Mr. Arenson: We focus primarily on video — television and the outgrowths of television, including expansion onto the Web and onto portable devices.
TWST: What's going on there that's interesting?
Mr. Arenson: The three areas that we watch to help chart the direction of things
are: one, the expansion of the number of video content choices available to
consumers; two, the number of different access points from which video can be
viewed or saved for later viewing; and three, the actual quality of the video,
in terms of picture clarity. I believe all those areas are expanding, which
makes for some great opportunities for consumers and for investors.
TWST: What's going on within the choice segment?
Mr. Arenson: In the choice segment, there is expansion on several different
fronts. For starters, I'd point to video-on-demand and the number of titles and
offerings that are available these days. I think video-on-demand in the
traditional sense, on the cable end of things, really highlights the expanding
number of choices, but the overall pie is much bigger than that. If we look
first at that traditional VOD environment, Comcast (CMCSA) is up to 6 billion
views of video-on-demand, and 10,000 different selections available per month.
Beyond that, there are a lot of different offerings emerging on the Internet and
on some mobile devices as well. Clearly iTunes has been a leader in driving
content to portable devices. Apple (AAPL) recently launched a movie rental
service, and the company is starting to ramp up the number of titles available
there. Recently Hulu, an offering from Fox and NBC Universal, launched with a
pretty robust offering of television shows available for streaming. So consumers
today can access movies, TV shows, clips of various content including news
items, and, of course, a lot of user-generated content from YouTube and the
like.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CMCSA, DGIT, DTV, NNDS, UEIC
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