Monday morning in San Jose and it’s clear that while the rest of the economy may still be in the tank online video is still driving growth for the tech industry. This year in addition to Streaming Media West now in its 11th year, the San Jose convention center co-hosts the first ever Online Video platform summit.
No longer is this an industry powered only by CDNs, the need for turnkey mid-tail, lower cost, simplified platforms has led to a whole new crop of companies providing online video to every conceivable industry on any scale. In fact there are so many platforms out there competing in the white label online video market there is a need for a separate conference to differentiate them. There should be a lot of really great things to come out of it this week.
On the Streaming Media West agenda, there are all the regular players, Adobe and Microsoft are still going at it, HTTP adaptive bitrate streaming and HD quality will be at the forefront. Microsoft has had the jump on Adobe for the first time in a while with Smooth streaming, and is in bed with NBC for the Winter Olympics and NBC Sunday Night Football Extra though Adobe’s answer is coming in Flash Player 10.1 slated for release in the first half of 2010.
Meanwhile, look for some interesting things from the keynote speakers. FLO TV President Bill Stone will give the opening keynote Tuesday morning. The company, which was the first to partner with wireless carriers to distribute live TV to mobile in the U.S. has expanded its offering by taking advantage of available UHF spectrum since broadcasters made the switch from analog to digital. Their new subscription personal TV service, independent of mobile carriers and their existing data plans is a lot more cost effective and exciting because it should put some pressure on mobile carriers to innovate and open up to improve the way high bandwidth content is delivered on their networks.
On Wednesday, XBox Live GM Marc Whitten will unveil what they’re calling “the next wave of of social entertainment” including integration with Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune video on Xbox live allowing users to buy or rent movies and TV shows streaming in 1080P with 5.1 surround sound (so long as you have a 3MBps connection).
And on Thursday Emil Rensing Chief Digital Officer of EPIX, the joint venture between Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate will give the keynote. To date the network has failed to gain any traction other than carriage on Verizon FiOS and their 2.5 million households so it should be interesting to hear the latest.
Tuesday and Thursdays keynotes as well as the Streaming Media Readers Choice Awards will be streamed live over on StreamingMedia.com and stay tuned here for updates throughout the show.