E-AUDIENCE

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Companies Should Compensate Consumers Who Lead ("Nag") Them To Change

Now we're not saying we had anything to do with Netflix finally enabling its subscribers to watch Netflix movies online using the Google Chrome Browser.  But, e-audience.com probably didn't discourage Netflix from moving in that direction.

This is the apparent beauty of the age:  Good companies want to know what customers think.  It's no longer: "ah look at that average-joe trying to tell us what to sell him; does he think he's calling the shots or something?"  

Still, I would propose that good companies should probably be compensating customers in some fashion for stepping up, providing insightful information about their preferences and thereby potentially giving the same good companies an advantage in the marketplace over their competition.  

We'll see if that happens before too long.  

Netflix Streaming Should Work With Google Chrome

I use Google Chrome  because it loads pages rapidly, probably setting the standard for page-loading speed  speed as of present day 2009.  

My problem:  Netflix.com does not work with Google Chrome!  It only works with Internet Explorer. 

This is verbatim from Netflix's How It Works Page under "System Requirements":

    "What are the system requirements to watch movies instantly on my PC or Mac?

You must have a computer running Windows XP or Mac OS X and an active broadband connection to the Internet.

• Windows XP requirements: Service Pack 2 or higher or Windows Vista; Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher or Firefox 2 or higher; 1.2 GHz processor; 512 MB RAM. 
• Mac OS X requirements: an Intel-based Mac with OS 10.4.8 or later; Safari 3 or higher; Firefox 2 or higher; 1 GB RAM. "

Now, I don't know if Netflix has some kind of hand-shake arrangement with Microsoft to indirectly ding companies that code browser software that competes with Internet Explorer.  But I'd say they probably don't.   

Instead, I'd say the matter is probably just a numbers game for Netflix -- most people use Internet Explorer so Netflix looks to focus it's resources on serving the tastes of "most people." 

I personally wouldn't moan too much about the current Google Chrome/Netflix incompatibility except that I am paying to use Netflix -- Blu Ray and Online Movie streaming.  This contrasts a bit with Hulu, which I, 1) Don't pay to use and, 2) "Happily" let's you watch Earth Girls Are Easy or anything else they offer using Google Chrome.  

 I and probably many other Chrome and Netflix streaming users would like to see Netflix work with Chrome.

1 Billion: Isn't That a Little Low?

This is old news, but ComScore released a study in January which reported that the "total global Internet audience (age 15 and older from home and work computers) has surpassed 1 billion visitors in December 2008, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service."

Now according to the U.S. Census Bureau the global population today, July 28, 2009, as of 3:00pm GMT time is:  6,773,888,574!  

In light of that census data (nearly 7 billion people!!!) I find myself weighing the first number, "1 billion," again.  

Now don't get me wrong, 1 billion is a ridiculous number of people.  But I have to admit that I was kind of expecting a higher percentage of the global population -- say 25% - 33% or more -- to be online by 2009;  right now, It looks like we're only talking about 13-14% at best.

Anyway, my estimates were high.  But the good news is that I do see a clear remedy:  I'll just have 3.5 billion people -- not including current global internet users -- convincingly "play dead" for medical authorities.  

Thus in about a week or two, reports will show that, yes in fact 30% of the the global population is online!  Whew, that was a close one!

  

Via Kindle, IPhone or Downloaded To Your Desktop, I Like Electronic Books

I am a pretty big fans of download-able, electronic books.  

I find them to offer us additional value over paper books for the following reasons:

1. They gratify needs I have had for immediate (!)  business procedural information and personal entertainment. 
2. I find them easier and faster to read.  One can increase their font size or adjust screen contrast, to make reading them as easy on the eyes as possible.  And the lack of a need to turn physical pages seems to allow me to seemingly "absorb" size-able texts at a faster rate.
3. I find them space-saving versus physical texts.  100 or now 1500 electronic texts occupy zero space -- except for maybe the single book-sized space taken by an electronic reading device.  As physical texts, however, these 100 books would perhaps occupy a shelf requiring an estimated 9 to 135 cubic feet of space -- a valuable commodity in a small, expensive apartment.                                
4. And I find that electronic titles are often times less expensive than their printed versions. 

 But keep in mind, I said "download-able books."  I didn't specify the electronic device I use to read said books.    

See, the reality is that, for the last 4 years, I have had great luck just reading down-loadable books on a good old Desktop PC or Mac.

I've never bothered with buying a hand-held, electronic book reader; frankly I never new which of these readers was going to stick around and which was going to find a place next to our hypothetical collection of Cue-Cats.  

But in the last couple of years, handheld devices have hit the market that seem more viable means of reading an electronic text by hand.  

Amazon.com, for example, has introduced it's own in-house-brand of hand-held, electronic-book hardware -- the Kindle and its subsequent variations.

And Apple's IPhone and IPod Touch products have also enabled one to read electronic book in a hand-held device (However, the IPhone is still a phone;  so, yes, you would be forced to use your phone service subscription to read a book with your IPhone).

So, I say that I am definitely now more amenable to the concept of buying a hand-held device to read an electronic book than I was in past years.  But I definitely don't have any plans to forget about the proved value i've found in simply downloading electronic books to my desktops or laptops 

TV Everywhere

TV Everywhere is a project formed as part of a Time Warner & Comcast partnership.  

The way it is supposed to work is:  cable subscribers will pay for TimeWarner or Comcast Cable services, then they'll also be able to access TimeWarner/Comcast's "TV Everywhere" site on their respective PCs or Macs or presumably IPhones.  

      

This all sounds relatively harmless to Hulu or any other outlet showing licensed content online, right?

Uh not exactly.  It is suggested that "TV Everywhere" will present a more appealing online outlet for content owners than Hulu and the others since it may pay more and also offer better security for the content.  

So does TV Everywhere kill Hulu.com, Veoh.com and Joost.com since content owners may choose to only do business with "TV Everywhere?"  That'll be interesting to see.  

But I have a feeling that a lot of people are not exactly lining up to back-track to cable services just so they can access online content on "TV Everywhere."   

Good "Connections" Allowing Web Video To Flower and Grow

I am having a hard time believing that the Web is not the future of video entertainment.  

Any way I "cut it," It looks like the Web -- and correspondingly one's computer and broad-band internet connection -- are going to serve as the primary "avenue" through which video will arrive on more televisions in coming years.  

The fact that outfits like Hulu are beginning to test showing movies and TV episodes at 720p -- the resolution offered by "Hi-Def" cable, satellite and broadcast -- seems to "seal the deal."

What's enabling all this in the U.S.?  I say higher residential internet connection speeds in many areas (coupled with a few hardy web video companies trying again and again where others have failed again and again).  

Of course, getting to this point has certainly taken a while.

I certainly recalls the dawdling pace at which internet connection speeds seemed to improve in the 90s (I even recalls the 2.4kbps connection speeds one had to live with when using Bulleting Board Systems like Compuserve in the 80s).  

Initially, in the 90s you were lucky to get a residential connection the internet at 9.6kbps.  This speed subsequently escalated to a lofty 33kbps around the time Bill Clinton entered his second term.  

In 1997, I looked in to a residential ISDN connection -- $200 a month for a custom-installed setup and a 300kbps connection speed...Woo Hoo! Dial-up at the time, though, was still at best 56kbps.  

Finally, in 1999 I started to see reasonable "broadband" setups for the home user in the DC metro area by way of by way of Cable and the new DSL phone line services; these services offered 500kbps download speeds for a relatively reasonable monthly fee.  Now to me, the concept of viewing half-way decent video by way of an internet connection seemed plausible for residential users.

Today, 2009, the same Cable and DSL connections provide 10mbps download speeds.  This post, in fact, is being written using a cable connection that provides a constant 12mbps download speed, 25x the download speed available for the same money in 1999.   

And the thing is, 12mbps isn't that big a deal if you compare it with the average connection speeds in other industrialized nations.    Check out this chart at worldpoliticsreview.com   The U.S. ranks 15th in the world in terms of average broadband speeds by country!?  

The country with the top average speed?  Japan, at 60mbps!?   If you're in Tokyo, you can stream 1080p video -- Blu Ray quality -- to your PC or Mac by way of your broadband connection (Here in the U.S. we still have to get our "Blu Ray" in the mail).

Obviously there is considerable upward potential in connection speeds in the U.S. if the aforementioned foreign countries are any indicator.  And, of course, I see this "upward potential" in connection speeds as doing anything but harming the growth of web video entertainment in the U.S. and world-wide. 

We're Watching It On The Web

Yes, I agree with those who recognize the following irony: the U.S. is on the cusp of the big switch to Hi-Def in 2009, yet more than a few of its citizens are choosing to skip HD Broadcast, Cable and Satellite use altogether in favor of using commercially-sponsored or low-cost web video providers -- Hulu or Netflix -- as their primary "signal source."   

But I disagree with people who think that watching a film or tv show on the web means a person has to sit in front of a computer monitor squinting at some grainy video image about the size of a deck of playing cards. 

Yes, it is true that you may certainly watch web video in some  small video box on a web page.   But the reality is that video hosted at sites such as Hulu or Netflix "blow up" quite nicely to fill Hi Def TV monitors that you might have connected to your computer by HDMI or other video cable.  

For example, I regularly enlarge Hulu content to fill a small projection screen that is 84" diagonal. Using Hulu's 480p setting (Nearly Standard DVD resolution), * I do not find myself particularly longing for the 720p resolution I'd be getting from cable or satellite.  

Yes, web video entertainment is a matter of "content selection" triumphing over HD Broadcast/Cable/Satellite's typically higher resolution."  But if I want Hi-Def resolution -- true 1080p resolution -- I'll just rent the Blu Ray disc from Netflix (Something I do quite regularly anyway).

*(Edit, June 14, 2009: I have noticed that Hulu is beginning to test showing a few videos at 720p -- the resolution offered by HD Broadcast, Cable, and Satellite providers in the U.S. Until yesterday, I wasn't entirely sure that a decent-for-the-U.S. broadband connection could handle conveying a 45 minute "dramedy" or 90 minute film  at 720p definition without bogging down.  But the residential, cable broadband connection I have in Los Feliz (L.A., Ca.) -- tested at 11mbps using speakeasy.net connection speed test yesterday -- did in fact seem to "play-nice" with Hulu's 720p setting. This makes sense since 720p over the web apparently requires a connection speed of at least 10mbps or better)