NBC Direct Revolutionizes Video “Nichecasting” by in News / November 11th, 2007
This week saw the introduction of NBC/Universal’s new video delivery service called “NBC Direct”, a daring foray by the media giant into the world of digital video. While many sites concentrate on user-generated content, device compatibility and more efficient codec compression, NBC has taken the far superior approach by making a player that chooses a tiny market segment and serves it well. Mostly.
“We looked at making something that would play on Macs or Linux, but that’s where the rest of the industry’s going, and we want to be different,” said Greg Yost, VP of Internet Prognostication at NBC/U. “When we launched Heroes, everyone else was doing medical shows. We dared to be different, and it paid off big time. Except for this season. This season sucks. But we had a good year in there, so it’s still a good analogy.”
Rather than supporting the popular iPod line of player, or Apple’s Mac OS operating system, or even Linux, NBC has opted to support only American Windows Vista computers with their service. And, based on early testing, those are just the tip of the restrictions iceberg.
“If you have a video card made between February and May 2007, it works great. But everyone else is out of luck,” said Mark Rogers, a technology analyst for Ludwig/Granger LLP, “Half our office had video cards made in June, so it took a lot of digging to be able to watch The Office. But when we did, man, it was worth seeing that postage stamp.”
Some critics have charged that the tiny 320×240 video resolution and the 10 frames-per-second playback is a deterrent to the service ever taking off. Bloggers have lambasted the venture, saying the video card restriction, 15-minute viewing window restriction, blood-alcohol testing requirement and 9-minute pre-roll video advertisement will turn most people off the whole idea. And NBC doesn’t necessarily disagree.
“Yeah, those features are meant to shut it down,” said Len Rubenstein, NBC’s VP of New Media and project manager for Hulu.com, NBC/U’s video service joint venture with Fox. “When I found out last month that Greg had been making another video service after I’d used that whole bottle of vodka coming up with the name Hulu, I was pissed. So I made them cripple the thing so badly only 25 people in the entire world could use it.”
Rubenstein’s prediction may be generous, however, as industry analysts suggest only 23 people in the world would actually want to try NBC Direct, 21 of which work for NBC.
