At a risk of generating some "blowback"*, I can say that a major operator's IPTV project is going to include the possibility to record broadcasts on demand (on a remote server for later viewing), as well as to chat while watching TV on a PC and to upload personal video files. My international contacts tell me this is pretty radical and unique. Very few of the few places that have launched IPTV, including TeliaSonera in Sweden, have these features. Well, the vlogging (that's videoblogging) feature won't be available until next year, probably, but it still has this local operator beating BT (as in British Telecom) to the punch in launching internet television.
All of these things (yesterday's newscasts, stored and searchable video) do exist here and there on the net, but putting them on one platform is still a new and cutting edge thing for Latvia. Late October launch for the TV part, most likely 11 channels (five local, six "free" Russian satellite feeds). I know the Russian stuff is popular here, but I can't picture the "typical cable TV viewer", the ethnic Russian pensioner, sitting at a big-screen PC watching one of the Russian channels and chatting about the latest soap opera or detective thriller (these are supposed to be rather good on Russian TV) with other pensioners :).
*blowback is a term that comes from espionage tradecraft, when one "plants" a story (usually disinformation) in a distant foreign country's press only to have the local New York Times stringer pick it up and report in the homeland press (i.e. Congo press reports disinformation that another African president keeps a goat as a mistress, NYT reports this , then exposes that "Congo Journal Story of Goat-o-phile Bongowongo President was CIA plant" ). Well, by rather bad analogy, this means that some Latvian journalist reading this blog guesses what the story is all about and reports it in his newspaper or agency, beating, say, a certain Latvian business newspaper where I work :). This may have happened with my blogging of the August visit of the Prime Minister and various Latvian IT honchos to Microsoft. I had it on the blog well ahead of the Latvian media.
9 comments:
Sort of podcasting only with video? Sounds good, err... jesus, with all the traffic coming in - webfeeds, audiofeeds, downloads, streaming voice and video - people need broadband. Now.
Sounds good, but there are certain and very important risks: legal, techical, financial, what might leace this idea in test-lab for this particular ISP.
Verry,
True. If and when a certain newspaper publishes the fuil story with the real identity of this operator (starts with L, ends with M :) :)), you will see that an international analyst is quoted expressing these same concerns. The financial risk is that after giving folks all this stuff for free, how are you going to be able to charge them. The only way I see is to add a second premium package, say BBC, CNN, MTV, movies on demand, but keep the basic service (LTV1, LTV7,LNT, TV3, TV 5 and the six Russian channles) free.
I could not guess that name, therefore, I think that this plan should be treated very, very critically.
Take a look in context and it will show you. I would not waste my time and write about this in newspaper (unless DB pay per article, whatever it is:)), since this is missing value or reality. Try to walk in TSonera shoes, nowadays.
I missed smiley after the word "name" in first sentence :).
the name also has the word fragment "tele" in it. You probably use this company to access the internet if you have DSL. It also reminds one of the Latvian national currency and the buddhist chant "om" (I am reading Mark Kurlansky's book "1968" where he writes how Alan Ginsburg, the beatnik poet, was always chanting "om" in the middle of violent demonstrations in Chicago). So with this company involved, it is a serious story :)
Situation in Croatia, we have Tele2 too.
http://tzombix.blog.hr/
If you like old blues, visit my blog.Blues history in croatian, but some mp3 too.
http://blueser.blog.hr/
Bye, blueser!
Man, give him something in English so he can understand the situation :-)) ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO SURF THE NET IN CROATIA
Hi T-Zombix. Looks like you do what I do in Croatian. Too bad I can only read the English quotes and links. Mats Tillly, who ran Tele2 in Latvia is now setting up Tele2's mobile operations in Croatia.
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