Applications come our way via releases. First there’s the beta and then a slow crawl through version 0.1, 0.2 and for the deliberately clever, 0.2.1.a.
This is how we get our software and over the summer were pleased to see Adobe update their Flash player. For those keeping score, the version released was 9.0.47.0, was (and is) offered as a public beta and even has a nifty nickname: Moviestar.
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ScribeMedia.Org coverage of Adobe Max was made possible by On2 Technologies
The reason for the name is the long awaited adoption of H.264 support for video playback. H.264 is an open compression standard that — along with On2’s VP6 — allows for higher video quality at every smaller file sizes. With it, we’re starting to see fullscreen, HD Web-ready video: a far cry from just a few years ago when we settled for little 320×240 jobbies that stuttered, stopped and buffered away.
Those who follow Web video are most likely aware of the changes, and producers and video service providers like blip.tv, Brightcove and Vimeo are calibrating updates and releases to their content and systems to coincide with user adoption rates of the player release itself.
Emmy Huang, Product Manager for the Flash Player, once gave this rule of thumb as people try to figure that out:
So here is a basic guideline that you can use to project penetration of a particular release:
@3 months = 30 – 40%
@6 months = 55 – 65
@9 months = 80 – 85%
@12 months = 90+%
I bring this up by way of background though. I bring it up to look at where WebTV is and is going to, and what that looks like compared to IPTV. If your head’s spinning a bit keep it simple with the following: WebTV is heading for fullscreen resolution, with high definition possibilities if content producers decide that’s what they want to create. Add increased bandwidth, peer-to-peer technologies, computers with stronger processors and codecs like H.264 and VP6 and the Web video of today will seem quaint a few years from now. Kind of like looking back at early television and film.
IPTV is and has been promising something similar. But different. Inside the industry there’s a distinction drawn to the fact that while the Internet Protocal (the IP in the acronym) is used just like in WebTV, the video is being delivered to a box that sits atop your television.
“The most common interpretation in the industry would be that video streamed over IP to a STB [Set-Top Box] is IPTV and that video streamed over IP to a PC is WebTV,” says John Allen, CEO of Digisoft.tv, a TV and IPTV software solutions company. “Those outside the industry often use IPTV for the PC also, those inside don’t.”
What Allen and other industry insiders often point to is quality of service. By this they mean that IPTV is delivered via closed — or alternative — networks. The metaphor used is walled gardens and the point they try to make is that the WebTV you see from providers and aggregators like Brightcove, blip.tv, YouTube and others relies on the last mile of connectivity to the viewer’s computer. Obviously, the last mile can be spotty.
IPTV, on the other hand, closes the network, and fiberoptically wires that last mile to insure high-speed bandwidth from the point of origin (the video on the server) to the point of reception (the box atop the television).
“In my opinion IPTV is defined as a walled garden service for video running over an IP network that requires dedicated hardware, software and a valid user identity,” says Russell Zack, a vice president at Anystream, a streaming media software company. “It also requires a continuous connection to a network.”
An example of this would be AT&T’s U-verse TV. The company is basically laying fiberoptic cable called Lightspeed and pumping content through it. To date they claim over 120,000 subscribers as it slowly rolls out the product across the country.
“Traditionally, what AT&T is doing with their U-verse product would be pure IPTV,” says Ken Pyle, co-founder of Viodi, an information provider to the IPTV industry. “Whether that definition will be what is commonly adopted, I am not so sure.”
Despite an exact definition, IPTV purists agree that closed networks provide superior service and enhanced user expectations. Take Hans Fischmann, General Manager of Advanced Media at cable operator Charter Communications.
“A Rolls Royce is an automobile while a Hyundai is just a car,” he says. “It’s really a distinction driven by an expected and anticipated level of satisfaction derived from the experience. When delivering streaming video over the Web the experience just doesn’t measure up to the standards of broadcast technology.”
But, let’s rewind for a minute and take another look at WebTV. With improved codecs and support, more power in computers for processing video and, as assumed, increased bandwidth and peer-to-peer distribution, the next five to seven years should see a drastic convergence between what purists now see as divide between IPTV and WebTV. And if we were a country like South Korea, we could shorten that lag to the next five to seven days.
South Korea’s famed for its high speed broadband, where average speeds are about 10 times faster than what we have in the States. And those speeds are accelerating. Rapidly. As in pushing speeds of 100Mbps.
The point here is that at least somewhere there’s no need to talk about the need for walled gardens and closed networks to achieve at least DVD quality fullscreen video.
The counterpoint of course is that we’re not South Korea and those following our infrastructure development consider those speeds out of reach in the United States until at least 2012. And during that time, telecoms will continue to build walled gardens. This drives Network Neutrality folk crazy. But that’s a completely different, if altogether important, story. What’s important to this story is that the purist dichotomy between IPTV and WebTV doesn’t need to be, but is what it is because of choices made about our national infrastructure.
“Mobile phones will be used to watch TV when a real TV or a PC are not conveniently available,” says Bob Larribeau, co-founder of TelecomView, a telecommunications analysis firm. “A computer will be used to watch Internet video content and to watch TV content when a real TV is not conveniently available. A TV is likely to remain the preferred entertainment system for most people, when it is available.”
True enough. But, while I know I’m an irregular content consumer, I do know that like most I’m mobile and PC enabled more often than I’m TV enabled. And in this bits and bytes world of small bite consumption, I watch, listen and read most of my media on alternative platforms. Be it on the train, in the office or at home where I’m more often in front of a computer than in front of a TV.
The small box on top of a TV sucking down IPTV is nice and I’m glad people are working on it, thinking about it and delivering it. But it’s one part of a much greater content delivery whole.
And that whole is what the public internet can provide as the public internet, along with service providers like the Blips, Brightcoves and Vimeos. This is still where I’m hitching my horse or whatever the metaphor might be. It’s also where content providers like the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, CBS, Slate and many others also have their wagon.
“A viewer should never have to worry about the technology they’re using to watch a TV show,” says David Tishgart, a spokerperson for Vignette, a Web solutions provider and consultancy, “It all boils down to this: if the content is interesting and compelling, I’ll watch it.”
Me too. And happily.
Michael Cervieri is Executive Producer of ScribeMedia.Org, except for Wednesdays and Thursdays when he teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
