Open Media Network

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Open Media Network

The Open Media Network launched Tuesday with a broad plan to enable many things we've been talking about here recently, like downloadable television shows, movies, and podcasts. Marc Andressen (a Netscape founder) is on the board and when I first heard about this, I assumed it would be a lot like Our Media, opening up content, streaming, and hosting to anyone on earth.

Despite the "Open" name and .org in their URL, it appears that Open Media isn't quite like that, built on Kontiki, a DRM-friendly media distribution system that keeps you from doing anything with files once you've downloaded them (I recall the first time I saw Kontiki, their product boasted features that would automatically delete downloaded movies after playing them x number of times).

The site doesn't work for me in Firefox and won't let me download a demo movie (which even includes "DRM" in the filename). In Internet Explorer, I'm asked to install a custom activeX control from a company I'm already having trouble trusting. Oh, and it's windows only.

I don't know how widespread Open Media adoption will be, but so far the early launch doesn't look too promising. Still, it's good to see more players in the IPTV space launching.

by Matt Haughey April 27, 2005 in News

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I'm curious, how do you view Open Media Network and Our Media relative to Tivo? Are these future competitors, partners or a little of both? I don't see these leading to a partnership, because it seems to me Tivo could probably do much the same without much incremental effort... Perhaps I just answered my question, but I'd enjoy reading you detailed opinion on this at some point...

Posted by: StephenCastellano at Apr 27, 2005 5:00:37 AM

I guess I'd say that the Open Media Network and Our Media are slight competitors to TiVo, because both newer ventures are moving towards an entirely IP-based delivery of things you could traditionally get on TV, on DVD, or on the radio. However, most TiVo users have a broadband connection, so it's a no-brainer that TiVo will someday deliver video to TiVo boxes over the connection, instead of over the airwaves, and let people enjoy downloaded video where they want it most -- on their TV.

Our Media is an open by-the-people kind of thing so I suspect they may get partnerships with folks wanting to glean the best content from it. Open Media Network seems to have a traditional mindset where creators are in control and everything is locked down. They seem like someone you could pay to get rights to their video and deliver it to other devices. I think TiVo could simply go their own way and create their own distribution network where those with content pay to be optionally loaded onto TiVos.

I wrote about this a few years ago, before I had this site, when I thought pay per view might be an avenue for TiVo:

http://a.wholelottanothing.org/features/2002/04/tivos_next_move.html

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Apr 27, 2005 10:37:48 AM

This is more pie in the sky. Kontiki comes out of the b2b training space into the consumer space. They have no studio content. What they are doing is nothing new -- if you were at NAB in 1998 you would have seen live demos of media indexing, metadata tagging and segmentation. This has been on the MPEG roadmap for almost 10 years now, maybe longer. IPTV delivery systems won't deploy with this stuff. They face competition from Google and other services that already have set-top-box designs in test to take advantage of internet delivery of media and media tagging. Its a flash in the pan, mark my words. An axtivex control and 1/100th the content of iFilm is the future of tv? Give me a break.

Posted by: Kon at Apr 28, 2005 1:20:44 AM

"The site doesn't work for me in Firefox"

This is so depressing. Marc Andressen of all people isn't supporting Netscape/Firefox??

In TIME Magazine: The 2005 TIME 100 (now on newsstands) he's the one who wrote the write-up about Mitchell Baker, head of the Mozilla project. Did Marc get hit in the head with a bowling ball or something??

Posted by: MikeyC at May 2, 2005 7:20:00 PM

This is in a way good, but I can't help but think that Mike Homer (Kontiki CEO) has some dark evil motive for doing this, mostly because I knew him at Apple and he was dark and evil there. Dog's don't often change their spots.

A similar idea, without the bittorrent clone and DRM (but including micropayments for downloaded content, or just free content) is at:

www.rprn.org (Real Public Radio Network).

It was created by a team of programmers from the Univeristy of Colorado and a local retired exec type. NPO/.org in natue. Worth looking at as an alternative to ourmedia/OMN/PRX/Radio4all, etc.

Posted by: ElijahBlue at May 10, 2005 4:11:46 PM

Open Media Network

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