• by Josh Lovison , November 7, 2007

The game changed on Oct. 16.  And Madison Ave -- you've lost.  Before it was even particularly clear there was an arms race going on, the consumer won.  Democratized Media has surpassed Mass Media.

Oct. 16 was the day that vimeo.com, a site aimed at consumer-generated video, made available the ability to upload and view online video at HD quality.  And this isn't "HD quality" in some sort of marketing-savvy BS term.  This is 720p HD video at 24fps, delivered in real time using the latest Flash.  The video is encoded in h.264, which is the codec used for Blue-Ray and HD DVD video.

A few months ago I wrote a piece pointing out that digital distribution through the Xbox360 had allowed "South Park" to broadcast in HD -- when Comedy Central is an SD-only channel -- and in doing that, highlighted the limitations of cable broadcast by surpassing them.  That was fiddlesticks compared with this milestone.

What are the implications of  the vimeo move? It means that at the same time marketers are running 30-second spots in SD on HD channel buys, because the cost of producing a dual format spot is too much in time, price, and effort -- a consumer could conceive of a spec, shoot it, edit it, and distribute it online in HD for pennies.  Literally.  

I'll use something I recently shot as an example of this.  Just for fun, I came up with an idea for a "mockmercial" for Gatorade, influenced by the look of the DeBeers commercials and the feel of an Axe commercial.  I shot and edited the entire thing in one day, with just myself and a friend.  And it's being distributed right now in HD to anyone who cares to view it.  Take a look. Total cost?  $38 and one day of my time.  Now, it's not going to take me to Cannes, but it is representative of a paradigm shift, because it's hardly the only thing out there.

The industry has hemed and hawed about the importance of the "YouTube" generation, seeing it as a fanciful oddity, and delivering endless lip service to the potential of the masses and to participating in the "conversation" -- always, it seems, from a perceived position of superiority, and in a somewhat patronizing tone.  This attitude is understandable; the Coke and Mentos video was a brilliant concept, but wasn't the prettiest thing around.  It's been recognized that there is a revolution taking place, a taking back of the media by the people.  But the new reality is, now "the people" are the better equipped.

For the past year I've been keeping digital cable in lieu of getting my digital content through online means such as iTunes (which I figured out was a bit cheaper on an a la carte basis than my monthly fees) because I enjoy watching my content in HD.  I predict that this time next year I will no longer have digital cable, and will instead have a media center pc hooked up to my TV.  This isn't purely because of vimeo, but because of what I've seen Flash 9 capable of providing me.  The conversation is shifting indeed -- and if I might say so myself, it is looking wonderful while doing so.