With online video being the darling of the day, it is hardly a surprise that the ranks of online video networks keep growing. t5m, a London-based company started by serial entrepreneur Charlie Muirhead, is the latest to join the likes of ON Networks, Next New Networks and DECA. (t5m stands for The Fifth Medium, we are told.)
Muirhead, who in a past life founded companies such Orchestream and Nexagent, has managed to convince a lot of heavy hitters to invest in his company. Investors include Brent Hoberman, a co-founder of lastminute.com; John Taysom, the founder of the Reuters Greenhouse Fund; and Rattan Chadha, founder of Mexx, the clothing company. t5m’s special twist on online video content is that it is “socially conscious” and will focus on content that “will inspire and entertain.” Charlie Rose meets E!
t5m got many celebrities to endorse their network, though how it translates into viewers remains to be seen. Here is a quick hands-on review of the service:
It doesn’t work with Mozilla Firefox and you need Internet Explorer. Why? Because the site uses the new-fangled Silverlight technologies, unlike other video sites that use Adobe Flash. The install process was fairly easy and took less than 45 seconds. I watched a great chat with best-selling author Barbara Taylor Bradford. The network at present is a bit sparse on content, and if t5m wants to attract a steady audience, they need to put their content machine into high gear.
The overall mix of the network content is a bit high-brow, which is fine, but I wonder if they can actually develop a mass audience or remain a niche play. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the small size of videos (though you can enlarge them to full screen), and web pages were dominated by static content. I would imagine a video network would emphasize its video assets. Hey, that’s just me. I guess they’ll figure it out…eventually.
Bottom line: From a business perspective, given how much money corporations spend on do-good causes, and involvement of celebrities, they can attract a decent-sized audience. If they keep a tight control on costs, t5m can actually become a decent niche network.
Video courtesy: t5m via thenewsmarket.
Silverlight works with Firefox / mozilla – it is simply crappy engineering on the t5m site that is prohibiting Firefox from working correctly.
Sorry, Firefox issue corrected now.
if you are looking for multi-lingual tv, online tv social community, social tv network, internet tv stations, tv channels, free global internet tv, broadband channels, live webcast, customized tv programmes, After testing various TV software and visiting loads of sites. most of them offer a free trial or preview and then they make you pay to sign up, or are cluttered with ads. I think that is ridiculous… so ive done my research and have found a couple of really decent sites. The first one Id like to draw your attention to is (viewmy.tv) This site has almost 1300 channels from around the globe and counting. it is free to register and they dont ask for stupid details, just your username and email address. It actually streams live channels so you dont have to download any and they have a pretty easy way of finding the channel you want. You can search through genre, country, region or name of the channel. oh and there are no ads either. Check this one out. With over 1300 channels from hundreds of countries, loads of features like channel rating, user recommendations, live chat, profile pages and much much more.