With the explosion of emerging content delivery services, a range of providers must figure out effective ways to market new formats to customers and advertisers. At a gathering of industry experts, ideas abound in addressing those challenges.
NEW YORK—If you listen to the people tasked with building new ways to market and deliver digital content to consumers, they'll tell you that we're on the cusp of a multimedia revolution.
With Apple Computer Inc. selling network TV shows on iTunes, Verizon Communications Inc. launching its fiber optic television service, and Microsoft Corp. partnering with MTV Networks Co. to push music video downloads to Xbox gamers, there's no question that media convergence is entering a formative era. But even the most optimistic experts gathered at the DigitalLife conference here this week conceded that many questions remain regarding the delivery and business models needed to make these services user friendly and profitable.
Consumers are impressed by the expanded multimedia features of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360. Click here to read more.
Despite the many promising flavors of these digital content services, which offer to deliver on the long-held vision of entertainment available to consumers nearly anywhere they choose to look for it, executives from companies providing the infrastructure, hardware and broadcast networks on which the materials will be programmed said there's still a lot of ground to be covered.
If there's a sensible place to begin examining the issues digital content providers must address, the physical bandwidth needed to beam all these various services into people's homes seems to be a logical jumping off point. According to Nick Lehman, senior vice president of strategy and operations for MTV Networks' Digital and Music Media Group, the more bandwidth that becomes available, the more opportunities companies such as his will have to create sophisticated multimedia offerings.
"Really what we need is unlimited broadband access, but for now, programs will expand to fit the available networks," said Lehman. "You can't put a 30-minute television program on a cell phone yet, so we have to play to the available platforms and tailor services to the bandwidth and devices that make the most sense."
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Challenges Loom for New Content Delivery Platforms
Web Design 
