Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the Pulse of the Streaming Media Industry.

Speaker 2 0:23

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn Podcast. I am Dan Rayburn, along with Mark Donegan, co-host on Friday, march 21st, two weeks out from the NAB Show Streaming Summit, which I'll be very happy once I'm in Vegas, on the ground. Yeah, that's right Getting stuff done, but yeah, two weeks away Everything's looking good there, mark, let's just run into some news here. We did skip last week last minute here because of some travel I had, so let's just go through some news from this week. Also a few things from last week, so today, for sure.

Speaker 2 0:57

NFL Sunday ticket. They put out pricing on the 2025-2026 season. Actually, I should say YouTube put out NFL Sunday ticket pricing, so the pricing is going up. For those that don't bundle NFL Sunday ticket with YouTube TV and you buy it individually, the price is $480. That's up from $449 last year. If you bundle both, the cost is $378 this year. Last year it was $349. So price increase on both. Uh, that said, early bird discounts have been previously offered discount codes. If you look at the reddit discussion list, you'll see that some users have gotten nfl sunday ticket standalone for as low as 220 that's a pretty good discount it is, and it looks like that's because they were a member last year but they didn't renew it.

Speaker 2 1:47

So it sounds like, hey, if you renew we'll give you certain pricing. Uh, but I also noticed the pricing's a little all over the map. So don't necessarily take that $480 and 378 price I'm giving you as as the de facto standard you're going to pay. We also see discounts throughout the year from YouTube TV in terms of NFL Sunday tickets. So let's see what else comes out. But just right off the top, if you're looking at MSRP, there is a price increase this year. This is news from last week.

Speaker 2 2:20

Comcast and the IOC so the International Olympic Committee they've extended the rights agreement. So NBCUniversal and Peacock is going to stay as the US TV and streaming home the Olympics games through 2036. That's part of a $3 billion deal. That's extending it Interesting for listeners. As part of the new agreement, comcast is going to now support IOC with technology, infrastructure, connectivity, in-house venue distribution in the actual venues. They're going to collaborate in digital advertising opportunities and also NBCU is going to help with the Olympics video player as well. It sounds like the IOC is defaulting to the expertise that mbcu and their team have in terms of technology yeah, that's right makes total sense.

Speaker 2 3:11

Let's go into live events here for a second. So geo hot star, which is the new entity there in india, said they had 60 million concurrent streams for the march h marth H championships trophy final. So cricket surpassing the previous record of 59 million on Disney plus hot star. So, uh, interesting here, mark, because during that event there were definitely reports of of problems. Um, you had people who were unable to log in. You had the website giving an error saying it was down. Major buffering and pixelation issues were reported. Some only showed that they couldn't get anything higher than 720p as a max bitrate. When it was said it was streamed in 4k. Yeah, so again, another live event where we have no idea what percentage of users were impacted. Another live event where we have no idea what percentage of users were impacted. There's just no way to know. Now multiple GeoHotStar employees are also saying on LinkedIn that this is a new quote, new world record, new world record. But do they mean just for cricket, because Netflix reported 65 million? Quote current streams for the Jake Paul, mike Tyson fight.

Speaker 3 4:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:28

So are they comparing a new world record for cricket or a new world record for streaming? It's not clear, I don't know. But here's what I will just say again and what we've discussed about previously. While the quantity of viewers matters, so does the quality. That's right, yeah, and none of these large scale live events ever talk about pretty much anything tied to the quality of service the user is getting.

Speaker 3 4:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:54

We know the streams for live events have issues. They won't say what percentage of users are impacted. Also, the Geo Hotstar event was in one region. Netflix's boxing event was streamed globally. Globally yeah, then we also have to look at the bitrate, because you can have higher viewers at a much lower bitrate. So cricket events, much of that's on mobile.

Speaker 3 5:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:20

Mark. Some on mobile were reporting a max bitrate of 240p during the cricket event. So concurrent users, average minute audience, simultaneous streams or devices, however you want to do. It is an important metric, but that should no longer be the only metric used by companies to determine success. Determine success and, as I wrote on LinkedIn, as an industry we have to stop putting so much clout on concurrent or EMA numbers without any other additional details.

Speaker 3 5:53

Yeah, and I think even obviously you know those of us who are involved in streaming understand that. You know even the case where people reported 240p, as you know, the, the max resolution, or 720p, like okay, was that person on 2.5G and only had one bar, in that case, then 240p was probably perfectly reasonable, correct 720p. Similar thing Okay, maybe it's on a connected television but there's some other factors. So you know, even that gets a little tricky, you know to both. You know, penalize or ding a service and say, oh, they delivered bad quality. Well, maybe they actually delivered great quality, given the network conditions of that user or that set of users.

Speaker 2 6:46

And that's why if people, if these companies broke out percentage of viewership based on device, that would help. But they never do that.

Speaker 3 6:52

Yeah, that would be very interesting. Or I even think about what Netflix does and I think it's still up I haven't looked at it in quite some time but where they would report based on region. The average bit rate delivered you know for ISPs. Yes, for ISPs, yeah, but in reality that also reflects the type of devices that are connected, the profiles of those devices, the bandwidth that's available, which, of course, is what they're trying to illustrate, because that's the way the adaptive bit rate ladder would work.

Speaker 2 7:26

There's so many variables here. The other thing we never hear although we do actually get this every once in a while from the cricket games is just the average viewing time.

Speaker 3 7:34

We've never gotten that from a.

Speaker 2 7:35

Superbowl or other events, but we actually get that from cricket, which is interesting it's like hours.

Speaker 1 7:41

Yes.

Speaker 2 7:42

Yes, of course, no surprise. It's like hours. Yes, yes, of course, no surprise. But as I said on LinkedIn, 2025 marks the 30th year of streaming media technology first really being invented, and it's time we stop using a single number to convince others of success. Like, quality should come first, quantity second. But we can't make these companies give us more engagement metrics or QOE metrics, even though that's really what we need Now.

Speaker 2 8:13

There was also some confusion because during the stream, in the upper right-hand corner of the player, it showed a view stat and it was at 840 million. I'm like well, there's no way you have 840 million concurrent users. So when I reached out to some folks they were like oh, that's just total views. But again, define total views, because if one person cricket, games are long, so if one person comes in 50 times, are they counted as 50 viewers? Apparently they are. So the views numbers. That doesn't really help us, but you know, I had to add them to my list of largest live events ever, even though it's getting more and more confusing to compare these different events. It's very difficult.

Speaker 2 8:55

One other thing here tied to this is now that the completion, the merger of the media business Reliance Industries and Viacom, a-team and Walt Disney Geostar has begun layoffs, so, no surprise, there's overlapping roles there. So that started last month, it's reported. They're expected to continue until about June and about 1,100 employees are going to lose their jobs. The company did say it's primarily going to impact finance, commercial and legal departments, but also employees from entry level to senior director level. So that's just the reality. When you, when you merge all this together, you are going to see additional layoffs. Yeah, that's uh. While we're talking about layoffs, real quickly. So it was reported that amazon was going to be making up to 14 000 layoffs, based on some information that the ceo previously gave out the end of the year.

Speaker 2 9:49

I don't know who started reporting that, but the interesting thing was it took amazon two days to come out publicly and say it's 100% false. They're not planning to do the layoffs. So I linked to somebody else who reported the story and said this is what they're reporting. But then today Amazon went on record with a publication. It was like this is not at all accurate. It's completely made up. We're not doing that. So I updated my story. Of course, but why does Amazon take two days?

Speaker 2 10:22

Yeah, that's right they could have killed the story the moment it came out. And also I emailed Amazon and got no reply. So odd. But just for anyone who saw that story, amazon says it is not accurate. They are not planning to make those layoffs.

Speaker 3 10:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:38

Some other sports news here. F1 TV has launched a new premium tier, so it's offering 4K video and multi-view functionality. It's going to monthly or $130 for the year. The multi-view feature is limited, obviously, to OS. Right now, chrome web browser tvOS compatible devices as well are currently working, but it's not available yet on Android or web browsers other than Chrome.

Speaker 3 11:10

Have you seen a demo of what this looks like you? Know I've not had the time so close to the NAB show. Yeah, so I will check this out. I haven't either.

Speaker 2 11:19

The company that's providing the multi-view functionality. The vendor reached out and telling me a little bit more about it, so I will check it out once NAB is over.

Speaker 3 11:27

I assume it's like in-car views and maybe cameras mounted on the car.

Speaker 2 11:34

I forget Press release. Said I forget press release on the track, yeah, anyway. Yeah, I just I don't, I don't remember, but I will check it out after after any bees over.

Speaker 3 11:43

Yeah, it does seem like I don't know. Multi-view for me personally, I don't quite get. I guess if you're sports betting, you know, then okay, I get the watching four games at a time, but it does seem like it'd be pretty cool for car racing, you know.

Speaker 2 12:02

I think it is Cause I checked out the NASCAR stuff with with Max.

Speaker 1 12:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2 12:06

And they had the cameras in the cars. We talked about that, and it was. It was cool to be able to switch so quickly one to the other, yeah, but but apparently with the stuff in F1, it's not just switching but you actually get to pick and choose. I think it was a couple dozen different video choices you could pick and you could build the multi-view that you wanted.

Speaker 2 12:27

I think, is what they explained to me. So I will check it out. Afterwards I will do a little review of it. I just I haven't had the chance. And also I reached out to f1 with some questions and they didn't reply as of yet. So, f1, if you're listening, hey, reply to my email. I'm trying to feature what you guys are doing here. Um, let's move on to mark.

Speaker 2 12:46

I thought this was. I thought this was really good last last week. Uh, apparently the the 200 dedicated streamer that sonos was working. They're no longer going to bring it to the market. Some of the new leaders there have killed it. What I thought was hysterical is these headlines that were like Sonos' quote, highly anticipated streaming device. And then I also saw ones that were like they're long awaited. What long awaited what? There is nobody in the market who's like man, I can't wait to buy a 200 million 200 streaming device. Even though it was going to do pass through and some other stuff, it was not highly anticipated. Yeah, nobody was looking to buy this thing and that's why they killed it, yeah, and whoever killed the company was smart.

Speaker 3 13:31

Yeah, they. They're like, wait a second. We make audio stuff.

Speaker 2 13:36

Yeah, it was going to do more than just stream content. I'm sure.

Speaker 2 13:42

It was not needed in the market, so good to them for killing that. Yeah, let's go over this. I don't know why this is such a big news story, but you know the information news site reported Apple's losing more than a billion dollars a year on its streaming service, they said, citing two people familiar with the matter. So, first of all, the information is is some of, uh, I would say, the worst coverage in the industry on the stream media industry. These are the folks who, many years ago, said that elemental technologies was acquired for $500 million, based on their sources.

Speaker 2 14:15

Yeah, it wasn't Based on a regulatory filing. It was acquired for $296 million. Yeah, to this day, they still haven't updated their post or corrected it. So I don't look at what the information says, because the vast majority of their reporting on the streaming industry is either vague, high level so it kind of implies something, but you're not really sure what they're implying or it throws out numbers like this that we can't trust. And the bigger thing that we should really focus on here is, let's just say, apple is losing more than a billion dollars a year on Apple TV Plus.

Speaker 3 14:50

Do we care? That's their market cap. Four trillion, yeah, four. $4 trillion, yeah. $4 trillion, $4 trillion, yeah. Do the math.

Speaker 2 14:58

Yeah, like we always knew that Apple TV Plus is about trying to keep people in the Apple ecosystem.

Speaker 1 15:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:04

So that doesn't matter. Also, they claim that you know others told them that Apple TV Plus had, quote around 45 million subscriber. But are they actual subscribers? Are they paying? Because I bought a new MacBook four months ago and quickly, right, it told me, hey, as a result, you get free Apple TV Plus. Yeah, exactly. And then last week, when I bought a actually another MacBook for the streaming show, I got the offer again. Right A year ago. When I bought a new iPad, I got the offer again. So the $45 million number sorry, 45 million viewers or subscribers, whatever you want to call them it's irrelevant. We don't know how many are paying, so it doesn't make any sense. It's totally irrelevant. In the conversation, apple made 93.7 billion in net income. Yeah, that's net income.

Speaker 3 16:00

Right Income. We're not talking top line revenue Right.

Speaker 2 16:03

So it's. If they're losing a billion dollars a year, it's a little more than 1% of their total net income. So just focus on what the business rationale here is why they're doing it. The other thing, mark, that I hated in every one of these articles that picked it up was for comparison. Netflix has over 300 million subscribers. Why are you comparing it to Netflix? Apple's core business is not streaming, so again again it's that apples to oranges and it's it's looking down on apple like well, you only have 45 million. Netflix is 300 yeah who cares?

Speaker 2 16:43

yeah, it's irrelevant. Uh, let's go to disney. So disney had technical difficulties, unfortunately, another technical issue here with disney streaming platform with widespread inability to buy the UFC pay-per-view bout. That was on March 8th on ESPN+. So this isn't the first time Disney's had an issue with UFC either. Pay-per-views. So that's a problem when users can't buy a stream for $80. That's, you know, you're losing, clearly losing revenue there that you can measure. So, as a result, they said that they would stream the pay-per-view for free afterwards for Disney subscribers and that's nice and everything. But people want to watch a UFC pay-per-view live. They don't want to see it afterwards. Now, ufc's current broadcast deal with ESPN runs through 2025.

Speaker 2 17:36

And there's rumors UFC doesn't want to re-sign with Disney. Amazon's publicly sort of vaguely suggested yeah, we have interest in UFC content. You could also see UFC cut deals with multiple streamers as well, deals with multiple streamers as well. The other thing that's odd with the usc pay-per-view is just to get the pay-per-view you have to be a subscriber to espn plus. So I have to subscribe to a streaming service just to get the option to buy a preview. That's kind of odd. And I have to subscribe every month, or at least the month that I'm trying to get the pay-per-view. So I wouldn't be surprised if the UFC looks at this and says well, could we widen our audience if they also didn't have to be subscribers of a streaming service.

Speaker 3 18:23

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 18:25

Very interested to see what happens here. Now it's being reported I don't know if this is the case, but it's being reported that Disney has an exclusive window to renegotiate a further license with UFC until the end of April. So I wonder if we'll hear more after the end of April. But also, ufc executives came out and threw Amazon under the bus afterwards and they were just they were, they were upset. So that's, you know, that's not helpful either. So we're going to have to. We're going to have to watch the UFC one.

Speaker 2 18:55

Yeah, what else we got here, mark? Quick shout out to couple folks vendors wise. So see, this was actually earlier in the week. Wow, it's been a long week. Yeah, tuesday I threw a happy hour meet up in New York City just before my speaking to SVG event, which was on Wednesday, which was a great event in Manhattan. So just a quick thank you to Uplink, amagi, wowza and Bitmovin. They covered $2,100 bar tabs so I didn't have to. But we had over 160 people attended the meetup in New York City Worked really well at the venue. So I will be doing more of those. If you want to know when I'm doing them, follow me on linkedin. I'm thinking the next one's not going to be till may or june, certainly a lot going on with nab and then and then after that, but uh, it was a great event mark and and the cool thing was just the level of different types of companies that were there broadcaster, sports leagues, vendors yeah, and I used to do a lot of these before, before COVID, which seems like a lifetime ago.

Speaker 3 20:04

I guess it kind of was it's five years more than I mean you know.

Speaker 2 20:08

yeah, it's hard and since since then, a lot of the venues I used to do them at, unfortunately in Manhattan, closed down permanently. Yeah, and venues also. Now many of them want a guaranteed five or ten thousand dollar tab on the bar, so they're harder to do in Manhattan. But this, this new venue, worked out really well. Make some changes to it next time to accommodate some more people, but yeah, it worked out really well, um, maybe characterize.

Speaker 3 20:38

you know what is it? Is it basically everybody's mingling? It's, uh, you know, are they talking professional? Is it more social? Is it like you know?

Speaker 2 20:49

oh, it's just okay, all right so this is just meet up and have a drink and circulate through the room. That's it. Yeah, uh, what they're talking about, I couldn't tell you. You know, I'm at the front putting on wristbands and frankly, it's, you know, trying to circulate through that many people. It's loud, um, but it's. It's a combination of people from the industry, business, technical content, people really just discussing what's going on in the industry.

Speaker 3 21:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:19

Or maybe they're discussing their favorite sports teams.

Speaker 3 21:21

I don't know yeah.

Speaker 2 21:23

I don't know yeah or both. But yeah, as as the uh, as the host, I'm dealing with the venue issues and you have to wristband everybody. And uh, it was funny, mark, cause obviously I said you know, bring your ID, it's a bar. But you know, a lot of people when they showed up were like here's my ID and I'm like I don't need your license, I'm not checking, I'm not checking IDs, what?

Speaker 3 21:44

are you talking?

Speaker 2 21:45

about, but it was a great turnout you weren't carding people.

Speaker 3 21:49

I was not carding people. No, no.

Speaker 2 21:51

I probably should have pretended I was and turned some people away, but it was, it was good, it was, it was casual, it was casual. It was nice to speak to some folks, too, who had been reading content from LinkedIn or my blog and I'd never met. Yeah, that's great. Hey, I read this. That was interesting. There were also some folks, more than a few, who were looking for jobs.

Speaker 3 22:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:14

That's always a great place to go. There's a lot of executives there, sure lot of executives there. Sure, some of them are hiring, uh, so the meetup is good. There's no, it's not like other meetups, which I'm not knocking them, but the ones that have presentations, or four companies get to present, yeah it, it's not like that. Uh, those, those can be great. Uh, those are tend to be more a technical developer crowd yeah so this is just whoever would like to come, who's from the industry. It's extremely targeted, targeted.

Speaker 3 22:40

Maybe we need to expand cities Dan Maybe I should do one in Phoenix.

Speaker 2 22:44

Hey, look, you want to do one. Cool, I'll support that. Here's the thing I get asked by people all the time come to this city, go to that city. That sounds really easy to do. Yeah, right, okay, I got to get on a plane and go all where just to host something for 90 minutes and people can have a beer.

Speaker 1 22:59

Yeah, no offense, but that's a little much.

Speaker 2 23:03

And I'm already on the road. What 100 days a year for the military? Exactly? I can't add just cocktail parties, but if you wanted to do one in Phoenix, sure I'd publish that.

Speaker 1 23:13

Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 23:14

Cool and I could clear you sponsors quickly.

Speaker 3 23:17

Yeah, yeah, cool, all right, Well, we'll talk about it. Maybe we'll announce something. Figure out the location. Yeah, listeners, if you're in the Phoenix area and you're interested yeah yeah, yeah. Well, I don't think my wife will like that, but we'll find a venue somewhere in Scottsdale you know, yeah, it's gotta be easier than Manhattan.

Speaker 2 23:38

Yeah, oh yes, you would think Manhattan's easy because there's so many bars and restaurants, but trust me, it's not. As I've learned, people don't want to go downtown, they don't want to go too far uptown, they don't want to go to the west side. You have to pick something right in the middle, yeah, yeah, so if you, can plan it, we'll do it. Cool, let's do it um cool let's go through some break of news so break, oh, no, not break, oh.

Speaker 2 24:05

Bending spoons, which acquired yeah, that's right announced that they've also acquired a company called kamut, which is a app and platform for advanced route planning and navigation tools for hikers and outdoor folks. Um, so, you know, I put something up on on LinkedIn yesterday about it just saying you know, here's another acquisition, no real synergy to Brightcove. And does it surprise me? No, because Bending Spoons is all about managing free cash flow.

Speaker 3 24:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:30

So fine. The issue here is that multiple Brightcove customers continue to reach out at an accelerated rate to me every week just asking like Dan should we stay where we are? What's the company going to do with the product? What's the future here? And I don't have an answer for them. I have no idea what incentive they have to stay, because what customers tell me is they haven't gotten any clear communication from bending spoons of what's going to happen to the product going forward.

Speaker 2 25:01

What the plan is Right, what's the plan Now? A document did go out internally Wednesday inside Bending Spoons to Breakove employees saying here's the path going forward, and somebody at Breakove actually multiple folks shared that document, so I got to see it. But it's all very high level. There's nothing about we're going to, you know, invest X, yeah, and it's all very high level. There's nothing about we're going to, you know, invest X, yeah, and most of the document is here's what we're going to cut back. We're going to consolidate cloud spend.

Speaker 2 25:26

Well, not good, but it's smart, like you know look, spending spoons is managing for cashflow, and if you can consolidate your cloud spend and get a lower price, of course You're a bad business. If you don't do that, yeah, of course You're a bad business. If you don't do that, yeah, yeah. But here's the thing Certain features and functionality are going to be cut out of the BreakHole player.

Speaker 3 25:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2 25:46

I'm not going to say which ones yet, because I don't really want to give that information out, because then it's like people panicking. But keep in mind, let me put it this way there are certain features within the BreakHole platform that only a very small subset of customers are using. So why would you keep them and keep developing them? You wouldn't. So I can't fault bending spoons at all for wanting to streamline BreakHole platform and target only a certain set of customers that need a particular set of functionality. Sure, that's not only smart of them, that's the right to do.

Speaker 3 26:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:25

The problem I have is they haven't communicated to customers. Hey, FYI, customer, we want you to stay. We're going to continue to develop for your type of business that you're using Breakhole for versus customers where this may not be the best fit for you going forward. Just be open and honest.

Speaker 3 26:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:45

Yeah, and that's really all I wish they would do. And if they don't want to do that externally, with media analysts, whatever, they have no responsibility to do that. But when you're not doing it with customers and I continue to get more calls, especially from some of the larger customers it's a problem because, mark, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but you've got some very large customers at Brightcove who take a lot of pro serves, professional services from Brightcove, a lot of custom stuff, and those are the customers that are a little more worried because if Bending Spoons doesn't want to be in the custom business, Absolutely, and those are the ones that are going to have to find some new solutions faster and it will be harder for them to move because they require more handholding.

Speaker 3 27:29

That's right and they have. They have custom, custom work that will likely need to be done on another platform. Yes, I'll tell you, dan I. I replied to your thread.

Speaker 2 27:39

I saw it.

Speaker 3 27:39

I saw it, it was good and then I, I actually, and I, the way that I look at this is you know, and I don't know who the sales head at Vimeo is, but boy that's, and maybe there are. You know they may have a whole war room of SDRs and but this is like ripe opportunity you know Well it is, but but here's the thing I liked your post and how you listed out.

Speaker 2 28:03

Hey, you can use these tools to figure things out. That was, that was cool. But here's the thing People are very quick to throw out Vimeo. There's a lot of what Vimeo is doing that Brightcove doesn't, and vice versa. And also you have a the largest percentage of Vimeo customers are paying what less than 30 a month yeah, that's right and that's not who break home yeah, we've talked about that.

Speaker 3 28:24

The difference between the vimeo enterprise or, as they call it, the um called enterprise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sales assistant.

Speaker 2 28:33

Well, right cove no longer has break over press the self-service model, yeah, about a hundred dollar a month customer. So there is some overlap and multiple vendors, Mark, have reached out and said Dan, like how do we get a list of breakout customers?

Speaker 3 28:47

Well, go look at my post. I'll tell you how to do it.

Speaker 2 28:51

Some, not surprisingly, reached out and said well, can we hire you to help us grab customers from? No, you can't pay me to. I don't do that. Sorry, you can't pay for my contacts. I think it's smarter than to ask. Yeah sure. Or hey, we'll give you a percentage if you can help us get in and close the deal. No, I've never done that either in history, yeah.

Speaker 2 29:14

But there are multiple companies who are. There's three companies just this week alone where I talked to a C-level person on the management team specifically saying how they were targeting breakout customers. But also there's a small subset of breakout customers that make up some of the largest percentage of their revenue and it's not hard to know who those customers are.

Speaker 2 29:38

Yeah, so they, they already know. Um, it'll be interesting to see just what the final in the future and by future I mean next couple months or a couple quarters what the final Brightcove platform is from from bending spoon standpoint of, just okay, this is what Brightcove looks like going forward, because today that's unknown and based on the document they shared, it was still working on it. It's going to evolve over time, but you still have customers who really wish they had some more insight into that. Let's just close out here, mark, with Max. So next weekend I'm going to be reviewing Max's streaming for NCAA.

Speaker 2 30:22

It's been a while since I've looked at it like in super detail, so I'm going to break out a lot of the devices TVs, look at multi-view, some of the other things, just more so with the app, but just a sort of a heads up. You know Max again, I'll call him out to do one of the best jobs in the market for every couple months I don't know who else they send this to, but they at least send me an email, and I'm sure others as well, documenting pretty much everything they've changed, fixed or updated in the platform, which is pretty cool. Also, just hey, this is a new feature we've put into Chrome or functionality or whatever it is. So they sent a list of all these new features and enhancements and they sent things around the new ad experience, global updates and international and what they're doing. So I'll call out just a couple things here because I thought it was interesting.

Speaker 2 31:12

They're doing something new with recommendations, so in terms of how you can browse similar titles mid playback, uh. So that's, that's different in terms of how you can now get to that, uh, under the scrubbing bar, um, on mobile. There's certain things that they're doing as well. One of the interesting things is selects max channels on standard and their premium max tiers can now stream HBO programming from the app through simulcast of the five HBO linear channels. You can do that right in the homepage.

Speaker 3 31:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2 31:44

So basically, that just allows viewers an easy way to tune into programming quicker, faster, better content discovery and engagement. So that's smart just in terms of how they're tying that in. Also, you might notice that the navigation changed on Macs global, so it's an updated navigation.

Speaker 3 32:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:06

So they move the content lenses from the top of the page to the left side utility menu.

Speaker 3 32:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:12

Which is smart, because now you have one-click access to these browse paths and it just simplifies everything in all one place. It also introduced categories, which is a new way for you to browse, based on genre, brand collections, so that's new. And then what's new, which really elevates new and trending content. So again, just a little more you know choice there, which I really liked. In Chromecast, you can now skip intros, recaps, promos. You couldn't do that before on Chromecast, so that's now functionality Within the actual app. You can now switch plans within the content discovery experience. You couldn't do that originally.

Speaker 2 33:03

The other thing I saw this myself, mark, recently when I was adding Macs to some other devices. There's now multiple ways to sign into Macs and they've just simplified just the UI. It's much easier sign-in flow. You've got the QR TV code, but just easier, right? Less confusion, which I like. On the ad side, there's a new ad format. It's all QR code based. Not surprising, that's about as much as we've seen on the shopping side. Not surprising, that's about as much as we've seen on the shopping side. There's new Discovery ad product branded rails as well. I mean, we probably don't like that, right, that's ads, so users want less of those or branded things, but good for advertisers.

Speaker 2 33:49

They're going to be rolling out when? When are they rolling out? When are they rolling out? Spain, right, so, spain January. They rolled out to Argentina. And then who do they have coming up? They've got what? Australia coming up before too long. I don't know the date on that, but just a lot of updates from them. I'm going to cover some of those updates during my review, since some of those are during my review, since some of those are functionality when I look at the ncaa stuff. So in about a week I'm going to be doing that, I think next weekend, I don't know. Ncaa mark, I've never watched it. I could care less about basketball. They don't have the final game on max, that's on paramount but but I think it's like the final four game or whatever it is that they have on max, like the last big series. That's the one I'm going to review.

Speaker 3 34:36

You know, I I find it interesting, dan I know you're a bit into baseball, I I think um.

Speaker 2 34:43

I mean I would say no baseball Mets, yes, cause I grew up watching that, but I won't watch any of the game.

Speaker 3 34:48

Yeah, okay, but I find it. I find it interesting. Neither of us are sports fans and yet you arguably, at certain times of various seasons, watch and go more in depth into some of these. You know streams and some of these games than probably even some of the fans do. You know, just as you're reviewing and you're looking at the experience.

Speaker 2 35:13

Yeah, probably so. But you know, sports fan, true, and here's the thing I hope fans don't go to the level I am.

Speaker 3 35:19

Well, no, yeah, that's true, Because that would be bad if you're a real fan man.

Speaker 2 35:24

Turn it on, make it work, make it start up fast, make it not rebuffer. This is something we talked about at SVG, is you know, Brandon? Svg asked me a great question.

Speaker 3 35:32

That's right. You just spoke at SVG, right.

Speaker 2 35:35

Yeah, yeah, this, this little event they had in the city. But he asked, like what do? What do fans want? Like what's a good experience?

Speaker 3 35:42

Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 2 35:43

Yeah, and he said, like is it just? You know, it starts up fast and it doesn't re-buff.

Speaker 3 35:48

Yes, yeah, and Like yeah, that's what they want, right, simple, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 35:55

Yeah.

Speaker 3 35:55

That's the key. Yeah, it's, it's. It's years and years ago. You know the way I got into this industry largely I mean not completely, but was through like home theater and um, and I mean this goes back, you know, years ago and you know, and so there was always a segment of like home theater, both the dealers and the manufacturers and then even the you know people who bought this. You know very, very high end, expensive equipment where you know they were so obsessed over. You know whether it was the audio and the video, and then, at the end of the day, it's like but are you really even into the art and the craft of the of the movie, of the film? And most of the time they weren't, it was. It was like, well, step back and of the movie, of the film, and most of the time they weren't. You know it was, it was, uh, it's like I'll step back and enjoy the movie yeah, people watch for different reasons.

Speaker 2 36:43

Yeah, exactly, I watch because it's part of the industry. Hopefully others watch just because they like it?

Speaker 2 36:48

yeah, exactly so that's what we got this week, mark. Let's just do nab real quick, just so. Two weeks out, um or less, by the time you're listening to this program all still looks good. One or two changes here in the program nothing major. Still doing the cd private cdn meetup for customers only. So if you want information on that, reach out to me. That's taking place on sunday, april 6th, at 5 pm in the west hall. Just some beers and network with some of the smartest people in the industry when it comes to DIY CDN. Customers use third-party CDNs Netflix, youtube, paramount, wbd, crunchyroll, fox, you name it. They're going to be there so you can come learn, learn from them. We've got the happy hour, obviously Monday night outside in the balcony.

Speaker 2 37:32

Content wise, I haven't added anything since we last talked, mark, about the NAB, but folks that follow me on LinkedIn can see I'm pushing up a lot of the sessions now. Yeah, people can get more details, and then I'm still offering probably another 10 people this week got codes. I still have another new batch of codes for anyone who recently got laid off. So if you've been laid off, you're looking for new job and you're going to be at NAB, we'll give you a ticket for free Gets you access to the NAB Streaming Summit, but also the show floor. So if you're interested in that, reach out to me. Linkedin, email, text me, I don't care, call me, it doesn't matter, I'm easy to reach.

Speaker 2 38:09

But the goal is is to get as many people as we can into the sessions and just hear what's going on. And I think, mark, last year I think it was 42 tickets we gave away. I think we're about at that point this year right now, or close to it, so it looks like it'll be a little bit bigger than last year. As far as the pool of people there looking for jobs which is good, there's a lot of key executives there. Also, some recruiters have reached out to me as well, from brand names we all know, saying well, I'll be there, you know, is there anyone in particular you want me to talk to? And so I'm hoping the show leads to some folks having some very good conversations about a potential next employment opportunity.

Speaker 3 38:52

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 38:54

That's, that's the goal. And, as I say all the time, this is not about streaming, it's about people. That's that's the point of the conference. Right, invest in people. So that's what we've got. Uh, let's see, mark, we're back the next two weeks with uh. No, actually we only have one more week of a podcast, because I'm thinking the next week I'm actually flying out for Vegas. So we've got one more, and then after that we'll do a podcast. After NAB, there'll be some stuff to break down. There is some news coming out that I find interesting, some tied to infrastructure. I've already been pre-briefed on it. I'll be doing some detailed blog posts about that.

Speaker 3 39:32

I think somebody actually leaked through an announcement. I saw someone talk about a new job and it's like huh, really, that brand is reviving.

Speaker 2 39:44

Oh, you're talking about the edge cast stuff. No, that's not a leak. That's not a leak. Oh, okay, as you see, I already corrected the person who worked there about their actual company okay, okay, I actually I didn't see your response.

Speaker 3 39:57

Yeah, look at my, look at my response.

Speaker 2 39:59

Okay, all right, yeah, it's tied to the parlor cloud technologies acquisition or something, yeah, yeah okay, I'm working on a finishing a detailed write-up on what they bought, where they bought it, what regions they got capacity and what they're doing with it but, yeah, so someone who works there put up a post, but it wasn't it wasn't very good from them in terms of explaining what was actually going on yeah, exactly yeah, so it looked like edgecast was being revived.

Speaker 2 40:27

Well it is edgecast is. So edgecast is revived as a brand right, but it's edge's Edgecast Cloud. Yeah, and CDN is just one of the services inside Edgecast Cloud, which is part of the larger umbrella of Parler Cloud Technologies.

Speaker 3 40:44

Parler yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 40:45

Yeah, so it is a bit confusing. I will break it all down. Yeah, expect to get that post in the next couple of days. Maybe even by the time people are listening to this, it's already up. Couple of days maybe. Maybe even by the time people are listening to this, it's already up. Sure, so that's what we got this week. Uh, you have any questions? Reach out to Mark and I. Anything on NAB, reach out Also just for a couple of emails I'm getting this week. There's no speaking opportunities. Don't reach out to me about. Hey, I have this new opportunity.

Speaker 3 41:10

Booked. Uh, booked months ago, right Signs are already printed right I can't add new sessions to the program.

Speaker 2 41:15

I appreciate people being interested, but uh, it's, you know, that's just not the way it works. Yeah, yeah, so that's what we got. Any questions reach out? Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 41:26

Everyone, have a good week if you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend. Have questions for dan or mark. Connect with them on linkedin at any time.