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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (18757)	1/7/2007 5:48:43 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

Further to my posting The Venice Project yesterday (uplinked), some interesting observations offered by one poster earlier today in response to questions concerning streaming and compression. He ultimately points to efforts being done at the University of Washinton on a client framework called: BitTyrant, "A selfish BitTorrent client that improves performance." (Yagottaluvit) merit.edu --snip: > The question I don't understand is, why stream? In these days, when a > terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with > streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, > if possible), and play it back. Very good question. The fact is that people have been doing Internet TV without streaming for years now. That's why P2P networks use so much bandwidth. I've used it myself to download Russian TV shows that are not otherwise available here in England. Of course the P2P folks aren't just dumping raw DVB MPEG-2 streams onto the network. They are recompressing them using more advanced codecs so that they do not consume unreasonable amounts of bandwidth. Don't focus on the Venice project. They are just one of many groups trying to figure out how to make TV work on the Internet. Consumer ISPs need to do a better job of communicating to their customers the existence of GB/month bandwidth caps, the reason for the caps, how video over IP creates problems, and how to avoid those problems by using Video services which support high-compression codecs. If it is DVB, MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 then it is BAD. Stay away. Look for DIVX, MP4 etc. Note that video caching systems like P2P networks can potentially serve video to extremely large numbers of users while consuming reasonably low levels of upstream bandwidth. The key is in the caching. One copy of BBC's Jan 8th evening news is downloaded to your local P2P network consuming upstream bandwidth. Then local users use local bandwidth to get copies of that broadcast over the next few days. For this to work, you need P2P software whose algorithms are geared to conserving upstream bandwidth. To date, the software developers do not work in cooperation with ISPs and therefore the P2P software is not as ISP-friendly as it could be. ISPs could change this by contacting P2P developers. One group that is experimenting with better algorithms is bittyrant.cs.washington.edu --end snip Of course, the above poster's prescriptions are by no means absolute, nor do they go unchallenged, which becomes clear with additional discussion in the thread (clickable from URL, above). FAC

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (18757)	1/16/2007 4:11:15 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

The Venice Project, the video streaming site I covered in Message #18757 (uplinked), has changed its name to "Joost." joost.com Yesterday, we were The Venice Project™. Today, we're Joost™. Tomorrow, we're yours! Imagine having infinite choice, and TV that is truly interactive. TV anywhere, anytime... This is the year. Joost™ is coming. Sign up for our beta today at: joost.com -- Meanwhile, Netflix is introducing a service to deliver movies and television shows directly to PCs, not as downloads but as streaming video: Netflix to Deliver Movies to the PC By Miguel Helft \| Jan 16, '07 \| NY Times SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15 — Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, lists more than five dozen personalities whose obituaries were published prematurely. Someone may want to add Netflix to that list. The impending death of the company, with its online system for renting DVDs delivered by mail, was predicted late in 2002, when Wal-Mart said it would enter the business; again last year, when Apple and Amazon announced movie-downloading services; and again last week, after the introduction of a series of products and services intended to bring Internet video to television sets. But Wal-Mart left the online rental business in 2005 and now refers customers to Netflix. Meanwhile, none of the movie-downloading services have gained much traction with consumers, the notion of taking Internet video content to TV sets remains a work in progress, and Netflix keeps signing up new customers at a fast clip. It was expected to end 2006 with 6.3 million subscribers and nearly $1 billion in revenue, or about 12 percent of the $8.4 billion annual DVD rental market. Continued at: nytimes.com ------