What the heck would we do if we didn’t have TiVo or DVR’s. Half the shows that we watch that get canceled would never be watched by anyone. Then they’d be canceled… Ah… hmm.
TiVo just got a bit more addictive, or enticing, if you will.
YouTube and TiVo have come together in a joint venture so now you can actually peruse YouTube on your broadband TiVo sets and you won’t even have to get up from the couch anymore… uh ho. And this is TiVo’s first streaming video provider partnership. For the moment though, this will only account for 1/5th of the nearly 4 million TiVo subscribers.
TiVo has deals with 60 other internet sites that provide content to TiVo. These deals account for 27 million downloads through the service. According to Nielsen / NetRatings, (Yea, Nielsen again) on a monthly basis, YouTube is watched by 68 million people, who stream an amazing 3.8 billion videos. That averages out to around ~55.9 videos viewed per person, per month.
That’s nuts.
To date, the movie rental gadget Amazon Unbox has been the most popular gadget on TiVo. I’m expecting the YouTube feature will be a pretty addictive option and probably overtake that toy, but it depends on the people. Face it, there’s some OK stuff and there some ridiculously good things out there too. For me I can log in and dig up stuff NASCAR stuff on Dale Earnhardt Jr., or Sr.. Or I can dig up some past PBA tournaments and watch those. In other words, YouTube can be a quick visit, or a real time sink. I put my own time sink out there of my dog chasing roller coasters. ( Entertaining to me, but to most, who cares.)
It seems a pretty brave move on TiVo to partner up with Google’s video arm of the web, YouTube, as they’re always finding themselves under the legal gun as over-zealous members tend to post material that isn’t theirs, and the search engine monster Google finds themselves constantly in “conversation” with lawyers about the rights of some of the posted videos.
But as Google puts it, TiVo is only a window for the videos the users post.
Believe it or not, I see something good in this new partnership for us, the fans of the science fiction genre.
(Continued…)
This could actually be a good thing. Traditionally, Google has not been able to make any profit off of YouTube. If through this venture, YouTube (Google) and TiVo figure out how to create profits from this partnership, this could launch a new era that creates profits for the marketing forces behind networks via online video. In other words, television shows like Journeyman or Jericho would have more of an impact with the marketers and become the properly recognized successes that they are.
Its an odd recognition of something I detest, yet quietly, I root for. My head hurts.
Have some history and Statistics:
Google:
In 1993, there were approximately 100 websites in the gigantic web called the internet. Wow, imagine the potential!
Larry Page and Sergey Brin came together and created a web page ranking system that tracked adjoining links, creating a kind of family tree map of the websites on the internet. This process was hosted on a piece of equipment called BackRub. By late 1997 Page and Brin obtained the funding necessary to move their project from the Stanford campus and into a friend’s garage.
That garage has expanded out into several server farms that run stripped down, low-cost linux machines. I’ve personally seen one of these farms and they are eerie quiet. They’ve pulled all the fans, and taken the cases off the machines and run them “open-face” to take advantage of the buildings A/C systems. Estimates say they run approximately 450,000 servers around the world. Geo-location helps them serve the world more efficiently.
The core of the page ranking system from 1993 is still an integral part of the Google search engine today. Combined with their marketing / advertising schemes, they make an estimated $10 billion annually.
YouTube:
Believe it or not, YouTube isn’t that old. It was started in February of 2005. Though Google claims that the service is not profitable because it’s hard to nail down a marketing niche, there are intangibles related to this service. And they better be pretty big intangibles. It’s estimated that the costs of providing the stored video’s is~ $1 million a day and that 10 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute!
Sources: HollywoodReporter.com, Telegraph.co.uk, Techland.blogs, nsf.gov, baselinemag.com
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“What the heck would we do if we didn’t have TiVo or DVR’s.”
Well, as someone who doesn’t have one, I can tell you that I’m still using a VCR. When that inevitably wears out, though, I have no idea. I doubt I’ll be using a DVR, though, because I do not want to have to pay a monthly service fee just to be able to record my shows.
As for Youtube on these things, interesting idea, I suppose, but aren’t the videos going to be a little too grainy on a full sized TV screen?
FlameStrike: I have 3 VCR’s in my place… and I too am waiting for the day these don’t adorn some store shelf somewhere.
They’re getting so rare that I was hard pressed to find a cheap one the last time I had to replace one.
I’ve been thinking about the DVR or TiVo route but not sure which is the better way to go.
YouTube has added options for playing hi resolution versions of the video’s online, when they are available in such and that is possibly, in my assumption, will be delivered in hi def by default. (Well, if I were them that is.)
Bruce and FlameStrike, you two realize it is the 21st century, right?
Nooooo…. when the heck did that happen?
I tend to use what I know until it breaks and there are no more. I think an interesting example would be that I just bought my very first mp3 player… man, those are cool!
So there ya have it. I ain’t on the forefront of technology… someday… I might accidentally end up there. But for now, I’m comfortable with the whirrr sound of fast forwarding!!
If the 21st Century is going to require me to pay a monthly fee to record my TV shows, I’ll stick with the 20th Century. That and the fact that my VCR still works are the only reasons I’m still using a VCR.
DVR capability on a satellite box adds about $5/month to your bill and once you use it you’ll never go back.
Vic
$5/month is more than I’m willing to pay to record something. Especially when I can pay once for a VCR or DVD recorder and pay once every few months, if that often, for the blank media to record on. That seems like a better deal to me than $60 a year or more, presumably depending on the service.
*Heavy Sigh*