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Skype, Sony Working to Offer On-Demand iTunes Rivals
The field of on-demand video services continues to grow. Both Sony and Skype have announced their intentions to challenge the dominance of iTunes via download services. Sony is going to be offering movie downloads via the PSP, no doubt as a partial rebuff to Microsoft's entry into the field. Meanwhile, Skype is planning to roll out a broadband television service they are calling 'the Venice Project'. Funded with the money made when Skype was sold to eBay, the beta version was apparently launched last week. From the article: "On his blog, Mr Friis said the partners had been 'quietly testing with a small circle of people' for a few months, and that they would now expand the circle. The service will offer high-quality programs through an ad-supported platform. The project aims to bring quality TV programs free to consumers who have a broadband internet connection, the spokesman said."
This company is funded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, not by Skype. The Venice Project is as unrelated to Skype as Skype is to Kazaa.
This the Skype foundrs, Zennström and Friis using the money they made selling Skype to create a new service. Skype is a product of eBay, and eBay are not involved in this.
An interesting question is whether they will be using P2P filesharing techniques for video distribution the way they did for for VOIP with Skype. One thinks bittorrent and other types of swarming, but it seems more difficult to apply here (Bittorrent based protocols work by having people download different parts of the file, which is difficult to apply to a stream.)
If MS were to incorporate free content (sans DRM), offer MUCH larger hard drives for the 360 (120 GB+), and improve their interface (adding search capability, and RSS feed-like subscription option, etc. like iTunes) they would be the kings.
The first barrier to MS dominating the download market is that in order to use the wonderful service, you have to buy an XBox 360. Non-gamers (and there are a few of them out there) are uninterested in buying a console merely to replicate features they can already get on their computer.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Even assuming they fix the DRM issues and iTunes loses it's monopoly, I'm starting to get bummed about everyone wanting an account and client software to download a song that costs a buck.
It's bad enough that I need to have a user name and password every place I shop on line, and I can understand why newegg.com needs an address because they have to actually ship something, but why is the process still so tedious to download a single song? What happened to micro-payments?
The matter gets worse when they want you to install software to download. Not only do I need the iTunes client to download from Apple, but now I have to install a Yahoo client to download a non-DRM MP3, and I'll probably have to go into the registry to keep it from showing up in my "tray" at startup.
What will Sony and Skype want me to do? Who knows. But if they're trying to attract new customers, my advice would be to try and make it easier. At least Skype is likely to use PayPal, but if they don't make the download web-based, they might find it hard to convince me to install yet another "music manager" that I don't want or need. I have a Q and a Y in my tray. Someone somewhere is going to have to realize that this isn't a game of Scrabble and I really don't need to add two Ss.
TW
Dude -- sign me up for video over broadband! With inexpensive DSL having just enough bandwidth for service...we're talking, phone, TV and broadband for $25 a month, plus whatever Venice or its peer charges. Even assuming $20-25, it would still cost less than basic cable in NJ.
Software, hardware: love it all - especially their phones. Playing Russian Roulette gives you excitement.like.no.other :-)
Play Russian Roulette with your batteries for excitement.like.no.other