Not really sure what to make of this, other than being personally disappointed. I’m a big fan of Brightcove’s personal services, providing much better quality than YouTube. I never liked putting my personal videos up on YouTube, especially clips of friends and family. And for mixing a few clips together, Aftermix was a more than adequate mash-up / non-linear video editing tool. I never thought that enough people were using Brightcove that these personal, unmonetized streams and pages would be such a financial burden as to shut it down. But they have been realigning themselves towards their core competency - providing top tier publishers with the best technology and distribution platform. The rest of us get the shaft.

That said, here’s my email from Brightcove’s support team this morning:

Dear Brightcove.TV member,

Beginning December 18, 2007, we plan to end support of direct consumer uploads to Brightcove.TV. As a result, you will not be able to upload new videos to Brightcove.TV after December 17, 2007. But videos you have already uploaded to Brightcove.TV will remain available on the site and through your Brightcove.TV channel. Videos you have embedded in other sites and blogs will also continue to play.

If you have a Brightcove Platform or Network account, which means you use the Brightcove Console, then you will still have the option to promote videos on Brightcove.TV.

Brightcove.TV will continue to be a guide to great video from Brightcove media and business partners. The site will have new videos added to it daily from these partners and these videos can be saved as favorite videos in your channel.

If you work for a media company, marketer, non-profit, or business and are looking to purchase the Brightcove platform to publish and distribute video on your own site, please visit the Brightcove Products Overview section of our website.

We appreciate your interest in Brightcove and apologize for any disruption this change may cause you.

Sincerely,
The Brightcove Team

Ben adds: Brightcove’s Jeremy Allaire in a blog post today points to the collective 120 million uniques a month that visit their video network as evidence of the demand for professional content. They have hit the big time and it makes sense they should want to stop giving away bandwidth for free.

For those still seeking free distribution of higher quality video than offered by YouTube there’s no shortage of sites still happy to support you. Vimeo and Viddler are good places to start.

You’d think that people would learn. Conference after conference, panel after panel, article after article, the pre-roll conversation rolls on. And, from my humble observations, it feels like we’re making some progress. The discussion isn’t just about the format being good or bad, but has moved into targeting, ad-to-content ratios, appropriate types of content, and protecting the user experience.

Turns out, though, that some people simply refuse to listen. Maybe it’s a last gasp of desperation from a desperate company. Maybe they didn’t sell these ad units. Maybe…..I dunno. But if you thought I had a bug up my ass about :30 second pre-roll, today’s bug is twice as large.

Clicking on a quick news story about the shooting of the Redskin’s Sean Taylor (link to text-only story from me!), I ran into a 1:02 long pre-roll ad for Levitra. The actual video story? 1:11. See pics below. Thanks for the fantastic user experience, Roo TV. UNACCEPTABLE. For the user, for the publisher, for anyone picking up the syndicated content, and it should be for the advertiser as well. Not a day goes by where I don’t have a “:15 vs :30″ conversation. What media buyer is shopping around a 1-minute pre-roll? Do they have to pay a premium for the annoyance factor? What planner is stuck trying to find publishers that will accept a minute long pre-roll? Or is Roo so desperate at this point that they’ll run anything anyone is willing to pay for?

Question - is there something about erectile dysfunction sufferers that they need to be hit over the head with advertising messages more than others?

C’mon, people. We can do so much better than this. Or can we? Jupiter’s Nate Elliott called this one out in the middle of the summer and yet this same damn ad is still running 6 months later.

UVNTV. “It works actually on a mac believe it or not.” That’s a hell of a catchphrase for Ice Cube’s new Silverlight powered online video portal being pimped on MSN Soapbox as “the biggest network in the world coming”

Above: Ice Cube Promotes UVNTV in Silverlight via Synergist

Ice Cube has fallen so far since being Doughboy in Boyz in the Hood. But enough making fun of his cameo as online video entrepreneur, everyone else is already doing that. UVNTV is actually kind of cool.

So far, the portal consists of 13 channels programmed by the likes of Vibe and Interscope. Like a linear network, scheduled programming runs during the day and most channels go off air late at night (with the exception of Daily Chronic TV, channel 420 which apparently never stops).

A rotating banner along the top promotes upcoming channels such as College Net TV, appropriately promoted in companion with a full-length version of the film Friday. Ah, college.

The site, which launched in March of this year is also intended to help content producers promote themselves by creating online press kits and photo galleries. Though that community aspect doesn’t seem to have taken hold, the site already offers a better original online programming experience than most.

No money to spring for the NBA package this season? If you’re looking to watch the games live online you’re mostly out of luck. This year, subscribers to NBA League Pass through their cable operator are the only ones with access to the league’s broadband package.

The limited number of live events offered outside the NBA’s broadband package come as a result of renegotiated TV contracts with ESPN and TNT. The new contract running through the 2015-2016 season will include streaming of games through ESPN360, to Verizon VCast cell phones and includes delivery to platforms not yet in existence.

Continue Reading at Tilzy.TV 

“The ironic reality of the writers’ strike is its irrelevancy,” leads Jack Myers’ blog post on Mediapost.

Not unlike the music industry, Myers points out that, “Today, fewer than one network television series in twelve breaks through to profitability. This one program in twelve has to support the enormous operating overhead of those who risk capital to develop and produce the programs. It is a business of failure, not success. The Writers Guild of America wants a piece of that American Dream — the ability to fail time and time and time again, and ultimately have a profitable business.”

I can’t envision any scenario where writers get to simply sit and write and expect to benefit financially whether or not their scripts are ever developed. So perhaps they must fight the good fight now to protect what little future upside they have in any distribution model.

On the Heels of Shred or Die, Will Farrell and Adam McKay have added Jeff Foxworthy’s Blue Collar comedy to their “Or Die” franchise of sites.

By taking this targeted approach, creating outlets for well known talent to put content Or Die Networks gains both economies of scale and the ability to target ads to very specific audiences.

Would you believe…planned downtime? In any event we’re back with a new banner and hopefully will be adding some improved functionality to the sidebar and comments soon. Let us know what you think.

Yahoo! has signed an agreement with Sony BMG to extend its video-on-demand license into additional territories around the world. The new deal adds additional Sony BMG music videos to the Yahoo! Music catalog, and will be available across Yahoo! and off-network through a Yahoo-branded video player. The deal also enables Yahoo! users to utilize various Sony BMG audio recordings in user generated content.

As Brightcove continues to shift its focus away from advertising and exclusively towards providing publisher technology solutions, another senior level exec has departed.

Dina Roman, formerly the VP of National Ad Sales at Brightcove is out. OVW hears the she’s headed to Scripps. This follows closely behind the departure of Adam Gerber, who recently took up the CMO gig at Quantcast.

Ah, how Web 2.0 of us. Thinking about what we could do to add even more video usefulness (ok, timesuck) to the site, I decided to add a stock ticker widget into the sidebar that would list stocks from our industry. If there’s others you think that should be added, please leave a comment and we’ll get ‘em right in there.

Actually, the idea was inspired by Roo’s earnings (or lack thereof) announcement yesterday. I’m no analyst, but it looks like they are continuing to lose money and moving in the wrong direction in ad sales. As we get closer to the end of the year, at least I can take my lumps on that one and offset some of my other gains in the market. It really looked like they were poised for a breakout year.

ROO incurred a net operating loss of approximately $8.5 million in the third quarter of 2007, including $1.2 million of non-cash compensation. This compares to a net operating loss of $3.7 million for three months ended September 30, 2006, including $0.6 million of non-cash related items. During the third quarter, revenues in the Online Digital Media segment were $2.4 million, an increase of 123% compared to revenues of $1.1 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2006. Revenues in the Advertising Agency segment were $1.0 million for the third quarter, a decrease of 11% compared to revenues of $1.1 million for the third quarter of 2006.