Infinity and Beyond

Canadian’s often feel overshadowed by American media. I mean, aside from Bryan Adams and Alanis Morissette, Canadian pop stars are fewer and farther between than their American counterparts.

But now Reuters reports that Canadian’s who have been rubbed wrong by the lack of Canadian generated porn, and their boredom with American porn, can anxiously await the launch of the Northern Peaks adult pay-TV channel. It will be “Canada’s first adult video channel offering significant Canadian adult content.” Canadian regulators just approved the channel.

What’s more significant is that while Canadian regulators require 15 percent of content to be Canadian-generated on channels, Norther Peaks is going to have no less than 50 percent of Canadian-generated content. This will likely spur a large number of auditions to star in new channel content–and of course a large collection of “auditions” and “outtakes” for later use on the channel or direct-to-DVD production.

Most interesting is this though:

“Northern Peaks will be restricted to certain types of programming including long-form documentaries, dramatic series, feature films, game shows, mini-series, sitcoms and made-for-TV movies.”

So, let’s just think of this for a few minutes…adult pay channel content in the form of:

• Long-form documentaries (a. “long-form” hahah b. “documentaries”??)
• Dramatic series (aka porn with too much dialog)
• Game shows (what are the prizes??)
• Mini-series, sitcoms, etc (can we see a new take on “Twin Peaks”??)

Sorry if that was a bit immature, but I couldn’t resist. Here is an interesting hook however: a featured Xtube [NSFW] users amateur hour show. Xtube is a Canadian-based company, so this completely makes sense and would make for great cross promotion.

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OK, this is NSFW if you’re not wearing headphones. And it isn’t really relevant to anything. But it’s hilarious. And I suppose it shows the the power of user generated content.

Watch this first:

And then this:

Thanks Elliot!

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ZDNet News ran an article with details of NBC’s upcoming revamp of NBCOlympics.com and the goal of making it an online success, including live Web casts of the events plus archived footage.

The site will launch with an improved video player and other enhancements in time for the start of the 2008 Olympic games.  Over the course of the games, 2200 hours of video footage will be generated and accessible to users through both live and on-demand streams.  That’s good news for fans of various events that don’t get much, if any, television coverage.  Fully 25 sports are expected to be covered online which won’t really be seen on TV.

NBC hopes that the star of the Olympics will be Microsoft’s Silverlight, the web applications framework chosen by the company to power the new site.  It’s been in development for nearly a year now and is currently undergoing a number of UI tweaks.  They will be testing the site with live video during the Olympic trials.  The choice of Silverlight represents a win for the technology Microsoft has put forth to compete with Adobe’s highly popular Flashsuite.  

While choosing to use a Microsoft technology to power the site, NBC chose to go with DoubleClick to power the advertising, as opposed to Atlas platform which Microsoft acquired when it purchased aQuantive.  The Silverlight player will integrate with DoubleClick to display “dynamic ads” to viewers.  I’m assuming this will be your normal targeted ads, but perhaps they’ll be doing something new and amazing.

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At the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 held in London, the VP of Legislative Affairs at AT&T stated that by 2010 the Internet will have reached it’s max capacity.  This is, of course, with out billions in dollars worth of upgrades–$55B in the US alone, and $130B globally.

The idea of the Internet maxing out seems a bit far fetched to me.  Specifically, this quote made me think that the problem might be getting blown out of proportion:

“In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”

Really?  My neighborhood is going to generate more traffic than the entire Internet?  I find this really hard to believe.  And a statement like that makes me doubt everything else Cicconi talked about.  Perhaps if every appliance in my home is downloading full-length HD-quality movies, plus bonus features, and streaming porn, and making video calls to other appliances down the street, and running their own stock markets and research projects.  But at least at this time I don’t forsee my toaster actually taking up that much bandwidth.  And is AT&T going to provide me a reasonably priced 1Gbps pipeline to my house?  Probably not.  Even if they do provide such a pipleine I doubt most homes would pay the price for it.

Some who heard the speech felt that Cicconi was in a roundabout way advocating for bandwidth shaping and prioritizing their Internet traffic (i.e. slowing down or restricting users who are downloading movies via file sharing sites).  Cicconi of course claims that’s not the case, and with good reason given Comcast being put in the hot seat over that issue.

I think it would be interesting for the big providers to publish some data on their current capacity levels–most people aren’t maxing out their bandwidth all the time. But I’m curious to know what level of usage on average the companies are actually seeing.

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Paramount Pictures has released thousands of video clips from their film library for use inside the virtual 3-D online world of there.com. Members of the site will be able to buy clips for about $1 to add to their avatars’ as a way to represent themselves further. The clips are composed of one liners from such films as ‘Clueless’ and ‘Beverly Hills Cop’. The days of simply sending :( to someone is over when you can have Cher Horowitz saying “as if” to you instead. Ahh, it’s good to see Paramount opening up it’s vault and allowing its content to be used in such a creative and productive fashion.

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Your doctor visit may one day be powered by Google, much like your internet searching.  As reported at eFluxMedia, Google is going to expand it’s IT business into the medical arena, starting with 1,500-10,000 patients at a clinic in Cleveland.Patients who opt-in will have their medical records transferred to Google.  The idea would be to allow patients better access to their medical information, something patients are increasingly interested in and encouraged by their HMOs to do.What’s not clear is what Google stands to gain from this service.  Will Google sift through your medical records ala Gmail and provide small little Google Ads targeted to your past and present ailments?  Will there be a built in search tool tailored to medical advice?  And if you don’t have time to go to the doctor can you open up your Google medical info service, type a question into the box, and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?It sounds a bit intrusive to me, but Microsoft has already rolled out a similar service (yes–MS beat Google to the punch with their HealthVault service).   

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Hewlett-Packard has signed a deal with Sony Pictures that will allow customers to request DVDs from the studio’s library. This will primarily benefit  those looking for the rare and obscure film that can’t be found at your local Best Buy.

 Jason Spivak, head of strategic development at SonyHE told the Times “We’re hoping this provides another option to make available products that wouldn’t necessarily garner widespread retail shelf space.” This goes along with the fact that HP is hoping to sign similar deals elsewhere, “if studios can sell more catalog than previously, they can generate more money.” That’s the key to getting others to join up. If Sony is successful then other studios could follow along making that obscure copy of North more accessible.

This development is one of many recent that allows more consumer control over the content they are able to access. Sales would most likely fall under the same revenue sharing as regular DVD sales made online by companies such as amazon or barnesandnoble.com but it only further blurs the line of internet revenue and traditional sources that the WGA and others have been fighting hard to get more revenues from. With the age of unlimited on-demand access to all forms of content emerging, deals like this one where the tech company becomes the middle-man are going to be more common than ever before.

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Paramount is planning to take “a radical departure from the traditional movie business model” when it releases Jackass 2.5 on the internet and later on DVD, skipping any form of a theatrical release. Thomas Lesinski, President of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment told the AP that “it’s the first broadband movie ever distributed by a major studio.”

When the movie is released it will be free for a two-week period starting on December 19 exclusively at Blockbuster and their new property Movielink. From there the 64-minute pic will move to a pay-per-view format and it will also be available through Apple’s iTunes store.

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Roman Polanski, Oscar Wilde, The Dixie Chicks, Elia Kazan. A child molester, a homosexual, liberal country singers, and a ‘namer of names’. The controversies that follow these artist and many like them can at times overshadow the great works of art they have created. Do we know more about Polanski’s indiscretion with a 13 year-old or his  Academy Award winning film ‘The Pianist’? Did ‘naming names’ hurt the career of Elia Kazan who went on to direct Marlon Brando in ‘On the Waterfront’ and James Dean in ‘East of Eden’? What of the 5 Grammy’s the politically charged Dixie Chicks won this past year or the immortality Wilde has achieved even after imprisonment for committing homosexual acts?

While technology advances and allows for the easier distribution of content some of that content can be overshadowed by the personal missteps that the creators of content can make. I mention this because today is Tuesday and when looking through the list of new dvd’s and cd’s coming out today one in particular caught my attention. ‘Blackout’ by Britney Spears. I haven’t heard any of the music off the album, although I did see her MTV “performance” a few weeks ago, but I have heard a great deal about her personal life. Drugs, divorce, custody battles, etc. For whatever it is worth Britney Spears has sold over 83 million records and has had incredible success despite any personal failings. It does seem though that talent and success aren’t as connected as they used to be.

Wilde and Kazan are standing up to the test of time and even though Kazan received a cold reception when accepting his Lifetime Achievement Oscar how will Polanski or the Dixie Chicks be remembered in years to come? For their wonderful art or will they move to the ever growing category of tabloid celebrities? We can only hope that when the content is greater than the sin of the creators the future will remain bright.

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