The Future… is Video on the Web

Well it seems that reports of HD DVD’s death are far from premature, in fact it is expected that tomorrow Toshiba will announce that they have withdrawn from the race to win the hearts and minds of Hi-Def video audiences.

Sony, after losing out 30 years ago in the VHS versus Betamax wars has dealt a bitter blow to both Toshiba and Microsoft by cornering the market with their Blu Ray system.

As readers might know I am an “early adopter” of all manner of gadgets and yes I have a Blu Ray and an HD DVD Drive Combo. What I never understood about this war is why it mattered. With Combo drives so easily available and now for less the £100, why worry about which format your disc is.

I truly believed  that users would simply turn to combo drives and whether you played an HD DVD or Blu Ray Disc was neither here nor there. Clearly I was wrong.

I also thought that Microsoft might force PC manufacturers to release new PC’s with HD DVD and subsequently release all their new software on the format. Clearly I was wrong again.

I now know that HD DVD is on its way out. Surely I can’t be wrong on this one.

Well it seems there may be a final chapter or a first of new book as it were. The Chinese Hi Def Forum has backed HD DVD and is to release its modified versin CH DVD in March. If there is one thing the Chinese have a lot of its end users so HD DVD could well survive after all, just under a different name.

So the lesson…. It isn’t over til the fat lady sings. Watch this space

Long Time client Morris and Spottiswood has commissioned a second Exhibition Presentation for an upcoming Conference of Social Housing. The Video will loop on a Plasma screen at their stand and is intended to highlight the commitment the company has to Social Housing. We wish them well at the conference and congratulate them on their continued commitment to the sector.

Ok, I might be overstating this a little. But I was so pleased to find this great piece of software we installed it on all our office PCs. In a nutshell it gives a graphic representation of your computer’s drives, and allows you to track large files that you didn’t realise were hidden within a deep folder hierarchy and move or delete them, thus cleaning space on your drive. It’s great for Kelpie as we deal with enormous files upto 20Gb in size and knowing where those files are stored is incredibly important especially as our on site client storage now exceeds 40Tb. For mission critical files we also have an offsite backup which syncs daily, so our clients can rest easy in the knowledge that their films are always availble and safe in electronic format to transfer to DVD at a moments notice. Of course with more and more of our clients choosing to stream their videos from our servers the days of repeat duplications of DVDs that have become scratched are coming to end. Don’t forget to ask us about our streaming Web Video solutions the next time you commission a Corporate Video.

Director Stephen B Anderson is off with DOP Alex Hill to shoot the first part of Kelpie Films‘ documentary on a US Peace Activist in Nebraska this February. The film which is funded by Channel 4 in the UK will continue into full production in the coming months with an anticipated date to air in the US and UK sometime in September 2008.

Long time client Balfour Beatty have commissioned another Health and Safety film for a recently acquired company, Cowlin Construction. The shoot is due to take place in March across the UK.

The team have just completed the latest AGM film for SCVO’s Social Economy Scotland. The film showcases 7 projects from around Scotland. Some cutting edge 3D animation was created to give it a real glitzy look. The film was designed to celebrate the success of the groups so an award ceremony style concept was designed for the brief.

Global Engineering Company, Howden Power, have commissioned Kelpie to shoot a CEO address to be distributed internally to the many Howden offices around the Globe. The Corporate Video will feature ground breaking 3D graphics of a virtual studio, while the interview will be shot against a “green screen” to be composited in later.

A little tip we are telling all our corporate clients these days is to look passed the old favourite, DVD, and onwards to USB Drives. With storage up to 16Gb, there is more than enough room to store text, image and video files. So the next time you consider distributing a promotional video to your clients, try a key instead of DVD. You can brand it with your logo and the great thing is it has a dual purpose as a handy storage device so once your client has watched the film or presentation they can continue to use the drive and every time they do, they think of you.

We’ve got great connections in the wholesale USB marketplace so don’t pay over the odds for your next run, just give us a call.

Yes, that’s right I think I am in love. I am a self confessed early adopter and it threatened to join a long line of long forgotten gadgets I had purchased in the name of research, but the Tablet PC didn’t go the way of my electronic pen or the N1 wireless router (and the Dodo for that matter).

 No, it’s still in my bag 4 months later and doing a terrific job of keeping me mobile and organised (something my Xda Orbit is currently failing to do). If you haven’t tried one yet, do. It accepts handwriing or keyboard input with the former recognising even my scrawling efforts. But it’s the size that is the main attraction. Laptops had gotten so large the very term was a misnomer and the widescreens were using so much battey power you couldn’t even enjoy that 2 hour DVD on the train as the battery wouldn’t last. The Tablet is the size of a medium sized book and can also output the VGA to a monitor if you are using it at your desk. But don’t just do that, after all this is designed as a truelly mobile PC. As I say it could have been just another fad, but I am already scouring Dabs and PCworld websites to check if there are updated versions of this fantastic machine.

 Industry paper Screen Digest estimate that online downloads of video will reach 1.5 billion in the UK this year and this will be due in no small part to the succces of BBC Iplayer, which has dominated with a 38% market share in the last 6 months, within the free to air online TV marketplace.

“Screen Digest’s long-term financial outlook of the UK online TV sector will now be dependent on the future development of convincing platform strategies by UK commercial broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Five, as well as new entrants such as Bebo, MySpace, YouTube and Joost,” said the Screen Digest senior analyst, Arash Amel.

“It is expected that the success of the BBC’s iPlayer open web streaming model, and future ‘viral syndication’ strategies, will encourage UK commercial broadcasters to enter a long-term reassessment of how they deliver programming to users.”

Kelpie Media are keeping a close eye on this and are already roling out services for clients that will eventually lead to those customers launching niche TV channels of their own.