pTV

Content Discovery Engine Matchmine Raises $10 Million From Kraft Group

By Joseph Weisenthal - Fri 21 Sep 2007 07:12 AM PST

Matchmine, a Boston-area startup that helps users discover internet content, has raised $10 million from the Kraft Group, reports the Boston Globe. The service, which will go live next week, will ask users create a MatchKey, by having them rate various pieces of content (videos, blogs, music, etc.) in order to develop a profile of their tastes. The Matchkey can then be plugged into participating third party sites, allowing them to serve up that content which is best suited to the user's tastes. Already, the company has partnerships with Peerflix, FilmCrave and Fuzz.com, though it will need to partner with several more for the service to be valuable.

For more, Alarm:Clock looked at Matchmine back in May: "Matchmine got underway in 2005, when Jonathan Kraft of the New England Patriots asked Trent Adams, the team's Chief Innovator, to build a Wi-Fi radio station for Patriot Nation. Adams built it but didn't know how to promote it, and started noodling on a system to alert Internet users about sites that fit their passions. Matchmine says that Kraft invested $1M during the R&D phase. The technology foundation involves a "combination of dynamic programming and n-space mathematics."

New Choices in Flat Panels Perplex Shoppers

By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON
June 28, 2007; Page D1 Wall Street Journal

Buying a flat-panel television used to be an easy decision: The sets were straightforward devices that simply showed TV programs.

Not this summer. Shoppers looking for a new flat-panel TV will increasingly be faced with a confusing array of choices. In the past two years, electronics makers from Hewlett-Packard Co. to LG Electronics Inc. have added new bells and whistles to their flat-panel TVs. Some of the TV sets now come with embedded technologies that help connect to wireless home networks or Internet videos. Others now come with built-in digital video recorders. And in the next few months a new wave of options will hit retail floors.

In August, Hewlett-Packard is launching 42-inch and 47-inch versions of its liquid-crystal-display TVs that come with the ability to connect wirelessly to a home network. The new sets, dubbed the MediaSmart TVs, can display those movies, music or photos stored on a personal computer in the network. Later this year, Samsung Electronics Co., the largest U.S. LCD flat-panel-TV seller by shipments, also will launch a wireless flat-panel plasma TV that for the first time comes with a separate media hub that can be stored within 200 feet of the TV. Consumers can use the hub to wirelessly connect devices such as PCs and video cameras and game consoles to the TV. Sharp Corp. plans to add networking technologies to its Aquos-brand flat panels next year.

For consumers, the new generation of flat panels is a step closer to the electronics industry's Holy Grail: a connected TV that can not only play television programming but also download films, music and videos from the Internet. A device that can meld all those functions is likely to be a winner in consumers' living rooms, where many tech companies are trying to gain a toehold. In March, for instance, Apple Inc. released Apple TV, a device that allows users to beam movies, television shows and music purchased through Apple's iTunes Store on the Internet to their TVs and stereos.

Many of these new TVs may also be highly frustrating for consumers. Paul O'Donovan, an analyst for Gartner Inc., a market-research firm, warns that the market is in its early days for networking technologies. Since such technology in TVs isn't standardized, customers who buy the devices may get somewhat limited features that aren't compatible with other gadgets in the home.

For example, H-P's TVs can play music loaded from CDs into iTunes, but they can't play music downloaded from Apple's iTunes store because that music is encoded with protective software.

Also, the new flat panels have limited online content. They don't technically allow users to surf the Internet using their TV. Instead, they connect users to an interface with videos or movies from specific providers the TV maker has made deals with, such as CinemaNow Inc. or Yahoo Inc.

Still, the new accoutrements are being added to flat panels as TV makers try to stave off rapid price declines in the industry. The declines are being caused by the increasing commoditization of flat-panel TVs and rising competition between vendors wanting a piece of the action. Last year, the average price for a 30- to 39-inch flat-panel LCD TV in the U.S. fell more than 30% to $1,477. This year, the average price for a flat-panel LCD TV 40 inches or larger is expected to drop more than 20% to $2,195 in the U.S. from $2,853 last year, according to IDC. Analysts expect average selling prices of TVs to continue to fall, albeit at a slower rate. The average selling price of a TV 40-inches or larger in the U.S. is expected to drop to $1,186 by 2010 from $9,444 in 2003. Overall, sales of connected TVs are projected to rise to 21.3 million units in 2009, up from 1.6 million last year, according to market researcher iSuppli Corp.

Many of the new flat panels are priced as much as $500 more than standard flat-panel TVs. While Samsung hasn't released pricing for its new wireless TV yet, the company says the TV will cost roughly $500 more than standard Samsung TVs. Meanwhile, H-P's new 42-inch TV will retail for $2,200, while the 47-inch flat panel will cost $2,700. By comparison, those same models without networking technology sell for $1,899 and $2,299, respectively. As with most technology, prices are expected to fall over time.

The new options are giving some consumers retail fatigue. Matt Bunter, a database administrator in Lyon, France, has been looking for more than a month for a flat-panel TV to play American television shows he has downloaded onto his computer. He had originally planned to purchase an Apple TV for roughly $300, but then he saw a set-top box from an Internet-service provider that transmits digital content from the PC to the TV wirelessly. He also read up on H-P's wireless TVs.

"I'm a standard consumer, and I don't know all the ins and outs of all this sort of stuff," says the 35-year old. In particular, Mr. Bunter says it's confusing trying to figure out which solution to buy because all say they can perform the same functions. Mr. Bunter adds that while he's willing to pay up to €1,000 ($1,346) for a new television set, he wants to make sure he really understands first what he's getting for the money.

Some consumers may have more to worry about than just the TVs alone, since some of the new sets come with add-on devices. Next month, for instance, Sony Corp. will launch its $300 Bravia Internet video link, a one-inch- thick device that connects to the back of Sony's flat-panel TVs. The gadget allows viewers to connect to Internet videos from content providers such as Yahoo and America Online, as well as music from Sony's music division.

For some consumers, the new accessories add up to too much useless technology. Denise Tippit of Stockbridge, Ga., for example, wants to spend less than $2,500 to purchase a flat-panel TV for her family by the end of the year. But the 47-year-old professional photographer says she isn't interested in Internet TV. For her, the most important feature of any new TV is its picture quality. "I'm really just drawn to the color in the TV," she says.

For others, like Zeljko Zidaric, a product manager for a wireless-telecommunications company in Toronto, the new flat-panel TVs don't go far enough. Mr. Zidaric purchased a 37-inch H-P MediaSmart TV last November for more than $1,700. He says the TV was easy to set up and worked great for playing TV shows and other content he had downloaded from his computer. But he sold the TV in March because it didn't allow him to surf the Internet.

"I wanted more than what the TV could offer," Mr. Zidaric says. Today, he uses a desktop computer to connect his Samsung plasma TV to the Internet

PermissionTV Secures $9 Million Investment

PermissionTV has closed a new $9 million round of financing. The round was led by two new investors, Castile Ventures and Point Judith Capital, who join existing investors Common Angels, CramerOnline, Inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors and the Venture Capital Fund of New England. Castile Ventures’ Carl Stjernfeldt and Point Judith Capital’s Sean Marsh will join the PermissionTV board.

The investment will be used to accelerate the company’s position as an emerging leader in Internet video technology, expand its strategic sales team, and continue the delivery of new solutions for leading corporations, media and entertainment companies and advertising and interactive media agencies.

“Given the build-out of the Internet’s infrastructure, Castile made a decision to move up the value chain and seek a technology investment that enables high quality delivery of video over the Internet,” stated Carl Stjernfeldt, General Partner, Castile Ventures. “PermissionTV fits these goals. Its technology platform, along with the team’s deep operational experience and media connections, provide the infrastructure for rapid growth. I am excited to work with PermissionTV’s leadership team to reach the next set of milestones.”

“PermissionTV is an exciting investment for our firm as the company is proving that it understands the key digital drivers facing its customers as they deploy their high quality video content assets on the Internet,” said Sean Marsh, General Partner, Point Judith Capital. “We focus on backing exceptional teams building companies that are transforming large and important industries. Based on the blue-chip customers that PermissionTV has secured, the company fits this definition precisely. We look forward to working with the PermissionTV team to extend and grow their position as one of the leading interactive Internet video technology platform providers.”

In the past year, 30 leading content providers, media companies and agencies including Adobe Systems, Agency.com, Bob Vila, Fox’s myNetworkTV, Intercontinental Hotels, Molecular, Toyota Scion, Update Hollywood and Whitman Hart have partnered with PermissionTV to configure and manage branded Internet TV channels, create highly interactive and visually appealing video experiences, and monetize their audiences through ad-supported, pay-per-view and subscription-based services.

“The timing of this financing reflects the tremendous market adoption of high-quality Internet video, as well as the current wave of momentum behind PermissionTV,” said Bob Lentz, CEO of PermissionTV. “As we build out our infrastructure, sign additional new customers and partners, and expand our market awareness, we welcome Carl and Sean to our board and look forward to their firms’ involvement in helping to drive our future growth.”

Web TV Start-Up Joost
Raises $45 Million

By RIVA RICHMOND
May 10, 2007 1:23 p.m.

Upstart Internet TV platform Joost, the latest project from the creators of Skype and Kazaa, said it closed $45 million in financing from a group of investors including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc.

The New York company, whose growing alliance with content companies is making it something of a thorn in the side of Google Inc.'s YouTube, said the funds will allow it to accelerate product development, global expansion, local offerings and other services.

European venture capital firm Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, of Menlo Park, Calif., led the round. Other investors include CBS and Viacom, who both recently agreed to provide content to the site, as well as Li Ka-shing, chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd., through his charitable foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation. Joost said Mr. Li and his companies would play a role in an effort to expand in China and elsewhere in Asia. Financial details were not disclosed.

"This funding represents a tremendous vote of confidence in Joost's platform," said Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost with Niklas Zennstrom, in a statement. "We've carefully selected these investors from a variety of interested parties" because they can help Joost "accelerate growth and development of the company."

Messrs. Friis and Zennstrom have a history of creating disruptive online services using so-called peer-to-peer technology. Previously, they founded Skype, an Internet-telephony firm now owned by eBay Inc., and Kazaa, one of the key Internet file-swapping sites that bedeviled the music industry.

Their newest venture, which aims to offer broadcast-quality video content online, has picked up steam quickly. A fast-growing list of prominent content companies have signed deals with Joost, including CBS, Viacom, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Television Group and Turner Broadcasting System Inc. units, Warner Music Group Corp. and Digital Music Group. Joost, which is currently operating in a test mode, has more than 30 advertising partners - including The Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp. and Nike Inc.

CBS agreed last month to provide television show episodes to Joost. It also has content deals with YouTube and Time Warner's AOL, among others.

Viacom in February forged a content partnership with Joost under which it will provide programming from its Comedy Central, VH1, MTV, BET and Logo networks and its Paramount Pictures studio. Viacom reached the agreement just a few days after negotiations to license its content to YouTube broke down, and Viacom later filed a copyright-infringement suit against Google seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

YouTube has thrived on video uploads from amateurs, an approach that has opened the door to pirated content and conflict with content companies whom YouTube would like to have as partners. By contrast, Joost aims to distribute professionally created content and bills itself as copyright holder-friendly, a pitch that is clearly working. Joost, which is free to consumers, is supported by advertising, revenue from which it shares with content partners.

Akamai Releases FoxTorrent 1.0 - Firefox BitTorrent Add-on

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 05:03 AM CDT

Red Swoosh (acquired by Akamai for $15 million earlier this month) released v1.0 of FoxTorrent today. This is a fully functional BitTorrent client for Firefox that works cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and has a very cool additional feature - the ability to stream files as they are downloading.

This is no Azureus (my BitTorrent client of choice), but it does the job and saves time by allowing you to manage torrents directly from the browser. I tested it on a few (non-copyright infringing, of course) files and it worked great on the standard BitTorrent functionality. Streaming just didn’t work, although with the way the BitTorrent protocol breaks files into pieces and reconstructs them in a non linear way means you may have to wait until the file is mostly complete to even begin streaming. I’ll try it again once the files are nearly complete.

A good early review is here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117755162104382920.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news

April 26, 2007

Cable Giant Comcast
Tries to Channel Web TV

By PETER GRANT
April 26, 2007; Page B1

Comcast Corp., which has more subscribers than any other cable operator in the U.S., has joined in the fray over which Web site is going to become the top destination for TV shows, movies and other professionally produced videos.

Google Inc.'s YouTube has for the time being won the battle to become the premier site for short amateur videos. Now a host of major Internet players and others -- including Amazon.com Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL division, Joost, Brightcove and Apple Inc. -- are all maneuvering to claim dominant positions in the world of prime-time shows and other premium entertainment content that's started to mushroom on the Web.

A selection of videos offered on Comcast.net

Comcast is hoping to play the same middleman role on the Internet that it does on traditional TV -- buying programming from entertainment companies and packaging it for consumers. Earlier this month, the Philadelphia-based giant announced plans to launch Fancast.com, an ad-supported free TV and entertainment site. Comcast has stuck deals to carry prime-time content produced by CBS, Fox and NBC on Fancast, including shows like "Survivor," "Heroes" and "House."

"Being the place people go to for [video] content is what we have always done and it makes sense to provide content online as well," says Brian Roberts, Comcast's chief executive.

Comcast's push into the Web comes at a time when there is widespread speculation that video on the Internet will pose a major threat to the cable industry's bread-and-butter TV business. Some programmers and movie studios already have begun to pipe high-quality video directly over the Internet to viewers' televisions, bypassing cable operators.

But Comcast's move raises the possibility that cable operators may be able to benefit from the skyrocketing popularity of Web video. The company already has launched Web sites that are boosting usage of other services. For example, Ziddio.com, a user-generated content site, puts winners of amateur video contests on Comcast video-on-demand.

Comcast wades into the Web TV battle with several advantages. For starters, the company is the country's second-largest provider of high-speed Internet hookups, after AT&T Inc., with over 11.5 million customers. It already has used that business to turn its portal, Comcast.net, into the 41st most visited domain on the Web for U.S. users, according to comScore Media Metrix.

But competing for viewers on the Internet presents a different, and in some ways more difficult, set of challenges for Comcast than wrestling with satellite and telephone operators over pay-TV customers.

In its traditional business, Comcast usually is the only cable operator in an area, giving it enormous leverage over programmers. But on the Web, Comcast will just be one of many sites carrying the same content. Full-length NBC shows, for example, already are being carried on the network's own site, iTunes and will also be available on a new Internet TV site that Fox and NBC are creating.

"Our customers have shown they don't all go to one place," says George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer of NBC Universal and the interim chief executive of NBC's new venture with Fox. "There is incredible value in giving them as much choice as we possibly can."

To play a dominant role in Web TV, Comcast also will need to do more than simply accumulate the most mainstream content. Other sites have been focusing on amassing thousands of videos that appeal to ethnic groups, hobbyists and other niche audiences. Competitors also are adding social networking and other features to their sites to distinguish them from traditional television.

Comcast executives say they are developing such features, but others say the cable operator has a lot of catching up to do. "It's not clear to me that [Comcast] has the DNA or the understanding to do something like that," says Jeremy Allaire, the chief executive of Brightcove.

Comcast was one of the first cable operators to begin featuring Web video on its broadband portal. For four years, it has been loading up Comcast.net with music videos, movie trailers and other short content as a way of attracting and retaining high-speed Internet subscribers. The move has been part of Comcast's broader strategy, code-named "Eureka," to combine its TV, Internet and telephone services.

Lately, Comcast also has begun looking to extract revenue out of its Web sites as well. The company currently is choosing among Google, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL for Internet advertising and search services for Comcast.net and its other sites. The deals are expected to generate $100 million a year for the company starting in 2008, people familiar with the matter say. Some of the new ads will be inserted into videos.

Comcast's move into Web video is partly defensive. Like other producers and distributors of TV content, it was horrified by the devastating impact of the Internet on the music business. Company executives acknowledge what they're trying to do is tricky: create new places for consumers to view TV programming without hurting the value of their traditional cable business.

So far Web TV doesn't seem to be cannibalizing traditional television. Networks like NBC and CBS say that making their prime time shows available on the Internet is increasing the audience for their regular TV programming. Viewers are able to do things like keep up with a series by watching a missed episode on the Web. "We see online viewing as incremental, not as a substitute," says Amy Banse, president of Comcast Interactive Media.

Amazon.com's Unbox service, which allows consumers to watch movies and TV.

Also, Comcast has little choice but to move into Web video. Starting in 2005, when Walt Disney Co.'s ABC unit announced plans to make episodes of shows like "Desperate Housewives" available on iTunes, there has been a steady stream of top TV content onto the Web. Today much of the prime-time lineup offered by the major broadcast networks can be found on the Web the day after the shows have aired. Comcast doesn't want to cede the central role it plays in traditional TV to some other player on the Internet.

Fancast is a key part of trying to retain that role. Comcast has designed Fancast to be the leading source of content and information on the Web about TV and the movies. Users interested in a particular actor, for example, will be able to find out all the movies and TV shows in which he has appeared and how to find them on the Web or TV. If the actor is in a recently released movie, users will be able to buy tickets to a local theater through Fandango.com, which Comcast recently acquired. Eventually consumers would be able to purchase DVDs and download movies through Fancast as well.

The cable giant will use its broadband service to promote Fancast in the parts of the country it serves, which include 20 of the top 25 major metropolitan areas. But it will have a harder time in other areas, where names like Yahoo and AOL have much better name recognition.

Comcast also is exploring whether to take a lead role in allowing customers to buy or rent a video on the Web and watch it on their televisions. The company has been upgrading its network -- modernizing equipment, and increasing bandwidth available to broadband subscribers -- partly with an eye toward offering such services.

"Comcast can hold itself out as a potential friend to the content owner by giving them a well-lit place for offering video legally," says Craig Moffett, a cable analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

	Technology : ptmg 23 April 2007 S
	Adobe unveils next generation Internet video solution http://www.irishdev.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=5349
	Adobe Media Player is developed using Apollo, the code name of Adobes recently announced application runtime Delivered as a lightweight download, Adobe Media Player delivers innovation for both viewers and content owners. For viewers, Adobe Media Player enables higher quality Flash format playback, the ability to download and view videos offline, ways to discover interesting new shows, full screen playback, one-click viewer ratings, and a powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts. The player is cross-platform, based on open standards - including RSS and SMIL - and brings viewers the highly desired ability to play the Web’s most popular video format outside of their browser. For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. It provides an array of video delivery options for high-quality online and offline playback, including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. The Adobe Media Player enables a wider selection of monetization and branding options including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content. Advanced Analytics and Content Protection. The technology provides content publishers a standardized toolbox to deploy a variety of innovative new advertising formats, and to compile permission-based analytics data, both online and offline, to better understand their audiences. Building on Adobe's rich history of document protection technology, Adobe Media Player plans to offer content publishers a range of protection options, including streaming encryption, content integrity protection and identity-based protection. Adobe’s Emerging Internet Video Ecosystem Adobe Media Player is a key part of Adobe’s emerging ecosystem for the creation and delivery of next generation Internet video. It complements and leverages other Adobe components including: Adobe Flash® Player; the newly announced Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional; Flash® Media Server 2, server software for streaming media applications; Flash® Lite™ mobile video playback technology; Adobe’s range of media authoring tools such as Adobe Creative Suite® 3 Production Premium for video, audio and motion graphics production; and Adobe Media Encoder for compression and live streaming.

                             

TVT Newsbytes                     ::                     NAB
Broadband Reshapes Distribution
by Walter Schoenknecht, April 20, 2007
According to David Eun, Google’s vice president for Content Partnerships, video has a different look and feel for his company than for traditional broadcasters. “As we think about video in 2007, we see a clip-driven culture,” Eun said. Eun delivered the keynote address for a Tuesday NAB2007 Super Session entitled, “The Revolutionizing Impact of Broadband.” The event, sponsored by Level3 Communications, brought together Eun and a panel of broadband-linked industry executives who described the ever-shifting landscape of content distribution. The inclusion of video content in the Google search suite, according to Eun, was in line with the company’s stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. ... [Google’s mission] is really at the core of everything we do,” Eun said. “We want to think beyond the Web page, and go to other types of information.” For Eun, “other types of information” means video. DISTINCTIONS He drew distinctions between Google’s two video offerings — Google Video-accessible content, impartially indexed across content types and formats, and the content uploaded to YouTube, intended to be shared among users as a means of interaction. Calling them “parallel but complementary paths,” Eun suggested that there was great value to Google, its users and partners in tracking both modes of delivery. “We want Google to partner with content owners,” Eun said, offering a nod to his NAB2007 audience, presumably consisting of content owners such as local broadcasters. He described several partner relationships in which proprietary branding is applied to a YouTube player, offering a unique identity. “We want to let content owners create channels,” Eun said. But in this open, public space, according to Eun, viewers’ true feelings tend to matter more than the hype that may surround content. “It’s not about channel positioning,” he said. “It’s about what the community thinks of your content.” Eun also sought to assuage broadcasters’ fears about the unlicensed use of copyrighted material. As an example, he described an automated “notification and takedown” mechanism used at YouTube to proactively detect copyright infringement, notify the offending party and summarily remove the content. But for Eun, Google’s mission of making information accessible and usable is in no way incompatible with the monetization of content owners’ assets. “We see ourselves as a conduit, connecting advertisers with audiences worldwide,” Eun said. “We help them to find each other in an information-driven way, with metrics and data.” With this focus on collecting and reporting viewing habits, Google recently announced what is termed an “early trial” of Google TV Ads, a service intended to deliver data on the frequency and demographic distribution of spot playouts. Eun stressed that Google’s ability to serve its core constituency relied heavily on having content its users are searching for. “When our content partners do well, we do well,” he said. BROADBAND FOR BROADCASTERS Broadband Directions President Will Richmond then chaired a panel discussion among industry executives whose responsibilities all relate to content delivery via broadband channels. Under Richmond’s guidance, the panel explored the complex task of managing and finessing the multiple venues used today to reach audiences. WorldNow President Gary Gannaway cited his company’s high volume of locally originated streams as evidence of continued opportunity for local broadcasters. “All the video streams we have are local,” Gannaway said. “On the revenue side, that’s the exciting part [for local stations]. Local TV kicks butt!” Shawn Gold, chief marketing officer for MySpace, acknowledged his firm’s role in the content revolution. “If MySpace has done anything well, it has combined community with content.” The theme of community-building resonated with all the panelists, some of whom noted that local broadcasters built and nurtured community long before the Internet was a dominant force. According to Blake Krikorian, CEO of Sling Media, the challenge in aggregating content is to “ overlay social elements to make it a more engaging experience.” Several panelists described a two-way synergy between broadband delivery and more traditional media. George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer, offered encouragement to broadcasters: “The studies have shown that watching network shows on the Internet doesn’t cannibalize ratings — it drives ratings,” he said. Still, vertical, single-source content delivery sites represent missed opportunity, according to Daniel Scheinman, who heads the Cisco Media Solutions Group. “This is the golden age of the aggregator,” Scheinman said. “It’s a new type of content, shorter form, but there’s more of it.” Copyright 2007 NAB ~ All Rights Reserved Worldwide

   

On The Cover/Top Stories
Video Prophet
Scott Woolley 04.23.07

Paul Sagan has ridden hard over the wildest extremes of the Internet economy. In 1999 he stumbled into a $700 million fortune--on paper--by joining a brilliantly conceived startup called Akamai Technologies, which provided superfast digital delivery services to dozens of new Web sites. Then Sagan watched as the dot-com boom blew up. Akamai's Web site customers went bust, and Akamai plunged toward bankruptcy. Shareholders filed ten lawsuits, alleging a stock swindle. And then came the worst blow of all: Daniel Lewin, the brilliant young founder at the heart of the company, was killed by terrorists.

Akamai (from the Hawaiian word for "clever") seemed destined to become another casualty of the dot-com calamity. But six years later it has made an audacious comeback.

It powers the video wave now sweeping over the World Wide Web. Major League Baseball games, sitcoms from NBC, movie downloads from Starz and more zip across the Internet via 20,000 superfast servers that Akamai has deployed in 71 countries. The company's video offerings are multiplying: Its servers "broadcast" live games for the National Hockey League in high definition.

Most of the big online sites on the planet use Akamai to deliver all sorts of digital goods faster than the regular Net can handle:

Yahoo

, iTunes,

Microsoft

, MySpace. Akamai parks data locally to cut microseconds from the travel time each packet takes to get to where it needs to be.

Hardly anyone notices. On a typical day one in five Web pages worldwide comes via an Akamai computer. The only clues for Web surfers that a page was akamade is the wait they didn't endure and the error messages that didn't occur. "The Internet is getting bigger and bigger, but it's not getting better and better," Sagan says. "That's our job."

Akamai's central role in speeding up the Internet has paid off: Revenue has doubled in two years, to $429 million last year; earnings are up 66% in the same period, to $57 million. Akamai stock, though distant from the $345 zenith it hit in the dot-com craze, is up almost a hundredfold from the bottom. It was at 56 cents in late 2002, and lately it has cleared the $50 mark.

Yet Paul Sagan, 48, says that what Akamai has done is nothing compared with what the company will pull off in the next few years. Akamai's chief since mid-2005, he believes this star-crossed company has arrived at a magical moment in tech history, able to at least double its capacity every year and in the process disrupt vast swathes of the global economy. Sagan believes Akamai has figured out superior ways to deliver anything digital: basketball games, phone calls, software, feature films, anything.

The giant incumbents in cable, telecom and direct satellite now push a triple play of services to consumers: TV, phone and Web access. To Akamai all those products are just different flavors of the same thing: digital packets. The Net will threaten these behemoths of the old guard.

"Anyone who relies on the fact that they own a scarce distribution network is going to face ten years of turmoil," Sagan says. If people want to get their TV shows over the Internet, the incumbents won't be able to stop them (

Viacom

's new legal assault on

Google

's YouTube notwithstanding). He foresees an era of "emancipated consumers" who can get whatever content they want, whenever they choose. "They'll go right around the cable companies if they want." Sagan adds: "This was Danny's vision, and we are building it."

"Danny" is Daniel Lewin, Akamai's founder, an MIT-trained mathematician who conceived the algorithms and concepts that would form the business. On Sept. 11, 2001 Lewin, Akamai's chief technology officer, boarded the

American Airlines

flight from Boston to Los Angeles, on his way to a business meeting. Lewin settled into seat 9B in business class. One row ahead of him, on the other side of the aisle, sat Mohamed Atta.

A pair of hijackers got up from their seats in the second row and forced their way into the cockpit. They were followed by Atta, the only trained pilot in the group. No one knows for certain what happened next, but according to the 9/11 Commission, Lewin--a former commando in the Israeli army--likely tried to fight four hijackers singlehandedly, unaware of a fifth, seated directly behind him.

Flight attendant Betty Ong radioed the news of Lewin's battle to stunned co-workers on the ground: "Somebody's stabbed in business class." Half an hour later, at 8:46 a.m., the

Boeing

767 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Daniel Lewin left a wife and two young sons. He was 31.

Paul Sagan, like the rest of Akamai's devastated employees, was left to question whether Danny Lewin's company had any chance of surviving his murder. Akamai had $101 million in cash, enough to last just over a year. Its stock, down 99%, was in danger of being delisted from Nasdaq. Lewin's vision of Akamai remaking the Internet suddenly seemed more like hubris than genius. "People told us what we were doing was both crazy and impossible," Sagan says. "It was a horribly dark period."

Yet through it all Sagan and others stubbornly clung to their belief in "the Big Idea"--Danny's idea.

By design, the Internet's power stems from its simple rules and communal nature. A network of networks, it uses a common language to let all "nodes"--computers of all kinds and designs and sizes--link to the whole, giving each one equal access. There is no central control or imposed hierarchy.

It is an abiding concept in communications, made famous by theorist Robert Metcalfe, that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of people hooked into it. That makes theoretical sense; the number of pairs you can make among N players is just about N². The theory, though, doesn't take account of traffic jams. New Internet users add value to the network only if they can connect to one another, says Sagan. Akamai's big idea is that by rewriting the Internet's basic rules--making some computers smarter and more equal than others--it can let the Net grow infinitely large without breaking down.

Danny Lewin first happened upon the crazy idea of building a smarter Internet in 1996, just after he arrived at MIT. He was born in Denver and had grown up and gone to college in Israel. At MIT he was working with Frank T. (Tom) Leighton, a professor of mathematics who harbored a curiosity about how the Internet worked. Lewin, the mentally tough ex-commando, was hyperintense; his mentor, Leighton, laid-back and cordial.

Lewin and Leighton hashed out a basic idea: Connect computers to the far reaches of the Net, then program them to communicate with one another to spot better routes for getting e-mails, Web pages and other packets to where they needed to go.

Leighton, the head of the Algorithms Group at mit's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, helped Lewin concoct ways to more efficiently deliver digital bits to their destinations. One obvious way was to make lots of copies of popular information and store them around the world. That way, when a user requested a popular picture, it could come from a computer across town instead of from one on the other side of the globe. It was an old idea--distributed storage was a feature of networks since the 1980s--but Lewin devised a way to do it far more efficiently.

Together Lewin and Leighton came up with lots of tricks to fix problems the designers of the original Internet never foresaw. They tackled problems like "flash crowds" (which can overwhelm computers storing a Web page or videoclip that suddenly is popular around the world) and the "fat file paradox": Why does data traveling at the speed of light often take such a long time to make it across the country?

Eventually they refined a business idea: a service that essentially would be the

FedEx

of the Internet. People could always trust the public Net to deliver their information cheaply. But others might be willing to pay Akamai a premium to deliver their content faster and more reliably.

The two men set up a "model Internet" in an MIT lab. They linked various computers and labeled them as different cities. To test their software they unplugged the wires connecting a pair of "cities" to simulate the traffic jams that occasionally bog down the Internet. Lewin tested his theories on the mini-network and tinkered continually with the formulas underlying it. He came to believe that their system could keep increasing the speed of the Internet forever.

Lewin, on a lark, parlayed their idea into a business plan and entered it in a contest at MIT's Sloan School of Management. They tied for fourth place. (Their prize: $100.) Then Lewin and Leighton got serious about building a real business, and in 1998 the duo at MIT attracted interest from a Boston venture firm, Battery Ventures.

The VCs, flummoxed by the mind-bending math behind the company, sent over an unpaid consultant to evaluate the academics' unusual idea: Enter Paul Sagan. He hit it off with the two computer scientists and proved just the right fit for the fledgling firm.

Lewin was prone to confrontation, often shouting to make his point. "Danny was the most competitive person I ever met," says Sagan. "He loved to yell and loved to argue." Sagan, by contrast, is a born manager and consensus builder. At age 11 he decided he wanted his family to take a vacation traveling cross-country and persuaded his parents to let him single-handedly design and organize the entire trip, his father, Bruce Sagan, recalls.

The young Paul reminded his father of another Sagan, Carl, the famous astronomer and Paul's second cousin, "If you think about Carl's ability to organize material and to see the variations and possibilities, you're describing Paul. He has a tremendous capacity to see down the line and understand where we are going," the father says.

Paul Sagan's first love had been journalism, not technology. His dad owns the Hyde Park Herald, a weekly in Chicago. Young Paul finagled a job working for a TV news department in high school; by 1987, at age 28, he was running news at the CBS flagship station in New York City. In 1991 Sagan jumped to

Time Warner

, where he worked on some of the earliest Internet ventures. He helped launch Time Warner's Road Runner cable modem service, the first Web site for Time Inc.'s publications and the company's ill-fated effort to offer interactive TV in Orlando, Fla.

"Paul is the best manager I've ever worked with," says Walter Isaacson, Sagan's old boss at Time Warner. "And unlike a lot of CEOs, there's just not one ounce of jerk in him."

After Sagan was dispatched to check out Akamai in 1998, he encouraged Battery Ventures to invest; the firm put up $4 million for 17% of the startup. Then Sagan himself signed on, as employee number 15, becoming chief operating officer. George Conrades, an IBM veteran, joined as chief executive.

At the time Akamai's main customers were free-spending dot-coms that wanted Akamai to make their Web pages load more quickly. On the strength of those customers and Lewin's gauzy vision of building a smarter, infinitely expandable Internet, Akamai offered shares to the public in October 1999, in the heat of the dot-com frenzy. Akamai's investment bankers kept hiking the initial offering price, from $11 to $15 to $18 and finally $26, but it hardly mattered. The stock climbed 458% on its first day, giving it a market value of $13 billion. This for a company that had reported a grand total of $1.3 million in revenue. The stock doubled again in the next two months.

Lewin and Leighton became multibillionaires on paper. Sagan's 2.2% of the firm was worth $700 million. "We were arrogant," recalls sales chief Robert Hughes. "When you have one of the four best-performing IPOs in history, you get a little bit arrogant."

Then came the dot-com implosion. Customers with names like IshopHere.com and WinWin.com started going out of business. Conrades recalls wondering whether Akamai would have any customers left: "You would look at the customer list and say: 'What the hell are we doing?'"

With startups going broke by the hundreds, Sagan realized Danny's grand vision sounded to the world like all the other dot-com blather. At best Akamai looked like the folly of academic theorists who were not as clever as they thought. At worst it looked like a stock swindle built on a mountain of mathematical nonsense. The ten investor lawsuits accused the company of defrauding the public during its wildly profitable public offering, as well as of other misdeeds.

In the week following Lewin's death, Sagan spoke frequently with Conrades and Leighton; with Lewin, they always had run Akamai by committee, says Martin Coyne, a board member. "They were and are inseparable."

With Danny dead, they considered giving up. The trio began to ask one another hard questions. Their current customers were disappearing: Could they be replaced? After some debate each of the three agreed they could.

"Look around the room," Conrades said. "Do you believe we have good people?" That one was easy. Then Conrades asked the most important question: "Do you still believe in the Big Idea?" Danny's now ridiculed vision of building an infinitely powerful Internet--could they make it real? Conrades, Sagan and Leighton looked one another in the eye. Despite the trauma and turmoil that Akamai had endured, they still believed.

And there was this: "We had to do it for Danny," Sagan says.

Conrades and Sagan set plans to hunker down until bigger companies could replace the doomed dot-coms as customers and develop an addiction to the speed that Akamai provided. They laid off 800 of Akamai's 1,300 employees and cut their own pay to $20,000 a year. They made engineers do double duty as salesmen.

The company slashed operating costs from $2.6 billion in 2001 to $327 million in 2002. Even so, Akamai posted a loss from operations in 2002 of $182 million on revenue of $145 million.

By 2003 things began to turn around. Lots of real companies were interested in getting their data sent over the Internet faster and more reliably. The online speed needs of many older customers grew rapidly: At

Apple

's iTunes music store, an Akamai client, users have downloaded 2 billion songs. Akamai started landing a wide range of new customers that could be counted on to pay their bills: the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the U.S. Navy, Airbus.

Akamai's salesmen recrafted their pitch, telling established companies how much they could make with faster Web sites. Akamai started landing industrial companies who were selling more online. SKF Group, which sells ball bearings in Asia, used Akamai to speed the time their product's sales pages loaded, the better to entice impatient purchasing managers to use the site. In the next month SKF's Asian traffic jumped 30%, a number Akamai touts in its sales pitch to customers.

By 2005 the company was solidly back in the black, posting a profit of $14 million in the first quarter. Conrades took that as his cue to step down. The board asked Sagan take his place as chief executive. Sagan, ever humble, declined. "I thought there had to be somebody better," he says. "I spent a long time trying to convince them." Leighton, Conrades, Coyne and others insist Sagan's demurral was sincere. Says Leighton, Akamai's chief scientist: "It's not always the case that the best person for the job is the one who wants it most."

Sagan relented and took the job in April 2005, getting a raise to $400,000 for the year and a grant of 500,000 options at an exercise price of $13.33. (Current value: $18 million.) Sagan honed in on the most promising markets, where customers would be most likely to pay Akamai for delivering their bits.

Besides video, he made delivering software applications a top priority. The idea of storing software on the Internet is an old one. That way, software can be easily accessed from anywhere. But the concept has floundered on problems of reliability, security and speedy access. Sagan figures Akamai is perfectly positioned to solve all three problems, making a software application stored on Akamai servers act just like the application on a PC's own hard drive.

Under Sagan's leadership Akamai's invisible network has continued to encroach on more of the traditional, overtrafficked Internet. In 2006 its computers tripled the volume of data they delivered the year before. That growth is at least twice the rise in Internet traffic overall.

Akamai engineers in Cambridge, Mass. are constantly preparing newer, faster servers the size of pizza boxes--cheap off-the-shelf machines embedded with special Akamai DNA--and deploying them to the farthest edges of the network. Dozens of colleges in the U.S. have an Akamai server sitting on campus.

Every few months the algorithm writers in Cambridge inject better software into the global network to make it shrewder at picking routes for Internet traffic. Last year the software wizards added 100,000 lines of code to the 600,000 in each server. That upgrade doubled the network's ability to deliver bits.

Tom Leighton insists the Akamai grid can continue to double capacity, annually and easily--at the least. By adding more servers, making existing servers faster and upgrading software the company could boost capacity 500% a year or more if it needed to, he avers. Which is precisely what Daniel Lewin had in mind when Akamai began.

In the video age, too much is not enough. Akamai's global network now delivers 300 billion bits a second to computers around the world. That is enough to handle the constant barrage of Yahoo e-mails, iTunes downloads and YouTube-style videoclips. But now imagine that someone uses the Net to broadcast a TV show that gets a single Nielsen point (1% of the nation's 110 million TV households). The delivery would need a trillion bits, a terabit, per second. CSI would need 14 terabits. To deliver the same show in high def would require 100 terabits. That's 300 times Akamai's current output.

That mismatch will ensure the near-term future of giant incumbents in cable, telecom and direct satellite, with their dedicated networks expressly designed to carry video. But a decade out the Internet could catch up with a vengeance. Its power and smarts and bandwidth will continue to expand, and viewing habits will fragment further, eroding the notion of millions of people viewing a single program at the same time. The old delivery systems could be relegated to utilities, mindlessly ferrying data packets from one node to the next.

Ultimately, the biggest threat to Akamai may come not from the billion-dollar behemoths that its technology aims to replace but from tiny startups that seek to replace Akamai.

Peer-to-peer networks use the millions of PCs worldwide to create a significantly dumber but much larger version of Akamai's global distribution network. The creators of Skype, the Internet phone service that Ebay bought for $2.6 billion a year and a half ago, just announced a new P2P service called Joost that promises to deliver broadcast-quality video over the Internet, free of charge.

When one newcomer, MediaZone, started a Web site to send prime-time shows from China to Chinese expats living abroad, it signed on with Akamai. But it soon found that it could save more money by using peer-to-peer nets to deliver its bits. The more users it got, the more bandwidth it could save. "With 250 users, we use 85% less bandwidth, meaning we save 85% of the cost. With 25,000, we save 99%," says Graham Golder, the vice president of engineering at MediaZone (FORBES, Mar. 26).

Other "content delivery networks," with names like LimeLight Networks, Savvis and Mirror Image Internet, have popped up. Many are cut-rate versions of Akamai, offering access to a much smaller global network in exchange for slightly less money.

Level 3, one of the biggest owners of fiber-optic cables, recently bought part of Savvis' network business, making it perhaps Akamai's closest rival. Level 3 is looking into combining Savvis' servers with the power of P2P networks similar to Joost. Many customers will prefer a hybrid network that steers traffic away from more expensive Akamai-style networks whenever possible, in Level 3's view.

Sagan points to the fact that Akamai has continued to grow faster than the Internet as a whole as proof that there will be bits aplenty to keep all these networks busy. He sees Akamai's global network as more reliable, smarter and more secure than P2P networks that make use of consumers' home PCs. "People aren't just looking to the cheapest bits. If they are, they aren't buying anything from me," says Sagan.

The vast array of companies delivering all sorts of bits has led to concerns in some quarters regarding the Net's ability to avoid a worldwide breakdown. "The unrelenting growth in Internet traffic during 2007 may overwhelm some of the Internet's backbones," according to a recent report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. "The Internet is often regarded as an infinite resource. Unfortunately, this is not the case."

Oh yes it is, Paul Sagan counters. He says he often spends his weekend pondering whether Akamai has lived up to the goals Danny Lewin set for it. His conclusion: "Beyond a doubt we have proven that Danny was right. I sleep very well thinking that."

TV Networks Still Wrestling With 'Video'

2007 TV Upfront Summit: What Should a Digital Ad Look Like? | Watch the Video

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: April 12, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Shifting dollars to digital may be on every advertiser's to-do list for the 2007 upfront, but uncertainty over what the digital advertising environment should

The TV networks have yet to devise an advertising environment that works for online video, said Ed Erhardt, president-consumer marketing and sales, ESPN. Videography: Steve Raddock

look like for TV networks could hold up getting any deals done, according to experts participating in a panel at Advertising Age and TelevisionWeek's TV Advertising Upfront Summit, held yesterday in New York at The New School.

YouTube's not the answer
"The big concern for video creators, which is what networks are, is this video-advertising-environment challenge. ... We have to figure out the video-advertising environment," said Ed Erhardt, president-customer marketing and sales at ESPN. Without that, he said, convergence "will not happen at the pace everybody thinks."

And online video sites such as YouTube "ain't getting it done," he said. "We're spending a long time with advertisers and agencies, trying to figure out a good advertising environment," whether it be on mobile or in commercial pods on TV.

According to eMarketer, online video is expected to be a $775 million ad business in 2007.

Hitting 'reset'
What kinds of online content offerings and how to make enough money off them to pay for them is something nearly every TV network is wrestling with. Courtney Holt recalled MTV Networks' video-heavy online strategy when he joined the company nine months ago to become exec VP-digital music and media.

"We had to hit the reset button," he said. Today, the philosophy is "let's do something really creative and figure out how to maximize it." An online property coming out of a TV company doesn't have to look like TV on the web. For example, MTV Networks has embraced virtual worlds, launching properties such as "Virtual Hills," based off an MTV show "The Hills."

"We've got hundreds of thousands of people sitting in these worlds for hours on end," he said. "We reached a new audience that loved virtual and loved that environment but might not have sat and watched the show week after week. ... [there are] lots of places to enter into a point of engagement without having to go through one giant portal."

Mr. Erhardt and his colleagues were addressing the role digital media would play in the upfront this year. Last year's upfront presentations were rife with the subject, as networks touted that digital components would be added to nearly all the upfront buys. In many cases, that turned out to be lip service, but TV networks feel more prepared to tout digital offerings this year, with new assets such as the News Corp.-NBC joint venture.

The gray area
The executives mostly agreed with a Merrill Lynch estimate that about 5% of this year's upfront would be accredited to digital, up from 2% or 3% last year. Last year broadcast TV networks wrote $9.1 billion in the upfront.

Eric Bader, senior VP-director of MediaVest Digital Connections, said the definitions aren't so cut and dried. It would be irresponsible to advise marketer clients to chop off percentages for digital, he said. And the shift of dollars varies from advertiser to advertiser, tending to be higher in categories such as auto, entertainment, financial and travel. Still, "there will be a surprising amount of money in next few years shifted from traditional media to digital even in categories like consumer package goods," Mr. Bader said.

There's the question of where that money goes. While projects such as MTV Networks' "Virtual Hills" sound intriguing, the jury's still out on how monetizable -- at least through advertising -- things such as virtual worlds are. Mr. Holt recognizes the delicate balance between usability and business. "People may start to build relationship with content outside of TV but it's TV-produced content," he said, and, thus, and it needs to be paid for somehow.

Taking care of cool
And when there is a good idea for monetizing something online, the question of how well it scales remains difficult -- especially when it comes to big integrated ideas, which everyone on the panel touted as having value.

"We can all come up with fantastic cool idea but how many people can take care of fantastic cool?" he asked. "If you want to do integrated, smart, intelligent ideas, everybody can do three a year but nobody can make money on three a year ... We need to figure out how to do 100, 200."

Amy Carney, exec VP-advertiser sales at Sony Picture Television, echoed Mr. Erhardt, explaining that her group had been hindered by "high-cost low-reward integrations." After a sales reorganization, it's now also going after deals not necessarily linked to TV. "Last year with strategic Alliances we were maybe able to bring three ideas to the marketplace," she said. Already this year, "we have a dozen and twice as many in the pipeline."

Lagging Online, TV Stations Get Moving

They Build Local Web Sites,
Offer Special Internet Shows
To Lure Lost Viewers, Ads

By BROOKS BARNES and EMILY STEEL
April 11, 2007; Page B1

Local TV stations are launching a blitz of Internet initiatives as they race to catch up online.

Once considered a license to print money, TV stations have suffered body blows from the Web. Lucrative 11 p.m. newscasts are sinking in the ratings as more viewers go to the Internet for cable channels to get weather and sports information.

Viewers no longer have to tune in to catch shows such as ABC's "Lost" because networks are making programming available all over the Web. And key TV advertisers such as auto manufacturers are moving cash toward online campaigns.

Web site of WNEM in Flint, Mich., promoting its talent show.

While newspapers have had success building heavily trafficked Web sites, "people still don't automatically think to visit a TV-station Web site," says Brent Magid, chief executive officer of media consultancy Frank Magid Associates Inc. "Stations need to do something online to get noticed."

Some have done so and are doing well. Hearst-Argyle Television Inc., for instance, which has been aggressive in offering exclusive online content, says its 29 stations streamed 38 million videos on their Web sites in 2006, up from 29% a year earlier.

And smaller station operators have had success experimenting with a variety of Web attractions.

WITN, a Greenville, N.C., station owned by Gray Television Group Inc., is hosting video tours of houses for sale on its Web site, while Nashville's WKRN, owned by Young Broadcasting Inc., started blogs on everything from religion to hunting. Meredith Corp.'s WNEM in Flint, Mich., produced a whole program -- a type of senior-citizen talent show, including a voting element à la "American Idol" -- for its site.

These sites fall below the radar for tracking firms such as Nielsen/NetRatings, but all three companies have seen traffic to their sites grow as a result. At WNEM, for example, according to internal figures, total clips played in 2006 by the station increased 53.7% to 873,382, and total unique visitors increased 49.4% to 1.5 million.

"We can't build a strong Web business by just doing online what we do on air," says Jimmy Goodmon, general manager of new media at Capitol Broadcasting Co.'s WRAL in Raleigh, N.C.

Over the last year, the CBS affiliate has added a social-networking component to its site and quadrupled the amount of Web-only stories. The revamp was in December; since then, the site's traffic has grown 40% a month, now drawing two million unique visitors -- in line with the local newspaper.

Most local broadcasters, though, are coming late to the party. One key measure of how far they are lagging on the Internet: Newspaper sales of local online video ads totaled $81 million in 2006, compared with a relatively paltry $32 million for TV stations, according to research firm Borrell Associates Inc.

Complacency and greed are two reasons station operators have fallen so far behind, say media analysts and consultants. The majority of local stations enjoyed 40% profit margins as recently as the mid 1990s (compared with 25% to 30% today) because they had little competition. Many didn't see a need to invest in their Web operations as a result, says Mr. Magid. Some were leery of moving too quickly online after getting burned when the dot-com bubble burst. Others resisted building up their Web sites for fear of giving viewers a reason to switch off the TV set.

Another challenge: changing the DNA of broadcast newsrooms. CBS Corp.'s 16 CBS-affiliated stations have been some of the most aggressive on digital initiatives, cutting a deal last October to supply video news clips to Yahoo Inc.

But prompting station executives to shift to an "always on" mentality -- breaking news on the Web around the clock -- has been hard, says Jonathan Leess, president of CBS Stations Digital Media Group. "They needed to understand that this is a threat," he says. "If they continued with a holding-back approach it will severely limit their growth."

As stations try to catch up, some are trying to build on their long established strength as a source of local news. Philadelphia's WCAU, owned by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., is putting the finishing touches on a new Web site called DigPhilly that will offer movie and restaurant reviews, job listings and personal ads. Visitors will also be able to share homemade videos.

"The goal is to go hyper-local with our coverage, right down to the street-corner level," says WCAU General Manager Dennis Bianchi.

But stations are finding this a crowded area. Existing Web players like craigslist.org and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Citysearch are already providing these services, and plenty of local newspapers have also been adding similar information listings to their Web sites.

Taking notice of all this activity are big TV studios, which rely on stations for their giant syndication units. Several studios are starting to offer Web content either for sale independently or as an add-on for on air deals.

For instance, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., the industry's largest supplier of TV programming, is preparing a syndicated TV show for next fall based on its popular celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com.

To heighten buyer interest, Warner Bros. is offering stations additional content from TMZ.com for their Web sites. "We hope it's going to drive a lot of traffic to our site and keep people on the site for longer amounts of time," says Derek Dalton, general manager of KGTV, a San Diego ABC affiliate owned by McGraw-Hill Cos.

Some smaller station owners have successfully persuaded their affiliated networks to help them out. Fox affiliates earlier this month successfully won the right to stream episodes of such hit Fox shows as "24" on their individual Web sites the day after the network airs the original.

Fox, a unit of News Corp., will share revenue from video advertising tied to the streamed episodes with affiliates; stations can also sell downloads of episodes.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC agreed to a similar deal with its affiliates last year and is now working on new video-player software that affiliates can use to offer local news content on their Web sites along with prime-time shows.

The player will also be available on ABC.com -- but will be able to identify the location of visitors. That means anyone watching on ABC.com will see branding messages promoting their local affiliate, says John Rouse, ABC's senior vice president of affiliate relations.

To date, ABC affiliates covering 80% of the country, including major affiliate groups as well as the 10 ABC-owned stations, have launched or have committed to launching the player on their own Web sites and are taking advantage of the opportunity to incorporate local advertising into the programming.

News Corp. and Disney have reason to help, of course -- they both own stations. However, their stations, along with those owned by NBC Universal and CBS, tend to be in less of a bind because they are clustered in big cities with more robust advertising markets.

Write to Brooks Barnes at brooks.barnes@wsj.com¹ and Emily Steel at emily.steel@wsj.com²

Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD

    http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-6739_7-32331171.html            

   

At a glance

   

• Editors' rating: 7.7 Very good
• The good: Extensive format support for a wide variety of audio and video files, including high-def content; streams purchased iTunes songs from Windows PCs; lightning-fast onscreen user interface; streams YouTube videos, public Flickr photo galleries, and Internet radio straight to your TV; can schedule TV shows and stream recorded content from PCs with TV tuners; excellent connectivity options provides compatibility with all TVs and stereo systems.
• The bad: No 802.11n Wi-Fi, and wireless performance was not flawless; protected iTunes songs take 15 seconds to load; interface isn't quite as simple as Apple TV's; would occasionally freeze up and require unplugging and plugging back in; large compared to Apple TV; no built-in hard drive.
• The bottom line: While it's not as slick as Apple TV and its performance isn't flawless, the Netgear EVA8000's awesome array of features should delight tech-savvy digital media hounds.

   

---

   

CNET editor's review

   

    Reviewed by                          ; Matthew Moskovciak                   
Edited by                         ; John P. Falcone                   
Reviewed April 5, 2007                

       

Apple TV

may get all the press, but digital media geeks (especially those who don't like iTunes) have had their eye on the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD since it was

announced

at CES 2007. The reason is simple--the Digital Entertainer HD plays more file types and has tons of features, plus it advertises its ability to play high-def 1080p video. The feature set is truly outstanding: it can stream YouTube videos, Flickr photos, live and recorded TV from a PC TV tuner, BitTorrent downloads, Internet radio, and even protected iTunes songs--yes, you read that correctly. In our testing, the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD ($400 list, but widely available for $350) largely lived up to its billing: it delivers a currently unrivaled set of features, and offers a compelling, more enthusiast-oriented alternative to the Apple TV. On the downside, the lack of 802.11n wireless hurt the streaming performance of larger video files, and the interface certainly isn't as slick as Apple TV's. But the Netgear is arguably the most versatile digital media device we've seen to date, and with the addition of some firmware updates and fixes, there's no reason it can't get even better.

Design
With dimensions of 1.5 inches high by 17 inches wide by 10 inches deep, the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD looks like an average slimline DVD player--albeit without the disc tray. That's a contrast to competitors such as the recent Apple TV and the

Mvix MX-760HD

, which look more like PC-styled wireless routers. It looks big next to the Apple TV, but stacks perfectly in an A/V rack. 

Aesthetically, the design is fairly bland but not unattractive. The front panel has only a single light for power, which unfortunately can't be dimmed or extinguished. The only button is the power button, and the rest of the front panel is blank, save for a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and the infrared receptor. No front panel controls definitely give the Digital Entertainer HD a sleek look, but if you lose the remote you're out of luck (unless you opt for the browser interface--see below).

The included remote is pretty good, with mostly excellent button differentiation, which makes it easy to quickly find the page up/down rocker or the play button. We would have preferred if the stop button was in a slightly more prominent place, but it's more of a quibble than a knock. Overall, the remote design nicely complements the menu system, and it's pretty easy to get the logic of the Digital Entertainer after only a few minutes of playing with the device.

 

There are no front panel controls, but the remote is better than average.

You need to install Netgear's software on your computer to get things working. After it's installed, you access and navigate the "software" in your Web browser. It looks a bit rough around the edges, but you won't really have to use it that frequently--if at all--once you've completed the initial setup. The browser interface essentially replicates the EVA8000's onscreen navigation--essentially, you also can use the software to remotely control the Digital Entertainer HD. It sounds redundant--and it is--but the ability to remotely control the EVA8000 from a laptop is useful if you're just streaming music to your stereo and don't want to turn the TV on.

Connectivity
The Digital Entertainer HD offers a solid jack pack, highlighted by HDMI and component video output, which are capable of displaying images in true high-definition. The rear panel also offers S-Video and composite video outputs for connecting to any old TV--something not offered by the Apple TV. For audio, you'll find both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs, plus a standard analog stereo output (red and white RCA jacks). Rounding things out are a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet jack, a USB 2.0 port, and a SCART port (for connecting to similarly equipped European TVs). The Netgear sports dual antennas for wireless networking reception, but it's limited to 802.11g--not the faster, state of the art 802.11n standard found on the Apple TV. On the front panel, there's also an additional USB 2.0 port and a headphone jack.

Digital Entertainer HD has just about every possible jack imaginable.

The USB 2.0 ports can be used for more than just thumb drives--we had no difficulty in playing music off iPods, which often give other A/V players trouble. We even hooked up a 160GB USB hard disk, and it worked perfectly. This is a nice option, as the USB 2.0 connection is fast enough for streaming video flawlessly and you can directly connect your media without worrying about the PC. Likewise, those who prefer PC-less network storage will be happy to know the Netgear should work with any type of networked attached storage, and it's DLNA compliant (though we didn't have any NAS drives on hand to test).

While we're on the subject of hard drives: keep in mind you will need some external storage device--or Web-based media--to be streaming to the Netgear. Unlike the Apple TV, it doesn't have an internal hard drive, so if you turn off your PC or external hard drive, you'll be limited to the online resources that the Digital Entertainer HD can access.

User Interface
The main onscreen menu for the Digital Entertainer HD consists of seven choices: TV/Video, Music, Photos, Schedule Recordings, Internet media, News/Weather, and More, with the latter giving way to even more options and features. The first three options give you access to the media you have stored on your networked computer, network attached storage drive, or even on USB drives plugged into the Netgear itself.

Each of the categories has different (but similar) methods for sorting through the files. For example, the most useful categories for music are Artist, Album, and Genre, and the Digital Entertainer does a good job of picking up tag information. There are also additional categories, such as Year and Decade, as well as Folder, which is supposed to let you browse the file structure on your PC.

 

The onscreen graphical interface lacks the slick panache of Apple TV, but it's functional--and the navigation is lightning fast.

We had a small problem with the way the Digital Entertainer displays folders--across all media types--as it only gives you access to the deepest folder level. For instance, if you have a main folder for The Eagles and a subfolder called "Greatest Hits" (the album title), as well as a main folder for Queen and a subfolder called "Greatest Hits" (again, the album), both the The Eagles and Queen files will appear to be in a single folder called (you guessed it) Greatest Hits. It's even more troublesome for files like ripped DVDs, which are nearly always grouped into Audio TS and Video TS folders. That means that what appears to be a single "Video TS" folder will be filled with several files named "VTS_01_1.VOB," and you won't know which is which. We're hoping Netgear can improve this feature with a firmware update.

The menu system on the Digital Entertainer HD is clean and serviceable, but it's not nearly as slick or animated as the one found on the Apple TV. That said, one of the first things we noticed when we started playing with it is how fast the menus are--whereas other network media devices can lag a bit, the Digital Entertainer HD is extremely fast. It really makes a big difference when you're searching through thousands of media files. We also liked that the Digital Entertainer HD was fairly flexible in terms of being able to customize options. You can set the screensaver delay time and change the image, and there's also the ability to choose different skins, although we couldn't figure out how to access additional skins other than the default.

File compatibility and media support
One of the strongest points of the Digital Entertainer HD is its file format support. For video, it can handle MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV, WMV-HD, MOV, H.264, DivX and lastly, VOB files from ripped DVDs--even though that last one isn't listed in the manual. This extensive file format support is a major advantage over Apple TV, which is generally limited to iTunes-friendly MPEG-4 and h.264 files. In addition, the EVA8000 also supports several types of Plays For Sure copy-protected video formats, such as WMV videos bought from online stores such as Bittorrent and MovieLink.

However, we can't say that protected video files played back easily. For example, we purchased an episode of Arrested Development from BitTorrent's new online store and tried to stream it over the Digital Entertainer HD. Our initial attempt was met with a "Media Protected" message, so we did some digging through the manual and determined we needed to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11 (we were running version 10). Once downloaded and installed, we gave it another whirl--and got the same message. Finally, after digging through some of the media sharing settings in Windows Media Player, we were able to get it to work, but there was no audio (Netgear is aware of the problem and is currently working on a fix). We did have success playing other video files from BitTorrent, but it was a pretty arduous process--and one that wasn't well-covered in the manual. By comparison, Apple TV's easy integration into iTunes means that anyone who's familiar with an iPod should have no trouble syncing and streaming to Apple TV as well.

For photos, the Digital Entertainer HD supports JPEG, BMP, TIFF, and PNG files, which is pretty good. The EVA8000 is also capable of filtering out very small images on your computer (such as icons), and you can set the filter level with the software, so your real photos won't be overwhelmed by the myriad Web graphics in your Internet Explorer and Firefox caches.

On the audio side, support is again comprehensive, with MP1, MP2, MP3, FLAC, AC3, WAV, AAC, M4A, WMA, and WMA Pro files. Open-source music fans will lament the lack of Ogg support, but we think inclusion of the lossless FLAC format makes up for it, as it makes it relatively easy to back up all your CDs and stream real CD-quality music from a large hard drive on your PC. There's also support for protected audio files, such as WMA files purchased from online stores such as Napster and Rhapsody--but not for "rented" subscription files from those same stores.

All that file format support is great, but the Digital Entertainer has one more trick up its sleeve--it can stream protected songs purchased from iTunes from any Windows PC that has iTunes installed. That's a huge plus, as it's one of the most highly desired features that is almost always missing from non-Apple products (with a few

notable exceptions

). The bottom line is that iTunes-junkies will be able to access their large libraries of purchased iTunes music (but not video). We did have some issues with the performance of those files--but more on that later.

 

This song was purchased on the iTunes Store, but the Netgear was able to stream it--albeit with a delay.

While many network media streamers are loaded with features, the Digital Entertainer is probably the most fully featured streamer we've seen. On top of its ability to pull content from networked PCs and attached storage, there's additional functionality in terms of its ability to pull content straight from the Internet. Here's a rundown of the Entertainer HD's additional features.

TV Tuner / EPG
The EVA8000 also can integrate itself with your PC's TV tuner--assuming it's so equipped--which means you can schedule recordings and play back recorded content right from your EVA8000. We had a PC setup running Windows Vista Premium (which includes Windows Media Center) and equipped with a Hauppauge TV tuner. At first, we had the tuner pulling in analog TV signals over an antenna, figuring we could use Media Center's built-in electronic programming guide (EPG) with the EVA8000. That didn't work for two reasons. First, you can't pull EPG data from Media Center--instead you need to buy a $5 EPG license fee from Netgear, which feels a bit cheap after you've paid close to $400 for the device already. Second, the EVA8000 can't be configured with an over-the-air tuner at all--during the setup for this feature, our only options were Satellite and Cable.

Once you get it setup, the functionality is pretty good. You can schedule recordings from the EVA8000, watch recorded content, or even stream live TV from the PC to the Netgear. Sure, the design isn't quite as friendly as TiVo--or, indeed, the Xbox 360, which offers all of the same functionality when connecting to Media Center-equipped PCs--but as an added feature it's pretty nice.

YouTube
Another great feature on the Digital Entertainer HD is the ability to stream YouTube videos straight to your TV. When you go to the "TV/Video" section, you can then select YouTube video, and from there you can, for instance, search for tags or search a specific user's videos. Obviously some of the joy of quickly looking up whatever comes into your mind is hampered by the fact that you need to use the remote to enter in search phrases, but aside from that, we felt it worked really well. But because you're not able to browse the YouTube site on the TV screen as you would on a Web browser, we went for a work-around. Access YouTube from a computer, set up an account (which is free), save your favorite videos, and then browse your username from the Digital Entertainer HD to, say, show your friends your favorite dancing cat video.

Flickr
You also can access your Flickr account via the Digital Entertainer HD. It works very much like the YouTube section, where you can search for users or tags. Again, we thought this functionality worked fairly well, as we were able to browse friends' Flickr accounts easily by dialing in their names and then saving them as favorites. One shortcoming we did notice is you can only view users' public photos and there's no way to, say, enter a password to view their private photos. It's a minor drawback, and one that can perhaps be fixed via firmware.

Internet Radio
The Digital Entertainer HD also is able to tune into Internet radio stations, which is a feature that was curiously missing from Apple TV. You can browse from the pregenerated list of stations, using Title, Genre, and Quality filters, or you can dial in the URL of an Internet radio station that isn't listed. While the quality and content of many Internet radio stations isn't that great, we have to admit we were pretty excited we could dial into to WFMU's Internet stream.

News and Weather
News and weather are also available on the Digital Entertainer HD. Once you plug in your ZIP code, the weather displays on the main menu page, and by going into the News/Weather section, you can access more detailed weeklong forecasts, as well as weather maps of the entire United States. In the news department, it comes preloaded with RSS feeds from Yahoo and Reuters, plus you can add your own by typing in the proper URL. We had no problem accessing the CNET Crave RSS feed, and any other standard feed should work just fine.

PC Access
The Digital Entertainer HD also has a nifty feature called PC Access. PC Access allows you to essentially stream what is on your computer monitor to your TV over the Digital Entertainer. Not only that, but you can actually control your PC using the remote control, so you can, for example, click links on a Web page. Honestly, the practical applications of this feature are rather limited, as the rate at which the screen refreshes on the TV is too slow to, say, watch Web video. But it's potentially useful for PowerPoint presentations and viewing other static media that can't otherwise be streamed to the Entertainer HD.

Follow Me and Party Mode
The Digital Entertainer HD's Follow Me feature is useful for those who have multiple units in their house. The idea is you pause a file on one Entertainer HD, and you can then hit "Follow Me," and it will start it at the exact same point on another Entertainer HD. The "Party Mode" feature is similar and allows you to sync multiple units so they, for example, play the same song in multiple rooms in your house. We only had one unit, so we couldn't test these features, but they're nice, well-thought-out extras for those looking to buy more than one unit.

Performance
We mentioned before that the Digital Entertainer HD is capable of playing protected songs purchased from iTunes--but there's a big catch. The problem is there's a 15-second wait between the time you choose a purchased iTunes song and when it begins playing (as opposed to the nearly instantaneous response on any other audio files). If you're someone who likes to listen to an entire album--especially albums without gaps such as Dark Side of the Moon--it really doesn't cut it, and it's even enough of a break to cause a hitch using shuffle mode during a party. So while it's great you can access your iTunes-purchased music--and we certainly commend Netgear for being one of the first non-Apple products to offer this functionality--it still doesn't quite compare to the Apple TV for people who buy most of their music through iTunes. On the other hand, if you only have a handful of purchased songs--50 out of several thousand, let's say--you could certainly live with it.

As with any network media device, streaming is at its most solid when using all wired connections. Our initial setup was using a Dell notebook computer connected via Ethernet to a Belkin N1 router, connected via Ethernet to the Digital Entertainer HD. Using this connection, we had mostly flawless playback of everything from full WAV files to high-definition WMV files. We watched some 720p clips of car racing that looked great and played without a hiccup, and it's definitely impressive to watch high-quality video streamed over a network.

After playing a bunch of files successfully, we decided to push the Digital Entertainer HD to its limits by trying to play a 1080p WMV trailer for the movie Alexander. The trailer played back fine and looked great for about 30 seconds, but eventually it choked. That's not too unexpected--and there's not much 1080p digital video available that people want to stream--but what was more annoying is it caused the Digital Entertainer HD to freeze, and required us to reboot it by cycling the power (unplugging it and plugging it back in).

Using wireless connections--as expected-- lowered the Digital Entertainer HD's ability to stream. First, we started off using our laptop's wireless connection with the Digital Entertainer HD still connected via wired Ethernet. In this scenario, we couldn't stream 720p WMV files without getting stuttering and audio dropouts. Ripped DVDs (essentially, 480p video) were better, as we had no trouble streaming King Kong, but it did freeze up when we were playing back Star Trek: Insurrection. As usual, music--which is considerably less bandwidth-intensive-- was even better, and we had no issues streaming FLAC and WAV without a hitch. The same was true of 256k AAC files--that's the better-sounding,

DRM-free file type

that will soon be available from the iTunes Store. We also switched the arrangement around, using a wired Ethernet connection with the laptop and the wireless connection to the laptop. This provided essentially the same experience, with King Kong playing fine but Insurrection having choppy playback--which is a bit puzzling, but that's what happened. This is where it's disappointing that the Digital Entertainer lacks 802.11n compatibility, as it would have offered the possibility of hiccup-free wireless streaming.

Since the Digital Entertainer HD was able to stream DVDs we're familiar with, we were able to get a good sense of its video quality prowess. First, we took a look at Star Trek: Insurrection and were able to confirm that it did have 2:3 pull-down processing, so the introduction looked good with smooth lines on the hulls of the boats and the railing of the bridge. We also were able to look at Silicon Optix's HQV test suite, which would give us a good indication of how good the video processing is. The results were mostly a mixed bag--it did a pretty good job of displaying all the detail of DVD video, but it did struggle with other tests such as a rotating white line and three shifting lines. We wouldn't rate it that highly as an upconverting DVD player, but it was better than the Mvix MX-760HD. And of course, it's better than nothing, which is what Apple TV offers in terms of its ability to play ripped DVDs (without converting it to another format).

We also looked at King Kong, which is an excellent-looking DVD, and the Digital Entertainer HD didn't disappoint. Detail and colors looked excellent, and we completely forgot we were watching the DVD streamed, instead of on a decent upconverting DVD player. While the Netgear might have struggled with some of the tests on HQV, we have to admit that film-based material like King Kong looked excellent. Perhaps our biggest concern with the EVA8000 is stability. We had our fair share of freezes that required rebooting, and there were times when the EVA8000 had trouble scanning our PC for files. Granted, we were pushing the device to its limits, but we do get the feeling you'll experience more hiccups with the EVA8000 than with Apple TV. For many, the additional features and file compatibility are well-worth some occasional mishaps, but anyone with a low tolerance for frustration might be better off with the Apple TV.

                   

Published: April 10, 2007

                   

Web Video: Who Can You Trust?

                      

                   

By Steve Rosenbaum

                                       

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Magnify.net's CEO outlines a stress-free strategy for making a name for your brand in the online video space.

                   

In my last article, I revealed some of the tricks that web video entrepreneurs have used to bring the some structure to the fast moving space known as internet video. But there are many ways marketers are distinguishing themselves, so here are a few more points to ponder when you are looking to provide outstanding service to your clients, and your customers, through the wonders of online video campaigns.

It's not about the tech or the toys
Lot's of folks are getting worked up about the technology side of web video. What codec are you using? Are you Web 2.0 or  AJAX, or Ruby or some other nifty form of high  tech gizmo? You don't need to get caught up in this debate, because users don't care. They don't care if their TV is plasma or LCD. They don't care if their phone is CDMA or GSM. They want nice video and good audio and they want it to work smoothly and quickly.

What the audience is looking for is relevance. They want video that keeps its promises, that's focused and useful, just as your channel promises. They want community and they want context. They want to feel listened to, engaged, embraced, even loved. They don't want to be talked down to, or at or about. They want to join in, be part, play nice and feel special. These are all things you, as a content provider, can do. And it doesn't really matter if you're running Linux or Mac or PC (ok, maybe that matters a little -- we like Firefox).   

What does this mean if you're a content entrepreneur? Trust your partners. Trust your eyes. Trust your fingers. If you think that something feels right, it probably is right. Don't let the technology overshadow the overall experience. Users feel the same way you do. If you feel like your site is too complex, too geeky, too inhuman, make it more human. Put your picture in the 'about us' page. Write a blog. Embrace the spirit and the energy of your community. This is what web video pioneers do best: they promote their brands by embracing their passions. Users are attracted to authenticity, and never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Play futurist, then build from there
Finish this sentence: "In the future, video will be… ". Chances are whatever you put in that blank will be right. Video will be...  on every website. Video will be... in my car.  Video will be... part of literature, magazines, training manuals, corporate reports, cook books, school year books. You get the idea.

So, take your current business, your brand, your retail outlet, your personal passion or pursuit and mash it up in your own way. Video is part of the future of all things digital, so it's time to start imagining a future in which video is part of what you do.

Don't just think about the possibilities and potential problems. Just build it. Because with an industry still so unestablished, there's no penalty for doing it today and learning from mistakes as you go. There's still time to build, test, deploy, and replace when necessary. Try different tools. Try Kick Apps. Try Nign. Hell, try Magnify. Hire some programmers on elance.com to build it for you. This is a great time to explore video in all of its nifty complexities. From this point on, it probably won't get any easier, and it certainly will not get less important.

Video isn't special, hard… or new
Ok, so if you've decided I'm wrong about the last point, it's probably because you've convinced yourself video is hard, special and new. So, you're content to let someone lay the groundwork, and you'll follow in their footsteps, eventually. No innovator's dilemma for you. You'll walk across the chasm on the back of others.

Waiting is a bad idea. 

Video isn't hard, special or new; it's just a story. A visual story. And your teenage kids can edit it for you. The intern in the break room probably knows final cut or iMovie. You've got a webcam. You've got a laptop. And with all the folks on Craigslist, you can hire an editor in about 10 minutes (try "editor wanted" under gigs; it's free).

So, video isn't any more difficult than blogging. Or the early days of building a website. But it's far more important. Don't let folks tell you that you can't experiment. You can. If you're company's brand is too big, or special, then start a little test site named after your dog, or your favorite beach resort. But don't wait. 

Break some eggs
Listen to the sound of the clicks on your site.

Which brings me to the cardinal rule (Shelly Palmer, managing partner of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC, taught me this one). Play with live ammo. Don't be a scaredy cat. Because all media is social, you can't learn about it in focus groups or from books at Barnes and Noble. You need to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty. Change is oxygen in the web 2.0 world.  What is web 2.0?  The answer is in video. 

If you're writing an RFP, remember that speed counts, focus groups don't. Your customers will teach you what you need to know about their experience. But you need to ask them. So put up a discussion board, then read it, post to it and respond to criticisms and concerns.

Yes,  the changes are coming fast. But it's kind of like skydiving -- once you've stepped out of the plane, you in for quite a ride. Don't worry -- the chute always opens! Have fun.

TV 2.0

To watch some of the networks' best shows, you'll need to log on

By JACOB HALE RUSSELL - Wall Street Journal
April 7, 2007; Page P2

Most people don't know how the cliffhanger of ABC's "Day Break," a serial thriller canceled after six episodes, was resolved. The few who do are people who turned to ABC's Web site, where all 12 episodes of the season are posted.

Some of these watchers -- I'm one of them -- are part of a unique Internet-era group: TV lovers who don't own a TV. In the past year, each major network has launched its own Web-based video player that lets viewers watch many prime-time shows free online, usually a day after the episode first airs on cable.

Unlike the TV episodes on iTunes, which users typically download for $1.99 each and can be saved to their iPods, these shows are streamed and play roughly the way they would on a TV set.

One advantage of watching this way: the chance to discover shows that most people don't see, sometimes yanked before they've had a chance to build an audience. Increasingly, networks relegate unaired episodes of canceled shows to their Web sites, particularly serial dramas with viewers who want to know what happened in the end.

Some of these are surprisingly enjoyable. ABC's "Day Break" -- a show about a man who's been framed for murder but who keeps waking up to find that the same day has started anew -- lends itself to watching several episodes in a row, instead of waiting a week between episodes. "Six Degrees," an engaging serial from "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams, has now been canceled, reinstated and canceled again on TV, but some episodes are available on ABC.com.

In the case of shows still playing on TV, online viewing can also have its advantages. Typically, the network sites show a 30-second commercial at the beginning of an episode and then about every 20 minutes, making for fewer and shorter interruptions than you'd have on TV.

There can be frustrations, however. For some shows I watched, the volume was pumped up to an almost deafening level