Disqus - Latest Comments for mark cuban

Re: Mark Cuban: We don't think you are stupid but that doesn't mean we agree

mark cuban — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:49:30 -0000

you are twisting my comments from 2006. And you are taking poetic license with your own points.

The point I made back in 2006 was that in order to really watch HD in HD you actually had to connect to your HDTV with a digital or component connection. That watching HD content in HD was going to be limited by that factor. Which it has been.

I never said they wouldnt want to connect their TVs to their PCs to watch standard video. Although the reality is that even the number of people who do so is small, i can see why people like myself connect our big screens to our PCs, why wouldnt we ? That doesnt mean we prefer to use the net to watch HD or any video as our source.

The only place I underestimated usage is with XBox. They have done a great job of enabling their users to download and stream content. Particularly with their Netflix partnership. But even their delivery of content faces the same challenges of the last mile and in home bandwidth and their numbers are not huge for streaming either. All that said, and with all the techonlogical changes you refer to, TV viewership continues to increase. Even among young demos.

And I would challenge that I am resistant to change. In fact, its the exact opposite. There is nothing new or original about what is going on with internet video any more than there are new and exciting things going on with Desktop PCs or Windows App Software. When you get to a point where people are arguing about features and business plans, its a technology that has jumped the shark.

Internet Video is still consumed primarily during work hours and most of that afrom work. Bandwidth to the home is and will be constrained. Thats not to say it wont increase. Of course it will. But real creativity and change will come from applications that put the bandwidth to far better use than trying to copy TV.

If you want to talk about change, Im thrilled to talk about new application opportunities that are bandwidth hogs. The possibilities are endless, but they dont include internet video on demand.

If you want to talk about opportunity for change as it relates to traditional TV, im thrilled to talk about Tru2Way/EBIF, network DVRs and such. That is where the real change ishappening in the tv space. Its just not on the internet.

m

Re: Mark Cuban: We don't think you are stupid but that doesn't mean we agree

mark cuban — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:58:17 -0000

Thanks for the post Jeff, I can answer your question bijan. Todd wagner and I own Landmark Theaters, which is in 18 of the 20 largest markets. We own HDNet, which has 14mm subscribers. We own Magnolia Pictures that distributes on DVD, VOD, ITunes.

TOgether we created Ultra VOD. Here is how it works. We take a movie like Two Lovers (the movie Juaquin Phoenix was promoting on his infamous Letterman flipout appearance). Like all our Ultra VOD movies (which is most), we release them to pay VOD on cable and satellite companies THREE WEEKS before its theatrical release. We charge a premium for it (9.95 or a little more). It allows us to build a buzz for the movie and significantly cut our promotional costs forthe movie.
The Wednesday before its friday theatrical release, we offer a free showing on HDNet Movies (on all major carriers but Cablevision), obviously as an incentive for people to subscribe.

Then the movie is released theatrically to markets we think are the best fit. We put it in Landmark Theaters along with other independently owned theaters (other than Clearview, the big chains like Regal, Cinemark, NAI have refused to show our Ultra VOD movies).

Then the movie is released shortly there after the DVD, Netflix, Itunes, Xbox,. Also , FWIW, we do not copy protect any of our DVDs. Its not worth wasting the money.

We have had great success with the model and are obviously unique in our approach.

What we dont do with HDNet however is stream our shows. We sell them on Itunes, XBox Live and DVD. If you want to buy them, we are happy to sell them. But we want the price you pay ala carte to act as an incentive for people to make the choice to subscribe to HDNet on their cable or sat provider.

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2005/10/21/splog-attack-on-the-blogosphere/

mark cuban — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:37:53 -0000

great post. funny thing is when i was first writing about the things in august, i didnt want to use the word. It sounded wrong to me, but i also didnt want to use spam because i thought people would just dismiss it and not pay attention to it.

at least the word splog leads people to ask what they are.

and it seems like google is implementing some new features on blog creation

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:42:20 -0000

Look Matthew, I know you like to rip anything Im involved with, but come on.

Im happy to match icerocket.com results against Technorati or google and I dont find sphere even usable.

Google is littered with splogs. Techno does a better job, but is splog heavy and slow as can be, incredibly cluttered and often is missing posts.

Based on the comscore pageview numbers for both, our traffic is right up there with either. However, in blogsearch, pageviews dont mean much. MOST repeat users setup RSS feeds for their searchs. That is what Icerocket is optimal for, repetitive searchs. Its clean, its easy, its fast.

And if you didnt know, we also power A9 blog search along with others.

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:30:04 -0000

fair enough :)

I manage icerocket on a daily basis. The only area Google has an advantage on us with is with Blogger.com. They get those automatically and sooner. Plus we scrub our results harder to get fewer splogs, so we are usually an hour behind google.

Tell me when you find fewer results on icerocket so i can find out why.

Usually when i review with someone, it comes down to they just trust google more and our results are usually, not always, but usually better.

Try our RSS feeds as well. I think you find they work as well , if not better

all feedback is welcome

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:34:10 -0000

btw, try this in either of the others
http://blogs.icerocket.com/search?q=author%3A%2...

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 10:23:15 -0000

you got us on these kinds of searchs for 2 reasons.
1. because its blogware.com, we are going to take longer to scrub it to make sure its not a splog. Like I said before, we are slower, but we try to be more efficient.
2. I dont think looking for "who links" is the most relevant way to search, and our icerocket its rarely how people search. I think a lot of bloggers search as you do, but not business people. In this case, I think they would do a search on AT&T BellSouth

look at technorati
http://www.technorati.com/search/AT%26T+Merger
They dont have anything

http://blogs.icerocket.com/search?q=AT%26T+Merger

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&a...

compare IceRocket, we include all RSS feeds and have more news than Google. Google on the other hand has more splogs. Content thats repeated from site to site.

I like the way we do it of coures, but Google's has definitely gotten better, while Technorati has easily gotten far worse

I think Google and Icerocket have good delmiters, but Icerocket makes them more obvious. As a previous poster mentioned, you can quickly see if any tags match your search. If any authors match your search, etc

Where technorati has excelled IMHO, is being a vanity search outlet.

Icerocket will have lots of new features coming. From video to social networking features. We arent high profile, but we have a growing base of users and RSS subs

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 11:12:55 -0000

what a love fest :)
To answer your question on News. I want EVERY RSS feed except comments (because of so much spam) included. Although we call ourselves a blog search engine, thats a misnomer. Its just easier for people to understand.

We want to be the best place to search for fresh information. rather than just blog posts. So often we include rss feeds of popular search topics.

I also think in the future that sitemaps will allow us to know when and what has changed on traditional websites, which we will include as well. So if ibm.com adds a new segment on support for a certain product, I want that to be a result in a search for that product.

If a new video is added to a video hosting site about a topic, we want to see that included.

When you search for ibm on google, you will always get the same answer, or they will make you search all the different tabs, image, video, news, web, etc. We want to be the destination for those who want to know the latest information on the web about IBM.

Notice that you can get an RSS /Live Bookmark even from our web search..

icerocket is profitable and growing. We like being under the radar and making changes based on user feedback. Its worked for us

thanks for all the feedback Matt

m

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:58:23 -0000

Martin
How many people search based on URLs ?

If you have to find the URL first, that kind of defeats the simplicity of search

Re: Google wins — because it doesn’t suck

mark cuban — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:46:17 -0000

thats where disagree. As I mentioned to Matthew. Icerocket being called a blog search engine is a misnomer. Its a freshness engine. What is the freshest information available about anything.

For some reason you guys, techno and some others think its about helping people explore . As you call it, contextual relevance. Thats fine, and there is a market for that. I just dont think its the big market.

I like what you guys do with the pop up windows. Smart marketing, but also very confusing to people who arent looking for tourguides, but are looking for information. Some people dont want a conversation. They want information. My wife likes conversation, I like the details so I can get on with making a decision.

Icerocket is more of a business and productivity tool.

We arent in any rush to become the biggest and best as of yesterday. We are profitable, growing and enhancing our product.

I hope Sphere it conquers all the women of the world :)

Re: Viacom goes one way, BBC the other

mark cuban — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:00:28 -0000

Mathew, does anyone know how much traffic there is for Youtube in the UK ?

From what i see, BBC is giving up very little. They have a small cable channel in the US, dont produce content in the US and how much revenue can they generate in the US at this point ?

So what are they giving up ?

In the UK they agree to let Google sell commercials around their commercials for their shows. Thats smart.

It would be the equivalent of Viacom saying "dont let people in the US watch clips I want to protect, but you can do whatever you want with it in the UK". Wouldnt it ?

Re: Web Video…So Many Problems, So Few Solutions…For Now!

mark cuban — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:38:30 -0000

You have it backwards. Web Video has a ton of potential. And it always will.....

m

Re: searching the blogosphere, and more

mark cuban — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:22:01 -0000

Definitely let us know what you think about blogsearchs with icerocket !

m

Re: GrabPERF Goes Big Time!

mark cuban — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 05:50:12 -0000

cool site. nice way to see how the comp is doing :)

Re: Cuban on Fragmentation & Attention in the Blogosphere (or Why Power Laws Really Do Govern All Media)

mark cuban — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:25:36 -0000

well done

Re: 2005/11/29/mashable-now-syndicated-to-the-corante-network/

mark cuban — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:22:01 -0000

I want to subscribe, but dont want to do it through feedburner and their options. Can you put an old fashioned RSS feed up ?

or am i missing it ?

m

Re: 2006/10/16/gaming-youtube-for-fun-and-profit/

mark cuban — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:40:38 -0000

icerocket.com gives you references back to videos as well

http://blogs.icerocket.com/popular/youtube

Re: 2007/11/23/mark-cuban-stop-p2p-traffic/

mark cuban — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:49:44 -0000

time for you guys to do your homework and maybe you should actually read what i wrote before you go off.

I said Google Video should replace P2P..no. I said it was better for audio and video. Understand the difference ?

And your example on efficiency only applies in the rare cases where 100pct of the seeds are on the same network segment.

and there are far better ways to do file distribution than p2p. Look up multicast. I guess i should have expected your post and done a "Turn Off P2P, replace it with multicast and...." post first. Would that have helped you ?

the redunancy and load balancing of P2P ? I would love to see that paper confirming that. The issue with P2P is that you dont know who your seeds are or when they are available and exactly how much bandwidth will be available. if you did, it wouldnt be a P2P network, it would be a CDN.

Im all for applying P2P principles on a CDN. A CDN has resources thats are clearly definable and for the most part deterministic. Something that an open internet P2P application doesnt have.

More importantly, CDNs pay to host their servers and for the bandwidth they use.

Open Internet P2P is a leach network. Its theft by stealing bandwidth a few bits at a time.

As bad as an idea as it would be, it would be fun to watch ISPs go to a pay per bit model rather than the disingenuous all you can eat model they currently have.

If not a pay per bit, how about an all you can download for free, but pay per bit for upload model ?

Want to see how inefficient a protocol P2P is ? Watch how quickly users would unload their clients when they got a bandwidth bill for their upstream bandwidth use.

Re: 2007/11/23/mark-cuban-stop-p2p-traffic/

mark cuban — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 06:00:58 -0000

no question its an oversimplification. P2P is o bviously not the only bandwidth hog. However, it is the only "bandwidth leach" that comes to mind.

It is the only manner of bandwidth consumption that commercial operations use in order to avoid paying for bandwidth. A distinction that I point out multiple times

m

Re: 2007/11/23/mark-cuban-stop-p2p-traffic/

mark cuban — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 06:14:53 -0000

Joost is a perfect example of what is wrong with P2P. It is a for profit corporation that is attempting to develop a tv like product without paying (as best i can tell, correct me if im wrong), for the bandwidth its users are consuming. Call me crazy, but to me thats wrong.

This doesnt mean that Joost isnt a valid application. It is. If they were to put P2P on a CDN and pay for the bandwidth they consume, I would be all for it.

To be clear, Im not against P2P across the board, just in instances where its used as a bandwidth leach.

As far as CDN vs P2P, i would guess that for non pirated bits, that CDNs consume more bandwidth than P2P does. Again, Im fine with this because it requires companies to pay for the bandwidth they use.

And P2P beats downloading from a single source in many cases, but who downloads from a single source these days ? There are untold non P2P options, CDNs and multiple file download hosts that require the distributor to pay for the bandwidth they consume and distribute the bits to end users in an very efficient manner.

The Google option is for file distribution rather than emulating a video distribution option. Google is preferable because they have what is arguably the best network for content distribution in the world and they have made a business decision to subsidize the cost of anyone wants to use it.

And I think its a bad idea because of the confusion it would cause, not because its not a viable business model. I havent done a complete analysis, but from a cursory glance it seems like it could lead to the opportunity for lower pricing alternatives (if ISPs were smart enough to avail themselves of this alternative)

Bottom line is that P2P hasnt solved a single problem for recipients of files. It has solved a cost problem for distribution of content/files/other bits. It has moved the cost of distribution from the source to the destination. I think thats wrong.

obviously , not everyone agrees.

If we want to push for ISPs to optimize our experience and minimize our costs, then lets push for multicast. Lets push for better accounting of usage and more realism in advertising of just want we get for our money and what we dont get.

I can think of 100 different ways to improve the ISP experience.

I can also think of 100 internet sacred cows that need to be challenged. Challenging them in blog posts is a lot more fun

m

Re: The brrreeeport report

mark cuban — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:37:53 -0000

thats not really the test that matters. Only blog geeks really care that a post was caught in X min/sec/hours. Which means some of us have too much time on our hands.

Now what will be interesting is if a splogger picks it up and republishes it all over the place.

then you have something of interest

Re: Internet video business challenges

mark cuban — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:29:01 -0000

Robert
I plan on downloading your videos and putthingthem on google video and youtube. You will make up all your costs with allthe free promotion and traffic they will give you :)

If you dont like that, you can search those and other sites all day long and issue takedown notices if you can find where i post your stuff.

Then you can sue them and maybe get a bunch of google stock !

thats how you make money !

Re: What Mark Cuban is missing about HDTV

mark cuban — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:39:28 -0000

The point of the post isnt that you cant. Its that most PCs arent out of box capable. Sure Macs have DVI out, but most dont have the processing power. If they did, QT would be the default transport for high def already since it does such a great job with any resolution.

For PCs, its only the last 2 years that PCs have had enough CPU or Graphics power to push HD out a compatible port. Which means even IF those computers are compatible with HDTVs and can play HD content, they are small in number and those without arent going to run out and get HD compatible PCs .

Hooking up an XBOX to remotely stream. Get real. Possible. Yes. Has been for a while. To stream HD, works for some content formats. Certainly doesnt have a chance of becoming ubiquitous and the obvious solution to playing HD content from the net to an HDTV. THe Xbox w HD DVD had a far far better shot of being a ubquitous inhome media server that connected the net to HDTV but MIcroSoft chose to make Online a Walled Garden. A mistake they may never live down.

Works great when you are trying to subsidize your hardware costs, but kicks you in the ass when you are trying to become dominant outside of gaming. Its a back to the 1970s strategy of the mini and mainframe software strategy. Maybe they have hired some former Xerox Parcers ?

THe question I was answering, and maybe I didnt write it as well as some others would of was

"Will HD content from the Net to a consumers HDTV replace traditional distribution methods of content from a satellite or cable plant to a vendor provided box connected to an HDTV ?"

The complexity of alternatives in these comments just proves my point that they wont, and the comments dont consider the bandwidth issues of downloading or streaming content that pretty much has to be encoded at 9mbs or more for 80pct of the most popular content.

thanks for reading and commenting on the blog. Thats what makes blogging fun !

Re: Following Demo07

mark cuban — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:28:58 -0000

only bloggers care how quickly posts are indexed. the rest of the world cares that you find the info thats out there and scrub it