[opendtv] Execs see challenges bringing Net video to TV
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:34:30 -0400
Whether this is really the "beginning of the end" of the DVR is up to
broadcasters, however I think this might go a lot further than just
affecting the need for DVRs.
If the networks make all of their shows available online, say 30 minutes
after the show was aired, and if the ISPs' core nets can handle the
demand without too many glitches, pretty soon it makes one wonder why
the networks need to depend on broadcasters and MVPDs. All they need is
ISPs.
Proper HDTV this way is already possible for those with Verizon FiOS,
and cable companies (acting as ISPs primarily) will no doubt catch up,
as they deploy fiber closer and closer to homes.
The networks would then have the option of delivering TV programs free
or for PPV, real time stream or VOD, or download. Looks to me like the
ISPs have the most difficult job in all of this, to ramp up their
networks to support really massive, simultaneous demand.
Bert
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Execs see challenges bringing Net video to TV
Rick Merritt
(09/24/2008 7:41 PM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210603770
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Professional quality streaming video over the
Internet is on the rise, but how that content will come to mainstream
TVs remains unclear, according to speakers at the Streaming Media West
conference here.
"Getting the signal over to the TV has been really hard," said Albert
Cheng, executive vice president for digital media of the Disney ABC TV
group in a keynote here.
The company has had 440 million views of its TV shows streamed off its
Web site since May 2006. However, the vast majority of those viewers
have been on PCs, he said.
"I run our player on a TV in my office and it looks pretty good, but
we'll need a lot of education and marketing to bring this to a broader
audience," he added.
A growing group of companies including Apple Inc and NetGear are
delivering set-top boxes to massage Web video for flat-panel TVs. Such
set-tops represent the future of a merged Internet TV, according to
another keynoter here.
"It's the beginning of the end for digital video recorders. Streaming is
a much better solution," said Anthony Wood, chief executive and founder
of Roku who also helped design one of the first DVRs, the ReplayTV
system.
Roku launched in May a $99 set-top box that runs on a TV the NetFlix
online service which host more than 15,000 movies and other videos. Roku
plans to release a software developer's kit to let other services run on
the system, but has not said when the SDK will be available.
"We think in 2009 we will see a shift to Net content on the TV," he
said.
Wood hopes to gather more services on his system while service providers
such as NetFlix are enabling other hardware vendors including LG to
design their own systems.
"There are a lot more kinds of set-top boxes out there than there has
ever been and the numbers are just going to keep going up," Wood said.
Today established TV vendors are avoiding the costs and the hassles of
regular software updates needed to support Wi-Fi and Net video in their
TVs. The Roku founder shared some of his thoughts on the technical
challenges and the competition in Internet TV in a video interview.
A separate panel said consumers are interested in getting high
definition video from the Net but are constrained by the bandwidth of
last mile connections.
As many as 30 percent of users of Microsoft's Xbox video store choose HD
over SD movies despite the fact they cost more and take longer to
download, said John Conrad, engineering manager of Microsoft's VidLabs.
The group was formed in December to encode video from as many as 40
studios for online distribution to Xbox and Zune players.
However, more than ten percent of the source tapes VidLabs received last
month had to be returned to studios because they had flaws that
prevented Microsoft from creating online files. "The distribution
process in the industry is still pretty poor," he said.
"Encoding is still a black art," said Matt Smith, a video architect at
Yahoo.
A video programmer attending the event from Intel Corp. said today's
video adapter cards lack 64-bit drivers that would enable real-time
encoding of HD video.
The last mile hurdle is equally challenging. "We are trying to send
video at 750 Kbits/second, but we are finding many users still on 300
Kbit/s links-it's a head scratcher," said Kevin Annison, vice president
of digital media for SpeedTV.com.
"Very often we lose impressions" when someone tries to upload an HD
file, said Nick Rockwell, chief technology officer of MTV Networks. "We
just don't get much feedback when people aren't able to render a file,"
he said.
In his keynote, Cheng said Disney ABC is providing high def versions of
its shows but only at 720-progressive resolution, not full 1080p.
Available video content on the Net "is mainly standard definition now, a
lot of our partners don't have HD yet," said Wood of Roku.
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