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Video-on-Demand versus P2P?
aisnota at aisnota dot com asks: "VOD, the First Skirmish in the Battle seems to be the story of cable and satellite MSO's finally accepting PVR technology. The real question is why it took so long for those companies to recognize consumers with peer to peer networking have effectively created, 'Video on Demand', and they are a bit late to the table. Slashdot readers are invited to chime in to determine if cable/satellite operators are just in time or too late incorporating VOD as compared to peer to peer technologies, licit as well as illicit. The real question though is competing with your own video content to effectively create your own VOD channel with Gnutella or similar peer to peer software. Who has done this?"
The subject of the article isn't VOD, though it mentions VOD capabilities in two places as buzzwords for the industry. The article is about how the set-top manufacturers want their boxes to be the home network conduit of the future, and are trying (in many cases successfully) to replace the computer as the hub of your digital world. The analogy is of course a false one, as the set-top box is merely functioning as the digital-video hub of the house, rather than the fileserver or the highly trafficed websurfing box. Of course, scrambling to become the "hub" just reminds me of how we had to replace our actual hub a few weeks ago, which was a painless procedure costing $20. Why anyone would see that as a desireable business position to be in is beyond me.
I'm very happy with set-top boxes coming with additional capability assuming they can be made with the capacity to handle it, which obviously wasn't true of the painfully slow 1st generation digital set-top boxes. My hope is that cable operators will continue to offer vanilla devices, in order to aviod redundant hardware and unnecessary noise in the house. But additional capabilities for an entertainment device that can still output over RCA and co-ax can only be a positive thing... I don't see why it is even an issue.
And no, Gnutella isn't VOD. To think so is somewhere between Naieve and MPAA propaganda. Demand means I want it now, Gnutella / FastTrack means it may or may not be finished in three days.
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I work in that industry, developing a Linux based STB. I think that the P2P is not a competing technology to the operator based VoD services. It is complementary.
First of all true mass VoD services *can* be cheaper than renting movies, buying storage, hazzle around with ripping software and computers in general. Just imagine the non-nerd comming home from work, (s)he turns on the TV, selects a movie at $2.99 from an archive of hundreds or thousands of titles. Compare this with the extra work and hazzle setting up and utilize a computer not talking about the noice.
Secondly, streaming movies aint that easy so any P2P solution must involve a download and storage procedure, hence using a noicy computer. Which non-nerd likes todo that in the longrun? Also what download times would you get retrieving commercial titles from a leaf node in a network? Compare that with Gigabit fiber backbones of the operators.
I belive that P2P will be used by the same persons that use P2P today who seem willing to spend hours of preparation to watch a handy CAM captured asian bootleg of TTT instead of wait until the real version is available in the renatal stores or at the cinema. A normal user will most of the time sit back in the sofa with a beer, some snacks and silently get the movie from the operator at a relativelly low cost. We can see that happeining today in the music industry where the CD burner forced down the prices on the second line music, and that is good!
P2P can be used to spread movies that doesn't fit in the mainstream audiences and holiday documentaries to friends and relatives. An operator would be able to support that too by offering a public streaming service at the headend etc etc
My punch line is that most people doesn't want to fool around with computers at all. They want to watch movies.