Digital Video By The Numbers, Q4 and 2012 Infographic

It's getting harder and harder to pull apart "Second Screen as a Companion Experience" and "Second Screen as the First Screen Viewing Experience".  The living room and the tablet are converging so quickly.

• UltraViolet has 7m subscribers, but only carries 59% of the Top 100 titles and 50% of currently popular video titles
• Best Buy / CinemaNow launched a Disc-to-Digital beta last week
• Flixster's iPad experience now has download capability--giving UV consumers the opportunity to travel (without a laptop)
• While HBO Go, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are garnering press, the traffic shows that Netflix out streams them nearly 30 to 1
• Netflix has now tied HBO in total subscribers (albeit with some international ones)
• Xbox is the underestimated player in the digital living room with 30m subscribers and a recent commitment to launch 40 new content channels
• The Wii U deployed multi-screen services for its platform and promises to combine it with its second screen controller and then "TV will never be the same"

While everyone know Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, and Amazon Instant Video (as an app), have you tried Matcha, NextGuide, Flixster, or Plizy?  Interested in case studies on great apps that help consumers discover and watch content on their tablet?    Click here

Join us at the www.2ndscreensummit.com today at the Wynn (1-6pm, cocktails to follow).

10 Predictions for the Second Screen Industry in 2013

It seems that technology triggers are often accompanied by the hype of future potential benefits, while the real value is elusive and slower to appear than industry journalists, analysts, or pundits would like, but I am going to lay out 10 scenarios that will develop in this still nascent industry during 2013.

An Updated View of which Second Screen Apps to Watch in 2012

Earlier this summer, I wrote a brief blog on 10 second screen apps to watch discussing which apps I thought had a compelling enough user experience to propel them forward. Since then, we have gotten together as an industry for debate in NYC (twice--once for Advertising Week, once for CEA), in Amsterdam @ IBC, and on the West Coast at the MultiScreen, NextTV and TV|Next summits. In the meantime, NextGuide and zeebox launched their apps in the US--a lot of changes have taken place.

As we are now a few weeks into the Fall TV season, I thought I would update my views on which apps seem to be furthest along the path to develop the features that will drive serious consumer adoption.

I continue to believe there are really 5 major features sets that drive consumers to pick up a device as their second screen in an attempt to add value to their first screen experience: Finding something to watch (Discovery), determining where to watch it (Seamless content sourcing, often combined with Discovery), launching that content to your first screen (Simple), getting more information about the program, whether sport stats, actor bios, games, or commerce opportunities (Stimulating), and then sharing all of that and more with your friends (Social).

Netflix sneaks in some Simple second screen functionality

Depending on how up to date you are on your Twitter feed (or your S3 2Day curated news service), you most likely read the brief story on Gigaom about Netflix quietly rolling out some second screen functionality for the PS3 implementation of their streaming service.  I tried the service last night and included a few screen shots to give you an idea of what is capable, but let me try to take this conversation in two directions: 1) a discussion about what you can do today with an iPhone or iPad with your Netflix service, and 2) where the real opportunity for Netflix and other OTT video service operators lies.

My review of NextGuide by Dijit - A Personalized Video Guide

The long anticipated wait is over.  When CEO and co-founder of Dijit Jeremy Toeman (@jtoeman) told me in May that he wanted to launch a new 2^nd screen app focused on consumer search, recommendation and discovery, I had some pretty high expectations.  The concept of Discovery has been something I have written about in this blog a number of times, and by every account to date, it is something that is hard to deliver on because it is part approach/sophisticated algorithm integration and part UI/UX (user interface / user experience).  There are a few decent apps in this space already (BuddyTV, Matcha, Fanhattan), and they all have different strengths and weaknesses, but NextGuide has made a strong entrance into the marketplace in its 1.0 release on iOS for the iPad.

The Second Screen Hype Cycle

I was reading an article recently from an industry “evangelist” describing the second screen phenomena as very “nascent technology”, that the odds of you discovering that something is on television that you didn’t pre-record or already know about is low, that the majority of consumers will continue to want to channel surf to watch the lion’s share of their content and that the “remote is not going anywhere anytime soon”.

Not a middle of the road stance.

I thought long and hard about that article.  Part of the problem being described is a classic market adoption challenge known as “crossing the chasm”.  Fair enough--people’s behaviors take time to change as we are all creatures of habit.  But as I read and re-read the article, I started looking at the individual feature comments and thought in terms of the feature sets we have used to describe second screen (Simple, Social, Seamless, Stimulating, Discovery).

And then I re-read the most recent Gartner report called the “Hype Cycle for Broadcast and Entertainment - 2012.”

The "Seamless" sourcing of video content from multiple aggregation services

10 years ago, life was simple in your living room.  You really had 3 libraries of content to worry about:

1. the 500 channels of content you were receiving from your Cable, Telco, or Satellite provider, 
2. the collection of DVD's on your shelf, and
3. the available plethora of DVDs to rent at your local Blockbuster.  

But even simpler then was the fact that there were only a few rights windows, and as a consumer, you understood them pretty well:

• Movies came out at the theater first, and then a few months later were available to rent (eg Blockbuster) or purchase (many locations) on the same day.
• A few months after this, they started appearing in your premium TV networks (eg HBO, Showtime).
• A few months after this, they came out on the standard, non-premium broadcast networks.

Video entertainment was easy, despite the poor available search methods of channel surfing your EPG and browsing your shelf or local store's shelves.

In 2012, you are perplexed by a long list of growing of (sometimes exclusive) digital sources of content with different restrictions and availability dates.  Some titles are available for sale but not for rent (eg iTunes, Vudu, Amazon).  Some titles are available for rent, but not in your subscription service (eg Netflix Streaming, Amazon Prime).  Sometimes the digital version is available the same day as the DVD/Blu-ray is available in stores for sale, but even the physical DVD rental has different availability dates in the few remaining Blockbuster stores and the Netflix mail service than it does at the RedBox kiosks in your local grocery store.  Throw in TV catch-up services where the DVD is often available after it is available for free or subscription online and you are thoroughly confused.  Or at least should be.

10 Second Screen Apps to Watch in 2012

The last time we published an app summary was just before the CES show this year in early January  and then again leading up to our 2nd Screen Summit in LA in mid-Febraury.  While the nascent 2nd screen app market segment has been exploding with new apps for shows, network channels, movies, major events, and sports all over the place, 3rd party apps have been quietly improving themselves and trying to find their way into more consumer living rooms.  As we prepare for another Second Screen Summit on June 27th in NYC, we should pause and review the progress those 3rd party apps have been making.

Why is Discovery so hard to implement for video services?

Last week, Google said it was trying to tackle one of the hardest problems on the internet -- video Discovery.

Looking at consumer video services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and even GoogleTV) and their second screen counterparts (Matcha, Fanhattan, BuddyTV, etc), the admission of the challenge is painfully evident in the user interface the consumer faces and the result of the Discovery process.

But let's back up a bit first. What is Discovery? How does it relate to Search and Recommendation? I think we will find wide agreement that the concept of Search is one where you know what you are looking for and are trying to find it. Now this can be more complex than "Where can I find a legal version of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol that I can watch in my living room right now?" (which itself can be challenging in today's service offerings).  It is not usually as complex as the problem Shazam solves in the music industry ("what is the name of that song that sounds like..."), but can be difficult (I know the actor who was in the movie or what it was about). Search is decidedly a "lean forward" experience, and as most of us have found out over the last 5 years, it incredibly difficult to implement on a 10-foot remote experience, with various virtual keyboards or fancy remotes trying to help us solve this problem.

My Review of Matcha as a Second Screen experience

I noticed Matcha present at the OTT Conference on 20-21 March and was very curious as to what their app experience was all about.

When you launch it, it immediately asks you to connect Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and Hulu, and quickly let's you know that it is essentially a video recommendation service which will also serve those videos on your iPad or laptop (so a second screen app that turns the 2nd screen into the first screen). They clearly have ideas for Amazon Prime and Xfinity even though neither are working yet (bottom greyed out portion of UI).

After you connect your accounts up, you notice that Matcha organizes "suggestions" in 5 rows. First, there is a row on the "Hottest" content. Based on what they showed me, I am assuming this is popular in Matcha vs. popular in broadcast TV in general, etc.

The 2nd row is "Newly Available", presumably content that was just made available to Netflix or Hulu.

The 3rd row is about "Recommendations". I am assuming in this case that they have taken into account my Netflix Queue, Hulu queue and my Facebook likes (I can't tell) to make a recommendation. Most of my recommendations I have already seen, but most of the recommendations are in the right space.

The 4th row is called "Friends" and is presumably a collection of what my friends liked on Facebook. There does not seem to be a discernable order though (most liked, recently liked, etc).


The 5th and final row is called "Queue", which seems to be a combination of the Netflix queue, my Hulu queue, and a Matcha queue.

There are a few filters that can be applied (Movies vs. TV, year of the content's release, genre).

This collection of 5 rows seems to be the primary function of the app--a recommendation service that helps you launch directly to Netflix or Hulu as a result (and presumably Amazon in the near future). How good is it? I think the UI is clean, but not as sophisticated as Fanhattan, which has more discernable selection criteria (Emmy winning, Oscar winning, Top 20, Recently Like, Most liked, all fitlerable by ratings, genre, etc, etc).


There is a product detail page, which similar to Fanhattan, shows the sources and suddenly introduces iTunes and Amazon as a source (rental and purchase). I did try to Like the content and put it in my queue. I cannot tell if the Like went to my Facebook (they also have a dislike which Facebook does not do), but it did add it to my Matcha queue (but not my Netflix queue).

While I am not sure this app is intended to be a second screen app, I would say the following:

- Simple. No control of the 1st screen. Would be a MAJOR improvement if available.
- Social. Other than likes and importing likes, there was little ability to push information socially. Low.
- Seamless. A good effort on gathering sources of content, though the cable/telco/satellite channel line-up for content is missing. Medium.
- Stimulating. Relatively lightweight here (low).
- Discovery. Ahh--isn't this what they want to be? I think the app is a probably in the Amazon mode (your friends watch, this is popular), but has not yet built an algorithm to help me Discover new content. I would say medium for effort, but if this is to be there "raison d'etre", they need to find an algorithm/engine (Digitalsmiths, Jinni, theFilter) to drive real Discovery features for the consumer. They would also need a better seeding process (similar to BuddyTVs) to help capture what I like in general and what I have seen at a cursory level.

As a consumer already exposed to Fanhattan and BuddyTV, Matcha has some feature development to do to get me to switch to their app.