Follow me along a brief web journey… Browsing the newly redesigned CrunchGear, I read Blake’s holiday gift suggestions that lavished high praise on Griffin’s Evolve Wireless Sound System, leading me to XM’s site to find out if they’re still ignoring us Helix/Inno customers in need of an integrated speaker solution. While they’re offering a $30 adapter for the horrible looking Belkin Boombox (sorry, Kevin), what caught my eye were the XM Podcasts. So I headed over to Orbitcast to learn more:

XM Satellite Radio is now available on iTunes. Not all of it of course (that would be silly), rather a select number of XM’s original music, news and sports series are now available as free podcasts. “By making these original XM series available through xmradio.com, iTunes and other popular podcast web sites, millions more consumers have an opportunity to sample some of the best in premium music, news and sports programming that you can only get as an XM subscriber,” said Eric Logan, XM executive vice president of programming.

This is an extremely progressive move by XM, allowing them to economically reuse content - simultaneously for both entertainment and advertising purposes. Nice!

In what I assume is a move to advertise their (recently acquired) Movielink service (and get some press), Blockbuster has paid over a million bucks to exclusively distribute Jackass 2.5 for one week. The NY Times writes:

Paramount Pictures is lurching onto the Web with its “Jackass� franchise, with what it says will be the first studio-backed feature film to have its premiere online. The hour-plus film has original material and previously unseen outtakes from the second “Jackass� movie in 2006. The new movie, made for less than $2 million, will stream for free but will have 15- or 30-second commercials before and after it plays.

It’s not entirely clear to me if this will be offered via a website (blockbuster.jackassworld.com) or if it’ll require a download of the Movielink application. However, once the period of exclusivity expires, the “film” will be made available through other online sources (iTunes, Unbox - $10-$15) and physical DVD ($30). (via Hacking Netflix)

UPDATE: The film won’t require a Movielink install. Rather, playback will be web-based and may feature the most prominent utilization of Silverlight. (Requiring a 1.5MB browser plugin on Windows or Mac OS X.)

While digging through the US patent website, I noticed that IBM has filed an application to place non-skippable DVD commercial advertisements. It’s hard for to believe that there isn’t prior art for this already but, according to the application, commercials can either be updated via the internet or they can be embedded directly on the disc:

A method wherein contents of DVDs may be restricted based upon purchased certificates is provided. The certificates allow for secured information on playback. Specifically, whenever a DVD is to be played, a certificate is consulted to determine whether the content of the DVD should be played with or without commercial interruptions. If the certificates provide for commercial interruptions, then commercials can be obtained from an online service that renders commercials on demand, or from the DVD itself. In such a case, the content of the DVD may be interspersed with commercials.

I’m usually a fan of new DVD technology, but I’ve got mixed feelings about this one. Every now and then, I’ll come across a DVD that won’t let me skip past the previews and it drives me absolutely nuts. If I’ve already paid for my content, then should I be forced to watch advertisements? It makes me feel like the studios are double dipping.

On the other hand, I could see plenty of advantages in ad- upported DVDs. There are lots people who aren’t willing to pay money to watch a DVD. If they can catch up on a series by dealing with the ads, then this technology could introduce time shifting to an entirely new audience. It could also open up new distribution channels to content providers. For example, if McDonalds included ad supported Disney flicks into their Happy Meals, I wager that they’d reach more viewers than Friday nights on ABC.

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I’ve learned to take my camera with me whenever I hit the local King of Prussia mall — every few months something interesting pops up. This weekend it was a new Sony holiday display. Display is probably too mild a word as the footprint of this thing is probably two thirds the size of my house. The big showcase is the Sony Blu-ray theater, complete with Walt Disney and Pirates of the Caribbean branding. However, there are also a bunch of PS3 stations (still battling the Wii and the Xbox) with shoppers trying their luck at different games. Click to enlarge the additional pics:

DVR powerhouse TiVo, Inc. announced that they will be offering a new service that gives advertisers detailed information customer information. “Power Watch Consumer Panel,” a partnership between TiVo Inc. and Starcom USA, fires another salvo at long-established Nielsen as TiVo attempts to further monetize the data and statistics data that their DVR service gathers.

TiVo currently sells second-by-second subscriber viewing information of television programs and commercials. However, the new announcement is specific to TiVo customer demographic data including age, income, marital status and ethnicity. Before you get too panicked about the privacy thing, note that the program is is strictly voluntary and all data will remain anonymous:

TiVo recruited 20,000 households to opt-in to the viewership panel. Because these subscribers have opted in, TiVo can associate household data with the viewership data, and hence will be able to produce program and commercial viewership reports which can be looked at by aggregate demographic and behavioral audience groups. All data remain completely anonymous.

Continue reading at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

NBC’s video streaming portal, Hulu, has entered a slightly less private beta and more details have emerged. The NY Times writes:

Hulu, now an independent company with more than a hundred employees and its own offices in Los Angeles, will begin privately testing its new service with select users at Hulu.com. NBC recently removed its content from YouTube [and soon iTunes] to make way for the Hulu introduction. All the shows are viewable inside a Web browser and festooned with advertisements. It will also begin sending its videos to the sites of five distribution partners, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace, Yahoo and Comcast.

In addition to NBC, Hulu is also working with Fox, USA, MGM, and Sony to provide full-length television content and even a few “free” movies. Though, Hulu may suffer the same problem as other online video services (such as Joost) - What I like to call the “random crap” syndrome. While there’s usually a percentage of quality video, it’s unpredictable in terms of both titles and availability. And then there’s the larger percentage content of questionable quality, such as Hulu’s A-Team and I Dream of Jeanie reruns. Given their DNA, perhaps they’ll do a better job of making entire, current catalogs of shows available. Regardless, Hulu is trapped in a web browser without even a television-friendly Windows Media Center plugin.

I’m not much of a photographer, but that doesn’t stop me from always taking my camera with me. Here are some recent gadget shots:

The music branding and advertising at Starbucks has gone completely over the top. Above is a pic of the digital release displayed in front of the cashier. I also picked up a business-card-size promotional sheet offering a free “song of the day” by entering the download code online. Makes me wonder where Starbucks will go next. (Co-op work spaces? Theme parks?) They’re clearly more than a coffee shop these days. And what about the music distribution business? Do music studios have to sell an experience rather than just a song?

Next check out what I found at Costco and a yard sale…

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Nielsen, TiVo and Snapstream Media. One of those three is well known for tracking television viewership, but the other two: TiVo and Snapstream Media (makers of the Beyond TV PC DVR software) are not as well known in this realm, but offer a more transparent and relatively useful snapshot of what Television Viewers like you and I are watching. Would you agree that Heroes and The Office are hit shows - at least better than Dancing with the Stars or 60 Minutes? Well you’d likely agree more with TiVo and Beyond TV users.

Since the early 1940’s the television and advertising industries have relied on Nielsen Media Research to measure the popularity and success of television programming. Nielsen continues to be the leading provider of this information and their list of the top TV shows by demographic are consistently highlighted in the media and watched closely by Advertisers and the Television Networks. While I’m still interested in what Nielsen is reporting as the top shows, I’m left wanting more.

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