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Disclaimer: I created WideSAN

I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN system, I can already deliver video with individually customized advertising inserted effortlessly by the server. Either as a standard AVI or in browser flash video. When delivering as flash video, tracking actual commercial views is possible. The problem has been getting licensed content to distribute.

Disclaimer: I created WideSAN

I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN system, I can already deliver video with individually customized advertising inserted effortlessly by the server. Either as a standard AVI or in browser flash video. When delivering as flash video, tracking actual commercial views is possible. The problem has been getting licensed content to distribute.

I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.

Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.

Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.

DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.

Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.

Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.

DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.

Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.

Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.

DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.

Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.

Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.

DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.

Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.

Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.

DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

yea so how about when the adverts are stripped out of the website by adblock programs?

Go right ahead, the ads are inside the AVI file, part of the video. That's the innovation in the WideSAN technology, changing the video on the fly (in this case inserting advertisements) while the server does virtually the same amount of work as it would serving up static files of the same size.

Who's going to want to download programs stuffed with adverts when they can leech them from torrents anyway?

There are a *lot* of people out there who can't figure out how to find and download from a torrent, or other p2p system, the various things they are interested in. Personally, given the choice of downloading the original AVI, legally, from a website, or one that is pre-stripped of ads from somewhere else illegally; I'm going to chose the ad supported one, for the following reasons:

• It's just plain easier, it takes less effort to download from a website than to hunt around for it in p2p land.
• I'm supporting the owners (hopefully the creators also) which will provide me the future benefit of further content.
• It's not that hard to fast forward through the commercials, there's no DRM, it's not illegal, and there's nothing stopping me.
• An ad free version will almost certainly be re-encoded, thus lowering the quality. (re-encoding content from a lossy format to a lossy format will result in lower quality)
• It's already in a standard format (AVI with standard codecs) that I can play almost anywhere or convert to any format I choose.
• There's nothing stopping me from editing out the commercials myself, and that would be perfectly legal.
• I don't have to worry about getting busted for copyright infringement. However minute the chance might be, it exists, people *are* getting busted.

I'm doing my best to head video DRM off at the pass. I recognized that content owners would be clamouring for it a while ago and have tried to create a viable alternative.

WideSAN technology would allow video to be distributed free of charge, supported by ads. Since the video is free, and easily downloaded from a web site, this eliminates the need for DRM. After all, who's going to scour the p2p landscape for something they could have already legally downloaded as an AVI from a web site by the time they found it.

People get video (such as movies and TV shows) for free, owners get paid, everybody wins! Now I just have to get some owners to realize this.

Here's my conditions for using this service or a service like it: * Saturate my connection, whether you use BitTorrent or HTTP. * Use a standard protocol -- BitTorrent or HTTP. Please don't use FTP. * Charge a reasonable amount (I think they're doing that now). * Let the files themselves be un-DRM'd and in a standard format -- I'd love h.264 in an avi, mkv, even mov. Note that h.264 != high def. * If you give me subtitles, let them be soft subtitles. * If I must download commentary and special features, they should be no more than 20% of the total download size.

Sounds like you want WideSAN

• Standard HTTP downloads
• Free (ad supported, but you can skip/mangle/whatever the ads)
• Standard AVI files, currently we use MPEG4 w/ MP3 or AC3 audio (other codecs are possible)
• WideSAN can provide resolutions and bitrates from PDA quality up to 1080p HD and beyond
• Subtitles via separate file download