A small start-up is trying to do what many in Hollywood and Silicon Valley have so far been unable to do: take Internet video from its YouTube origins to a full-fledged television service with dozens of channels.

“We have video on the Web,” says Roxanne Austin, chief executive of Move Networks Inc. and a former president of DirecTV. “We don’t have television on the Web.”

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Move Networks Inc. may finally see some traction as an IPTV technology provider, with the news that Cable and Wireless plc (NYSE: CWP) has chosen its adaptive bit-rate technology to power a global rollout of online video services.

CWI, Cable and Wireless’s international telecom business, will use Move Networks technology to deliver online video services in 38 countries worldwide. The deal will enable CWI to offer multichannel video services to customers through their existing ADSL broadband connections without the need for building out local IPTV infrastructure.

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Two-year-old Move Networks is following an ambitious plan to move the telecom industry toward business models that finally monetize so-called “over-the-top” Internet content rather than let it cannibalize video subscriptions. The company’s downloadable media player authenticates existing video subscribers and allows them to watch some content online. But the company’s new chief executive officer, Roxanne Austin (the former chief operating officer of DirecTV) says service providers can go further than the free online models discussed today, ultimately turning Internet video into new incremental revenue streams.

On the evolution of Internet video business models: We’re at a unique time. We’re finally talking about getting paid for content on the Internet. It’s one of the reasons I came [to Move] at this stage. We’ve been talking in this industry for a long time about video on the Internet, in phases. We went from, “it’s all going to be free” to “it’s going to be user-generated content” to “it’s going to be professional content paid for by advertising.” Now people are saying there’s going to be video everywhere…

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FierceOnlineVideo got a chance to catch up with newly appointed Move Networks CEO Roxanne Austin near the end of her first day on the job. Though Austin couldn’t answer some of the questions posed because she is still familiarizing herself with aspects of Move’s business, she was upbeat about Move’s market opportunity and chance to turn around the company after a tumultuous first half of the year. I’d also like to note that Austin is the first female representative in the FierceOnlineVideo Leaders series. I hope there are many more to come.

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Internet TV services provider Move Networks has appointed former DirecTV executive Roxanne Austin as its president and CEO.

Austin, who also joins the company’s board of directors, since 2004 had headed Austin Investment Advisors, a private investment and consulting firm focused on new media and technology. Prior to that, she was president and chief operating officer with DirecTV and held various senior leadership positions at then-parent Hughes Electronics.

“Roxanne brings the experience, expertise and leadership necessary for Move Networks to help its customers define the future of Internet television,” Move Networks founder Drew Major said in a statement. “We are extremely fortunate to have Ms. Austin lead Move Networks and its vision to set the standard for a ‘true’ television experience delivered over the Internet as well as by IPTV.”

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Roxanne Austin says one of her criteria for taking on a executive position after leaving DirectTV was that the new company had to be a “game-changer.” Now, the new CEO says Move Networks Inc. is in the position to change the game of how television can be delivered.

Austin took over the post of CEO and president of the American Fork company on July 13, replacing co-founder John Edwards, who took the title of executive chairman.

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New York — Comcast and Time Warner Inc. will attempt to synthesize their approaches to delivering cable TV programming via the Web starting with a nationwide trial involving 5,000 of the operator’s customers.

In the industry’s first national “TV Everywhere” trial, set to kick off in July, Comcast will deliver new and recent episodes from top TNT and TBS series, available through the operator’s Comcast.net and Fancast portals, for no extra cost to customers who subscribe to both TV and broadband services.
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2008 was the year that big media learned to stop worrying and love—or at least accept—online video.

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While most people watched the telecast 51st Annual Grammy Awards starting at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS last night, there was a whole three hours of non-televised content that viewers could only watch live online.

The Grammy Awards Pre-Telecast, which includes nearly 100 categories of Grammy awards that don’t make the televised awards program, was brought online with production and technical expertise from Springboard Productions, iStreamPlanet Co. , Move Networks Inc. , and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T).

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The 51st annual Grammy Awards telecast this year had 24 artists performing nearly 30 songs over three-and-a-half hours. But the “pre-tel” awards ceremony, where more than 100 other awards are given to several hundred recipients, was traditionally an obscure, invitation-only affair, held in the Los Angeles Convention Center adjacent to the Staples Center where the televised show originates from. That changed in 2008 when the Recording Academy green-lighted a beta trial of live-streaming the pre-tel ceremony. . .

The transfer rate this year is up to 1.4Mbps, using Move Networks’ Move Media Player, whose adaptive streaming technology will automatically query each viewer’s computer to determine its connection and processor speed and type, and then optimize the stream for that user. AT&T was the CDN provider.

Sounds Good
In the world of streaming, the focus tends to be on the picture, with smooth, unbuffered motion the ultimate goal. However, this webcast was part of the Grammy experience, the music industry’s most important yearly broadcast event. The audio would warrant some attention of its own.

Although Move’s media player is essentially a black-box solution, with the adaptive streaming and other parameter optimization taking place based on preset profiles, Mark East, director of managed webcasting for iStreamPlanet and the producer of the pre-tel Grammy webcast, is a fan of how Move’s player sounds out of the box. “They have a really nice mix of profiles in their default settings. In the upper ranges especially, it’s great-sounding audio,” he says. The adaptive streaming adjusts for both audio and video. “The low-end will not drop below 64kbps and will scale up to 96kbps at higher profiles,” David Rice, Move Networks’ v.p. of marketing, explains.

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