[opendtv] Re: Google says web TV could jam the web
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 06:28:35 -0500
At 11:11 PM -0500 2/8/07, Tom Barry wrote:
The equivalent of broadcasting live events over the Internet would
be multicasting. They could make that work if everybody wanted. It
is maybe justified economically only for broadcast events with huge
number of viewers, say maybe like prime time network TV today. But
when you have many viewers that all want to watch something at the
same time (with a few second processing lag) then it makes sense.
Of course I realize that many of the current players don't want it
to work that way. But it could.
The "problem" is having everyone watching different live streams at
the same time. Just imaging that 80 millions homes "tune in" to
YouTube at almost the same time, all downloading different clips at
slightly different times.
Tom is correct. Broadcasting over the Internet is NOT a difficult
problem. And non-real-time downloads are not a problem either. If the
movie studios and their TV networks want to move to a model of
Internet downloads to "subscribers" they can easily do this using
multicast techniques. In fact they already do this today using 20th
century technology...
The DVD.
But DVD distribution depends on Fed-X and UPS to deliver those little
plastic cases to stores for a synchronized day of release.
Apple is already doing this via the iTunes store. You can purchase
content prior to the date of the release, and they download it to
everyone that per-orders when it is released. This can easily be
adapted for any non-live programming - just multicast a movie or
episode of a program during an off-peak Internet time period. The
download need not even be real-time.
I suspect, however, that the model that Google and Viacom are looking
at would turn cable head ends into Akamai like mirror sites where
consumers could buy programming on demand.
The key here is that they cannot allow the Internet to become an
Interstate highway system where ANYONE can deliver content to the
masses without tolls.
Regards
Craig
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