[Home] VideoDistribution

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When video content gets created today (2001), these are the common distribution mechanisms:

Live, usually free or w/ads:

Pay-per-view, usually unpirated:

Time-shifted and possibly pirated in sense of removing ads:

Small-time distribution (home videos, etc.)

Sharing pipes with other types of data:

Major players:

Consumer expenses (USD):

Future technologies to consider:

Social trends to consider:

Consumer expectations:

I would like input on how people think VideoDistribution will change in the next five years. Does the current system work? Are the most important solutions to come in the next five years more related to technology or economics? Thanks. -- SteveHowell

Thoughts on HDTV

VideoDistribution will go farther in the way it is going. HighDefinitionTelevision? gave the networks huge honkin' pipes to send high-def signal, but the acceptable uses for that bandwidth are few and far between. The World Series? Sure. A concert by Brittney Houston and the boy-band Flash N The Pan? Eh, why not? The network premiere of Jurassic Park 27? Perhaps. The Weakest Link? Friends? Jeopardy? No way. So, most of the time, the Friendly Broadcasting Company will be sending out data that can be used in other ways: weather, news feeds, pre-sending shows perhaps? The knock on HDTV has been that our problems with standard TV isn't the brightness of the picture, but the brightness of the content. Hopefully the use of the bandwidth for non-television purposes will help.

Broadcasters sell audience to advertisers, not content to viewers

A small comment on the economics of a broadcast medium: the audience is what is being sold. The customers are not the audience, they are the advertisers. You are attracted by the editorial content (be it classic rock, television or whatever) and the advertisers are attracted by the numbers and by the demographics of those numbers. Teenagers have little income, but it is all disposable, so pop radio puts on songs that attract teenagers. The sunday morning talk shows attract smaller numbers, but those tend to be serious adults with money to invest, so ADM and other companies create ads that say "we're a good, solid, important company, so we're a solid investment." Essentially this is the point of magazines today. The cover price is to make it valuable to you, but the money to exist comes from adverisers, not subscriptions.

The current system works, to some extent. It keeps people more or less on the same wavelength, and it can more or less show ads to the people who are receptive. "Hey, did you see Friends last night?" But this will fall away. More people watch "Friends" at 8pm Thursday than watch Cartoon Network, or the Food Network, or Showtime, but more people are chosing to watch Cartoon Network or the Food Network or Showtime or something else than are watching network TV. This means that the audiences for the major networks are shrinking, so the current system might not be working in 2010.

Emergency Warnings as example of Out-Of-Band information distribution via broadcast

The first thing that everyone in America saw was the Minstrel shows, and it was Life magazine and national radio broadcasts before everyone was delivered the same information from coast to coast on a more-or-less timely basis. The TV is the ultimate end of that, and the power of that medium is shown by the fact that weather information is presented in-band on TV, interupting your favorite show. I could see tornado warnings presented out-of-band, so that your TV, which is showing you your favorite Anime on Cartoon Network, a warning from your local FBC affiliate will tell you that perhaps you should roll up the windows of your car and bring your dogs in, but your TiVo or whatever is recording that Anime and the sitcom showing on FBC and not show anything like that. Your friendly local neighborhood network affiliate will start broadcasting data over their HDTV bandwidth. It'd be stupid not to. The only question is, how can anyone receive it and do something with it? Already, some public television stations (US only, I don't know the details of TV in other countries) send time data in the blanking area between frames to allow your VCR clock to set itself. More broadcast data will come.

Networked Control

I would like to be able to, from work, when I hear word of something I'd want to tape (for example, next Friday's Tonight Show, so I can catch Alison Krauss and Union Station), to tell my TiVo or whatever that I'll want to record this. This goes into PervasiveComputing issues, but it also is a direct strike against the economic model of broadcast media. --DaveJacoby

Social/economic reasons to distribute video:

  1. Advertisers pay broadcasters for rights to the audience.
  2. Cable companies pay for rights to rebroadcast your video content.
  3. You can advertise your own products or advance your own political agendas.
  4. Viewers pay money directly at movie theatres and pay-per-view.
  5. Public safety -- tornado warnings
  6. Reputation-building
  7. Video done solely for artistic expression (think film school)

One of the key things in deciding policy for video distribution is to understand the social benefits of the video medium. In the most mundane sense, here is what video distribution really allows:

  1. If it's news, you can broadcast it, rather than gossip it.
  2. If it's art or entertainment, you only have to perform it once.
  3. If it's instruction, you only have to teach it once.

The flip side of these benefits is this:

  1. Disemminating news locally gives more important context. (Think of friends-at-the-bar journalism as compared to, say, The O'Reilly Factor.)
  2. Entertainment has more intimacy when it's performed live.
  3. Instruction is better when it's hands on.

-- SteveHowell

Discussion


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