KIT digital |
The Convergence Conundrum
Verizon’s FIOS TV service announced a rate hike this week, which coincides with their announcement at The Cable Show that they were going to be rolling out a mobile video app called Viewdini, which searches through content from Netflix, Comcast, Time Warner and others (but not FIOS, interestingly enough. At least not yet.) The app allows you to look for a particular show or movie, find it and then stream it to your mobile device. This comes on the heels of the telco’s recently confirmation that they are done with FIOS build-out for now, and are concentrating instead on fill-in: gai
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The Assault Continues: Four New Consumer-Centric Video Technologies
It wasn?t too hard to predict that once every permutation of text-based social media had been explored, would-be entrepreneurs would shift their attention to video. And while ?social TV? has become an all-purpose buzzword these days, this spring has seen a couple of notable consumer-centric introductions First off are the competing social video services Viddy and SocialCam. Both of which take the cute-puppy-video meme to the next level. While users are encouraged to upload their own video and share it with their Facebook friends, the primary use of both sites seems to be sharing new cute
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I?m a GPU, how about you?
This piece, from London-based Fearghal Kelly, is the first in a series of posts from KIT’s international team focusing on more technical issues. Introduction It?s easy to get distracted by the glossy black shells and colourful interfaces of the many thousands of video platforms in existence today. As consumers and users, we often lose sight of the advancements that get us here. KIT digital is right in the middle of building these platforms and we are fortunate enough to work side by side with the key technology enablers. Underneath the usual 3LAs (Three Letter Acronyms) like Digit
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Companion Devices: Roku vs Apple TV
One of the more interesting side effects of the rapid growth of Netflix and other OTT services is the equally rapid growth of devices made specifically for watching OTT services on your big screen TV. Roku is the biggest indie player, followed by Boxee. Roku gets less PR than Boxee, which seems to be constantly adjusting what exactly it is they do, while Roku has remained a straight up connection device. I have owned a Roku device for about six months now and there?s a lot to recommend about it: it’s cheap (around $50 for the entry level) small (about the size of my fist) and
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Multiple Screens, Multiple Personalities
We spend a lot of time thinking about how people watch TV now, how they?ll watch it in the future and what the best way is to get them to watch more of it. One of the questions that we wrestle with, as a global entity, is how much regional preferences play into the equation. For instance, while Americans and Europeans take the iPad for granted, local import taxes can triple the price for viewers in other areas, who turn to Xoom and other Android devices. We?re also cognizant of the different habits of Western viewers who grew up with ?57 channels and nothing on? and those viewers who g
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It?s A Hit: Press Around Our New KIT Social Program Guide
We’ve been getting a lot of great press around our new Social Program Guide and wanted to share some highlights. Lost Remote, the white-hot Social TV site, was first out of the box with a lengthy article by lead writer Natan Edelsburg, who cited the ability to instantly see the which friends are watching which shows as his favorite feature. Beet.tv, whose Andy Plesser has made a name for himself as the tech world’s leading interviewer, filmed a great in-depth with KIT Global COO Alex Blum, where they discussed the social program guide and KIT near term roadmap. Mari Silbey reviewed
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KIT Digital working on 11 Latin American TV Projects
This article, by Phil Anderson, originally ran in Business News Americas Video management software provider KIT Digital expects to end 1H13 with 11 commercially active OTT or IPTV projects in Latin America, executives told BNamericas. “We have 10 large infrastructure projects going on now, apart from [already active] Telecom Argentina,” said Charlie Deane, KIT Digital’s OTT solutions director for Spanish-speaking markets. “Some are very advanced, already in internal beta-testing today. There are others that are going live in 2-3 months, and others for which we’r
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Beet.tv Interview with COO Alex Blum
Global COO Alex Blum was interviewed by Beet TV’s Andy Plesser about our new Social Program Guide and other initiatives during this year’s NAB. It’s a great overview of everything we’ve been up to in the drive towards productization
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Announcing The KIT Social Program Guide
Finally, after months of hard work and preparation, it’s here: the KIT Social Program Guide or SPG. What Is An SPG? It’s a Social Program Guide- a white label product that lays social functionality on top of a pay-TV provider’s EPG so that viewers can see what their friends are up to and then act on that information… by actually changing the channel or hitting “Record.” Hence “social” program guide. We’re emphasizing the program guide end of things because the genesis of this product is our belief that people rely heaviest on social data
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NAB 2012: The Five Things You?ll Be Hearing About. (I Think.)
While NAB is due to start in about 12 hours, I wanted to do a quick rundown of the sorts of things we expect to be seeing there: 1. Social TV Apps: The Pets.com of 2012. Lots of VC money being thrown at any and every permutation of “social TV,” 99% of them suffer from two big problems: they don’t interact with each other and they don’t interact with the TV set. Anyone who solves those problems will be drawing huge crowds. 2. Ahhhhh! Netflix!!!: The astounding success of their streaming service caught everyone (including Reed Hastings) by surprise as it flew in the fac
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