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Raising the video quality bar: Vusion's WARP video player delivers

Online video is on fire these days. I'll once again cite the recent numbers out from  Ipsos MediaCT, showing that 19% of all video watched anywhere, including traditional TV and DVD is now done online. With YouTube commanding about a 70% market share of all online video viewing, it means we've pretty much just accepted the lower picture quality for web video, at least for now. YouTube of course now offers higher-quality streams of videos where the publisher's have uploaded the larger versions. Still, it's not TV quality. 

But true HD quality video is coming. We've seen a leap forward from Hulu with their HD content, along with blip.tv and Veoh setting a higher standard in terms of picture quality. What's the next step?  Vusion (formerly Jittr) provides what they call "instant-on, full-screen, high quality streaming video." The Milpitas, CA-based company recently snagged the prestigious “Judges Choice” award in the video section of Under the Radar 2008.

Right now, they just have a handful of  demo videos on their site to show off their next-gen WARP player. The player requires the WARP plug-in and is well worth the minute or two it takes to ge it setup. Since they don't yet allow embedding of their demos , I've posted a screen shot from Kanye West's "Stronger" video. Click on the image to watch it on their site. I recommend the full-screen version which is really what the WARP player is all about. It  enables a TV-like full screen viewing experience while eliminating buffering and pausing so common with other streaming media players. It's basically a bit of hybrid between pure streaming video and downloaded video since it temporarily stores video chunks on your hard drive to enhance the streaming performance, without fully downloading the video to your machine.

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Vusion

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ABC takes baby step into sharing content, signs deal with Veoh

ABC runs one of the last true walled gardens in online video content, preferring to keep eyeballs on one of their properties instead of letting them stray to sites that embed their shows. If you want to watch an episode, or even clips, of their hit show LOST, you have to navigate over to ABC.com's full episode player.

Could it be that the Mouse-House is finally thinking about setting sail on the high seas of distributed online video? Well call it dipping a toe in the water perhaps. Today ABC announced that full episodes of its hit shows (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty) along with sports content from ESPN will be available exclusively through video startup Veoh's site. The catch of course is that the videos won't be embeddable, and in fact just link directly back to the ABC or ESPN sites. On top of that you have to install a plug-in for the Move Networks player just to get it working.

NBC, which backed video site Hulu as a joint venture with rival News Corp., took the approach of wrapping it's content in a premium player with pre-roll and post-roll advertising, and setting it free. CBS's shows can be found on numerous video sites, including Joost, Veoh, MSN, Comcast.com, and others. This feels a bit like a "me-too" from ABC, realizing that getting traffic to ABC.com is much more expensive than letting your content go to where the traffic already is. Time will tell. When you have hit shows that are destinations in themselves, ala LOST, you can afford to be a little guarded. But with more and more video conent getting watched online - currenty 19% of all video conent is watched on a personal computer according to Ipsos MediaCT, the changing habits of viewers means to launch the next hit shows, you'll need to go where they are, not where you are.

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Fun Video Friday - Spinning a MacBook Air on one finger!

This is impressive...

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Time to learn Mandarin at eduFire

Ok, so I've been putting it off for a while. We all have. But it's about time to learn some conversational Mandarin. Now I could head to craigslist and search for LA-based Mandarin teachers or tear off one of the phone numbers on a flyer I saw at Whole Foods. But this is just too Web 1.0 to me. How am I supposed to know who's a good teacher or not? From their ad? No, I need that social networking component that I'm starting to take for granted in practically all the services I rely on - Yelp, YouTube, Facebook, Digg.

That's when I found eduFire, an online learning community that's right now focused on matching language tutors with people like me who want to learn or practice a language. A quick search found that as of today, there are 19 tutors who can teach me Mandarin, ranging in price from $10-45/hr. The tutors list themselves, their experience, their teacher rating from past students, and even a video clip of one of their lessons.

Founder Jon Bischke, who previously founded The 2000Tutor.com Network (sold to Penton Media), Zaadz (sold to Gaiam) and LearnOutLoud.com, has quite the track record in building successful teams. The Santa Monica-based company currently has a nimble 3-person team but is looking to grow as the site develops. Hmm, having an office one block from the beach should help with recruiting. They are looking to close a Series A round in the next few months, and currently have a $400k angel round to hold them over.

The site is very Web 2.0, built around a solid Rails-based social networking platform and uses Flash to deliver the video. They launched about a month ago and have already recruited a network of over 400 language tutors. Newly added is the Flashcards feature that allows you to work on language vocab between tutor sessions.

Tutors don't have to pay anything to list themselves on the site. eduFire takes a 15% commission from each tutor session, which is only paid once the session is complete. The model is similar to Grockit (disclosure: I'm investor in Grockit), which is building an online learning platform and community using game mechanics to connect experts with students. In both cases, the best teachers with rise to the top and command the highest rate.

As for my Mandarin lessons, I might sign up with Liu Jin Shan, who has some terrific testimonials and brings a nice mix between Western teaching styles and actual time living in Mainland China. At $25/hr he seems like a bargain. Time to find out.

Watching (web) TV

Been a busy few days. Watching a lot of channel content on Joost and it's open-source competitor of sorts, Miro. I'll have a more detailed review of these stand-alone web TV (IPTV) players. Both are pretty immersive and I've been looking at the current state of web TV content.

I think we're on the cusp of something very big in this space. When I boot up my web TV players and watch the latest from my chosen channel feeds, I get that strange feeling that I've seen something like this before. Oh wait, that's right - the rise of cable TV. I think where we are at now with web TV content and these nascent channels like Mahalo Daily, The Onion News Network (ONN), TEDtv, etc. is like where cable TV was in the 80's. You had the established networks and then these upstart fringe channels shaking things up. We're just getting started here, and it's going to be big.

Meet me in LA - Techcrunch Meetup

I'll be attending the TechCrunch LA Meetup on Thursday. Looking forward to meeting some new startups and teams, especially in the web video content space. It is LA after all. It's co-hosted by PopSugar along with a number of sponsors and should bring out some key players in web, new media, video, fashion and entertainment. There's also a Facebook event you can add to your calendar.

See you guys there - looking like quite a turnout is expected.

Omnisio juices up video

Had a chance to sit down with Omnisio Co-founder Ryan Jubee last week, who along with his team have built quite a set of tools for next-gen online video. The Y-Combinator-backed site's been live now for about two weeks and has seen steady growth in both video content and visitors, with over 2500 video compilations so far. In a nutshell, Omnisio allows users to easily pull clips from videos hosted on the web at sites like YouTube, Blip.tv, and Google Video and create a single mashup video you can then play with. Take this Steve Ballmer meltdown mashup, for example:

The launch followed the idea that sometimes you have to let your product out there to fully understand its potential. So the team did just that, launching a consumer version of their tools which currently only allow for the mashups and in-video commenting. (You can toggle this somewhat distracting feature on/off.)

The real powerful tools are yet to be released to the general public, but several parter "channels" have been set up that make use of these gems. People-tagging and (powerpoint) slide sharing are the most powerful, in my opinion, and really can make remote learning a viable option. The Stanford/MIT Venture Lab is one of the early Omnisio adopters, really making use of the platform in this recent panel discussion on monetizing social networking. Try jumping ahead to a tagged person or specific slide. Check it out:

I'm starting to wish I could review my college lectures like this. There's definitely an opportunity here to leverage these tools - universities, online schools, internal corporate training - you name it. I commend the team on their ability to stay lean by allowing the external video hosts (YouTube, Blip.tv) to do the heavy lifting of file storage. One to watch in this space for sure.

That killer "Slow Maybe"

Credit a recent Twitter from Nivi over at VentureHacks who got me catching up on a series of John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) talks from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. This clip is on negotiating valuations with VCs.

Love this quote: "The great danger of dealing with venture capitalists is the 'slow maybe' - you'd always much rather have a quick yes or a quick no."