Category: Streaming media
February 15th, 2008
Jane Fonda just used the unbleeped "C" word on Today Show: what's next?
During the Today show, well, today, guest Jane Fonda talked about “The Vagina Monologues” with host Meredith Viera.
While referring to the play, Jane let a word slip out that rhymes with what U.S. football teams often do on fourth down.
And the bleeper didn’t catch it either.
So why am I writing about it on this blog?
I just know that this remark will be political fodder for more regulation of broadcast television. And with so many broadcast and cable shows available on the Internet and on your mobile device, what legal liability would retransmitters of content with such language incur?
Forget “wardrobe malfunction,” and Janet Jackson’s exposed breast. Now we have Jane Fonda- a controversial figure in her own right, saying a word that, frankly, most of the women I know are more offended by than the gutteral term for incestuous intercourse.
And it’s morning hours, and the kids could have been watching? Can Western civilization stand this “vulgarity?”
Or in conversations that probably are going on as I type this:
“Mommy what’s a …”
Gasp.
August 28th, 2007
Akamai beefs up its HD distribution capabilities
Via an interview with Akamai Chief Technology Officer Mike Afergan, Om’s all over Akamai Technologies’ announcement yesterday that via enhancements to its Content Delivery Network, it now feels more than up to the task of delivering high-def video over the Web.
“While broadband service providers like Verizon are putting fiber-based broadband connections in place, there are a large number of folks who are using connections in the 3-6 Mbps range.,” Om explains. “The solution, Akamai argues is to come closer to the end user. Why? Because as the distance from the server increases, the throughput is dramatically reduced – even a slight distance increase can result in delivery problems.”
To enhance its CDN, Akamai is using technologies from acquired solution providers Nine Systems and Red Swoosh.
Akamai does some of their own explaining here:
To realize this same vision and fidelity in the online world, a 2-hour feature-length movie wouldneed to be encoded at a bit rate of at least 6-8 Mbps, which would result in the file being a size of 5-8 GB. This presents numerous technical challenges to deliver such a high-quality, large file. For instance, delivering a file encoded at 6 Mbps to an audience of one Nielsen ratings point (1,102,000 households) would require 6.6 Terabits of sustained bandwidth, and that doesn’t even take into account latency and network congestion.
The availability of very large, last-mile bandwidth connections does not always mean that an end user will be able to completely leverage that access. A critical factor to enable high bit rate delivery of very large HD files is the proximity of the end-user to the server sending the file. As the distance from the server becomes greater, throughput dramatically decreases. Even a seemingly small distance can result in lost throughput due to lower throughput, higher packet loss, and increased latency.
As an example, the only way to achieve 10 to 20 Mbps throughput for typical PC end-users is if the server is less than 20 milliseconds away. The more latency, the longer it takes to download the file, which interrupts the viewing experience and results in a poor end-user experience. Compared with other centralized models, the results that Akamai’s network offers high quality content are unmatched on a global scale.
Broadband subscribers are guaranteed to have a faster download, and enjoy a quality HD experience, when downloading content from servers nearby the request. With servers distributed in over 750 cities, Akamai addresses these technology requirements with its unique edge delivery model that reduces latency to levels necessary for a quality HD experience. Because distance matters for high-quality large files, all content, whether it is frequently or rarely requested, must be served closest to the end user. Akamai’s unique technology automatically and instantly spreads popular content on-demand for better scalability.
In addition, many large HD videos are not always watched in their entirety. It is therefore optimal to locally cache only the portion of a file that is most requested by end users, which on average is the beginning of the file or movie. This partial caching of HD video enables both popular and less popular, long-tail content to be served from the edge to guarantee optimal performance.
“Akamai’s goal is to be able to support 100 Terabits per second of traffic. Our flexible and distributed architecture uniquely positions us to realize that vision and we are aggressively progressing toward that goal,” said Afergan. “We are also committed to the long-term objective of building an ecosystem linking content owners, network providers and video platform players to ensure a superior HD web experience wherever last-mile infrastructure permits.”
Now we need to ask at least three questions:
Is there enough demand for this content?
Is there- or will there- soon be enough HD content to feed this beast?
What type of pricing models will prove sustainable for online hi-def content distributors?
July 16th, 2007
It was 8 years ago, Broadcast.com taught the Internet to play... media files
The fact that I am using a cultural reference that dates back to a now 40-year-old Beatles album should tell you that I am no spring chicken.
But in reading Mark Cuban’s Blog Maverick blog, his post entitled Remembering Broadcast.com takes me back to the early days of Internet streaming.
These were pioneer times- before Flash, before widespread broadband availability, beforeiTunes, before Podcasts. We’re talking an era when Internet multimedia either meant streaming encoded music or video files from large servers, or downloading them in their entirety.
Mark’s Broadcast.com was the first Internet broadcaster of broad content and reach. As he writes:
We had full length audio books, full length CDs, full length movies, TV shows. You name it. And unlike today, we actually got licenses for them before they were on our site.
We had preroll commercials. We had inserted commercials. We even inserted video commercials into audio files and streams.
In that same time frame, I was writing a streaming media program book for RealNetworks. It was at that point that I realized the imprint of Broadcast.com on the then-nascent Internet media landscape.
Mark was a pioneer, and still is. Sold Broadcast.com for $4.5 billion, bought the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and wants to acquire Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. I for one, would like to see him succeed.
June 26th, 2007
Today's Internet radio boycott won't matter
Yes, I know its a cliche to call today’s Internet music radio boycott “the day the music died,” but actually that’s not much of a stretch.
Backgrounder: numerous Internet radio stations- from large ones operated by Yahoo and MTV to smaller ones operated out of garages- fall silent today in protest of high royalty rates a panel of copyright judges say they will have to pay the recording industry starting July 15.
These judges ruled that online radio stations should pay the recording industry every time a song is heard by a listener, in addition to a $500 minimum monthly amount for each channel they operate. Oh, and pay back through January, 2006.
I have a couple of thoughts on this whole issue.
First of all, I find it incomprehensible that a recording industry in the throes of a long sales slump would be behind efforts to quash an avenue of exposure to new artists who might actually find their CDs bought online or at retail. Focus group of one here: I’ve bought lots of music that I first heard via Internet radio.
Second, I am not sure this day of Internet radio silence will be successful. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), whose suburban Seattle district is close to the corporate HQ of streaming media pioneer RealNetworks, has introduced legislation to roll back these increases, but there’s no chance this bill will be voted on July 15. No guarantee it will pass and be signed into law, either.
Focus-group-testing corporate radio (via the National Association of Broadcasters) and the quadropolistic big four music companies (via the RIAA) have a far louder voice in Washington than Webcasters, large and small. From a regulatory standpoint at the least, we need regime change.
Loading ...June 7th, 2007
These stats offer fascinating insights into Internet music, retail use
Internet infrastructure services provider Akamai says it delivers betwen 15 to 20 percent of the world’s Web traffic on any given day.
Now, Akamai has launched a fleet of free Web-based services that show real-time, last-24-hours and historical traffic pattern data on activity and demand for general Internet connections, retail transactions, music download facilitation, and other features they provide.
I went online just before 3 a.m. Pacific. I looked at three of Akamai’s patterns, and found some fascinating stuff.
I will show you three screencaps now.
At 3 a.m. PDT, we might have expected North American Internet use to be light. It is, but notice where most of the North American Internet activity is taking place? Not on the East Coast where some folks are waking up, but on the West Coast, where folks (such as yours truly) are up late. These stats may also be reflective of the high bandwidth websites that are hosted out of Silicon Valley.
Now, let us look at retail traffic patterns for ecommerce and similar apps:
4 p.m. and 10 p.m. local times look like the busiest. IMHO: 4 p.m. is before the breadwinner gets home, and 10 p.m. is when the evening’s chores are done and it is time to buy.
But what about online music listening and downloads? I am glad you asked.
North Americans seem to listen to and download the most music, and around 3:45 p.m. local time seems to be the optimal moments. Could it be that’s the time just after most kids get home from school?
Of course, that’s before they break open the books for homework (yea, right).
Loading ...May 22nd, 2007
Why ABC's time-shifting of Charlie Gibson Webcast is a seminal development
We learn from a report in Broadcasting & Cable magazine that ABC is moving its World News Webcast from 3 p.m. to 12:30 p.m Eastern Time.
Interesting backstory on the move. As B&C’s John Eggerton notes, the Charlie Gibson-anchored newscast was originally launched in January 2006 as a preview of that night’s tv newscast.
But an unanticipated thing happened. World News Webcast devoted a following of its own, with some exclusive content. And with that emergence, came some new metrics.
The move to 12:30, says ABC, is because the Web’s peak traffic is in the early afternoon.
The takeaway? This isn’t just an isolated example. I believe that more and more real-time Webcasts produced by “mainstream media” will be time-shifted to maximize metrics best practices for Web audiences.
Hey, look. Tv programmers have been using this principle for 60 years- testing, probing and shifting televisino programs to th right time slot. ABC doing this with the Gibson Webcast is a harbinger of similar practices for online media.
Full disclosure: I write occasionally for Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
May 16th, 2007
Massive Hollywood talent strike could be boon for digital content creators, sites
As explained in the Wall Street Journal today by prominent entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, there could be a strike called for by the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America.
Before I get to the point of this post, please don’t think most who would be affected will just sit idly in their mansions. Most don’t have mansions. We are, after all, talking about more than 100,000 actors, 13,000 directors and 15,000 writers.
Now with that established, we need to think about what these nearly 130,000 people will do with time on their hands.
Morris writes that with all this idle time, these “130,000 unemployed artists might find something to do when they are put on strike.
“And in so doing,” Morris continues, they may just start creating original content for the new media because it is easy and well, they’re not allowed to go to the set or the lot.”
Morris, who is founding and managing partner of L.A. based law firm Barnes, Morris, Klein, Mark, Yorn, Barnes & Levine then considers that once all this creative talent gets a taste of new media, they may not be so anxious to give it up once the presumed strike is settled.
The attorney envisions a scenario where an income stream is flowing to them via say, Joost and iTunes, as well as ad-supported sites.
Not only that, but once you give actors, directors and writers a dose of creative freedom, well, as Morris puts it, “they may enjoy the lack of interference from ’suits’ and become smitten with the ability to put their work out immediately and world-wide.”
Lack of interference from “suits.” I haven’t heard a phrase that liberating since, “free at last…”
April 19th, 2007
How we can use rich media technology to honor the victims
One thing about me- I'm sort of a First Amendment absolutist.
Yet with broadband speeds and video-compliant meaning that objectionable material is far more accessible to most of us, sometimes the pace in which decisions need to be made about whether to distribute or suppress this material must be made instantaneously.
In this case, there is some value to seeing the sicko's statements. Whether via indications of facial expressions, mannerisms or verbiage, we have to learn more about the disposition of other potential killers before they have a chance to do what Cho did.
NBC is under significant pressure to pull back the Cho tapes (Virginia tech murderer) from public view. I say a compromise would be in order, similar to that footage of the planes hitting the towers on that terrible day. The footage is seldom shown, but freeze frames of the impact still are.
But getting back to this week's tragedy, broadband service providers must join with society in another calling.
Broadband websites should enable the distribution of tributes to the slain. I have to believe that digital video exists of many, if not all of the fallen- in lighter moments when the gift of life was still there.
If I ran a broadband news site, I would offer space, tutorials, and even staff resources to convert those videos into YouTube or other clips that would honor those individuals who have perished too young.
Then, once those videos were encoded, I would establish a section on my site that would show exactly what and who has been lost. Celebrate their lives.
And that would be a way for broadband technology to light a candle in this week of sorrow and darkness.
April 17th, 2007
My Virginia Tech posts: apologies and clarifications
Yesterday, in my first post on the lack of availability of indexed and searchable video about the Virginia Tech tragedy I started out by writing in part:
Evil. Pure evil.
The sheer numbers inform a tragedy that is so much more profound than any discussion of the technologies used to stream it to the Web- where workaday Americans can watch it.
Then, in my followup post, I delved into the digital rights management issues. I know now that if I had prefaced that discussion with a re-iteration of my feelings that I had stated in the previous post, my sensitivities to the horrible events would have been clearer. I apologize for not devoting the appropriate sensitivities to these events, and their consequences.
I could have done a better and more sensitive job explaining the overarching belief that I presented in the rest of the post.
Once again, the Virginia Tech tragedy was a moment of deeply personal and of course, national pain and national news- and that for hours, the broadband-Internet-using public's right to know, and to see, was thwarted by digital rights management exigencies/fine print that one might argue ought to have been waived.
April 16th, 2007
Creating and distributing streaming media will get easier this summer
That's because of something called Akamai Stream OS.
Streaming media solutions provider Akamai Technologies will offer reference designs for this new rich-media distribution system beginning this summer.
I'm excited about Stream OS for two big reasons.
Stream OS, which has just been released, will simultaneously output video and other rich media in multiple formats. That means that streaming media creators (large media as well as dabblers such as yours truly) will not have to encode separately for each platform such as Windows Media or Flash.
Here's how Akamai says Stream OS' "smart application interface" will work:
Assets are organized using a customizable directory structure. Upon upload, file information and metadata is extracted.Content can then be downloaded orstreamed live or on-demand over the Akamai platform via optimal servers and paths.
User requests for Live Event content are delivered via a content link whichreturns a playlist to the Akamai server closest to the user. Content is sent to theuser’s media player, employing replication, redundancy, and initiating reportingfor every transaction.
Content in Stream OS can be controlled and protected by applying businessrules such as token authentication, bandwidth controls, geographic ortime-based restrictions.
For content delivered via feeds, RSS feeds are created and can be updatedautomatically using Stream OS. Content can be added statically per item,or dynamically by applying a rule to a directory that automatically updatesa feed every time a directory is updated.
CBS is already on board. Must be because Stream OS also offers metadata options that will let producers auto-code and distribute video to content partners while automating scheduled updates as well as managing link-based syndication to other websites and even RSS-enabled blogs and MySpace-type sites. Distribution-enabling widgets are also available in Stream OS.
The metadata involved in Stream OS also eases rich media searchability by incorporating a description option for the content. Search engines love that, you know.
And if search engines love it, so do I.
April 13th, 2007
Smells like stream spirit, but FCC's payola settlement is a joke
Here's an even more apt reference than a play on the title "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana.
We go a little further back for this one:
"One likes to believe in the power of music
"But glitter and prizes and endless compromises, shatter the illusion of integrity"
"Spirit of Radio, by Rush.
How true, how very true.
To the point:
The FCC has just announced a settlement with four national radio broadcast companies on payola charges. Payola could be cash or merchandise in exchange for airplay.
The effect on the Internet stems from the fact that many of the 1,653 radio stations owned by the four ownership groups mentioned in the agreement also stream their broadcasts over the Web.
The settlement of $12.5 million comes with a promise on the part of all parties that they will not engage in this practice again.
To which I say, gimme a break.
Payola scandals have come and gone for more than 50 years now. Some were prosecuted in the mid-1950s and 1960s. Then, as a music journalist in the 1970s and 1980s,, I saw rock station program directors hang out at parties with music label promotion people. I knew even then what drew some of these individuals and various, scantily-clad young women to the backrooms and bathrooms of houses and hotel suites where these parties were being held.
Funny how just a few minutes later, everyone became more animated and hyper. And suffering from itchy noses as well.
What I am describing to you only underwent modest modifications in the 1990s. Trips and gifts replaced coke, but the system stayed corrupted.
Then, as now, the root of the problem is the independent music promoter being paid by major labels to obtain airplay for their higher-priority artists. And I see nothing in this FCC agreement that looks remotely like an enforcement regimen.
Hey, it's music, and it's radio, and a $12.5 million fine might hold things in check for awhile, but only for awhile. And the more I think about it, I am not sure how much a bone of 8,400 free half-hour segments thrown to independent music labels will help.
Music and broadcasting are fast-lane businesses with little or no ethical conscience.
March 29th, 2007
CTIA yada-yada: entertainment moguls embrace mobile platforms
No surprise that on Day 2 of the CTIA conference in Orlando, two major mobile content providers repeated some familiar mobile platform mantras.
"Choice and personalization- that's why the mobile phone has so much potential and has become so important," said Eric Nicoli (at top of this post), CEO of international recording conglomerate EMI Group. "It's one of the most highly individualized consumer devices, and now that it has been fused with other services, it is one of the most immediate, effective ways to deliver music to consumers and to connect fans and artists in a powerful, ongoing conversation."
"Now the wireless industry has arrived at a moment of truth," lectured Philippe Dauman, President & CEO of (Google sueing, YouTube-fearing) Viacom Inc. "To sustain your growth trajectory you need to extend your global footprint and tap new sources of income- namely data and entertainment subscription services. That's where we come in."
Yes, Eric and Philippe, with ringtones and short music clips. But for video on handsets that delivers inferior video and doesn't dominate the user's field of view?
These guys are guilty of platform-itis… a craving to get their content on as many devices as possible. And the minutes-hungry carriers and the sales-hungry handset makers are only happy to oblige.
But will subscribers line up at the queue? Maybe the hardcore early adopters, but after that, I still believe it will take years for many millions to embrace rich media content on the handset.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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