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Veoh

URL	http://veoh.com
Type of site	Video Distribution
Registration	Free
Owner	Dmitry Shapiro, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Created by	Dr. Ted Dunning

Veoh is a San Diego, California-based company which runs an Internet Television service allowing users to find and watch major studio content, independent productions and user-generated material.

The company received media attention^[1] after Michael Eisner (ex-Disney chairman) joined the board. In April 2006, he was one of the investors (along with Time Warner) in the US$12.5 million second round of financing for Veoh and re-affirmed his status in August 2007 as an investor in the company's US$25 million Series C financing round.

In a controversial move, Veoh made its service unavailable to several markets (Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe) in May 2008.

History

Veoh was founded by Dmitry Shapiro. The company launched an early version of its distribution technology in September 2005 and debuted its full beta service in March 2006. Veoh officially launched (out of beta) in February 2007. Veoh has raised about US$70 million from venture capital and media investors. Time Warner, Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Spark Capital, Shelter Capital Partners, Tom Freston's Firefly3 LLC, Jonathan Dolgen (former chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group), Intel, and Goldman Sachs are all major investors.^[2]

In addition to the user generated content that Veoh broadcasts, Veoh has distributed content from major media companies including CBS, ABC, The WB, Viacom's MTV Networks, ESPN, FEARNet, Billboard, Ford Models, US Weekly, TV Guide, and others. Independent creators found on Veoh include NextNewNetworks, 60 Frames, Can We Do That?, Goodnight Burbank, and Dave and Tom.

In 2008, the domain veoh.com attracted approximately 17 million unique visitors monthly according to a Quantcast.com study.^[3] According to the company's internal metrics, Veoh has more than 28 million unique users per month.

Viewing options

Veoh offers two viewing options. The Veoh.com site, which is currently used by approximately 19 million viewers per month, allows viewers to watch streaming web video from across the Web. Although somewhat like YouTube, Veoh.com offers a broader selection of network television content and allows viewers to watch full episodes of TV shows and full-length movies. It is however plagued with technical difficulties, unlike YouTube it often freezes and restarts videos. Veoh.com hosts a range of programming, from user generated content to studio content. As well as this it provides a pop up to PartyPoker.com. Veoh also provided a software application, VeohTV Beta, that enabled "lean back" and remote controllable viewing of web content. In December 2008 Veoh transitioned from VeohTV to the Veoh Web Player. The Veoh Web Player enables users to watch full-length videos on Veoh.com within their browser. It also enables users to download video from Veoh.com and other websites.^[4]

Publishing videos

Publishers can use their PC to upload videos for distribution. Veoh transcodes the video file so the video is available on Veoh.com, streamed on the publisher’s own web site, and in portable devices like iPods and Sony PSPs. Publishers are able to customize the presentation of their content, automatically publish via RSS feeds, and organize video programming into episodic series or complete channels.

Technology

Veoh uses both peer-to-peer (for its player software application) and Adobe Flash-based streaming video (for its website) technologies. Veoh claims its use of peer-to-peer in the player application enables distribution of longer form video files at a much lower cost. It also means that bandwidth costs will not rise in direct proportion to the number of users.

According to the official website, Veoh is freeware.

Recommendations

Veoh's recommendations engine is intended to enable viewers to find content that interests them. The recommendations engine was built by co-founder Dr. Ted Dunning, Chief Scientist for Veoh. Veoh recommendations are based on user behavior. As users watch, rate, and download videos, the Veoh recommendation system 'learns' what interests the user and presents more video choices that meet similar criteria.

Controversy and criticism

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. (July 2008) Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

When playing a file, the program checks if the video was pulled from the website for alleged copyright infringement. If so, the program will delete the file without giving the user a choice. Extract from Veoh TV end user license agreement as of 8/10/08:

“ 3. AUTHORIZATION TO ACCESS

Veoh reserves the right to instruct the Veoh Software to delete content downloaded through the Service if it reasonably believes that such content may infringe the rights of any third party (or otherwise violate the Terms of Use or any applicable law) and You hereby grant Veoh permission to do so.”

As of February 2008, Veoh changed back to high resolution downloads for those using Veoh TV Beta giving the original file in the format it was uploaded in.

Veoh tends to over estimate the number of active users (according to various sources). Its present user-base is estimated to be around 14M with active users under 3M.

Veoh has blocked close to 200 countries. Veoh has stated that the move was made because "not enough users exist in these countries."

Availability in different parts of the world

In late May 2008, Veoh discontinued service in multiple countries. The company stated that the decision was made in order to focus on the more than 33 markets in which it has the most viewers.^[5]

As of May 31, 2008, upon trying to access the site from a Latvian IP address a screen is displayed:

Veoh is no longer available in Latvia & Mauritius

– www.veoh.com

Without prior notice, users from these countries were denied the ability to backup the contents they have contributed to the website. As of June 2008, visitors (IP addresses) in the vast majority of countries, including Asia, portions of Europe, Africa, Central America, and South America, have reported being blocked or experiencing a similar message for their region.

Gaude Paez, a spokesperson told NewTeeVee.com “The markets we are exiting collectively represent less than 10 percent of our viewer base.” She maintained that the decision was “not about saving resources but rather refocusing those resources.”^[6] Recently, however, the restriction has been removed from certain territories such as Puerto Rico. Indian users have reported that the Veoh restrictions were lifted for a month, yet came back in August.

See also

• Comparison of video services
• Google Video
• YouTube
• Metacafe
• blip.tv

References

External links

• Video critical of Veoh's new policy of blocking countries from accessing its videos
• Veoh web site
• Interview with Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of Veoh in socalTECH
• VEOH on Ubuntu (and some others) with wine
• Veoh on almost all platforms with Veohproxy
• vget, an Open Source Veoh downloader for Linux written in C

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