Hi Bruce, after reading this in the sacramento bee today, kinda made me feel good as to how far we have come and that other "start ups" are dealing with the same old problems. Mabe we are a little farther along then they are. The good news is the market is waiting.
Streaming dreams: Start-up pins
hope on video process
By Clint Swett
Bee Staff Writer
(Published Nov. 9, 2000)
As you watch on the computer monitor, Carlos Santana's fingers fly
over the strings and the wail of his guitar spills out of the speakers in
five-channel surround sound.
It's not a DVD of the rock star's concert but rather a streaming video
presentation, piped in over the Internet at about 280 kilobits per
second -- comparable to the high speeds provided by DSL and
cable modem connections.
Unlike with most streaming video, however, Santana, his band and
two gyrating dancers fill the whole screen, not just a small window.
And the sound is perfectly in sync with the visuals, a rarity in the
Internet world.
This level of sophistication is brought to you not by Microsoft or Real
Networks, the two leaders in streaming video.
Rather, it's the creation of eMonitoring Solutions, a tiny Rancho
Cordova company that seeks to make video images that arrive over
the Internet as smooth and realistic as watching it on your VCR.
"People in the entertainment industry have looked at this and said it's
terrific," said EMS Chairman Robert Pepper.
The technology veteran was head of Level One Communications in
Sacramento before it was purchased by Intel Corp.
"I think we're really onto something."
Video streaming figures to be an explosive business as companies
look for ways to get entertainment and information out to Internet
users, said Emily Meehan, an analyst with the Yankee Group in
Boston.
Applications could range from movies on demand to sports
broadcasting, from college courses online to tightly targeted
advertising. And anyone with a PC and a broadband connection
could tune in.
About 50 million business computers worldwide already have
broadband connections, making that market ripe for streaming
business-oriented material to the desktop, said Jerry Kaufhold, an
analyst for Cahners In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz. And the Yankee
Group estimates that 20 million U.S. homes will have high-speed
connections by 2003.
EMS already is negotiating with at least one major entertainment
company and an Internet sports site to license its technology to zip
video out to Internet users, said Crystal Breazeale, EMS' chief
operating officer. She declined to name the companies.
Streaming video involves taking a digital image such as a single frame
in a movie, compressing it by pulling out unnecessary pixels, and then
shooting it over the Internet to the viewer's computer.
Typical full-motion video has 340 million bits of data per second that
must be pared down to about 300,000 bits to be viewed over a
DSL connection.
That bit of wizardry is overseen by Jodie Reynolds, EMS' chief
technology officer. A veteran of Apple Computer and a former head
of a virtual reality software company, Reynolds came out of a brief
retirement in Truckee to sign on with EMS.
Using her experience in virtual reality programming, Reynolds
developed mathematical formulas called algorithms, which decide
which pixels can be eliminated while still providing the best user
experience.
"I think she has a wonderful grasp of what the problems are and
came up with very creative solutions to fix it," Pepper said. "She's
been able to solve some problems that haven't been solved before."
But while EMS waits for its streaming technology to find a taker, it's
charging ahead with something slightly more prosaic -- video
monitoring over the Internet.
Using EMS' system, retail chains, day-care centers and even
gambling casinos can set up video cameras on site. Video from those
cameras can be viewed from any Internet-connected computer,
allowing an executive of a series of retail stores, for example, to
monitor what's going on anywhere the stores are located.
That was the vision of Greg Kilgore, formerly president and chief
executive officer of Track 'n Trail, an El Dorado Hills-based chain of
outdoor shoe and clothing stores, which he left in October 1999.
Kilgore thought the Internet would be a great way to keep track of
activity at the more than 120 stores in the chain. He and Christopher
Ewing, president of Sacramento's Shari's Berries, decided to move
forward with the concept, and began operations with three
employees last February.
Within the past nine months, EMS has grown to about 25 employees
and has booked orders for more than 300 of their monitoring
systems, including a series of 40 Subway sandwich shops, said
Breazeale.
EMS is negotiating with several major retailers that could represent
as many as 6,000 additional installations, she said.
A basic installation with one camera and a black box that
compresses the video and streams it out to the user starts at about
$130 a month per site.
Despite the extraordinarily tight labor market for tech-savvy
workers, employees have been eager to sign on, Breazeale said.
"We've had zero problems recruiting. We invite talent over, and they
look and want to join the company," she said.
For the time being, video monitoring will remain the company's core
business because it's much more likely to produce a steady revenue
stream, company officials say.
But as its compression technology improves and more consumers get
high-speed Internet connections, demand for its products in the
entertainment industry could soar, said Ken Rozenweig, a
Pennsylvania business consultant who has been advising EMS.
"Microsoft, Sony, Comcast -- everyone is looking for (streaming
video) solutions," he said. "The company that has the best solution
first (will be a big success)."
And EMS faces some formidable competition. Microsoft, Real
Networks and Apple Computer all have well-established streaming
businesses.
And a North Carolina company called Summus is said to have
full-screen streaming technology that could rival that of EMS.
But Kaufhold, the Cahners analyst, said technology matters more
than bulk.
"The smart business model is to have an innovative technology you
can deploy regardless of your size," he said. |
