2010-12-20
New Blog on Savard Faire main site
I have moved my blog to the main "Savard Faire" web site. I wanted to consolidate information there. You can find it here.
2010-12-14
Look! No cable!
I have been living without cable/satellite TV since March.
At first, it was an experiment; With the video available on the internet and digital broadcast, could I live without paid TV services?
9 months later, the answer is yes, absolutely!
I think one of the biggest revelation for people that do visit is not so much what you can find as video content on the Internet, but rather what you can find on terrestrial digital broadcast.
A little context first: I live in Montreal and the terrain here has never been kind to analog terrestrial transmission. A few mountains around, a lot of buildings and area where reflections have always meant that the quality of television was bad. Basically, the whole city has been subscribing to cable television since the 70s primarily to have good reception of the local TV channel. Sure, it was nice to have additional choices, but broadcast channels were the main reason. When you receive TV through cable almost exclusively in a city for 40 years, terrestrial antenna becomes quaint and people can't really conceive the possibility of good TV receive on one of those.
Montreal is about 30 miles (50 km) from the US border. The US stations in northern New York state and Vermont have always been targeting Montreal as the market there is many times bigger than in their US foot print. Those stations with affiliations to all the major networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CW, PBS) are carried on cable here. I had a feeling that I could get a signal with an outside antenna.
In October, on an impulse, I went to "The Source" (formally Radio Shack) and bought their only outdoor antenna in stock. A small, slick antenna that look a bit like a flying saucer, the kind they use on RV vehicles. I installed it on the roof of our three stories house. The directional antenna is equipped with an internal mechanism to tune a specific region. I did tune it towards the NY/Vermont direction.
Without much costs and efforts, I was able to get a perfect HD signal without any drops or artifacts for all the channel except for the ABC affiliate in Burlington (it seem they fell down to a bad signal allocation on VHF and that will change eventually). I can get also the local Montreal digital channel without changing the antenna's direction since I am about 5 km from the transmitters.
Counting the primary and secondary channel, I do receive about 25 digital channel, most in HD with strong stable and clean signals. When I show that to people that visit me, they really have a shock. It's hard for them to imagine that you can have such choice and quality over free terrestrial broadcast.
Based on my microscopic de-facto market research, I feel that people in North America don't really know yet how good terrestrial digital broadcast is. I think that the broadcasters have a lot of work to do to make people realize that it is that good. I also feel that it can change fundamentally the relation between the broadcasters and the cable/satellite distributors.
What do you think? Have you tried digital terrestrial television in your are? Share your comments and experiences!
At first, it was an experiment; With the video available on the internet and digital broadcast, could I live without paid TV services?
9 months later, the answer is yes, absolutely!
I think one of the biggest revelation for people that do visit is not so much what you can find as video content on the Internet, but rather what you can find on terrestrial digital broadcast.
A little context first: I live in Montreal and the terrain here has never been kind to analog terrestrial transmission. A few mountains around, a lot of buildings and area where reflections have always meant that the quality of television was bad. Basically, the whole city has been subscribing to cable television since the 70s primarily to have good reception of the local TV channel. Sure, it was nice to have additional choices, but broadcast channels were the main reason. When you receive TV through cable almost exclusively in a city for 40 years, terrestrial antenna becomes quaint and people can't really conceive the possibility of good TV receive on one of those.
Montreal is about 30 miles (50 km) from the US border. The US stations in northern New York state and Vermont have always been targeting Montreal as the market there is many times bigger than in their US foot print. Those stations with affiliations to all the major networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CW, PBS) are carried on cable here. I had a feeling that I could get a signal with an outside antenna.
In October, on an impulse, I went to "The Source" (formally Radio Shack) and bought their only outdoor antenna in stock. A small, slick antenna that look a bit like a flying saucer, the kind they use on RV vehicles. I installed it on the roof of our three stories house. The directional antenna is equipped with an internal mechanism to tune a specific region. I did tune it towards the NY/Vermont direction.
Without much costs and efforts, I was able to get a perfect HD signal without any drops or artifacts for all the channel except for the ABC affiliate in Burlington (it seem they fell down to a bad signal allocation on VHF and that will change eventually). I can get also the local Montreal digital channel without changing the antenna's direction since I am about 5 km from the transmitters.
Counting the primary and secondary channel, I do receive about 25 digital channel, most in HD with strong stable and clean signals. When I show that to people that visit me, they really have a shock. It's hard for them to imagine that you can have such choice and quality over free terrestrial broadcast.
Based on my microscopic de-facto market research, I feel that people in North America don't really know yet how good terrestrial digital broadcast is. I think that the broadcasters have a lot of work to do to make people realize that it is that good. I also feel that it can change fundamentally the relation between the broadcasters and the cable/satellite distributors.
What do you think? Have you tried digital terrestrial television in your are? Share your comments and experiences!
2010-09-01
Apple TV: A test in streaming business model
These days, everyone seems to point as the Internet as the future distribution conduit for television. In fact, this has been the story for a little over 5 years now. While technically, it is feasible, the issue holding everything is the lack of a lucrative business model that can challenge the magnitude of revenue from network television on cable. So far, it had been little more than an incremental blip; A revenue that is nice to have but too minuscule to stand on it's own.
Apple has been trying to establish itself in the video distribution using the same recipe as it did for music. The buy and download music has been a huge success, so much as it is on the verge of overtaking the CD as the dominant form of distribution. This make sense for music; it's easy to listen to music while doing something else AND people typically listen to music they like many many times. For TV shows? Not so much. You want to play it right away, not in 30 minutes, you want to pay as little as possible especially since you typically will not watch it 20 or 30 times.
So it the "rental" watch it now a model that is going to work better? That's what Apple believes and they want to make it easy to enroll ten of thousands of enthusiast in the market research which it call the "NEW Apple TV".
And if it works, if people like it then what?
Then they do prepare an awesome consumer electronic device based on that concept an Apple branded TV set that is fully integrated, upgradable and leave the competition trying to catch up. Also, anyone things that the new social media feature of iTunes will not be applied to the TV content soon?. Apple wants to become the new Sony, it is for music, it now things they found the formula for TV.
Who want to join this market research?
Apple has been trying to establish itself in the video distribution using the same recipe as it did for music. The buy and download music has been a huge success, so much as it is on the verge of overtaking the CD as the dominant form of distribution. This make sense for music; it's easy to listen to music while doing something else AND people typically listen to music they like many many times. For TV shows? Not so much. You want to play it right away, not in 30 minutes, you want to pay as little as possible especially since you typically will not watch it 20 or 30 times.
So it the "rental" watch it now a model that is going to work better? That's what Apple believes and they want to make it easy to enroll ten of thousands of enthusiast in the market research which it call the "NEW Apple TV".
And if it works, if people like it then what?
Then they do prepare an awesome consumer electronic device based on that concept an Apple branded TV set that is fully integrated, upgradable and leave the competition trying to catch up. Also, anyone things that the new social media feature of iTunes will not be applied to the TV content soon?. Apple wants to become the new Sony, it is for music, it now things they found the formula for TV.
Who want to join this market research?
2010-08-15
Yelp as an anti-brand hero
I made a quick trip to Charlevoix last week. Without much planning, we needed to stop to eat a quick bite on the road. Although, generally, I prefer to eat at good independent restaurants, the lack of time and planning made me want to consider a chain restaurant.
A large chain restaurant is a brand, and the attraction of brands is that you know what to expect. Even is you arrive in a new place, you can walk in to a restaurant that you never been, and yet the experience will be pretty much what you expected it to be. No great surprises, but no awful experiences either. This is what makes people go easily to Starbucks in a new place rather than sampling an unknown little cafe, even if the upside of a better experience may well be there.
If I have been in San Francisco instead of in Chalevoix, I would have used Yelp to quickly find a non-chain place. Yelp has reached a critical mass in San Francisco and as such, you can pretty much find the place you want based on the reviews (well, you need to actually read a bit the reviews, not just the ratings if you want a fair idea of the place).
All that really made me think about how Yelp may be in fact an anti-brand hero. A shining light for all those small business that try hard, agains odds to offer a different and unique product. A way for potential customers to discover those great places and to steer way from large brands without risking an awful experience.
What do you think?
A large chain restaurant is a brand, and the attraction of brands is that you know what to expect. Even is you arrive in a new place, you can walk in to a restaurant that you never been, and yet the experience will be pretty much what you expected it to be. No great surprises, but no awful experiences either. This is what makes people go easily to Starbucks in a new place rather than sampling an unknown little cafe, even if the upside of a better experience may well be there.
If I have been in San Francisco instead of in Chalevoix, I would have used Yelp to quickly find a non-chain place. Yelp has reached a critical mass in San Francisco and as such, you can pretty much find the place you want based on the reviews (well, you need to actually read a bit the reviews, not just the ratings if you want a fair idea of the place).
All that really made me think about how Yelp may be in fact an anti-brand hero. A shining light for all those small business that try hard, agains odds to offer a different and unique product. A way for potential customers to discover those great places and to steer way from large brands without risking an awful experience.
What do you think?
2010-08-05
Data, information and news integrity in the age of clouds
The Internet as a network is often represented as a cloud. In some ways it may be an indication of how we are behaving collectively when reading or sharing information.
Not so long ago (10 years), I was sitting in Computer Sciences classes at McGill University where I was learning about good database practice to ensure data integrity, normalization and good quality results. Large database system that banks are using have been designed with this high quality in mind. After all, who wants to have a some money, maybe more maybe less, no real knowledge of bills or prices.
Yet, somehow, this is more or less what we get with news and information on the web today. Shall we trust what we read or share? Similarly, computer systems that are build to sustain huge number of user are now build more for the sake of giving quick response time to the user (loading your web page quicker) than for making sure that the data integrity is sage. This is partly the trend of what is called "noSQL".
After all, most outlets on the web today are desperate to show you more ads to try to make money than to give you accurate data, information and news.
Give it to me now, give it to me raw, share it quick, quicker than my friends so I get more exposures and prestige. Quantity, speed. I don't care about quality and integrity.
Is the cloud clouding our judgement?
Not so long ago (10 years), I was sitting in Computer Sciences classes at McGill University where I was learning about good database practice to ensure data integrity, normalization and good quality results. Large database system that banks are using have been designed with this high quality in mind. After all, who wants to have a some money, maybe more maybe less, no real knowledge of bills or prices.
Yet, somehow, this is more or less what we get with news and information on the web today. Shall we trust what we read or share? Similarly, computer systems that are build to sustain huge number of user are now build more for the sake of giving quick response time to the user (loading your web page quicker) than for making sure that the data integrity is sage. This is partly the trend of what is called "noSQL".
After all, most outlets on the web today are desperate to show you more ads to try to make money than to give you accurate data, information and news.
Give it to me now, give it to me raw, share it quick, quicker than my friends so I get more exposures and prestige. Quantity, speed. I don't care about quality and integrity.
Is the cloud clouding our judgement?
2010-07-19
About vision, execution and spins
Competition is harsh is the world today. Especially if you are in the technology space where borders have a lot less meaning today that it use to. You have to compete globally, with regional specificity (language, culture, regulations...) acting as a delaying factor.
Having a great vision is a definitive must have of course, but the key ingredient to success is really the quality of execution of that vision.
One common problem is that sometimes people with great vision don't understand technology very well. Of course, they seek to work with great technology leaders but this is a problem that is harder to solve that it seems. If you are not that technical yourself, how do you know who is very good with technology?
People who seems to know more in technology to you may not be up to the challenge. Often, the most impressive people are those who can talk the best about technology not necessarily those who are best at executing. Great teachers, great speakers, great communicators and salesmen can lead you to the impression that they are great in execution but this is in fact seldom the case.
Most of the time, the best people for executing the vision are those people that are completely immerse in their tasks at hand and don't care that much about appearing as such.
I witness such a case recently where the senior management of a technology company that had a great vision, didn't know that much about technology and actually was uncomfortable discussing it. Technology was clearly outside their comfort zone and their tendency was to push it down to lower levels.
Without a deep understanding of technology at the higher level, you make yourself an easy target to manipulations and spins. For instance, you may be convinced that your website is a great success and that all the metrics are looking good and are progressing on a great slope, when in fact a deeper analysis reveal that most people land on the site from misleads on search engines and are turning around with a single page view.
This is turn may create the illusion that your vision is well executed and that you are on solid grounds. Then after millions invested and years into your precious "window of opportunity" you realize that it is all fading away, that the execution has not been very good. It is now too late to take corrective measures, you don't have enough resources left and competition had time to appear and eat your pie.
Problem now is how avoid falling into that trap? How do you know who to trust and who not to trust? What is real, what is a spin? These are hard questions and there no simple recipe to answer that.
However, you need to trace the interests. People generally act for the interests of your organization as seen through the filters of their own interests. So they are going to come up with solutions and tactics that are strangely aligned with their personal interests. People who act first for the long term interests of your business before their own interests are rare but they do exist.
I am a strong believer in long term success over short term interests. My recommendation, search for such people. Believers in principles, solid in execution and who will tell you the reality like it is, not the one that you would like to hear.
Let me know what you think and I will do some more blog postings based on your reactions!
Having a great vision is a definitive must have of course, but the key ingredient to success is really the quality of execution of that vision.
One common problem is that sometimes people with great vision don't understand technology very well. Of course, they seek to work with great technology leaders but this is a problem that is harder to solve that it seems. If you are not that technical yourself, how do you know who is very good with technology?
People who seems to know more in technology to you may not be up to the challenge. Often, the most impressive people are those who can talk the best about technology not necessarily those who are best at executing. Great teachers, great speakers, great communicators and salesmen can lead you to the impression that they are great in execution but this is in fact seldom the case.
Most of the time, the best people for executing the vision are those people that are completely immerse in their tasks at hand and don't care that much about appearing as such.
I witness such a case recently where the senior management of a technology company that had a great vision, didn't know that much about technology and actually was uncomfortable discussing it. Technology was clearly outside their comfort zone and their tendency was to push it down to lower levels.
Without a deep understanding of technology at the higher level, you make yourself an easy target to manipulations and spins. For instance, you may be convinced that your website is a great success and that all the metrics are looking good and are progressing on a great slope, when in fact a deeper analysis reveal that most people land on the site from misleads on search engines and are turning around with a single page view.
This is turn may create the illusion that your vision is well executed and that you are on solid grounds. Then after millions invested and years into your precious "window of opportunity" you realize that it is all fading away, that the execution has not been very good. It is now too late to take corrective measures, you don't have enough resources left and competition had time to appear and eat your pie.
Problem now is how avoid falling into that trap? How do you know who to trust and who not to trust? What is real, what is a spin? These are hard questions and there no simple recipe to answer that.
However, you need to trace the interests. People generally act for the interests of your organization as seen through the filters of their own interests. So they are going to come up with solutions and tactics that are strangely aligned with their personal interests. People who act first for the long term interests of your business before their own interests are rare but they do exist.
I am a strong believer in long term success over short term interests. My recommendation, search for such people. Believers in principles, solid in execution and who will tell you the reality like it is, not the one that you would like to hear.
Let me know what you think and I will do some more blog postings based on your reactions!
2010-01-31
Want to extend the life of your TV network? Go Live!
On demand content is the domain of the Internet. If someone wants to see something specific, there‘s no better way today than making use of the Internet. Of course, the experience is not yet seamless to view high quality content on your big screen TV, but it’s coming quickly.
This week Apple debuted its new iPad, which in fact is the perfect device for personal media consumption. You can use it around the house or around the world. It has a screen big enough for quality viewing of shows (BTW, if I were in the magazine business, I would take note also!). For all on demand video content, this is a great device and that will tip the scale even further towards the Internet as the mainstream delivery conduit.
So, what do you do if you operate a television network or station? Go live!
Streaming live high quality video content on the Internet is still a challenge and it is very expensive to do so. Traditional, synchronous delivery of TV (broadcast, cable, satellite...) is very efficient and cost-effective for delivering high quality video content to a large audience. The advantage of live TV is that you don't know what might happen. So people will tune-in just in case something does happen and to witness it in the very moment. Sports is a good example: It's fun to watch the Superbowl when you don't know who will win, how the game will unfold... not so much when it is recorded. This also applies to shows where there is audience live interaction, call-ins etc.
Don't watch the audience disappear under your nose! Realize that things are changing and do something about it!
This week Apple debuted its new iPad, which in fact is the perfect device for personal media consumption. You can use it around the house or around the world. It has a screen big enough for quality viewing of shows (BTW, if I were in the magazine business, I would take note also!). For all on demand video content, this is a great device and that will tip the scale even further towards the Internet as the mainstream delivery conduit.
So, what do you do if you operate a television network or station? Go live!
Streaming live high quality video content on the Internet is still a challenge and it is very expensive to do so. Traditional, synchronous delivery of TV (broadcast, cable, satellite...) is very efficient and cost-effective for delivering high quality video content to a large audience. The advantage of live TV is that you don't know what might happen. So people will tune-in just in case something does happen and to witness it in the very moment. Sports is a good example: It's fun to watch the Superbowl when you don't know who will win, how the game will unfold... not so much when it is recorded. This also applies to shows where there is audience live interaction, call-ins etc.
Don't watch the audience disappear under your nose! Realize that things are changing and do something about it!
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