Category Archives: Media ecology

Why P2P is the only way of distributing TV

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Very thoughtful column by Bob Cringeley, arguing that the only way we will ever get TV over the Net is by harnessing P2P technology. Excerpt:

Twenty million viewers, on average, watch “Desperate Housewives” each week in about 10 million U.S. households. That’s 210 megabytes times 10 million downloads, or 2.1 petabytes of data to be downloaded per episode. Fortunately for the download business model, not everyone is trying to watch the show at the same time or in real time, so iTunes, in this example, has some time to do all those downloads. Let’s give them three days. The question on the table is what size Internet pipe would it take to transfer 2.1 petabytes in 72 hours? I did the math, and it requires 64 gigabits-per-second, which would require an OC-768 fiber link and two OC-256s to fulfill.

There isn’t an Internet backbone provider with that much capacity, much less excess capacity. Fortunately, it wouldn’t have to all go over a single link and could, instead, be injected centrally into the network and fan out to viewers all over the country, in which case the OC-48 and OC-192 links used by Global Crossing, Sprint, MCI and others just might be enough.

But that’s just one popular show. What will we do, then, with American Idol?

Ah, but remember Moore’s Law, which is going to increase our bandwidth dramatically over time! It doesn’t matter. Throw 250 million viewers watching 180 channels up on the Net, raise the resolution to full broadcast then raise it again to HDTV, and even Moore’s Law won’t catch up. Just carrying all the viewers of “Desperate Housewives” at the current iTunes resolution won’t be economically viable for another decade according to Moore’s Law.

I am no Luddite. IP is the future of global communication on all levels. But adding video to the mix is so bandwidth intensive that using current techniques will push back total IP conversion for decades…

Just one quibble. I don’t think it’s Moore’s Law which is giving us bandwidth increases on the scale we’re seeing, but advances in opto-electronics.

Internet use and access in the EU

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AP reports that a European Union report released yesterday shows wide differences in the level of Internet use among EU nations, with Benelux and Nordic countries leading the way and eastern and southeastern Europe generally lagging behind.

In the Netherlands, 78 percent of households are connected to the Net, compared to just 16 percent in Lithuania, according to the report from the Eurostat statistics agency, based on data gathered in early 2005.

The Dutch also lead the way in domestic broadband access, with 54 percent of homes linked up compared to 1 percent in Greece, 4 percent in Cyprus and 5 percent in the Czech Republic.

In Greece, 73 percent of the population say they have never used the Internet, the survey said, well above the EU average of 43 percent. More than half the citizens of the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and Portugal have never logged on to the Net.

Among students, only 7 percent across the EU have never used the Internet.

Overall, the survey showed a rise in Internet connections since 2004. Domestic connections in the EU rose from 43 percent to 48 percent. The number of homes connected to broadband rose from 15 percent to 23 percent.

For EU businesses, Internet access rose from 89 percent to 91 percent, while broadband connections increased from 53 percent to 63 percent.

At least 90 percent of businesses are linked to the Internet in all nations included in the survey, except Latvia, Hungary, Cyprus, Lithuania and Poland. In Sweden, Denmark and Finland over 80 percent of firms have broadband access, compared with less than 45 percent in Cyprus, Poland and Greece.

The survey did not include France, which declined to take part.

The changing media landscape

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This morning’s Observer column…

The Miglia and the Slingbox illustrate how our media ecosystem is changing. They provide early glimpses of the future. Or at least of how the position of TV is changing. Bill Thompson, BBC Online’s resident blogger, has a nice way of putting this. He says that today’s kids will never buy a TV set in the course of their lives. That doesn’t mean they won’t watch TV or video; just that they will access it via a plethora of devices, of which computers and mobile phones are just two examples.

This is why the BBC was lucky to get one final instalment of licence fee income. At the end of the current Charter period, the media landscape will be unrecognisable…

So what now?

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One of my current obsessions is finding graphical ways of illustrating my thesis about the declining role of broadcast televison in the media ecosystem. Over coffee the other morning, Bill Thompson suggested a striking way of making the point. He says that most of those who are children today will never in the course of their lives buy a TV set. That doesn’t mean they won’t watch TV (my point about the way the ecosystem is changing) — just that they will watch it via various devices, none of which will be a special-purpose television set.

As if to emphasise the point, the gizmo in the photograph turned up today. It’s a tuner for digital terrestrial TV. Plug a TV antenna into one end, and the device into my Mac’s USB 2.0 port, run some software and — Bingo! — I’m watching digital TV. What’s more, it turns my computer into a PVR, because I can record off air onto the hard drive.

Now comes a question. At the moment, if you buy a TV set in a store, the retailer sends your address details to the TV Licensing authority, so that they can check to see that you’ve paid your licence fee. Has Apple (from whom I bought the device) done this? More generally, how will the licence-enforcers cope with this brave new world?

New York Times discovers the Slingbox

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Yep — there’s a piece by David Pogue.

IN the olden days, Americans gathered in front of the television sets in their living rooms to watch designated shows at designated times. You had a choice of three channels, and if you missed the broadcast, you’d feel like an idiot at the water cooler the next day. Quaint, huh?

Then came the VCR, which spared you the requirement of being there on time. Then cable TV, which blew open your channel choices. Then TiVo, which eliminated the necessity of even knowing when or where a show was to be broadcast. What’s next — eliminating the TV altogether?

Well, sure. Last year, a strange-looking gadget called the Slingbox ($250) began offering that possibility. It’s designed to let you, a traveler on the road, watch what’s on TV back at your house, or what’s been recorded by a video recorder like a TiVo.

The requirements are high-speed Internet connections at both ends, a home network and a Windows computer — usually a laptop — to watch on. (A Mac version is due by midyear.)

Today is another milestone in society’s great march toward anytime, anywhere TV. Starting today, Slingbox owners can install new player software on Windows Mobile palmtops and cellphones, thereby eliminating even the laptop requirement.

On cellphones with high-speed Internet connections, the requirement of a wireless Internet hot spot goes away, too. Now you can watch your home TV anywhere you can make phone calls — a statement that’s never appeared in print before today (at least not accurately).

Invasion of the oxymorons

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This morning’s Observer column…

Ask a liberal to give an example of an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms) and s/he will invariably say ‘military intelligence’. Ask an old-style television executive and you will get the reply: ‘user-generated content’. That’s because in the glory days of broadcast TV, viewers were assumed to be incapable of generating anything, with the possible exception of subscriptions to sports channels. The idea that couch potatoes might create content was deemed ludicrous. And even if the saps could create something, there was no way of publishing it. QED.

So here’s your starter for 10. Who said this?

‘Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it. This new media audience – and we are talking here of tens of millions of young people around the world – is already using technology, especially the web, to inform, entertain and above all to educate themselves. This knowledge revolution empowers the reader, the student, the cancer patient, the victim of injustice, anyone with a vital need for the right information.’…

The TAKEAWAY Festival

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The User-Generated Content movement continues to grow. There’s an interesting event coming up at the Science Museum — TakeAway: DO it yourself media . Blurb reads:

More and more people are transforming themselves from media consumers to producers – using the new tools, software and technologies now at their disposal.

From the expanding realm of free and open source software (FLOSS), to peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and ‘pervasive’ mobile and locative technologies, the possibilities exist as never before to create and disseminate our opinions and experiences through our own media.
TAKEAWAY, the Festival of do it yourself Media, will help you to understand what it’s all about and how to take part in the revolution.

Who said this?

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From Guardian Unlimited

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors,” said Mr X, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. “A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it,” he said. Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild [the Stationers’ Company] that he was looking forward, not back.”It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy – not just companies but whole countries.”

He added: “Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds.”

Strong stuff, eh? Oh, and the identity of Mr. X? None other that the Digger himself, Rupert Murdoch, now the proud owner of MySpace.com.

The move to user-generated content

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More evidence of changes in the ecosystem — from The New York Times…

Increasingly, the new, new thing in media is getting paid for the homemade. Reflecting the surge in the popularity of user-created material, both online and traditional media companies are opening their wallets to make sure that the best of it finds its way onto their television shows and Web sites. Even Yahoo, the nation’s most-visited Web site, has signaled a change in its strategy by moving away from creating its own professional content in favor of user-generated material — and it appears willing to pay for anything its users deem worthy. All this is part of a trend seeking to turn conventional media business models on their heads in the digital age. Typically, media content was either paid for by consumers in the form of subscription fees or by marketers through advertising. In offering to pay users for creating content, companies like Yahoo are not looking to turn every amateur into a professional so much as acknowledging the growing appeal of homemade material to audiences and hence its value to media businesses.

The significance of the Writely acquisitiion

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More on Google’s acquisition of Writely, the web-based processing tool, about which I wrote briefly the other day. I’ve just come on an interesting (if slightly hyperbolic) essay describing the acquisition as Microsoft’s “Pearl Harbour”! I think that’s overblown, but it’s interesting to remember that Bill Gates chose Pearl Harbour Day way back in 1993 to alert his company to the threat posed by the Internet and Netscape.