Boxee's management try their hardest to convince Hulu that Boxee is a big step forward for Hulu and Hulu's content partners.

Unfortunately, Boxee has yet to be successful with that effort and later this week Hulu content will disappear from Boxee. I hope it is a short separation that leads toward a long and happy relationship. Boxee's management is committed to working with Hulu to make that happen as Avner, Boxee's CEO outlined on the Boxee blog.

Boxee is a browser optimized for the 10 ft experience. Much like mobile browsers on phones, Boxee renders the content it finds on the web in a way that optimizes it for the device it runs on (in Boxee's case that is the TV). Boxee is also an RSS reader optimized for the 10 ft experience. Content owners may initially see broswers and RSS readers optimized for TV viewing as disruptive and threatening, but just like mobile browsers are the friend of content owners, so are TV browsers. And Boxee is by far the best TV browser out there for a host of reasons that I outlined in this post when we made our investment in Boxee.

Here's how I came to understand the power of Boxee.

I used to watch Hulu on my living room TV in the Safari browser:

Now I watch Hulu on my living room TV in Boxee:

It's the same content on the same device coming through the same pipe and the only difference is safari is a browser optimized for a computer with a keyboard and a mouse and Boxee is a browser optimized for a TV and a remote.

I spent some time this evening reading the comments on the Hulu blog post. I commend Hulu for being open and transparent about this decision and allowing the community to discuss and debate this decision out in the open. That's the way to do this kind of thing. Naturally, users are upset. There are over seventy comments already on the Hulu blog and over two hundred comments on the Boxee blog. As I tweeted earlier tonite, I hope that Hulu and its content partners take the time to read these comments and think about them.

There's a consistency to the comments and it is confusion first and foremost. Hulu users don't understand the distinction between watching Hulu through Firefox or Safari and wathicng Hulu through Boxee. And many of them are coming back to watching TV because they can watch over the internet, when they want, and how they want. They feel liberated by Hulu and Boxee and see them as a match made in heaven. Which they are. And I sure hope that Hulu and its content partners come to that realization quickly.

Comments (View) / posted in Television, Venture Capital and Technology, Web/Tech /

Technorati Tags: AppleTv, Boxee, Hulu, Television