Beeker Studios

On Saturday February 28th, I attended the Film & Innovation Forums: The Marriage of TV & the Internet at Cinequest. Lance Koenders, Technical Assistant to Eric Kim at Intel, and Thomas Morgan , Chief Strategy Officer for Move Networks were present during this presentation. I enjoyed the discussion, but I think the film makers in the audience who I think were a big target for this forum were a little underwhelmed by the discussion.

Lance presented a slim embedded box, that streams data over the web (?) that you connect to your TV. The content he presented to the forum, didn't seem all that engaging, as a user of boxee it felt like all they were presenting was a headsup widget, instead of actually getting me to the content destinations. The system did not integrate netflix, which I feel is a huge oversight. Perhaps they struck a deal with Cinema Now (Oh I bet that service was on the tip of your tongue, wasn't it), which brings me to the problem I see with this box over something like a PC. It's not really open, it may be cheap, and purpose built, but I felt like the service offering wouldn't be there for me to commit to it. It was clunky, slow, and the UI was meh!

Thomas works for Move Networks and promptly alerted the crowd that they are the technology company that makes network TV (Fox, ABC, etc.) companies deliver their TV shows in high-resolution video on the web. He explained how easy it was for anyone to hookup their computer with "a cable that cost $15" (his words not mine), to their tv, and watch tv shows over the web. He demoed an unrecognizable boxee like interface, that was cluttered, and played back some video, and as he put it, streamed directly from the web, no buffering. Just to make a quick point about the no buffering thing, even STREAMING requires buffering, especially if you are saturating your network connection, in any part of the chain.

The conversation quickly shifted into content revenue generation models, as they put it there are 3 ways content makes money. Al a carte (iTunes), subscription (Netflix), and advertising (Hulu). The conversation stayed on advertising for quite some time, and turned more into a cable/media delivery vs. open internet argument. There was even some sprinklings of chatter about network neutrality.

Why I think this didn't really help film makers

Someone mentioned in the audience that it's extremely hard to get a film into iTunes, as they don't really have a channel to allow single film distribution. Kind of strange since they allow this for musicians, perhaps this will change in the future. The problem is still, are people willing to "buy" a film, or "rent" a film, al a carte, with a very small window of opportunity to watch it? It seems like this model is not preferred or liked, at least not by me.

Netflix really seems to have things going right, they're open delivery is penetrating into devices rapidly, with it being integrated into Roku, boxee, xbox 360, and even directly into TV's, and blu-ray players. Netflix also doesn't have an avenue to distribute independent films for film makers. If one wishes to get their content into netflix, I can only assume they need to work with a film festival that has agreements to distribute films within netflix. As I understand they haven't distributed too many films on netflix, and even less on instant watch (probably not any). Cinequest does work with Jaman, but that service is Al a carte, and also isn't integrated into the TV content aggregation systems/services I have mentioned above.

I realize this forum was more about where 90% of people watch their films, in the living room, and where content delivery is becoming easier, and less costly, but I couldn't help wondering how the allure of having ones film distributed theatrically is so sought after.