VOD on Web Is for Real, Changing Landscape
By FRED DAWSON May 1, 2000
New moves among Web-based content suppliers suggest that cable operators will be confronting a rapidly shifting video-on-demand environment as they move to commercial launch of their own VOD services this year and beyond.
Largely ignored as background noise when it comes to delivering long-form video at acceptable quality levels, a handful of Internet entities have staked their futures on being able to provide on-demand movies and other TV-like programming options in competition with cable and direct-broadcast satellite. Some say they can do so within bandwidth parameters measuring in the hundreds of kilobits per second.
These start-ups may be long shots as potential challengers to cable anytime soon, but their odds are getting better.
Most significant, The Walt Disney Co.'s Miramax Films last month became the first major studio to commit to putting movies up on the Web. The company said it would make 12 films available for viewing from its own site using the services of Web-video distributor SightSound.com.
"This is just one avenue of distribution we're looking at as a company that is interested in the latest technology advances," Miramax spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said. "It may be another great opportunity to maximize the benefits of owning copyright."
Miramax is putting its toe in the Web waters in a way that circumvents some of the key problems that have kept most studios from committing to open distribution of their films on the Internet. For example, a "filter" that reads user addresses will prevent distribution of films outside of the United States, thereby protecting overseas copyrights.
Moreover, Miramax is "exerting a significant element of control by operating the service from our own Web site," Hiltzik noted. This applies to control over commercial issues, as well as security issues, including the ability to set the time limit for viewing a film once it has been purchased.
"We're not sure how much we'll charge per film viewing, but we'll set the costs ourselves," Hiltzik said. "We could have a mix of recent and older films, or only use films from the library."
Rather than streaming movies for viewing in real time, the SightSound system downloads content to PC storage at whatever data rate an individual user's line supports. At dial-up rates, the average film can take up to eight hours to download, or it can take a matter of minutes over high-speed lines, SightSound director of marketing Jennifer Pesci said.
Compression -- which, like other facets of the software package, is drawn from Microsoft Corp.'s media kit -- cuts the storage space required at the PC to about 100 megabytes, Pesci said, adding, "It's all very basic."
But for a movie to download in five minutes or so, even at the high compression rates used in Microsoft Media, the end-user must be equipped with access lines supporting throughput of about 3 megabits per second.
Someone with a typical digital subscriber line or cable-modem line running at a few hundred kbps would require the better part of an hour to download a feature-length film.
Not wanting to gamble on the success of this sales pitch, most Web-based long-form VOD suppliers are choosing to use real-time or near-real-time streaming technology together with broadband distribution to the edges as the best approach to competing for a mass audience.
With such services now up and running, anyone with a consumer-grade high-speed-data connection can determine whether these providers have made a good bet.
"It all sounds good until we see it executed," said Patrick McDarrah, who recently left Miramax to become vice president of business development at Gotham Broadband, a New York-based supplier of broadband-content-development services.
"Until it's proven that you can use streaming technology to distribute movies at good quality over the Web, you won't see studios taking the leap," he added.
STUDIOS WILL USE WEB
But whether it's via streaming or download to storage, the studios are likely to exploit Web distribution eventually, McDarrah said. "The Internet will have a place in the window, probably after films are shown on free broadcast TV, because then they've been fully exploited," he added.
How far forward the window might move from there is anybody's guess, because
copyright protection remains a major issue for the studios, as does the need to control the revenue flow, McDarrah said. "Miramax is to be commended for taking this first step," he added.
By setting up the out-of-country filter on distribution and distributing only its own products, he noted, Miramax is getting around key sticking points, such as the industry's need to agree on uniform approaches to identifying end-users and controlling distribution in accord with the terms of individual film agreements.
"Lately, with so much unresolved, people are agreeing to disagree on Internet-rights issues, which leaves the matter frozen until these things get worked out," McDarrah said.
But how soon Web distribution becomes a compelling outlet for the studios is likely to rest ultimately on the viability of the technical platform and the size of the audience that makes use of it.
Here is where Web-based movie-on-demand companies like MeTV.com and CinemaNow Inc. think they have a possible trump to use in pulling the majors in.
"I don't think the majors will come into this market until they see that we can deliver a sustainable high-quality image," said Bruce Eisen, executive vice president at CinemaNow, which has become one of the program suppliers for broadband-media distributor ClearBand LLC in the latter's deal with DSL competitive local-exchange carrier NorthPoint Communications Inc. "But that will come."
Meanwhile, Eisen is hoping that a mixture of action and foreign films -- many under control of CinemaNow parent Trimark Pictures -- will draw an audience as the company builds a portfolio of independently produced films from people who relish the Web as an outlet. "Filmmakers can have their own Web page: We'll digitize, store and stream the movies," he added.
ACE IN HOLE: DORMS
"Our sweet spot is the early adopter and college students in dorm rooms, where high-speed access is common," Eisen said. "We think we have product that works really well in this demographic."
If it does, the result could put pressure on the movie studios similar to the pressure Web-user distribution of music has put on recording companies, and unsigned filmmakers, like unsigned bands, could become a force to be reckoned with.
There may also be shortcuts to overcoming the quality limitations associated with delivering streamed media over DSL and cable-data lines. ClearBand's distribution system -- currently being tested by NorthPoint in the San Francisco Bay area of California -- uses IP broadcast-streaming technology out to the points of interface with individual subscriber lines, then streams selected content from that broadcast stream to end-users.
"The quality is outstanding -- much better than streaming our content directly from the Internet over DSL or cable," Eisen said.
While CinemaNow uses the services of iBEAM Broadcasting Corp. -- a satellite distributor of IP content to the edges of local distribution networks -- the data rates end-users experience are highly inconsistent, Eisen said. "It's like having a sports car on an L.A. freeway," he noted. "Sometimes you can go 80, and sometimes you go 20."
Users can choose one of four streaming-speed options when they watch a film from CinemaNow, from dial-up to 700 kbps. "Cable-modem and DSL subscribers virtually always can get at least 100 kbps," he said, adding that full-screen video begins to look pretty good at 300 kbps and above.
But none of this should cause cable operators preparing to launch VOD services any worries, McDarrah said, adding, "VOD at that level of quality on the Web isn't going to happen for at least another five years."
Once they get the right architecture the video content on a SAN would seems the best way to manage all this content?
Who will be the specialists in this area? SUNW/Bulldog, Forefront. What will happen to the video server specialists, Concurrent etc, will storage companies parnter with the SFA,s Harmonics, CSCOs to deliver the whole package? Will follow along and look for some pioneers. |
