Technology360

Innovation at the Met

The Metropolitan Opera, of all organizations, has been doing a very innovative thing by transmitting its performances in HDTV to movie theaters around the country as well as other innovations.  Non-profit fundraising guru Bob Stein writes:

... [CEO Peter Gelb] has taken opera to the streets--free large-screen broadcasts in Times Square (opening night of Madame Butterfly), introduced $20 rush orchestra tickets and broadcast live performances to movie screens around the world. He's brought directors from the theater world to stage operas, and he even recruited design celeb Isaac Mizrahi to create the costumes for Orfeo ed Euridice.  ¶  What has resulted is a revitalized Met. According to Bloomberg.com,

Sales during the 2006-07 season rose 7.1 percent to 810,225, said Gelb, who succeeded Joseph Volpe in August. In all, the Met sold 83.9 percent of tickets offered for its 3,800- seat opera house at Manhattan's Lincoln Center compared with 76.8 percent last season.

Link:  Major Giving.

The legendary Mark Schubin gave a talk about the Met's Live HD opera-to-theater broadcasts at October's Iowa DTV Symposium.  The talk (The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD: global cinemacasts, robotic cameras, and more) is available both as a PowerPoint (click here and scroll down to the Content Track's Tuesday at 2:30 session) and as an MP3 file.

Just went to the Met web site and see that one of their theaters is about a 75-mile drive from me, so I'm going to buy a ticket and check it out.  --Dennis

Video-to-go on a thumb drive

Here's an interesting idea.  Porto Media lets you download a movie to a thumb drive from a kiosk or ATM in about a half-minute.  IBM has a video profile (transcript also).  Link:  IBM.  --Dennis

What happened to Mark Schubin's Monday Memos?

Production engineer extraordinaire Mark Schubin's Monday Memos on digital television, a labor of love for him, an important source of information for his readers, and fodder for many a post on this blog, have been MIA since late last summer.  One of the many who has missed them asked about it on the OpenD TV list.  One of his principal gigs has been the Met Opera, and it's been feeding live performances to theaters around the country.  Here's his interesting response in its entirety.  --Dennis

[opendtv] Re: Whatever happened to...

• From: Mark Schubin <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: Open DTV Forum <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 11:19:31 -0400 (EDT)

The multiplication of media at the Metropolitan Opera happened.  If you're at 
the PBS Technology Conference next week, come to my Friday presentation, 
subtitled "My Life Since September."

In brief, we are transmitting live HD cinemacasts to sold-out movie theaters 
around the world.  How sold out?  The live transmission of "Barber of Seville" 
on March 24 ranked well within the top-20 in U.S. weekend grosses, despite the 
fact that it was shown only once.

Why is it taking so much of my time?  Here are a few highlights from "Barber" 
(just one of the series):
- 16 transponders on 13 satellites as well as three transoceanic fiber cables
- multiple motion-compensating HD frame-rate converters
- one-hour HD delays to compensate for the different starts of Summer Time in 
North America and Europe
- 14 HD cameras and 30 recorders
- five robotic mounts, including two extendable towers and a track, all of 
which had to be deployed in minutes
- a 600-foot live, backwards Steadicam move (ending at a live burro)
- shooting multicamera live in the control room itself (one intermission was 
shot live in five different venues)
- live subtitling in multiple languages
- stereo, 5.1, and LT/RT sound, discrete and encoded
- coordinating live commercial U.S. radio, non-commercial U.S. radio, global 
radio, and the HD cinemacasts, all of which sometimes share and sometimes use 
different production elements
- coordinating the parking of production vehicles on three Manhattan blocks 
with the fire department, the police, and local security

Wheeee!

But I'll try to get something out.

Sorry.

TTFN,
Mark

High-Definition Opera Hits Movie Theaters

As I recall, it was 20 years ago this last fall when we dropped the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts from our radio service.  We did so because the Met required stations in the "lower 48" to carry the broadcasts live, unlike stations in Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.  For those of us in the Pacific Time Zone, that meant prime real estate on Saturday mornings.  At the time, we replaced it with classical music on Saturdays and non-Met opera on Sunday evenings.  Those classical listeners on the next pledge drive contributed an order of magnitude more than the opera listeners ever had in the same time period -- though all 250 opera listeners apparently owned typewriters and used them in what was (and still stands) our the greatest protest over a programming decision.  I thought the Met displayed stunning arrogance in this ("It's like a sporting event," I was told).  But then they probably thought the same of us, who, after all, were obviously rural philistines depriving our listeners of opera from this great institution.

All that history is that is to key on the "sporting event" remark.  The Met has hit on a great idea for opera, which after all is as much a visual event as it is an aural one -- and, arguably, it's as much of a social event as it is an artistic one.  They're beaming live opera performances in high definition video to movie theaters.  NPR carried a story on this on the 31st, to which you can listen here.  Good luck to them. 

Update 3 Jan. 2007:
The Los Angeles Times reports there were technical difficulties at some theaters.  Link:  TVPredictions.  --Dennis

Coming Soon to a TV Near You?

Ronald Grover writes:

It's the Holy Grail of the movie download business. Movies straight from the Internet to your TV, none of that watching the flick in your straight-back chair while peering at your computer monitor. Now, for those who want to watch movies the way they should be enjoyed—that is, while curled up on your couch—comes the first downloadable movie that can be burned onto a DVD. On July 19, CinemaNow, a movie download site backed by independent film studio Lionsgate Entertainment, Microsoft, Blockbuster, and others, announced it will be the first to provide that service. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.

Apple to announce iTunes movie rentals

Ryan Katz writes:

... Think Secret has learned exclusively that CEO Steve Jobs will use his keynote address to announce the debut of movie rentals through the iTunes Music Store. While the announcement will undoubtedly be billed as a further extension of iTunes' dominance in digital media downloads, it represents a coup for the movie industry, which will have succeeded in standing its ground against Apple's pressures to offer consumers the option of owning movie downloads. ...

Link:  Think Secret.

Umair Haque thinks it's a mistake.  See Jobs Effect.  Link:  Bubblegeneration.  --Dennis

What Netflix Could Teach Hollywood

David Leonhardt has a great overview of Netflix and long-tail economics in the New York Times.  --Dennis

Disney, Pixar and Jobs

John Hagel has an insightful piece about why Steve Jobs isn't necessarily the right person to revitalize Disney.  A great instinct for product design and integration doesn't automatically translate to a great instinct for the 2.0 world -- as iTunes amply demonstrates IMHO.  Link:  Edge Perspectives.  --Dennis

Bubble May Burst Hollywood

Eric Hellweg writes:   "... Today [1/27/2006] is the release date for Bubble, a new film directed by Soderbergh and released by HDNET Films, an upstart film company cofounded by Cuban. Setting Bubble apart from, say, Nanny McPhee and Big Momma's House 2, two other films debuting on Friday, is that the film will be available in cinemas and on the HDNET cable channel on the same day. What's more, just four days later, it will be out on DVD. In other words: there will be no "window" between its theatrical release and its availability for home viewing. ...¶ ... theatrical revenues have been diminishing steadily as a percentage of overall revenues for the movie industry. In 1980, 55 percent of industry revenues came from theatrical showings. In 2005, the trend was in full swing: roughly 85 percent of revenues came from home video sales. As a result, the time before a home-video release has shrunk, as DVD revenues have encompassed more and more of the movie industry's overall revenues and profits. And, of course, studios are rushing to collect those home video sales."  Link:  Technology Review.

Also see David Goetzl's, IFC: Now Showing In A Theater Near You, And On VOD.  "... IFC will make at least 24 films available this year to cable companies for VOD distribution at the same time the films are playing on the silver screen. The MSOs will determine how much to charge for the films. In a market like Manhattan, where movies can cost $10.50, a cost half as much--or less--could take business from theater operators. ..."  Link:  MediaPost.

The Fragmented Media Future

David Schatsky writes:  "... Consumers increasingly expect to be able to consume media when and where they want, on any platform or device, in any context. The technology and media industries are beginning to oblige them. Fragmentation is both a cause and effect, creating a cycle in which fragmented audiences lead to fragmented content, which allows audiences to fragment further, and so on.  ¶  These changes will threaten established practices and entrenched interests in the media and advertising sectors, but consumers will benefit and ultimately, companies that can ride this wave will benefit as well. They have no choice. Take movies: Nearly 100% of the growth in movie industry revenues over the last 50 years has come from new markets, such as home video, and new platforms, such as DVD. ..."  Link:  Jupiterresearch.  Thanks to Terry Heaton for the tip.  --Dennis