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Video Distribution Platform Aiming to Kill TV
skaterperson writes "I just read about Downhill Battle's new open source video platform - a publishing tool based off of BattleTorrent and a video player written in Python. They've started a whole new organization to sponsor the project. They say "TV channels" will be made out of RSS feeds and anybody can subscribe to another user's content channel. The system is being designed for the express purpose of putting broadcasting in the hands of individuals. I like this idea of using recent advances in filesharing and syndication to allow aggregated content to be delivered to your desktop. There is a radio show on the project available at echoradio." The project is just getting underway, with a (hopeful) launch date sometime in June of this year.
Do we really need more public access television?
Granted, there is talent out there, but is the way to find them to give everyone a tv show and then filter out the bad ones?
Derive Politics
I think sometimes hi-tech people forget about Cleetus and Maude sitting in their trailer park in Alabama. Cleetus and Maude are consumers, just like us, but like their new 27 inch TV. Advertisers will continue to see these people as valid demographics for quite some time.
My point is that you can have all sorts of fancy delivery systems and video on demand stuff. Most real people will continue to turn on the TV and flip channels looking for "Reba" reuns for a long, long time. Don't throw out those rabbit earrs quite yet.
One reason that today;s model, flawed though it may be, is successful is that it provides entertainment that people want to see. If people like the content then they are going to make a free and voluntary choice to not give it up.
One such example is sports. I'm not interested in a low quality broadcast of the SuperBowl. I'll take the commercial production of the SuperBowl any time.
I agree. On the other hand it opens nice opertunities for communities of artists. I've kinda always liked the idea of Open Source TV.
I'm not sure that anything can kill TV. People are just not technical enough to spend alot of time setting up what TV they want to see through RSS feeds and whatnot. I think we need to remember sometimes that we are pretty elite when it comes to technology and thus we should think of technology in the sense of the average user's point of view.
At best this will create a lot of 640x320 webcam videos being viewed by noone, and a couple semi-pro's showing their content before going "big time."
Free MacMini
First -- textual blogs. Then -- foto blogs (Flikr, FotoLog). Next -- video clips, then continuous video-streaming, and so on with the possible future technologies (3D-video, avatars, etc.)
Not everyone has a blog today -- most people never will. This hobby (or profession) is not for all. Some prefer hiking, cars, computers...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That hasn't stopped pod casting has it?
All of these personal communication technologies, from email, through web sites, the evolution into blogs, podcasting and now this are full of crap. Really. After all, how many web sites of the ones you've surfed have you found interesting enough to check on a regular basis? 10%? And how many of those were personal sites?
Most of the net content is ego based, not quality based, and unless someone is prepared to put quality content on there it will remain as marginalised as the current ego trip hyped as pod casting.
Good god man you left out the most obvious thing, porn. Porn drove ecommerce into the mainstream, streaming media, the lust for more bandwidth at home, why on earth don't you see it coming (no pun intended) here??
The very fact that bittorrent does that is why this is (IMHO) a great way to watch what you want.
;) If we end up with DSL asshats with only 128kbps running a station...
Popular channels = Great quality, great speeds
Crap = Crap speeds
Of course, let's hope that the original seed has a good connection.
So, who will be spending the millions of dollars a year to produce the content that everyone will happily share this way?
TV is good because it assumes that I watch the commercials and endure some content I'd rather not. That's the current model that pays for things.
In a choose your own feed senario advertising becomes pruned. So, who makes new content and who pays for it?
then you get a tv-out card, you fairy
I doubt it would have any greater of a noise to signal ratio as any other public medium. Read Slashdot at -1 for an example. Sure, if something is made truly "public" and "free" it will get crowded with egocentric garbage and probably lots of porn. But there will be diamonds in the rough. Those of us who are interested enough will gravitate towards the quality sources and invite our friends. As for the rest of the sheep? Nobody told them they had to watch the images on their magical glowy boxes all day. They're just as free to do what they want as we are. If they are placated by Paris Hilton's latest mind-numbing comment to some idiot with a camera, let them have it.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
Most people are content to passively recieve information via their tv, GENERATION of content is another matter entirely. It's really, really hard to make a good show, even if you have a great idea and a crew to help you realize it. However, I'd rather watch video of someone's uncle's birthday party than sit through the shampoo commercials and vehicular porn that saturate current television programming. Maybe there'll be another http://15.bloop.org/video.shtml/ 15 Minute Show.
Someone noted: "One reason that today's model, flawed though it may be, is successful is that it provides entertainment that people want to see..."
Meaning the networks are better at deciding what content the masses want rather then the masses is rediculous! It may be true in the sense that the networks are the only ones who can control the distribution of said content, good or otherwise.
What is happening now is more and more passive viewers are not plopping their arses down for several hours a night to watch advertising saturated "primetime" content. More and more are using technology to record and view what the want when they want.
Primetime and the telelvision advertising model is rapidly disappearing. That is the PRIMARY reason the industry is fighting so hard for the broadcast flag. They must control the hardware or the user will decide when and where the content is consumered not the network and their advertising model goes out the window.
What the Broadcast Flag is really protecting is the networks advertising model not content. Once users can no longer freely record and watch content the way they want, they will simply find alternatives or find another source of entertainment.
Don't laugh. This GARBAGE the networks call content is also drastically shrinking the "masses" that tune in at primetime. There is an ever growing list of more stimulating alternatives that do not require the user to sit through hours and hours of advertising. And that is what everyone is trying to protect... the MONEY!
Locking down shitty content will only cause viewers to find alternative content. Locking down good or better content will only PISS OFF and alienate an ever-shrinking audience!
Maybe this is a bit off topic, but it has to be said.. Why is every other new tech story on slashdot about one technology/software/whatever trying to KILL another one? I think the appropriate word is "competition". Headlines like the above have lost their sensationalism through over use. Everyone take one step backwards towards reality.
That said.. unless your average 'other user' can spend millions to put together quality and/or entertaining programming, I don't see television leaving the picture anytime soon. (pun intended)
Standardize the protocols and integrate it in a set-top box. Sell the box at Wal-Mart. Problem solved.
People have been predicting things like this for years. Anyone who deals with P2P traffic in ISP work knows that this isn't going to fly. For crying out loud, Video over DSL hasn't gone anyplace and DBS is still running in circles chasing its tail. Why? Ease of distribution and bandwidth.
Sure, there's something to be said about content but not nearly as much as all this. And when it comes to content, people don't want ten million Internet broadcasters clogging up the Internet with pointless vanity crap they won't want nearly as much as a high cost well polished production like CSI or Queer as Folk or whatever.
Cable provides the best bandwidth out there as of right now and even that tops out at a couple hundred high definition channels. To broadcast over the net introduces new TCP/IP overhead robbing you of bandwidth further. Imagine if ten thousand people all choose one of a thousand broadcasts to watch simultaneously in one city alone. Imagine repeating this every night across every city and town. We'd need to start building fiber pipes measured like sewer pipes as in feet in diameter.
Okay, so we use a lower resolution and we settle for lag and breakup? No, I don't think so. Who would be willing to watch Battlestar Galactica if it were webcast at 320x240 when you could watch it on cable or satellite as it was shot? Doesn't that defeat the whole movement towards richly detailed hi-def content?
I don't see it happening for these interrelated reasons: bandwidth, resolution, content, viewing experience, etc. As much fun as some webcams can be, I can't see a future of all sorts of amature broadcasters ever going anywhere.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Well put. It's not worth complaining about all the crap that'll be produced: except for the hilariously execrable, it'll sink to the bottom. Making content distribution easier is incredibly exciting.
For any decent piece of content produced somebody is going to have to dedicate some time and resources to it. To do this in a steady stream it will require a near full time effort. Since the basis of P2P is going to be to distribute it free it will be very hard to get a DRM model to work. They could however come up with an ad supported system to make it equitable. I guess my only question is, would the community using this type of software be willing to accept that? Time will tell I guess. I do see this as a trend of companies like Brightcove, Prodigem and Akimbo emerging to fill this new demand. It will be interesting to see what business models play out.
Umm...no.
If you had some kind of measurable brain function, I was not speaking elitist. My point was that people are wrong to declare an embedded technology like TV dead. People in our business (tech) tend to forget the vast majority of people still like the simplicity of free TV and it's nice little remote control.
Feel free to shift that chip over to the other shoulder....it must be getting heavy.
I wonder how many feeds the human brain can monitor while still trying to function in the real world.
Who said anything about functioning in the real world?
How many times have you passed a car that looked like it was being driven by a drunk, only to see that it was someone on the phone?
How many times have you spoken to someone while they were watching TV or typing on their computer, only to realize they don't even notice you're there?
People don't want the real world anymore, it just doesn't cater to their every whim as much as they think it should.
TV content isn't quality based either.
Linux is not Windows
Sure it is. Most TV material aims to meet the lowest quality of content and production that most people will still waste their time watching into the commercials.
So many of you here are saying it will be just 1000s of public access TV low-quality shows. But the fact is that the people who are interested in making this sort of content for public access and for videoblogs and such, have all been DOING IT BY THEMSELVES (or with a couple of friends). But the real potential disruptive force in all this is the POWER OF WIDESPREAD COLLABORATION using them there "Internets".
The real problem is the scripts for these public access failures. But when amateur content creators really start adopting the open source software creation model, where hundreds of content creators start using internet software to collaborate and create scripts, find public domain and creative commons video footage, and using cheap digital cameras to film events and interviews from all over world, and then divide up the work a la open source software, edit the video using hundreds of different computers using cheap or even free editing software, then, THEN it blow even Hollwood out of the water.
And the main thing that this copylefted content will offer is something that the TV industry is in REALLY short supply of--a more real worldview and a wider range of philosophical and sociopolitical viewpoints. For example, every friggin day on TV you see celebrities, politicians and other famous people being treated with kid gloves, like the alpha animals they are. But on internet tv, they are gonna get trashed. And people are gonna like that.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It doesn't look tilted to the left if you're already on the left. The reason it looks so right-slanted in the first place is that there's nothing much to the left of them except grumpy soviet-era communists, and they often leftists consider themselves "centrists". To me (as a small-L libertarian), the media looks like it's tilted towards Authoritarianism, with a (to me irrelevant) wide array of left-to-right positions on which particular liberties they want curtailed. It's really a pointless argument to pursue, because everyone has a tendency to see themselves as being more "centrist" than they actually are, and from their point of view things will always seem to slant the other direction.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Sure the image quality of rendered content right now is such that no one is going to mistake it for live action. BUT, when you take a look at what engines like Unreal Engine 3 are capable of and you extrapolate out a few more years then you can see where this is headed.
I believe that TV of the future will include much rendered content being produced by small independent teams or individuals using the machinima approach.
How many people actually watch public access TV, though? As easy as it is to get your show on the air, getting hooked up to viewers is a much more difficult prospect.
Let's say your show is on a subject that will be interesting to one person in a million. If you're broadcasting throughout NYC, there might be eight people who would enjoy your show if they saw it. And I guarantee you, unless it's a documentary on people who are addicted to public access TV, none of them will be watching when your show broadcasts.
But if your audience is global, there might be 6000 people who might be interested in your show. So the aggregate audience is much, much bigger. Not everyone lives in New York (though I hear that such people are oddballs, and really don't matter).
But still, finding that one person in a million should be just as hard. If you had to put up flyers on every corner in New York to get the attention of half of the eight Yorkies, then you should have to murder millions of trees in order to tract out every city in the world, right?
But the whole idea of creating Internet communities is that the oddballs who would actually suffer through your badly-produced show have a chance of finding each other. So you just find these little niches, tell them about your show, and (ideally) you have an instant audience of thousands.
More from Wikipedia
The point is, there's more to connecting with an audience than "getting on the air". In order for this tool to work well, it can't just be a way to "publish" torrents, but to advertise them in such a way that people can quickly find relevant content. I think this project will live and die by its searching and indexing abilities.
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