TV, Satellite, Radio and the Internet? MLS has been streaming for a while now. ESPN3/WatchESPN streams their matches. beIn streamed theirs before they got their deals. (MLB, NHL, NBA, NFL have internet streaming subscription services too) With the Red Box beginning to offer a new movie streaming service and Apple working on their new product (AppleTV or whatever it turns into), it looks like the future of television is not in the cable, OTA or satellite. What say you?
The Consumer Electronics Show takes place early in January, as it does every year in Las Vegas. Apple is allegedly thinking of unveiling their "Apple TV" there. Or not. But the concept is probably in the works. This is what Apple's CEO Tim Cook had to say on the subject a couple of weeks ago. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-intense-interest-in-improving-tv/
Business and Media doesn't need any subforums. Put it all under the same umbrella, there won't be congestion.
It's fine to change the forum name to reflect the fact that we discuss streaming media, but as someone who currently depends almost entirely on the internet for watching soccer, I can tell you it has a long way to go. I watch ESPN3 and Fox Soccer 2go, both by using AirPlay from my iPad to my Apple TV. FS2Go is unusable for watching matches live. Replays are much better, but I can usually count on the streaming skipping forward by several seconds a few times per match. ESPN3 is generally better, but just today during the Dutch league match the stream kicked backwards by ~5 minutes three times. It's nice to have a lot of matches availalbe (and for much less money than subscribing to cable sports packages), but if you're used to reliability, it will drive you crazy.
I get ESPN3 only and it has played fine for me. Oddly enough, I have had outages with ESPN2 more. I am not familiar with Fox2Go but the software-that-shall-go-unmentioned often has HD quality streams for the same matches (albeit not always in English but that's OK with me). I am not sure how much fault lies with the infrastructure and how much with the resources allocated to a particular program. As I understand, YouTube streams its 720p labeled content at 2,000 kbit/s and I rarely need to re-buffer a video. The same 2,000 kbit/s stream should be more than enough for soccer. The NFL highlights at 3,000 kbit/s, however, can sometimes get pixelated.
Agreed. Or "Content Delivery" (or specifically "A/V Content Delivery") likely makes more sense than "Broadcasting" as a name for this forum since most of "TV" and all of "Satellite and Internet" is now more a form of narrowcasting. But "Broadcasting" is a known and appropriate label I would support (even if it is technically inaccurate) in this case, if a change is going to be made.
FWIW, Time Warner Cable (aka TWC) has upped their "mid-tier" speed package to 15 Mbit/s, following a report by Netflix that TWC was one of the slowest broadband providers in the nation. Additionally, Netflix, currently the single largest source of the US internet traffic, is facing another new competitor in RedBox and its new streaming service called Redbox Instant. At the moment, these are all geared toward a movie/TV fan but can the all-encompassing TV/film/ sport streaming service be far behind?
A few updates - High Efficiency Video Codec has basically been ratified and there are various software firms already offering their services. http://www.bogotobogo.com/VideoStreaming/h265_hevc.php (I am sure there are other references as well) The expected reduction in the required bandwidth for the same quality is ~ 40%-50%. While a lot of news is to come out by the end of the week at the Consumer Electronics Show, there are expectations that not only Apple but Intel as well will create a streaming/TV-like network. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57...-debut-at-ces/?part=rss&subj=gaming&tag=title Additionally, Google released its new (supposedly free of copyright claims and thus royalties) codec called VP 9. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57561111-93/googles-new-vp9-video-technology-reaches-public-view/ Someone joked somewhere that these new/established streaming services (Netflix, Redbox Instant, Amazon, Hulu, etc) is just another way to watch the long canceled sitcoms. Hypothetically, of course, internet streaming is the easiest means of connecting to a customer - anything to anyone at any time. The current rights prohibit this from a free for all. However, when the major players like Apple, Google, Intel (I assume Microsoft will enter the fray sooner or later, as it is already involved in some aspects of the industry) are competing for the same set of eyes as the major TV networks, the TV networks will have to seek alliances. As a reminder, NBCUniversal was sold to Comcast for about $14B. Intel's market cap is over $100B. Google's ~ $230B. Apple's ~ $500B. Microsoft's ~ $170B. If these companies want to tie up the intellectual rights to the various properties, including sport, $83M/Y that NBCSN pays for the EPL, as an example, is pittance. Chances are, however, that the dancing cards will be getting filled up soon.
Is the new compression technology made possible by hardware improvements over the past decade or so? While not being a mathematician, it seems hard to believe that this "doubling of efficiency" concept could be realized by software algorithms alone ... this deep into the digital era. Can you sketch in some more, in layman's terms?
Of course, if I'm thinking of what you're thinking of. Suppose a TV show on ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX starts out with 12 million viewers. After a few weeks, it's down to 8 million. After a few more weeks, it's hovering around 4-5 million. A few weeks after that and a timeslot change, it's being burned off. The show's producers shop it around to the cable networks and nothing. All of a sudden, the internet outlets pick it up and it has new life. A show canceled on OTA TV could easily find new life on one of the outlets you mentioned above. It's like a show on HBO/Showtime/Cinemax/whatever. If HBO has 22 million subscribers, and I'm pulling a random number, but only 3 million watch a certain show, it doesn't matter to them, because they have 22 million people paying money to them.
The computational power per dollar spent is always (incrementally) increasing - refer to the Moore's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law If the CPU benchmark are roughly accurate (there are always minor discrepancies to the software maximization for a particular design), current CPU's are 10-15 times faster than CPU's in the same dollar range in the mid-oughts. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php FWIW, my old PC from 2006 is measured at 414, my new one (of the August, 2012, Dell Inspiron) is at ~ 5,700. Also, memory prices came down significantly as well. That is correct. Everything is a trade-off - in his case of a computational power for the bandwidth. Some of the links in my posts above explain the basic principles fairly succinctly. No one knows how it will work out but ... a traditional TV broadcasting model that has been in effect since the 1940s has been pretty simple - the networks create a program, then viewers vote with their thumbs. Popular shows stay on the air. The less popular are canceled. The subsequent technological developments since then - remote control, multichannel cable universe, VCR's, etc. - really hasn't changed that principle. And here it all comes out to what is willing to pay for what shows. Some programs - the old bland Friday night ABC Family programming with the Full House and Family Matters - are followed because the kids watch it with their parents not being offended and thus watching along with their kids. Other shows like the Sopranos have had loyal audiences on a paid network (HBO) and were lucrative because fans of HBO programming paid monthly fees to subscribe to the channel. Other shows represented everything in between. From the technology point of view, it's much easier to deliver content like the Sopranos to a customer's home. This makes a pay-as-you-go concept a lot more feasible. The old bundled-up services - let's face it, many of us have cable/satellite packages where some channels are ignored - lose their necessity, as they were being force-fed to the buying public by the cable companies, along with their allies in the US Congress. These channels survive because a paying customer has little choice whether to accept them or not. The "single channel-from-every-channel" Internet TV changes all that.
I am splitting this into two posts because I didn't want to run into the "reply" time limit. The effect of the Internet TV on sports may work out like this : 1) All major US pro leagues will offer online streams on the subscription basis, which is more or less a status quo from today. What may change is how these streams are bundled. For example, NBC is offering a bunch of online stuff with their SNF broadcast already. For others, you have to go to the NFL site directly. 2) All the marginal sports that are currently finding it hard to land a distributor will be able to broadcast by streaming (Oliver may not have been right on the $1 + cost of transmission either because, as an example, a Portuguese/Russian/Argentine League can set up either a purely separate site or simply work off Roku/Hulu/Intel/Apple/Netflix/Amazon/Redbox setup. As I understand it, the Russians - NTV, NTV+, Russia 1/2 - are offering their major soccer streams for about a $1 per match. Those are streams that one most often finds pirated on the various compilation streaming sites). 3) What is unknown and heavily speculative are the financial models. In the past, Fox2Go was offering its EPL matches for ~ $20/mo? beIN isn't even streaming at the moment. MLS was the most affordable at about $40/year. NFL's Prime Ticket is ~ $300 per season (or about $75/mo to follow the secondary market games) but its Game Rewind highlight package is about $70/season. What happens after that? I would expect the global competition to force the current soccer right holders to lower their streaming prices. The NFL won't budge (this reminds me of a line from "Goodfellas" referring to a capo "Paul Cicero" - "Paulie may have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody). I expect everything to soon be available legally - from the Olympics type sports that are often ignored in the US to cricket, team handball, horse racing, professional boxing, Australian Rules Football, etc. Insofar as the scripted TV broadcasting goes - going a bit on the limb here - I expect a creation of a paid concept a la HBO for more "adult" oriented shows (R-to-AO-to-X rated) or some sort of convergence of all pay-TV channels into an umbrella of networks. The OTA broadcasting will continue to be dominated by the "lowest common denominator" types with an occasional breakthrough hit and dispersed by the major events of high public interest such as the NFL playoffs, World Series, etc. The "new" concept may be something in between the HBO and NBCBSFOX type of a network with more moderate fees - say, in the $15-20/mo range for half a dozen to a dozen of channels - that would feature original G/PG/PG-13 rated original scripted shows such as you see on USA, A&E and so on. FWIW, Warren Van Orden - I tested my CPU consumption (Windows 7) by playing Heaven and Hell's "Sign of the Southern Cross - Live" on YouTube at 720P (which streams at 2K/s). It was at ~ 15% of Intel i5-2320, with memory (8 GB) at about 24%.
Hehe ... a while later I tried the NFL highlight clip at 3K (Packers-Vikings, if anyone is interested) and the CPU usage jumped to 32%. The NFL is using the Amakai plug-in, which may absorb more processing power than required otherwise. BTW, streaming boxes like Roku and Apple TV are fairly low powered because they use simpler software that's maximized for video, since it's basically the only thing they do. In any case, more info is sure to come out during the CES, which takes place January, 6th-9th.
Microsoft is acquiring a "mysterious" start-up called Id8 GroupR2 Studios from the former founder of Slingshot Blake Kirkorian. http://www.geekwire.com/2013/micros...-krikorians-stealthy-home-automation-startup/ Slingshot was the product that allowed a home computer to be a "TV anywhere". http://www.ehow.com/facts_5025651_slingbox-tv.html It looks like more consolidation among the streaming industry is on the way. And, a second after I hit "post". Intel is reportedly on the cusp of delivering something that consumers around the world have been wanting for a long, long time. Kelly Clay at Forbes reports Intel is going to blow up the cable industry with its own set-top box and an unbundled cable service. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-cable-2013-1#ixzz2GtepcSX7
An "unbundled cable service" might not turn out to be possible, or desirable if it is indeed created:
This is piss-poor logic, which goes something like this, "people are getting robbed by bundling rules but they're happy about it!" Obviously, if people can choose a buy-as-you-go system, they will. They are already doing it with some extent with the satellite services. Clearly, the content creators will want to fight it. The problem for them is that, in a limited channel analog cable universe, the real big boys had much more power because they could bundle their most popular channels with the assorted riff-raff. In an unlimited streaming broadcast model, the alternatives are much greater. As I had mentioned before, a Russian/Portuguese/Brazilian league can get set up a streaming business and, if the EPL/La Liga/Serie A charges unreasonable fees for theirs, can provide a different but still capable entertainment. The likes of Disney will still want to bundle no matter who their re-distributor is - cable, satellite, streamer - but they'll have a lot more competition. The NFL is the big dog here but one could actually buy the NFL streaming rights directly from the NFL or baseball the MLB if that is the sole interest of the viewer. Competition, unless suppressed by the government, will always drive down prices and always increase service quality. The likely outcome of this, as I speculated earlier, are various alliances between the broadcasters, content owners, cable/satellite outlets, major Internet players, etc. PS. In the "old" days, the distributor - aka TV Networks, then numbering three - had so much power, the gub'mint set up rules that prohibited them from owning programming. Thus, the system went into effect where networks combined with studios like - WB, Paramount, Universal, Disney, Fox, MGM/Columbia and their various off-shoots- to come up with original programming. The only remaining current power a network has is due to legacy - people still gravitate toward the ABCNBCBSFox because those are well known, albeit fluctuating, destinations. In the 1990's, as the cable universe expanded, the rules were changed and the old TV networks were either acquired by or merged with the content creators (FOX TV, NBC/Universal, Disney/ABC, The Warner Brothers Network, CBS/Paramount). Hypothetically, however, a combined force of Google/Intel/Apple/M-soft/Amazon can provide major competition but some alliances are inevitable. As the content becomes more important and the costs of creating product more palatable - digital cameras-editing-acting - and the distribution less influential, nothing is stopping the computer/Internet players from also owning content. Paul Allen - Msoft-Charter - owned chunks of Dreamworks. Pixar was co-founded by the late Steven Jobs (eventually sold to Disney). You'll likely see more and more of this as the time unfolds.
This is from a Wrap.com article as carried on Yahoo. http://tv.yahoo.com/news/jeff-zucker-kathleen-kennedy-14-lot-line-2013-034608028.html As I thought, a tech company M-soft is entering the content business. Off Nancy Tellem's Wikipedia page : X-Box, of course, can be used as streaming box. Tellem, by the way, has long been married to Arn Tellem, one of the most prominent sports agents, currently a VP with Wasserman's Media Group, which just happens to represent a bunch of US soccer stars like Landon Donovan and Freddy Adu + Steven Gerrard, Scott Parker, Jack Wishere and others.