Sezmi is a startup out of Belmont, California that hopes to win subscribers from cable and satellite providers by providing a cheaper, on-demand and real-time television viewing service for a select selection of the more popular broadcast and “cable” channels.
This new company is born from the ashes and founders of the defunct USDTV service that burned through its cash from investors such as Fox Television Stations, Hearst-Argyle and LIN TV, but ultimately ceased operations back in March 2007. Previously under the stealth name “Building-B“, Sezmi recently unveiled their new commercial name and are again trying to entice the interest of broadcasters into donating part of their digital television data stream in order to help make their business model work. Continue reading ‘Competition for Cable & Satellite? Says Who? Sezmi.’
Not many people get inside Sutro Tower, so I consider myself pretty fortunate. My current employer doesn’t have transmit facilities or other interests at Sutro, so I was escorted through the gate and into the facility by a contract engineer, John Buckham, that our SF station has who also maintains a radio station there for another employer of his.
This was a unique opportunity for a few reasons; since I don’t work there, getting access is impossible unless you know someone and can get something arranged. This is a historically interesting site and it is a unique tower engineering design that has currently weathered 25 years of use. Continue reading ‘Visiting an SF Landmark. Sutro Tower.’
Today I made the plunge and finally got off the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format fence and bought a PS3 system.
There were several reasons for this; first I did NOT buy it because I love Blu-Ray. I like that it has multiple studio and vendor support as well as about 25GB storage per layer, but the hardware for burning those discs is so new it makes the cost of production and third-party devices pretty high. That said, I have been watching Blu-Ray gain progressively more market share and seeing a number of more watch-worthy titles released on that format than HD-DVD. Also, in a less “scientific” approach I noticed a lot more people hanging around and buying from the BD movie shelf than the HD-DVD section at the local Fry’s and the shelf space dedicated to Blu-Ray movies is larger in almost all retail outlets I’ve been in that have them for sale.
One other item of note regarding the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war is that Sony already has considerable legs under the BD format with their alternate professional product line of XDCAM. This is also a blue laser format and is aimed at broadcasters and professional videographers. XDCAM has been around since 2003, well before consumer BD and the PS3 came out in , so even if the Blu-Ray consumer format somehow lost steam and died next year, Sony would continue to chug along with broadcasters and “big media” selling the same underlying technology to a different market. Just like they did when Betamax lost the Beta/VHS format war around 1988 and they sold it’s variant “Betacam” and later “Betacam-SP” to the broadcast industry becoming the defacto tape standard which is still in heavy use today. Continue reading ‘My new PS3 - Go! Go! Blu-Ray!’
For the old…. err.. “seasoned” television viewer that doesn’t understand what a “Tivo” is and still tunes in to re-runs of Matlock (after adding more tin foil to the rabbit ears), a few items just popped up on my radar I thought I would forward to everyone.
First is a website discussing the digital transition which I stumbled upon completely by accident, not because it was being promoted by broadcasters (go figure):
http://keepmytv.com/
Second is a new $40-coupon-targeted converter box finally out in the wild and you can read bout it here:
BTW, Gizmodo is a crass tech site so if reading profanity hurts your eyes don’t click the link…
Continue reading ‘DTV Transition’
For several years I have been attending the NAB convention and this year I was asked to craft a report for my current employer: ION Media Networks.
>General Observations:
The last few years I have noticed a progressive thinning of broadcast television specific technology and a steady shift toward digital media primarily focusing on its creation, storage, automation and management.The attendees are less and less broadcast engineers and more production people (video editors, sound personnel, cameramen, etc.), a lot of whom are independents and small shops. Then there are the attendees of the RTNDA annexed into NAB which, since 2003, has been entertaining in that you get to see all the 22-year-old journalism majors dressed to the nines trying to impress some news director in the hall with their résumé. Good times.
Continue reading ‘NAB 2007 REVIEW’
