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Free Net TV Threatens Telecoms
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net's running an article about the threat free television on the internet poses to traditional telecoms and cable companies." From the article: "No one is expecting Internet television to cannibalize traditional TV models overnight. Despite advancements in streaming technology, video delivered on the Web can still be choppy, with frequent interruptions as data packets buffer and reload on the screen. In fact many viewers who watched the NCAA tournament aired by CBS on the Internet last month complained about the network being overloaded."
Walt Disney's bold move to let people download TV shows for free could spell trouble for cable and satellite providers
.swf wrapper like youtube/Google video/etc. to guard against easy ripping.
If I understand correctly (which has been known to happen occasionally) shows will just be offered as a stream, not readily downloadable. My guess is they'll also use an
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The guy presenting this lecture has the right idea.
In short, he thinks small icon advertisements (eg. "drink coke") should be put in the corner of a TV show, and then the TV show should be freely distributed on bittorrent. Everyone wins.
It would seem Disney is confused about what it want, or who its friends are. Back in November of 2002, Disney sent a letter to the FCC asking "transmission network operators do not encumber relationships between their customers and destinations on the network."
Recently: "Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger weighed in on the network neutrality debate Monday with an opinion guaranteed to please his hosts here at the TelecomNext show -- in that he doesn't think any new legislation is needed."
Now, Disney wants to be a content provider, yet is siding with the telecoms in an endeavor that will ultimatly hurt content providers by trying in vain to prioritize selected traffic for selected content providers and consumers. Whoever it was at Disney that understood that trying to guarantee that a class of traffic gets prioritized fairly throughout all routers running the internet was virtually impossible must have left.
It would seem Disney want to feed them selves with one hand, and stab themselves with the other. What a Mickey Mouse operation.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The US is headed toward being a third-world telecommunications country because the American public is being dumbed down about what is really high speed Internet. Megabit speeds are legacy technology, regardless of what the cable and DSL providers say. Other countries are going to gigabit technology -- to the home and at reasonably low cost (say $50 per month for Internet, telephone, and cable TV combined).
/ docs/Gigabit-WP.pdf
Take a look at the white paper at:
http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/ccip
However, we must have net neutrality to do it, which means that bandwidth providers can't also be content/applications/services providers. Under such a gigabit Internet concept, you would separately negotiate for content, applications, and services. That blows away the business models of present cable providers and what the telcos are lobbying to get.
This is where we need to head, and the FCC and Congress need to stop listening to incumbent providers and start thinking about what is best for everyone.
It's still in beta, and it runs slowly on my Mac, but the way you can subscribe to channels or just download individual shows/clips is pretty cool. Could this be the future of TV? It's not really on-demand; it's more like demand-then-wait-for-download, but you get better video quality than most streaming solutions. I'd be curious to know what people think of this idea.
Electric Monkey Pants
It all boils down to isochronous delivery: broadcasters have us trained to think that entertainment is event driven, like "Survivor" or another scheduled event. In fact, few shows need be delivered this way.
The telcos that would prioritize their own isochronous/realtime delivery system only get an advantage there. We can still download movies, sports, or whatever for use at our convenience. This means that the NCAA Final Four is probably hot property for QoS throttling, where downloads of Star Wars movies or even Buster Keaton aren't affected by a time domain.
Bottom line: only event-driven, realtime entertainment that isn't available for time delay consumption matters. The on-air broadcasters already know this.... and the telcos are just trying to find a way to shave (or add) a piece from the deals we make. They'll likely win, because they're thoroughly bribed the congress for years into doing it 'their way' vis-a-vis their ability to get the FCC to play along, and for net-neutrality legislation to be handily squashed.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The evening news should not go unquestioned. Think of all the mischievous, world-changing possibilities that open when TV and the net converge even closer. Video streams from two (or multiple) sources could be synchronized and composited together according to instructions on a control channel. The video sources could be DVD's, or video streams from the net. The compositing logic could be on an HDTV, or set-top box. You could watch TV with friends anywhere in cyberspace. You could syndicate and rebroadcast your own channel, intended to be merged and watched with "mainstream media". Think MST3K, Third Voice, or Wayne's World. Real-time critiques of old-style TV. Just you wait till Howard Stern starts ripping on the evening news. In low-bandwidth conditions, TV becomes like "pop-up video", as you IM with friends who are watching the same TV show, at the same time, on your TV set. Imagine special DVD players into which two DVD's are loaded simultaneously. One DVD can make a live mash-up of the other DVD. So you pop in "The Phantom Menace", and a "remixer" DVD that carries control data, and additional audio-video data to show you a special edit of George Lucas' film.
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/