Verizon Wireless and Comcast used Cable Show 2012 general session on Tuesday to pull a new product rabbit out of their collective hats, a new mobile search portal dubbed "viewdini".
Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said viewdini will leverage the capacity of its LTE network, streamlining access to videos from a wide range of content providers, including cable operators, websites and other popular video sources. Comcast Xfinity, Hulu Plus, mSpot and Netflix are among the participants at launch, with more including Verizon FiOS expected to be added soon, the company said.
On the panel, Mead said the idea behind viewdini has been kicked around for about two years, and was spurred by what Verizon Wireless saw as insatiable demand for capacity.
"We saw the capacity of the LTE network, we handle about 60% of the global traffic, saw the possibilities, the hunger of consumers to get this information whenever wherever they want," Mead said.
Mead noted that with 300 million customers across all of its platforms, Verizon Wireless expects more content providers to sign on to viewdini.
"If you're a content provider I think those 300M customers will be of interest to you," Mead said. "We're at the very beginning stages of that transformation."
Expanding customer access across all platforms quickly became the theme of the session. VEVO president and CEO Rio Caraeff said the future of content - games, movies, television and music, is quickly changing. He noted that he may have scores of content available on is computer hard d rive at home, but it becomes worthless to him when he is out of the house.
"It's not about owning anything, it's about accessing everything," Caraeff said. "We're going thru a generational shift, from a generation that values ownership to a generation that values access."
Independent film maker Ed Burns said that access is changing the face of independent film. He noted than five years ago, when he released the first film directly to iTunes, every journalist at the launch announcement thought he was crazy, that no one would ever ach a movie on their computer screens. Today they're singing a different tune.
Burns said that increased access, especially through mobile and portable devices, is bringing new audiences to independent film makers. He added that in the past, a film maker would hope to get on a late night talk show to market his film, and hope that those watching would find an art house or independent theater in their area to see the film. Today, all you have to do is convince people to turn on their computers.
That kind of access is being increasingly made available through technical advancements, particularly cloud computing, which has greatly accelerated the speed to market, said Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit.
"The cloud allows you to innovate at a faster pace," Smit said. "Technology has fueled the consumer demand. It's a mix of technology fueling it and consumers saying, ‘Now that we've gotten that, we want more.'"
