television production studios; Internet TV is expanding rapidly; and Hollywood films are expected to become a “premium content” mainstay. “There are a lot of things to work through here,” Hell says. “It could take five years, maybe even more. Initially you’re going to have broadcast television content, and then the premium content, moving to the Internet.”
Hell says that some cable programming, such as the Discovery Channel, MTV, and CNBC, will be “trickier” to make the jump to the Web. “We don’t anticipate some of this content moving immediately over to the Internet,” Hell says. But he says the “cord will get cut” as televisions become more widely equipped with IPTV capabilities, and as websites like Hulu become easily accessible on the big screen TV in the living room.
By the way, Hell says, “The advertising model on the Internet will feel very much like it does today. So yeah, you’re watching advertising [on Internet TV], but it’s much more interesting to you, because Internet TV has the ability to do true one-to-one marketing that people aren’t able to do today.”
Hell sees the market today as “disconnected” because it’s not easy for users to download a movie from the Internet and then watch it on the big screen TV in their living room. A user typically would have to copy the movie from a computer to a DVD or a USB memory stick and use that to transfer the content to their TV. But DivX is anticipating the day when that won’t be necessary, because the TV and other electronic devices will all be connected to the Internet.
Understanding the broad trend helps explain another recent DivX announcement. On Sept. 1, the company said it had acquired AnySource Media LLC, a Malvern, PA, developer of Internet Television streaming technology that enables users to
