StashSpace Streams Home Movies for Families
of Troops
Enables soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to
stay connected with their
loved ones and watch their children grow up at
home
 Staying in touch with friends and family is a
constant struggle for soldiers, especially those
stationed on the battlefield in hotspots like
Iraq and Afghanistan. While long-distance phone
cards are standard issue, local long-distance
providers often charge exorbitant connection
fees, making phone calls to the U.S.
prohibitively expensive. But even when phone
calls are priced more reasonably, audio-only
communication only goes so far in keeping
families in touch, especially when there are
children involved.
That’s what drove an online video service provider
to decide to offer its services free of charge
to the families of troops overseas. "About 90
days ago my wife was listening to NPR when she
heard about a woman who had an 18-month-old baby
and was sent to Iraq," explains John Larsen, HomeMovie.com’s CEO. "My wife said, ‘I can’t
imagine having to be over there and not be able
to watch my kids grow up.’" So John discussed it
with his business partner, CTO Lars Krumme, and
they came up with a plan to employ their
services in an effort to lessen this unfortunate
reality of war for "any troops in Afghanistan or
Iraq," says Larsen. "Their friends and family
can send in a 30-minute tape, and we’ll encode
it and make it available via StreamingDVD."
StreamingDVD is a proprietary format
developed by HomeMovie.com that displays
streaming video through the same chapter-based
user interface as a DVD menu. "We’re not really
from the streaming industry to begin with. When
we looked at how to allow people to share video
online, it seemed like they’d want to do it the
same way they use a DVD," says Larsen. "We see
DVD as the driving technology behind how people
will want to watch video."
This special offer for the troops started on
February 14. To get the word out, "we’ve been
working with our state senator here in
Washington," says Larsen. "And we currently have
contact with some of the groups within the Armed
Forces that have access to three-quarters of the
troops over there." But unless you’ve got a
family member or friend in the military or
you’re reading this article, you may not hear
much about this initiative. "It’s really not a
big marketing arena for us, but we thought that
this would be a great technology for this
application," says Larsen. "It’s our way of
helping out and trying to ease some of [the
soldiers’] suffering. Sometimes a breath of
fresh air from home is just what they need."
HomeMovie.com is a subscription service that
receives customers’ home movies on tape, encodes
video in the Windows Media format at both 150 and
250kpbs, automatically generates a StreamingDVD
of the content with 30 evenly spaced chapters,
and then makes this content available through
their Afiniti player. Once the video content is
available online, users can perform simple edits
through the Java and HTML-based player; they can
also grab clips from multiple tapes to create
brand-new videos. As long as they stay active
members, users will have all of their content
archived on HomeMovie.com’s servers. Besides
offering videos via StreamingDVD, HomeMovie.com
users can also author DVDs of their videos
through the Afiniti player, creating custom
menus and personalized artwork for the DVD and
packaging.
HomeMovie.com’s ultimate goal is to "get our
platform into every household in America and
become the vehicle of the future for deploying
your personal video in a secure environment,"
explains Larsen. "Our strategy for our consumer
market is to have a very low threshold for
entry. The procrastination effect of having
these videos sitting on the shelf and not doing
anything with them is a disaster; these tapes
are turning into dust." Besides preserving old
memories, Larsen hopes that HomeMovie.com can
also work towards furthering the acceptance of
streaming media. "The whole premise of the
company is to provide access to long-format
streaming video, trying to take the streaming world
out of the realm of little clips," says Larsen.
Geoff Daily
StreamingMedia.com
3.07.2005 |
StashSpace Press
StashSpace in the News
News from StashSpace
>>> Back to StashSpace News
|