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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?"
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.