For Immediate Release
March 8th, 2010

Thriller Media Group, LLC announces the general availability of the Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM) – Compatible with most content delivery networks, Flash Media Server, Wowza, Windows Media Server, and more!

Palm Springs, FL:  Thriller Media Group(TMG), LLC announced today the immediate availability of a top-of-the-line streaming Internet Video Encoding box, The Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM).  This encoder supports all major streaming formats, including; Flash Media Server 3.5, Windows Media Server, iPhone live video, QuickTime/Darwin, RealMedia Helix, and Wowza.  It’s also compatible, Influxis, Live Stream, Multicast Media Suite, Justin.tv, uStream, and more!  The encoder will work with Akamai, Limelight, Edgecast, Level3, Bitgravity, Highwinds, Amazon Cloud, and others.

The Thriller ULTIMATE encoder (TM)  is available for rent or purchase for live webcasts, webinars, video conferencing, internet broadcasts, sporting events, corporate functions and more!  The encoder boasts a speedy CPU, plenty of RAM, ample storage, and most importantly professional hardware analog to digital encoding, all packed in a box much less than 1 cubic foot.  Miguel Dunkley, TMG President and Co-Founder says, “we found that although Digital Rapids, Viewcast, and Newtek make some of the best hardware out there, they are just too expensive for the average person to afford.  We set out to build a portable, powerful device which could compete head-to-head with the best at a fraction of the cost.  We believe we’ve achieved our goal.”.

The Thriller ULTIMATE Encoder (TM), supports component, composite, S-Video, balanced and unbalanced audio.  The device also sports USB and Firewire ports to support digital camcorders and even basic web-cams.  No other encoder on the market can support all these devices. TMG will even pre-configure and test the encoder for you before sending it out to ensure it’s ready to go out of the box.

An optional feature is the addition of the Thriller Ultimate Presenter.  This feature will allow easy integration of slide shows, images, and any other media into your broadcast.  Easily add titles, transistions, and multiple cameras to your presentation. 

TMG also offers on-site encoder management.  If you feel more comfortable having an encoding engineer on-site during the event, TMG will hand deliver the encoder, set it up, work with your A/V crew to ensure that all components are functioning.  The company also offers live event archiving, post-production video editing, post event video hosting, Flash and Silverlight player development and streaming media consulting services.

“We’re very excited about this”, says Dunkley, “No on else in the industry is offering this type of service.  We’ve talked to countless organizations who are looking to do 1 or 2 live events per year and can not or will not justify spending ten thousand dollars on encoding equipment.  This way, you can have the best of both worlds;  use a professional hardware encoder and achieve a broadcast quality live stream, but don’t invest the capital and depreciate a piece of equipment which is going to sit in a store room 11 months out of the year.”.

About Thriller Media Group, LLC
TMG is a sister company of SIGISIS, LLC, a company that provides cutting edge web and graphic design services.
Contact information:
Miguel Dunkley – miguel@rentanencoder.com
http://www.rentanencoder.com
(561) 856-3332

The habits of US visitors to online TV sites reveal that online TV-viewing acts as a replacement for DVR (digital video recorder) viewing, according to research from Nielsen.

Online Video – The New DVR?
The broader usage patterns suggest that online video is, for the most part, a replacement of DVR use, or used by those who do not have immediate access to TV. TV network content online is primarily used to catch up with programming, rather than as a replacement for TV viewing.

When asked for reasons they watch TV shows on the internet, 54% of respondents said because they forgot to watch a specific episode when it aired on TV. Another 47% said they are catching up on a current season of programming, 33% said they are catching up on a previous season, and 32% specifically said they forgot to record a show with their DVR or TiVo. Only the bottom three answers, another household member watching another program at the same time, and watching while at work or traveling, could be considered reasons that replace watching TV in the traditional manner.

Online TV Viewing Dominates Web Sessions

When an internet session involves viewing TV, the viewing of TV tends to dominate the session. Overall, 73% of a respondent’s internet session that involves TV viewing consists of TV viewing. That number climbs to 75% of men’s sessions and drops to 69% of women’s sessions. The 2-11 age group has its internet sessions least dominated by TV viewing (50%), with ages 65-plus devoting the second-least amount of time (59%). Respondents ages 25-34 devoted the most of their internet sessions that involved TV viewing to TV viewing (79%), barely ahead of 18-to-24-year-olds (78%).

Online TV Viewing is a Lonely Pastime

Online TV viewing is a mostly solitary activity, according to study results. A combined 84% of respondents never or rarely watch TV online with one or more other people.

Reused TV Ads Perform Best

Despite the efforts of digital advertising specialists to devise clever, quirky internet-only ads, online TV viewers seem to prefer repurposed TV ads, at least in the food and beverage category. In the areas of general recall, brand recall, message recall, and likeability, repurposed TV ads for food and beverage products came in first with respondents, followed by web original video ads and web original flash ads. Repurposed TV ads held the slimmest advantage in the likeability category.

Online Video, TV Viewers Have Purpose

Despite Nielsen’s findings, according to a research report from Knowledge Networks, online video and TV viewers have at least one similar habit. The report, “How People Use Video Navigation,” indicates that 44% of TV viewers and 56% of online video viewers engage in “purposeful viewing,” or going to watch with specific programs or content in mind.

Viewers Still Prefer Live TV

Eighty-six percent of respondents prefer watching TV on their television sets live, as opposed to using a DVR or on-demand feature, according to a recent Deloitte survey. Fewer than 10% said they prefer watching the same content online, though an increasing number are doing so. Potentially foreshadowing an increasingly central role for the TV, 65% of respondents would like to be able to easily connect their home TV to the internet so that they can view videos or downloaded content.

About the Survey:Nielsen collected online panel data of US visitors to online TV sites (ABC.com, CBS.com, CWTV.com, Hulu.com, or NBC.com) from January 4-February 4, 2010.

from: Marketing Charts

It’s not rocket science, but it’s not pre-school either.  Here are a few things to be aware of when preparing to deliver mobile video.  Everything from formats, resolutions, bitrates and delivery methods.

Devices

Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android… Your audience may be coming to you on any one of these devices. So how do you decide which device to produce content for?  It’s not easy.  Fortunately with every new generation of mobile device, more and more standards are set.  There is almost 1 certainty now, all of these devices will play a 3GP or MP4 formatted video.

Not all devices are equal however.  Each one of these phones has a different resolution screen and runs on different provider networks.  Although, all the major cell providers now support 3G in most parts of the country, 3G is not readily available.  Also, 3G speeds vary from provider to provider and from location to location.  You can not count on your audience being able to support a 768Kbps stream.   Also some mobile users will be watching on a WiFi connected device which means they could support higher bit rates.

So what do you do then?  There are some packages out there which will supply device detection and then you can redirect the request to an appropriately formatted version of the video.  There are some hardware devices out there which will encode the video on the fly (Ripcode) this could allow you to have one high quality version and then re-encode it as needed.  You could also just build for the lowest common denominator and hope for the best.

What ever method you choose, you need to remember that to get a high quality video you don’t need a very high bit rate since you are watching this on a small screen.

Delivery Apps

Some companies are designing specifically for the iPhone since statistics show that 80% of all mobile Internet usage comes from the iPhone.  Obviously YouTube was right out of the gates with a special iPhone app.  There are some other iPhone apps lilke mDialog which caters to Indi and foreign films.  If wouldn’t take much to write an iPhone app which basically browses a database of avilable videos and then plays them through the iPhone video player/QuickTime player.  This is a simple and elegant solution.  It can brand your content and keep visitors coming back for more.

You could also write an app specific for the BlackBerry and Android (G1) and feel confident that you’ve got you bases covered.  Also since your visitors will be using an app specific to a device you can direct them to a specially formatted version of the video for that device.

Normal Website Video Delivery

So you don’t have the resources to develop a device specific app?  That’s ok.  You can build a webpage specifically for mobile devices, you can even get a .mobi domain if you want.  The trick here will be to format your video to support the largest range of devices or ask your visitors to choose a link for their device.  As I mentioned before you can also use device detection software to figure out what kind of device is visiting you page.

How to encode and format my videos

As we discussed 3GP and MP4 are the widest supported formats amongst mobile devices.  So choose a format you’re comfortable with and start encoding!  Use this table to help you gauge screen resolutions

• iPhone 480×320
• Blackberry Storm  480×320
• Blackberry Bold 480×320
• Blackberry Curve 480×360
• Blackberry Perl Flip 240×320
• TMobile G1 – 480×320
• Samsung Jack 320×240
• Palm Trio pro 320×320
• HTC Touch Pro 480×640
• Palm Pre 320×480

The worst thing that will happen if you produce a video in the wrong resolution is the image may become distorted when displayed on the phone.  It won’t be the end of the world, but if it’s paid content you will probably have to insure that the right video is being delivered for the right phone, so choose wisely.

Streaming vs Progressive Download

Chances are you don’t have a Darwin Streaming Server or a Flash Media Server at your disposal.  A CDN or specialized service will have access to this type of server.  You could certainly install your own, but make sure you have the bandwidth to deliver to a mass audience.  Be careful considering Flash as delivery method today.  There is limited Flash support on phones, most don’t support it, including the iPhone!  If you stream via Flash Media Server then you must have a Flash player, you can not point a browser to a .FLV and .F4V file and expect it to play.  Your best option for streaming today is to use a Darwin (QuickTime) streaming server, it can stream 3GP and MP4 files as well as MOV files.  You need to be careful about streaming higher bit rate videos to a mobile device.  If you get a device on an Edge, 2G network, or older PCS network then it may not be able to support more than 256Kbps or so.  Only a true 3G connection and good one at that would be able to support a 768kbps or higher bit rate.

So you should consider a progressive download delivery instead.  This way no matter what connection the end user has, the video can be delivered.  But consider this, a 50MB video delivered at 256Kbps will take approximately 27 minutes to download, will your audience stay that long?  I would recommend using a well connected CDN to deliver your mobile content to ensure that the file gets to the device as quickly as possible.

For more information on the differences between HTTP Progressive download and Streaming click here

Conclusion

I hope this short briefing is enough to encourage you to start pushing out mobile content.  Since mobile devices are simply a wireless computer and since mobile browsers are getting better and better you don’t need to worry too much about how to deliver a video.  You just need to ensure your content is in the right format and bit rate to allow maximum exposure.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)

The online video delivery experience

When delivering online videos there are generally two distinct ways to do it. HTTP Progressive Download or Streaming. You may assume that all videos are streaming, but you’ll be surprised to know that most aren’t.

So what are these two methods? How do they differ? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? Why would I want to use one method over another?

Progressive Download
All web servers are capable of progressive download. This is merely the method of a video file being delivered via HTTP to a browser. This is similar to someone downloading a file from your website. In fact the video is delivered in the same manner that an image, a CSS, a JS, PDF, or any other file on your web site is.

The real difference is that media players can begin to show the video while it’s downloading. For example, a FLV file being delivered via HTTP Progressive download will begin to play in your Flash Player as soon as a little bit of data is received by the browser. The same is true for Windows Media files. Quick Time will wait until the entire file is downloaded before it plays, unless the QuickTime player on the PC/Mac is set for progressive play. So be careful when posting QuickTime videos.

It’s quite obvious when a video is being delivered via HTTP Progressive Download. You will typically see the little status bar grow as the video downloads. You won’t be able to move the scrubber button past the amount that has downloaded already. This makes it impossible to jump to the end of the video before that portion has downloaded. If you have a slow web server or limited bandwidth or the end user is on a slow Internet connection, then it’s possible for the enduser to notice buffering.

Buffering occurs when the download can’t stay ahead of video. The video will stop while it downloads more. If you pause the video and it allow to download a large portion, then you can watch the video uninterrupted. In either case, this is a poor enduser experience, this is when you would consider using a CDN.

There is a technology called Psuedo or Seek streaming. This method utilized TCP/IP Range Requests to allow the user to jump to any portion of the video and the player will make a range request of the file to download that portion. This method is usually only for FLV videos and requires special services, or servers and custom Flash players to function.

When a video is delivered via HTTP, it is actually downloaded to the end users computer. This is good and bad. It’s good because if the person watches the video again, it’s already cached on their computer. It’s bad because it makes it extremely easy for someone to steal your content.

Finally, if someone only watches the first minute of your video but doesn’t stop the download, the browser will download the whole file and you will pay for the delivery of the file even though the person didn’t watch the whole thing.

Streaming Video
Streaming video requires access to a streaming media server. Some servers are Flash Media Server, Wowza Media Server, Windows Media Server, Darwin Media Server (QuickTime), Real Media Server. These servers usually require licensing and may cost several thousands of dollars.

Some well known streaming protocols are RTMP, RTSP, and MMS.

When a video streams, it is being sent via UDP protocol to a player on the end users compter. The user will have the ability to fast forward or rewind the video. The video isn’t being downloaded to the end users computer so it is less likely that the content will be stolen. Also if the user only watches 5 minutes of a 30 minute video, then you only pay for the delivery of 5 mintues, not the whole video.

The biggest disadvantage of streaming over progressive download is if the user watches the same video over and over you will pay for the delivery of it each time.  Videos are also streamed at what ever bit rate they are encoded at.  Keep this in mind when creating HD quality video.  8Mbps video may sound and look great, but most homes can’t sustain an 8Mbps connection.  If you have really high bit rate video, consider delivering via HTTP.

Most web hosting providers or Content Delivery Networks (CDN) will have streaming media servers available to use. Historically, Flash video was more expensive to deliver than other forms. Recently prices have compressed and you will find that it costs about the same to deliver Flash or Windows Media files. In the past I would have said if your video is more than 10 minutes in length deliver it via Stream and less do progressive. Since prices have come down, I would consider streaming for any length video since streaming typically begins to play faster than progressive.

If you are looking at using a service such as a CDN or Cloud Computing and they say you can stream your videos, confirm with their tech support that they are utilizing a streaming server and not just offering bandwidth.

If you are delivering Flash videos, then you should be delivering via RTMP or RTMPE protocol for streaming and http for progressive. Windows Media uses either MMS or RTSP. Quicktime and Real Media use RTSP.

I hope you find this article of interest? This is a good guide to help you through deciding to use streaming delivery of videos or HTTP Progressive Download.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.  As always I ask that you support our sponsors.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)
Top Content Delivery Networks which support Streaming
* Limelight Networks
* EdgeCast Networks
* CDNetworks
* Level3
* Akamai