If Google can reverse the trend on some channels to move towards LARGE popups that move around and make noise on the bottom have of the screen DURING the actual show, completely ruining and interrupting it, than GREAT!
Those "popups" are called "swipes" and the little logo in the corner is called a "bug." Personally, I dislike both. If I were ever in a Stanley Kubrick* style complete control situation, I would forbid any additional content. That goes for bugs, swipes, and any alteration of the credits. (Everybody deserves that their name be legible.)
* Stanley Kubrick is known for maintaining total control over his later films including marketing and advertising
I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN system, I can already deliver video with individually customized advertising inserted effortlessly by the server. Either as a standard AVI or in browser flash video. When delivering as flash video, tracking actual commercial views is possible. The problem has been getting licensed content to distribute.
Seems odd that Novell would "Fire Back." Unix Shell, where I host my server, has had no end of troubles with Xen.
[...]
the message on the front page of Unix Shell "Due to lack of Datacenter space, unixshell# has suspended ordering until further notice" is not entirely accurate. If you read the forums, they are waiting until Xen is stable enough to be able to deploy further accounts.
I thought the same thing when I saw the summary. However, unixshell# uses some features of Xen pretty heavily that it seems everybody else barely touches. (see post #8 in this thread for details) I believe that there are many people using Xen without problems because they never hit those bugs. That's not an excuse for bugs, they still should be fixed, it's just that unixshell# is finding some obscure ones.
In fairness to unixshell#, they are offering to migrate servers to their sister company, and they seem to be very forthcoming about the status of their servers. It seems that they are experiencing *occasional* lock-ups and reboots. Some people don't care, others do, and have left. They are actually out of space. It seems that they ordered another server, and were told that there no room by the data center. No warning at all. There are some other public incidents involving the data center's service and unixshell# seems to be reconsidering their choice of data centers. They appear, also, to not be worried about expanding until the Xen bugs are fixed. I don't blame them, more buggy servers means more headaches for the admins.
I just wanted to offer a counter opinion, both Xen and unixshell# have operated above my expectations so far. Xen is a relatively new technology, I expect there may be some hiccups here and there. Until now, I have been fairly lucky.
I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.
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.
WideSAN provides end users with standard AVI files containing video and audio in standard formats, playable on everything from Windows to *nix to PDAs. Since the files are based on well known standards, it's trivial to convert the video into any specific format required.
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.
There have been some products in this area such as the Linksys WMCE54AG. (This is not an endorsement, I haven't used this product.) This is a problem right now, but will be solved when the demand for such devices becomes larger. That will happen when more content (like movies and TV shows) becomes widely available and easily accessible by the masses.
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.
As I stated above, WideSAN delivers standard AVI files without any sort of DRM. This is what makes it unique. The reason WideSAN can provide standard files, without any obtrusive DRM, is that they are available for free. WideSAN is capable of inserting advertisements into the video at download time. This enables relevant advertising to pay for the content and bandwidth, allowing the end users to download the videos for free.
yea so how about when the adverts are stripped out of the website by adblock programs?
Go right ahead, the ads are inside the AVI file, part of the video. That's the innovation in the WideSAN technology, changing the video on the fly (in this case inserting advertisements) while the server does virtually the same amount of work as it would serving up static files of the same size.
Who's going to want to download programs stuffed with adverts when they can leech them from torrents anyway?
There are a *lot* of people out there who can't figure out how to find and download from a torrent, or other p2p system, the various things they are interested in. Personally, given the choice of downloading the original AVI, legally, from a website, or one that is pre-stripped of ads from somewhere else illegally; I'm going to chose the ad supported one, for the following reasons:
It's just plain easier, it takes less effort to download from a website than to hunt around for it in p2p land.
I'm supporting the owners (hopefully the creators also) which will provide me the future benefit of further content.
It's not that hard to fast forward through the commercials, there's no DRM, it's not illegal, and there's nothing stopping me.
An ad free version will almost certainly be re-encoded, thus lowering the quality. (re-encoding content from a lossy format to a lossy format will result in lower quality)
It's already in a standard format (AVI with standard codecs) that I can play almost anywhere or convert to any format I choose.
There's nothing stopping me from editing out the commercials myself, and that would be perfectly legal.
I don't have to worry about getting busted for copyright infringement. However minute the chance might be, it exists, people *are* getting busted.
I'm doing my best to head video DRM off at the pass. I recognized that content owners would be clamouring for it a while ago and have tried to create a viable alternative.
WideSAN technology would allow video to be distributed free of charge, supported by ads. Since the video is free, and easily downloaded from a web site, this eliminates the need for DRM. After all, who's going to scour the p2p landscape for something they could have already legally downloaded as an AVI from a web site by the time they found it.
People get video (such as movies and TV shows) for free, owners get paid, everybody wins! Now I just have to get some owners to realize this.
I guess it appeared as though you were originally suggesting that the site was an actual site that offered tv/movie content, as opposed to just a technology that someone else could use to set up such a site. Are there any sites using your technology? What are they? That is much more interesting to most than a technology to do it.
I'd love to actually offer content on my site, the only thing that's stopping me is licensing. I haven't been able to get any content owners to license their content to me. I'd have been offering movies and TV shows for download a year ago if I could only convince the owners to allow it.
They owners would get paid, advertisers would get to advertise, and people would get quality downloads of movies and tv shows. Everybody would be happy, but it hasn't happened yet.
The ability to serve standard AVI files over standard HTTP already exists, and costs nothing.
That's a good question, I'm adding it to the FAQ now. The point is to serve up dynamic AVI files (think TV and movies with relevant commercials chosen at download time) utilizing the server resources required to serve up static files of the same size.
It would be impractical to encode new video and audio or even just re-index pre-encoded video and audio into a new AVI file at download time. I've figured out how to pump out AVI files with different chunks of video inserted into them with no more effort than serving up a static file of the same size.
I went to the site and couldnt find anything downloadable, via HTTP or anything else.
We have a demo available only for potential customers at this point. I'm working on something suitable for a public demo.
Here's my conditions for using this service or a service like it:
* Saturate my connection, whether you use BitTorrent or HTTP.
* Use a standard protocol -- BitTorrent or HTTP. Please don't use FTP.
* Charge a reasonable amount (I think they're doing that now).
* Let the files themselves be un-DRM'd and in a standard format -- I'd love h.264 in an avi, mkv, even mov. Note that h.264 != high def.
* If you give me subtitles, let them be soft subtitles.
* If I must download commentary and special features, they should be no more than 20% of the total download size.
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Those "popups" are called "swipes" and the little logo in the corner is called a "bug." Personally, I dislike both. If I were ever in a Stanley Kubrick* style complete control situation, I would forbid any additional content. That goes for bugs, swipes, and any alteration of the credits. (Everybody deserves that their name be legible.)
* Stanley Kubrick is known for maintaining total control over his later films including marketing and advertising
Disclaimer: I created WideSAN
I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN system, I can already deliver video with individually customized advertising inserted effortlessly by the server. Either as a standard AVI or in browser flash video. When delivering as flash video, tracking actual commercial views is possible. The problem has been getting licensed content to distribute.
[...]
I thought the same thing when I saw the summary. However, unixshell# uses some features of Xen pretty heavily that it seems everybody else barely touches. (see post #8 in this thread for details) I believe that there are many people using Xen without problems because they never hit those bugs. That's not an excuse for bugs, they still should be fixed, it's just that unixshell# is finding some obscure ones.
In fairness to unixshell#, they are offering to migrate servers to their sister company, and they seem to be very forthcoming about the status of their servers. It seems that they are experiencing *occasional* lock-ups and reboots. Some people don't care, others do, and have left. They are actually out of space. It seems that they ordered another server, and were told that there no room by the data center. No warning at all. There are some other public incidents involving the data center's service and unixshell# seems to be reconsidering their choice of data centers. They appear, also, to not be worried about expanding until the Xen bugs are fixed. I don't blame them, more buggy servers means more headaches for the admins.
I just wanted to offer a counter opinion, both Xen and unixshell# have operated above my expectations so far. Xen is a relatively new technology, I expect there may be some hiccups here and there. Until now, I have been fairly lucky.
I haven't been able to get the ear of large networks, but I realized a long time ago that digital video was heading in the direction that you are complaining about. I decided to try and do something about it and created the WideSAN digital video distribution method that should satisfy content owners and end users.
WideSAN provides end users with standard AVI files containing video and audio in standard formats, playable on everything from Windows to *nix to PDAs. Since the files are based on well known standards, it's trivial to convert the video into any specific format required.
There have been some products in this area such as the Linksys WMCE54AG. (This is not an endorsement, I haven't used this product.) This is a problem right now, but will be solved when the demand for such devices becomes larger. That will happen when more content (like movies and TV shows) becomes widely available and easily accessible by the masses.
As I stated above, WideSAN delivers standard AVI files without any sort of DRM. This is what makes it unique. The reason WideSAN can provide standard files, without any obtrusive DRM, is that they are available for free. WideSAN is capable of inserting advertisements into the video at download time. This enables relevant advertising to pay for the content and bandwidth, allowing the end users to download the videos for free.
Go right ahead, the ads are inside the AVI file, part of the video. That's the innovation in the WideSAN technology, changing the video on the fly (in this case inserting advertisements) while the server does virtually the same amount of work as it would serving up static files of the same size.
There are a *lot* of people out there who can't figure out how to find and download from a torrent, or other p2p system, the various things they are interested in. Personally, given the choice of downloading the original AVI, legally, from a website, or one that is pre-stripped of ads from somewhere else illegally; I'm going to chose the ad supported one, for the following reasons:
I'm doing my best to head video DRM off at the pass. I recognized that content owners would be clamouring for it a while ago and have tried to create a viable alternative.
WideSAN technology would allow video to be distributed free of charge, supported by ads. Since the video is free, and easily downloaded from a web site, this eliminates the need for DRM. After all, who's going to scour the p2p landscape for something they could have already legally downloaded as an AVI from a web site by the time they found it.
People get video (such as movies and TV shows) for free, owners get paid, everybody wins! Now I just have to get some owners to realize this.
I'd love to actually offer content on my site, the only thing that's stopping me is licensing. I haven't been able to get any content owners to license their content to me. I'd have been offering movies and TV shows for download a year ago if I could only convince the owners to allow it.
They owners would get paid, advertisers would get to advertise, and people would get quality downloads of movies and tv shows. Everybody would be happy, but it hasn't happened yet.
That's a good question, I'm adding it to the FAQ now. The point is to serve up dynamic AVI files (think TV and movies with relevant commercials chosen at download time) utilizing the server resources required to serve up static files of the same size.
It would be impractical to encode new video and audio or even just re-index pre-encoded video and audio into a new AVI file at download time. I've figured out how to pump out AVI files with different chunks of video inserted into them with no more effort than serving up a static file of the same size.
We have a demo available only for potential customers at this point. I'm working on something suitable for a public demo.
Sounds like you want WideSAN