Category: Announcements

Programming Update

September 2nd, 2011 at 09:48 by Jim Louderback in Announcements, Shows

We launched The Young Turks on Revision3 last year as a way to bring topical and political news, along with the talent of host Cenk Uygur, to our Revision3.com audience. And while it’s been a great honor having the show in our line-up, we’ve learned that the fit between Revision3.com and The Young Turks isn’t as strong as we’ve hoped.

The good news is that during the past year The Young Turks has continued to grow dramatically on YouTube and continued to expand on what was already a strong and robust viewer base. However, Cenk and his team, along with Revision3, have decided that it just doesn’t make sense to continue distributing on Revision3.com – thus the last episode will be published there on Sept. 15th.

For Youtube viewers of The Young Turks, nothing will change. Cenk and crew will continue to deliver their unique blend of informative and opinionated news and analysis each and every day. For those fans that have enjoyed watching across the Revision3.com network, fear not – you can continue to watch all that and more on their YouTube channel at: http://youtube.com/theyoungturks

We remain huge fans of Cenk and the Young Turks team and we look forward to finding new ways to collaborate with them in the future.

-Jim


New Challenger: A Brand New Show from Anthony Carboni

August 26th, 2011 at 08:00 by Ryan Vance in Announcements, Shows

To know Anthony Carboni is to like Anthony Carboni. To watch Anthony Carboni host a show is to love watching him host a show. What can I say, the guy’s a great host! It’s with great pleasure that today we announce Anthony’s brand-new show, New Challenger. This show is a great new take on the video game review genre.

As Anthony and I were kicking around a number of new ideas he had for a show, this one struck me as really fascinating. Allow a review….to be reviewed. The longer you work in media, the more you realize the power that reviewers and hosts have to influence thousands if not millions of their viewers and fans. There’s something to be said for, as a viewer, looking critically at reviews of any kind of art. It’s always in the eye of the beholder. In this case, every week, Anthony is letting his guest, review his review! It takes a lot for a reviewer to open themselves up for scrutiny and this is exactly what Anthony is doing. It’s going to make for some really fascinating conversation about the games, his reviews and the nature of reviews themselves.

This all sounds very heady, but I promise you it’s going to be a ton of fun. Carboni is one of the funniest guys I know and he’s going to bring all that humor to his conversations in the show. I know he has an amazing line-up of guests all set for the coming weeks. I’m really looking forward to seeing the ideas and conversations around games that come out of this show. I used to produce a show featuring game reviews (X-Play on G4) and I’m always fascinated to see the personality of the producer or reviewer come out in the reviews. Now, you’re going to see that viewpoint challenged (and sometimes agreed with) on a weekly basis. I think it’s going to make all of us view reviews a bit differently.

Please check out New Challenger here!


Wave Bye-Bye to the WMV Codec at Revision3, say Hello to MP4

August 11th, 2011 at 05:59 by Rob DeMillo in Announcements

At Revision3 we pride ourselves on getting our rich, wicked cool programming onto anything with a screen. (OK, maybe not those new-fangled refrigerators…yet!) This, of course, means that we support quite a few video formats (also known as codecs, which is short for COding/DECoding). When you start counting the distinct video codecs in existence (VP8, WMV, H.264, etc), however,  and then multiple that by the number of screen resolutions there are (1080i, 720p, 720i, 320×480, etc etc) and then multiple that by the number of bitrates needed to support mobile vs. wired internet vs. wifi… it’s…uh… a lot.

Supporting all of these codec and resolution offerings is a complex process, so every so often Revision does a little spring housecleaning. We look into who is really using them, which ones are popular, which aren’t,  how many of them are there, etc. The last time we did this was back in January, and Jim Louderback let everyone know. Well, it’s that time again.

We took a look at codecs across the board to find out what was the least popular – aside from a couple of odd little strays at the bottom (20 people watch Theora Ogg format from our archives over the last 90 days), it turns out that WMV is used by less than 2% of the population. After doing a bit of research, we discovered a couple of factoids:

  • at the resolutions we deliver, MP4 looks significantly better than WMVs
  • With two exceptions (noted below) all Microsoft enabled devices support MP4 natively, including Windows Phone 7
  • The two exceptions are the First and Second generation Zune devices…and even then, Zune Marketplace will take a MP4 file and transcode it to WMV before depositing it on those early Zunes
  • Removing WMV from our codec lineup decreases our total transcode time for our shows, and simplifies our encoding workflow – all of which allows us to get our programming to you sooner.

With all of that in mind, we felt it prudent to turn off WMV encodes and place MP4 in your favorite show feeds instead.

Again, we do not feel this will impact anyone unnecessarily. If anyone is having issues reading MP4 on their Microsoft powered devices, please contact us at support@revision3.com


New Show From Jay Adelson

August 9th, 2011 at 09:00 by david in Announcements, Shows

Ask Jay

It is with great excitement that I/we announce the launch of our new show,”Ask Jay“, featuring none other than the chairman and founder of Revision3, Jay Adelson. Twice weekly episodes of Ask Jay will include tips, advice, and real life stories from the trenches for aspiring entrepreneurs.

I met Jay Adelson about 7 years ago. Me a small time (albeit ambitious) niche cable television producer, Jay a seasoned and experienced business man. Both of us were geeks with passions for things like modding X-boxes, building home brew computers, and attending space shuttle launches.

Our paths first crossed when the old TechTV show The Screen Savers did a segment about the inner workings of data centers and put its focus on Jay Adelson, then the founder and CTO of Equinix.

Fast forward to today, and Revision3 would certainly not exist if not for Jay’s leadership. He also instilled in me the entrepreneurial spirit in taking an idea, shaping it into something I believed in and taking the calculated, exciting risk of quitting my job to start and run a company.

Along the way, I’ve probably amassed more than an MBA’s worth of knowledge about everything from raising money, hiring a team and promoting your business, to trademarking, managing stock options, economic modeling, forecasting (and then some).

Jay is as genuine as they get when bestowing legitimate, honest business advice, and is one of the most approachable, fun, and engaging people I know. We’re thrilled to be launching this new series on Revison3 as a platform for him to lend his wealth of knowledge to all those seeking advice on how to follow their dreams.

Submit questions and learn how to turn any business idea into reality and maybe even change the world. Email askjay@revision3.com, on twitter @jayadelson, or as video comments at YouTube.com/askjayadelson. Check out the first three episodes launched today at www.revision3.com/askjay.

-David


Online video and media expert Anthony Soohoo joins Revision3’s board of directors

June 21st, 2011 at 01:00 by Jim Louderback in Announcements

Hey everyone, I have some more “corporate” news for you today!

I’m excited to announce that we’ve just added online video and media expert Anthony Soohoo to Revision3’s board of directors. Anthony is a true media visionary with extensive experience building and scaling video based businesses like ours.

Until recently, Anthony was the SVP and GM of Entertainment at CBS Interactive. For over three years, he built up and managed CBS Interactive’s entertainment division, which included such awesome franchises as CBS.com, TV.com, CBS Audience Network, CHOW, Chowhound, UrbanBaby and the CBS Web Original Studios. Under his leadership, CBS.com went from the #4 to the #1 online TV network property and became the #1 premium content property above ESPN, The New York Times and The Huffington Post. In 2009, Anthony was selected by The Hollywood Reporter’s Digital Power List recognizing the top 50 executives leading the charge in new media content.

Previously, Anthony was Vice President and General Manager at Yahoo. If you really want his full career details, you can check out his impressive bio here (spoiler alert: he’s got an MBA from Harvard Business School too, but we won’t hold that against him).

Now the cool stuff – here are a few fun facts about Anthony that make him perfect for our Board:

* He’s a tech geek at heart. He learned to program on an Apple IIe and built quite a business repairing Macs and PCs in college.

* He’s a true video addict. He’s been known to watch 20 hours of programming in one sitting (I assume he got up to use the bathroom now and then)

* His favorite hobbies are stalking gourmet food trucks in the wild, P90x exercising (apparently to work off that food truck excess) and watching Ferris Bueller over and over and over again just like a 3 year old kid with Finding Nemo.

* His favorite Revision3 shows are Epic Meal Time, A.V. Talk, and Scam School

-Jim, CEO