New Video Venture from Skype Creators

bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek reports that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (creators of Kazaa and Skype) are at work on a new project: 'software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web.' Calling the work 'The Venice Project,' Zennstrom and Friis have assembled teams of developers to tackle the problem. The developers are already in negotiations with TV networks to use the system.'" From the article: "This time around, Zennstrom and Friis are inviting the cooperation of TV producers and networks. While the exact nature of their business model isn't clear, they are talking to every TV network in town, according to one person familiar with the matter. The idea is to become a dominant TV distribution company for the Internet era, just as companies such as Comcast (CMSCA) have dominated TV distribution in the cable era."

Comments

Remember the Video Viruses

[eldavojohn]

First off, that article is rife with ads and I suggest the printer friendly version of it so you don't have to click "Skip this ad" or skip across memory intensive flash advertisements that cause your browser to crap out.

Secondly, this will most likely be a peer-to-peer application because it would be bandwidth expensive and problematic to centrally host these shows. A thing that concerns me with this is something I saw happen with Kazaa and the Windows media formats. Virus writers were figuring out ways to embed viruses into the files so that when your machine read them, the codec would unintentionally execute or behave like a virus or malware. Several of my friends suffered computer troubles due to downloading WMA files and trying to listen to them only to have their machine lock up with a worm. Later on, Kazaa included a BullGuard P2P Virus Protection Option in their product but in my opinion, it was too late. Everyone should be familiar with the potential JPEG exploit in Microsoft Windows, if it can be done for one two dimensional image, surely it can be embedded in a single frame of a video file.

I hope that the original Kazaa inventors realized this problem and are working to implement a secure system where I don't have to worry about receiving a file that might have malicious code embedded in it. A simple solution would be to compute a checksum on each file received by The Venice Project application. They would then require computers to ping a centralized server they set up to verify that the byte sum counted is indeed the correct sum and that the entire video is legit and unadulterated. There's probably easier schemes and forms of encryption to protect this but I sincerely hope this is a very real and concentrated point of this software for The Venice Project.

I think that Virus writers love applications built on names and not security. They love "industry standard" applications. Because that means a larger target base if they tailor a virus to that application. I fear that if people mindlessly buy The Venice Project only because of the inventor's fame but ignore security problems that may cause problems down the line. Kazaa was a virus writers dream, what are Zennstrom and Friis doing to prevent the same thing from happening again?

Re:Remember the Video Viruses

[Penguin Programmer]

Secondly, this will most likely be a peer-to-peer application because it would be bandwidth expensive and problematic to centrally host these shows. A thing that concerns me with this is something I saw happen with Kazaa and the Windows media formats. Virus writers were figuring out ways to embed viruses into the files so that when your machine read them, the codec would unintentionally execute or behave like a virus or malware. Several of my friends suffered computer troubles due to downloading WMA files and trying to listen to them only to have their machine lock up with a worm. Later on, Kazaa included a BullGuard P2P Virus Protection Option in their product but in my opinion, it was too late. Everyone should be familiar with the potential JPEG exploit in Microsoft Windows, if it can be done for one two dimensional image, surely it can be embedded in a single frame of a video file.

I fail to see how badly-written codecs and viewer software that allow arbitrary code from a non-executable file to be run is the problem of the distribution network. If an idiot user runs an executable that's named "hot pr0n!.mpeg .exe", that's the user's problem. If MS's JPEG implementation allows arbitrary code to be run on someone's machine that's MS's problem.

Let's not shift the blame from the stupid users and bad coders to the people who allow the content to be distributed. That's like blaming the truck driver who delivered your car to the dealership when you drive the car off a cliff at 200 mph.

Re:Remember the Video Viruses

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

Nobody mentioned "exponentially worse", just that it was as likely and this network should expect to be targeted.

The fact that the have been two critical vulnerabilities (JPEG and WMF issues were unrelated) in relatively simply 2D decompression code means it is reasonable to expect the may be vulnerabilities in 3D code as well.

It is due to delta compression, and all the other complex mathematical filters applied to video that makes a vulnerability so likely. If loading a "single frame" bitmap off the disk into memory exposes a buffer overflow you have a very bad programmer. A complex system of highly speed optimised code covering network caching, decryption, decoding, decompression, and post processing is a very different matter.

The high number of MPEG4 players dose not equate to a high number of MPEG4 codecs; as the JPEG and WMF vulnerabilities showed by effecting very nearly all Windows programs that used these formats.

Great, yet another voice to add to the chatter

[elrous0]

I am a big believer in TV over the web (I watch shows like Digital Life TV and Diggnation every week myself). And I really hope it becomes more normalized (esp. since I only have my apartment complex's crappy cable system to watch).

But, right now, there are three major problems with IPTV, or web video:

1. Competing standards and services--Every one of these new services or networks that launch web video seem to require their own unique "player" or codec to use. Even the iPod video player has failed to standardize this.
2. Lack of a good media center solution--Despite promising results with Windows Media Center, MythTV, etc. there still really isn't a good standard solution to pumping so many different formats of video from your computer to your TV. I myself basically had to end up connecting my computer's s-video output directly to my TV (and even that required an expensive ground loop isolator to get rid of banding and video noise). Newer HDTV's with VGA inputs might help this, but you would think that someone by now would have developed a decent stand-alone box that could transfer video from your computer to your TV over your network in a variety of formats REALIABLY. So far they all feature either piss-poor performance or are VERY picky and flaky about the video formats they'll play.
3. DRM--this is related to #1 and #2. Content providers are still ridiculously cautious about locking everything down with DRM, to the point that viewing the video over a network or every using a standard media player becomes extremely difficult. Yet another roadblock to making any one service or content provider "mainstream" enough for much popularity.

-Eric

Re:Great, yet another voice to add to the chatter

[Anonymous Coward]

In the peer to peer "revolution", the way forward was paved by these people. They weren't the first, but they mainstreamed it. Decentralized networks simply didn't exist in a fashion that had ever been applied or scaled in the way Kazaa did it, and even Bittorrent today doesnt have the level of resilience that the Kazaa supernode mesh does.

In the VOIP "revolution", the way forward was paved by these people. They weren't the first, but they mainstreamed it.

I see no reason to believe that if the same team applied the same work-ethos to video over TV that they couldn't do it, especially when transmitting audio is pretty similiar from a technical standpoint to transmitting video (Something Skype also now does), and the de-centralization technology has already been applied extensively and unarguably effectively in both Skype and Kazaa's networks.

The aim each time appears to be to develop something that takes off, brings a technology into the public consciousness, then sell it off to the highest bidder and move on to build technology for the next trend.

-Steve Gray

Re:Great, yet another voice to add to the chatter

[Larus]

Web surfers also have shorter attention spam, as demonstrated by the length of YouTube videos. How people believe they can make money out of me-too applications is mind-boggling.

obligatory..

[Rob T Firefly]

'software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web.'

I've already got one of those. It rhymes with "TitBorrent."

Someone think of the tubes

[rbarreira]

Don't they think of internet's tubes??

TV is okay vs. Movies & Music is not

[digitaldc]

The evolution of TV on the Web isn't likely to look like a rerun of the legal battles over film and music on the Web.

What's the difference, anyway?
They are both media being distributed on the internet, you can buy TV shows in stores and online just like movies and music DVDs/CDs.
So all media should be treated the same and the lawsuits should stop, correct?

thoughts

[Tony Tez]

I think the twins are onto somthing good here if you've been watching the progression of break.com and youtube.com . Since the videos will be coming from the tv stations, it's just a simple distribution system.

Hosted from a single site I could see bandwidth being an issue, but I think the draw of a p2p system isn't there. People used (still use, somewhat) p2p systems because of the draw of getting music/videos for free that someone didn't want them to. This is a legit system, and people are going to want a simple download. I imagine part of working it out is using multiple servers to split the load.

One other issue if they did use p2p would be licensing, namedly that BDE/Altnet Inc. own the patent of using a file hash on a p2p-type system. Stupid, but it exists and has technically held up in court. Granted easy to design a new system around it, but a con on the side of using p2p.

So, my bet is that it'll be on a multiple-server setup. That's my take at least as of now.

So, what I expect to see in reality is a setup like break.com where the videos only come from the tv stations(likely paying the venice project), and a fairly uninventive download method, riddled with advertisements. Oh, and DRM will definitely be in there, no doubt about it.

I think it'll work and people will visit often, but I don't think it'll be ground-breaking.

Re:thoughts

[costas]

One possibility that no-one has mentioned is p2p streaming. I can (vaguely) appreciate the technical problems of such an approach, but: a) it would definitely be something that you wouldn't mind getting on a p2p network for, as more nodes mean better performance, b) they could offer "supernodes" strategically located to speed up paid content, and that is a true value-add, c) if anyone has the technical chops to try it, the Skype guys do.

Democracy Player

[hey]

There is already the Democracy Player.
http://www.getdemocracy.com/
It uses all the right buzz words but didn't seem so great when I tried it.

Didn't they already do this with Kazaa?

[PhotoBoy]

Plus Kazaa also had porn, which automatically makes it the better program...