ABC To Offer Full Shows Online

vitaly.friedman writes to mention an Ars Technica story on the ABC's newest bid to stay relevant in the Information Age. As of the end of this month the network will be airing certain popular television shows on the ABC website, starting the morning after their first broadcast. From the article: "All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided. That's a smart move on ABC's part, as it ensures that advertisers will get another shot at hawking their wares to an audience that might otherwise change channels during commercial breaks or fast-forward through them if recorded. Aside from being unable to avoid commercials, watching the programs will be similar to watching timeshifted content in that viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind."

Comments

Cannot?

[the linux geek]

What exactly does "Cannot be avoided" mean? do they actually think they can prevent people from skipping the commercials?

Re:Cannot?

[AKAImBatman]

No fast forward or rewind ability, enforced by DRM on the player.

More likely, enforced by the fact that you're streaming the data. While most video programs try to read ahead, the buffer likely wouldn't be more than enough to miss a single commercial.

Re:Cannot?

[dcam]

It's very easy. Encode the video in Flash and do a php call so the file name is never revealed - not even the url to the directory where the file *is* is revealed. Can't be downloaded (even by workaround methods), ...

Rubbish. This doesn't really change anything. Hiding the URL with the binary write in php doesn't secure the file any further, it just hides where it is stored on the server. You might do this to force people log in, or to limit who can have access to particular files, but once you have given them access to a particular file, there is nothing stopping them downloading it. ... and controls can be set in the embedded player so you can't fast-forward (my guess is the last part of the article submission is wrong - you can maybe rewind and then ff to the last point you were at in the video, but you won't be able to skip ahead).

Now this might acually slow people down (a little). Until someone reverse engineers the flash player and works how it streams the media.

Re:Available the day after?

[Esion Modnar]

maybe they should offer some of these episodes the day *before* they air

I have seen this being done with some regular shows (such as "Thief") as a PPV event, 2 or 3 days before the normal airing time. Can't say there is any show I'm that anxious to see that I would actually pay money to see it early. Maybe some TF'ers would.

Re:No Commercial Skipping?

[nursegirl]

Check out the press release. They're using Flash 8 encoding to prevent it from being downloaded. Available Windows & Mac.

Episodes will be available at two resolutions, the better being 700x394 pixels at 700 kbps. I might have to start watching one of these shows just to support the effort.

Its Free!

[trogdor8667]

One thing no one has touched on is the fact that this is free. The article mentions that viewers can order the same shows via iTunes for $1.99 (no commercials), via OnDemand for $1 with no commericials, or for free via their website with commercials. Personally, I'd still go for the free version; I pay enough per month for my cable and DVR as it is.

Then again, ABC doesn't really have any shows that I'd actually be interested in this feature for. I do hope that NBC and CBS follow this lead, as well as Fox (for 24)

Re:It's Corporate Greed, nothing else.

[Baricom]

Also, ABC doesn't get a dime from your cable bill.

I hate to nitpick, but that's (probably) inaccurate. Almost all channels carried by cable get a chunk of the bill. It's true that premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, and so forth get a lot more, but even basic cable channels usually take between 10 cents and $2 per subscriber. For example, BusinessWeek reported in 2003 that ESPN charges an average of $1.93 per subscriber per month.

Now, ABC itself usually doesn't get paid by your cable company, but the local broadcast affiliate that carries ABC probably does. Federal law provides both "must carry" and "retransmission consent" provisions that cable companies have to abide by. In essence, a local broadcaster can try to negotiate with the cable company to permit transmission in exchange for a fee. If the cable company refuses to pay, the broadcaster has the choice to block the cable company from transmitting its signal, or to demand that it do so for free. Early this year, a dispute with an ABC affiliate caused the cable company to pull the station off the cable system at the station's request.

With these provisions, the amount of money a broadcaster can get from the cable company depends on how popular the station is. Local affiliates of the "big 5" networks usually have bargaining power to compel the cable companies to pay. Independent broadcasters and religious stations, on the other hand, usually opt for more viewers through asserting the "must carry" rule.

I agree with the rest of your post; I just wanted to point out these facts, which most people don't seem to know about.

RTMP is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very easy. Encode the video in Flash and do a php call so the file name is never revealed - not even the url to the directory where the file *is* is revealed.

Sorry, you're right off the mark. Encoding the video in Flash (making an FLV file) does nothing special. People can download those and play those. They can see the HTTP requests the Flash player makes. You can't hide the filename, and PHP has nothing to do with it.

The secret sauce is the proprietary communication protocol called RTMP (Real-time Messaging Protocol) between the Flash player and the Flash server. The video isn't served up as a regular downloadable file, it's streamed using this protocol. It's unencrypted. If you parse the protocol correctly and take the video packets out of it, you get a regular FLV (Flash Video) that you can save off and play later.

RTMP is the method that Google Video, MyTube and others currently use to serve videos via Flash.

Until now, Macromedia were crowing about how this security through obscurity protects content producers. They're about to have a can of whoop-ass opened on them, as the RED5 team reverse-engineered the protocol - they've now done enough that they've released an open source Flash server that can serve up FLVs to the Flash player.

I can only imagine that it won't be long before someone publishes a stream ripper based on RED5's work.