AL, you certainly touch on a lot of different options. Here's an article, thanks to Solid on the ATHM board, which covers many of the aspects of home networking techniques that we've discussed, and then some... especially in Part 2, in the following post. Enjoy.
Regards, Frank Coluccio
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cedmagazine.com
"AIMING FOR EYEBALLS" by Fred Dawson
The two leading cable data service providers are putting a new generation of
broadband content tools to use in aggressive growth strategies that represent
clashing views of cable's future.
With some 1.5 million cable subscribers between them, Excite@Home Inc.
and Road Runner are pulling out all the stops to capitalize on their advanced
infrastructures to deliver eye-popping content and ads that outstrip anything
other providers can offer. But while both entities are using a combination of
high-speed backbones and high-speed access links to support the end-to-end
functionalities that make superior content possible, they have different ideas
about how to use that content to the maximum benefit of investors, including
their respective owners in cable.
Excite@Home officials make clear they'll use their reach into
cable, DSL (digital subscriber line) and other broadband
access markets to build the largest possible advertising base
for their own and affiliated suppliers' content. Road Runner
officials say there are no plans to deliver Road Runner content
to anybody but cable affiliate subscribers.
"We have a very different approach to the market from
that of Excite@Home," says Stephen Van Beaver, senior
vice president of operations at Road Runner. "We don't see
any reason to change."
Van Beaver's confidence is rooted in Time Warner's and its allies' belief that
they can create cable-exclusive content that will prove the difference against
DSL and other providers who can only offer Web-based broadband content.
Building a large advertising revenue base is important, he says, but subscription
revenues are the major piece of Road Runner revenues and will remain so for
a long time to come.
Excite@Home Network Inc.'s perspective says the best way to win in the
exploding Internet broadband content and advertising market is to play as
many bases as possible.
"Our goal is to try and build a unified broadband experience (for @Home and
Excite customers)," says Excite@Home CTO Milo Medin.
This means that customers with high-speed access capabilities will be able to
get to much the same content through the Excite broadband portal that they
can access via @Home. "You may see caches (files stored on local servers)
with localized content in the @Home experience that's not available through
Excite, but otherwise, it will be fairly integrated," Medin says.
Now that both entities have upgraded their infrastructures with nationwide
interconnections of regional high-speed fiber rings supporting centrally
managed intelligent architectures, they're in a position unlike any other
provider to exploit new creative tools to the maximum extent possible. In fact,
where Road Runner is concerned, the infrastructure improvements will also be
felt on the distribution side of every affiliate network as a result of an
affiliate-wide decision to deploy DOCSIS (Data-Over-Cable Service Interface
Specification) modems in all Road Run-ner systems next year.
Starting in January, affiliate systems who are using proprietary modem systems
will begin adding second channels supporting delivery of services to customers
who buy or lease modems built to the DOCSIS standard, Van Beaver says.
"We expect DOCSIS modems to be available in all our affiliate systems by
June," he adds.
Already, with innovations in content implemented over the past few months,
"The level of user experience has improved significantly," Van Beaver says.
"We're now at version 2.0 of Road Runner, and that's a big jump from version
1.0.
Karl Rogers, vice president of programming at Road Runner, says a lot of
what's being done stems from the close relationship Road Runner has
established with major media suppliers. "We now have relationships with over
90 program suppliers, a lot of whom are cable TV networks," he says.
"In the past eight to 10 months, we've transitioned the customer experience to
one that is more of a rich-media, CD-ROM-like experience."
For example, Nickelodeon has built a "true CD-ROM experience for kids"
using graphic landscapes to pull the users into story-telling experiences, says
Rebecca Paoletti, director of programming for Road Runner. She points to
"high, high video" quality in the service developed for Road Runner by Fox
Sports, and to full-length music videos, 3-D game and chat environments and
the highly sophisticated use of interactive media by the networks operated by
Rainbow Media Holdings Inc. as other examples of the content transformation
underway at Road Runner.
The service is also poised to introduce voice chat, e-mail and other voice
applications in the first quarter of next year, Paoletti says. "Voice is going to be
an important part of the Road Runner experience," she notes.
One of the hottest new applications entering the Web space is 3D graphics,
which is something Road Runner has been building for broadband applications
through much of the past year in partnership with Worlds Inc., one of the
pioneers in 3D applications on the Web. Road Runner customers now have
access to 3D virtual environments developed especially for the service, as well
as to other Worlds' environments where software used in accessing the sites is
downloaded directly to users, rather than requiring them to install the software
from CD-ROMs.
At Worlds' sites, users who have created their own avatar identities from a
library of characteristics in the software program can "meet" each other and
enter chat sessions or explore music offerings and purchase merchandise
associated with the site, says Steven Greenberg, a consultant to Worlds. The
company's broadband-enhanced site is adding video clips and richer graphics,
and has implemented "shared-state capabilities" that allow participants in an
interactive game or other session to pick up and manipulate objects, he adds.
Road Runner, by making Worlds a channel on its site, gives Worlds much
greater exposure than it would have as a standalone provider of
broadband-enhanced content, Greenberg says. This is a portal strength that
Road Runner has begun to exploit on a wide scale as part of its sponsorship
and advertising initiatives.
"We're finding the sponsorship concept gives us a great way to
leverage the best of what's out there and to add a measure of added
value (to) Road Runner," says Bob Benya, vice president of Road
Runner's Power Media Services unit, which spearheads the
advertising and e-commerce efforts of the venture.
The media development tools now available for broadband
content make it possible to move away from the
traditional Web-page paradigm where HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
defines how everything from text to video clips to banner ads is tied together,
Benya notes. "We're combining all the elements and playing them dynamically
to fit each user experience," he says.
A key feature of Road Runner V.2 is the new "Power Window" advertising
box that features animation and rich graphic messages, often with one-click
connections to video segments. "It's almost a precursor to Road Runner TV,"
Benya says.
Rather than operating in a rectangular window using the traditional Web-page
techniques of HTML, the Power Window is square, with advertisements
running on a rotating basis. Some Power Window ads come with built-in
browsers that keep the user at the home site as the window expands to
something on the order of half-screen size to run the user-driven applications,
Benya says, describing this as the approach Road Runner prefers that its
advertisers take. A second way the window is used is to link the user to an
advertiser's page that has been co-branded with Road Runner and is hosted on
the Road Runner network.
"The Power Window can also link the user to the advertiser's home site, but
that's our least used and least recommended application," Benya says.
Just as the new creative tools support development of compelling content, they
support creation of a new kind of advertising which has become the driving
force behind surging attention to broadband content development among media
developers of every description. The potential of this technology to push Web
ad revenues into major-league competition against broadcast and print is the
driving force behind the Excite@Home approach to delivering content.
Excite@Home officials say the new ExciteXtreme.com broadband portal will
guide high-speed users, no matter what platform they're on, to much of the
same broadband content and rich-media advertising that is @Home's hallmark.
And, they add, the company will use the @Home cable-oriented backbone
network as well as caching facilities in regional data centers to ensure these
users have a superior broadband experience through ExciteXtreme.
continued ... |
