To: B. A. Marlow (754 )
From: Mike Fredericks
Wednesday, Apr 28 1999 11:27AM ET
Reply # of 1237
Hey everyone-
I'm not an ATHM nor a BCST investor (nor am I planning to be one) but am actually researching video over the 'net for another company I own (IATV)... Anyway, I saw the following paragraph in a June 1998 article from CBS Marketwatch, right around the time of the BCST IPO:
Of course, broadcast.com still faces numerous challenges. For
instance, the company is still only fine-tuning its ability to
broadcast content to a wide audience, which does in fact require a dedicated amount of bandwidth. And what happens when people starta ccessing the Internet through cable TV set-top boxes? Cable companies won't be eager to see broadcast.com getting paid to deliver content over its wires (At Home (ATHM), for instance, is forbidden by its cable partner agreements to allow video streaming segments of more than 10 minutes on its network).
Question: Is this prohibition still in place? I would think that broadband access would be a boon for streaming video, but if you can't stream more than 10 minutes it would be hard to do anything real. Has ATHM found a way to work around this 10 minute restriction? Have new agreements been signed? This article is 11 months old, so it's quite possible, but someone on the IATV thread mentioned these restrictions a few weeks ago and it has been gnawing at me ever since. Could an individual content provider sign an agreement with a cable company cutting them in on the revenues in exchange for allowing more than 10 mins of streaming video? How is the restriction enforced? Does the cable modem itself shut down video after 10 minutes? What's stopping a company from producing a 25 minute show in three 8:20 segments so that they don't hit the 10 minute boundary?
Thanks,
-Mike
Thanks, |
