David Caruso, where's Lexicon?

Doug Mohney — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:31:07 -0400

I saw David Caruso (in person) at CES in January. He rolled into the press room and quickly attracted a crowd of people who wanted to shake hands with Mr. CSI: Miami. David and his posse of two, Nils Lahr and Frank Nein, wanted to generate some buzz about his video technology company/play, Lexicon Digital Communications.

"We're in stealth, look at the video on our website, it's really great, thanks, stay tuned, see yah," is about how the discussion ran. Oh, and I got a signed postcard from him.

Lahr, Lexicon's CTO, was CTO and co-founder of iBeam broadcasting and before that was a senior developer at Microsoft when VXstreme was snapped up by Microsoft wayyy back in the day. I remember iBeam quite well since I went head-to-head with them at SkyCache/Cidera during the dot.com era; we were both hocking solutions to deliver bandwidth rich content to the edge of the Internet through satellite broadband before the alleged bandwidth shortage turned into a fiber glut.

Nein is the odd-man-in of the trio, handling PR for the young and stealthy firm, so I suppose we could blame him for the lack of information about Lexicon. But I'm not sure.

If you visit www.lexicondigital.tv, there's a clumsy website and a small screen cryptic video filmed in and around Vegas. Looks like more money was spent on props and making the video than setting up the website--definite faux pas, no matter how cool David is. Then again, Caruso also the mistake of bailing on "NYPD Blue" and doing "Jade."

With the flood of video tools in the marketplace and CDNs starting to give away deliver services, it's time for Lexicon to put their cards on the table. How does Lexicon hope to compete against Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft, not to mention all the other players floating around?

- Doug

Adobe Media Player, TV launched

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Adobe Systems has officially released Adobe Media Player 1.0 software and lined up a large group of television broadcasters and content publishers to provide content; supporters include CBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, PBS, CondéNet, and Scripps Networks. Adobe is also, "eating their own dog food" by launching the Adobe TV network to provide instruction and original programming about Adobe products.

Users should find the new software provides high-quality playback of streamed, downloaded or locally stored video in the Adobe Flash format. Video resolutions of 480i, 720p, and 1080p are supported. Users can subscribe to TV shows and other online content and automatically receive new episodes as they become available.

For content owners and media publishers, Adobe Media Player provides new ways to distribute, measure and build businesses around video content. The player offers offline monetization and branding options, including viewer-centric dynamic advertising for targeted marketing campaigns and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player to match the brand or theme of the video content. It can also provide content publishers with anonymous measurement of content usage data, such as when and how often a video has been viewed, in addition to supporting protection options such as protected streaming, advertising protection and video DRM protection.

At launch, initial Adobe Media Player content includes CSI: New York, CSI: Miami, Big Brother, Star Trek, Melrose Place, Hawaii Five-O (Book 'em Danno!), The Twilight Zone and MacGyver along with clips from various MTV properties. More content from MTV, Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL, VH1, CMT, Logo, Spike, The N, GameTrailers and Atom Films will be made available over the next several months.

There's also Adobe TV, four channels targeting photographers, designers, video professionals, and developers. Adobe has put up over 200 videos with programming ranging from how-to information, case studies to workflow deep-dives.

For more:
- Adobe Media Player press release
- Adobe TV press release
- Mashable.com story calling for more content on Adobe TV here