If you take time to read all IT related news every day, you will probably notice how Microsoft strategy has changed, or should I say evolved to accommodate new market forces. Consequently, product releases have been sped up from several years to several months, concept of software as a service has been embraced through Live suite of services, and Web 2.0 is not just another catch phrase at Redmond these days. In media world we are seeing traction as well. Needless to say recently Flash has captured all the headlines, mainly due to the phenomenal success of YouTube who is using Flash video. However, Windows Media is making the comeback! Zune portable media player will be officially released on November 14 and today X-Box division announced video download service via X-Box gaming consoles. So what's the big deal you might say? The answer is that Microsoft has realised that key to its technologies is not to push everyone and everything to use a PC, but rather to embrace the products consumers really want -- gaming consoles and portable media players -- and compliment them with compelling content. If you want to play content on your PC, that's fine but PC can not be the primary vehicle in all instances! Bundle some cool content with X-Box Live service and make it easy to watch on TV -- yes TV is still the key to our entertainment rooms! Now, if only they would have some cool tools to convert any content to desired high-quality Windows Media content and make process of posting that content to the web easy?!? Secondly, how about the live content? Windows Media hands down beats competing codecs, in scalability, features and cost. Moreover, how about better APIs so video can be easily integrated into web pages and player controls to work seamlessly!
Overall Wall Street has certainly took notice of what Microsoft is doing. Stock [NASDAQ: MSFT] is up 20% from its five year high despite announcements of increased spending in R&D. Yet again, in the mist of competition, people, as do companies, either flourish or perish!
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Windows Media vs. Flash
Today content owners face yet another dilemma: Windows Media or Flash? At iStreamPlanet we get regularly asked what format should content owners use. The answer is “it really depends on strategy, short-term vs. long-term, and how will the content be distributed!” First let’s look at latter one. If planning to deliver live content or offer content on a download basis, clearly your choice should be Windows Media. Why? Flash server has no capability to deliver live streams (at least not in a reliable and quality satisfactory manner) and there is no flash player for flash video downloads (player that plays .flv files on a standalone basis). Contrary, if looking to stream on-demand video, Flash is probably your choice because it offers easy integration, appealing programming APIs which are easy to use to customize your media player and it is pretty much platform agnostic. Meaning, if you are on Mac, Linux or Windows, you shouldn’t have any issues getting your content to play. Yet another question is what file format has capability to secure media with digital rights management (DRM) technology. Hands down Windows Media is the clear winner here as Flash has no DRM capability at this point.
Now onto long-term vs. short-term strategy and how it can impact your decision. Please note this is my personal vision, or more likely an opinion, based on six years of experience in this market space. When I analyze distribution and current and future trends, I think in terms of content availability on a wide range of IP connected devices. So let’s roll the dice here. TV sets are already indirectly connected to the Internet through multiple IP devices, been that set-top-boxes, media extenders, PCs or other types of media devices. Secondly, mobile phones are already media enabled, portable devices will soon all be Wi-Fi enabled and PCs were first to take advantage of been able to play media over the Internet. If user wants certain piece of content, in the future it will be absolutely critical that content is seamlessly and transparently available on any device user wants to use! Hence, if user is on a PC, the content has to be readily accessible using media playback software designed for PC. Moreover, if user moves to a TV set, the user needs access to the content via standard TV based interface (e.g. program guide and remote control). Furthermore, If user leaves house and wants to take content on its portable player, this process has to be simple enough and painless.
This is why I believe Microsoft, or Windows Media should I say, have a clear advantage. In fact they are already in all of the aforementioned devices and more importantly have enough resources to push the issue with standards. Competition is great because it pushes both camps to innovate and create value which in the end can only benefit consumers. However, unless interoperability becomes ubiquitous, a single format will have to emerge as a winner.
Now onto long-term vs. short-term strategy and how it can impact your decision. Please note this is my personal vision, or more likely an opinion, based on six years of experience in this market space. When I analyze distribution and current and future trends, I think in terms of content availability on a wide range of IP connected devices. So let’s roll the dice here. TV sets are already indirectly connected to the Internet through multiple IP devices, been that set-top-boxes, media extenders, PCs or other types of media devices. Secondly, mobile phones are already media enabled, portable devices will soon all be Wi-Fi enabled and PCs were first to take advantage of been able to play media over the Internet. If user wants certain piece of content, in the future it will be absolutely critical that content is seamlessly and transparently available on any device user wants to use! Hence, if user is on a PC, the content has to be readily accessible using media playback software designed for PC. Moreover, if user moves to a TV set, the user needs access to the content via standard TV based interface (e.g. program guide and remote control). Furthermore, If user leaves house and wants to take content on its portable player, this process has to be simple enough and painless.
This is why I believe Microsoft, or Windows Media should I say, have a clear advantage. In fact they are already in all of the aforementioned devices and more importantly have enough resources to push the issue with standards. Competition is great because it pushes both camps to innovate and create value which in the end can only benefit consumers. However, unless interoperability becomes ubiquitous, a single format will have to emerge as a winner.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Microsoft’s music/video device ‘Zune’
If you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft has officially announced a release of their own version music and video player under Zune brand name. Product should become available sometime in Q4 of this year, probably just around Christmas.
In the past Microsoft has relied on partners (Samsung, iRiver and others) to create devices, other set of partners to offer music stores (Napster, Rhapsody, URGE, and others) and those efforts hardly made any dent at Apple’s dominant market share. It’s apparent that ‘closed garden’ model where a single service provider provides device, service and media protection (DRM) works lot better than a music eco-system built on components from multiple vendors.
Two key questions have surfaced:
1) Will Zune work with existing music stores?
2) Will it use same media and digital rights management technology?
There are no indications from Microsoft but anyone involved in digital media industry knows that attempting to reinvent the wheel and abandoning the technology that was built into all MS supported systems, and more importantly abandoning the partner eco-system built over several last years, would be equal to a suicide.
In the past Microsoft has relied on partners (Samsung, iRiver and others) to create devices, other set of partners to offer music stores (Napster, Rhapsody, URGE, and others) and those efforts hardly made any dent at Apple’s dominant market share. It’s apparent that ‘closed garden’ model where a single service provider provides device, service and media protection (DRM) works lot better than a music eco-system built on components from multiple vendors.
Two key questions have surfaced:
1) Will Zune work with existing music stores?
2) Will it use same media and digital rights management technology?
There are no indications from Microsoft but anyone involved in digital media industry knows that attempting to reinvent the wheel and abandoning the technology that was built into all MS supported systems, and more importantly abandoning the partner eco-system built over several last years, would be equal to a suicide.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Glass Half Full
For all the opponents to digital rights management technologies, the questions is ... why? The seemingly predominant argument is that it inhibits the flow of (content media) information. Isn't this a rather trite and limited scope argument?
And realize that digital rights management usage rights extend much further than just the simple one-play or one-machine level - rights can be extended quite a bit farther than that so the average consumer can in fact share media depending on the originator's desire.
- Would you, for example, want someone else leeching off your cable box if you were the only one paying for the access?
- Would you, for example, share your entire CD collection worth several thousand $s to all of your neighbors?
And realize that digital rights management usage rights extend much further than just the simple one-play or one-machine level - rights can be extended quite a bit farther than that so the average consumer can in fact share media depending on the originator's desire.
Friday, July 07, 2006
License Scalability – Is it important?
When discussing DRM tools offered by different service providers it is absolutely critical to address scalability if the customer has a large audience base. Many content owners who are planning large events with flash crowds in the 10s or 100s of thousands should be aware of issues with license delivery scalability and reliability. Needless to say no customer is delighted to sit on a page for a while only to receive a page timeout message after several minutes! The same can happen to anyone trying to acquire a license to watch your content or event.
Content encryption and decryption is a processor intensive process that certainly deals with hardware and software limitations. At iStreamPlanet we worked hard to resolve this issue and give customers the ability to scale up to a virtually unlimited number of licenses delivered over a specified period of time. Most of us are technical enough to understand that total number of licenses issued over let’s say one day or a month is fundamentally different from the ability to issue a certain amount of licenses in 1 minute or 5 minute time period. Now you might ask what is so critical about 5 minute period. Imagine you are running a live pay-per-view event at 2pm, let’s assume it’s a box match, and you have 10,000 prepaid customers. At 2pm there is a high probability that 95%+ of your prepaid customers plus new signups will attempt to login, get their licenses and start watching the event. We are talking about 9,500+ users requesting licenses in less than a few minutes!!! How critical is it to you that they all get their licenses in timely manner (in our world that’s almost instantly) and are able to watch the video? It’s reasonable to expect if they are not able to acquire their licenses, they will call tech support lines and many of them will request a refund! Ask anyone that has worked technical support lines and they will tell you how ‘pleasant’ those conversations are!
iStreamPlanet DRM Web Services are offered in several different tiers each designed to accept a certain number of concurrent requests and output a defined number of licenses per second under maximum load. Even our basic Tier 1 offering can accept 200 concurrent requests and output 60 licenses per second under constant load! More importantly we can place you in a higher tier almost instantly and accommodate your growing user base.
Content encryption and decryption is a processor intensive process that certainly deals with hardware and software limitations. At iStreamPlanet we worked hard to resolve this issue and give customers the ability to scale up to a virtually unlimited number of licenses delivered over a specified period of time. Most of us are technical enough to understand that total number of licenses issued over let’s say one day or a month is fundamentally different from the ability to issue a certain amount of licenses in 1 minute or 5 minute time period. Now you might ask what is so critical about 5 minute period. Imagine you are running a live pay-per-view event at 2pm, let’s assume it’s a box match, and you have 10,000 prepaid customers. At 2pm there is a high probability that 95%+ of your prepaid customers plus new signups will attempt to login, get their licenses and start watching the event. We are talking about 9,500+ users requesting licenses in less than a few minutes!!! How critical is it to you that they all get their licenses in timely manner (in our world that’s almost instantly) and are able to watch the video? It’s reasonable to expect if they are not able to acquire their licenses, they will call tech support lines and many of them will request a refund! Ask anyone that has worked technical support lines and they will tell you how ‘pleasant’ those conversations are!
iStreamPlanet DRM Web Services are offered in several different tiers each designed to accept a certain number of concurrent requests and output a defined number of licenses per second under maximum load. Even our basic Tier 1 offering can accept 200 concurrent requests and output 60 licenses per second under constant load! More importantly we can place you in a higher tier almost instantly and accommodate your growing user base.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Google Checkout is here to stay?
A newest addition to the payment processing family of products is Google Checkout. It provides payment gateway service regardless of payment type (Visa, Mastercard and others) and checkout APIs so e-commerce can be fairly easy integrated in anyone’s website. An equally important is their aggressive pricing policy of charging 2% of total charge plus $0.20 per transaction regardless of total amount charged and some further perks if you are Google AdWords customer!
This in our mind can be revolutionary for thousands of mid and small size content owners eager to monetize their content but no so eager to spend money on the e-commerce features required to sell content online. In combination with DRM Web Service tools we can turn anyone's website in pay-media site in couple days.
This in our mind can be revolutionary for thousands of mid and small size content owners eager to monetize their content but no so eager to spend money on the e-commerce features required to sell content online. In combination with DRM Web Service tools we can turn anyone's website in pay-media site in couple days.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Webcasting vs. Managed Webcasting
For the past six years we at iStreamPlanet (www.istreamplanet.com/) have conducted several hundreds of these events for companies in different industries ranging from manufacturing, education, government, information technology and the list goes on and on. One common challenge we have encountered when doing many of these events is the integration of different technologies required to deliver a successful live webcast. Note that posting media for on-demand viewing/listening does not require same steps or sets of technologies. Here we are going to stay focused on live portion. Following is a list of technologies, not necessary in order of importance, required to deliver successful live webcast:
1) High-speed Internet connection
2) Audio-visual program feed
3) Media digitization (also known as encoding)
4) Media delivery
5) Webcast integration
Managing these five technologies or procedures and making sure they all work seamlessly is commonly known as managed webcasting. In any event, the extent to which each procedure is managed is a topic of many discussions and something we wanted to discuss with folks involved in the streaming media industry or people/entities who have ordered streaming media services from companies such as iStreamPlanet.
1) High-speed Internet connection
2) Audio-visual program feed
3) Media digitization (also known as encoding)
4) Media delivery
5) Webcast integration
Managing these five technologies or procedures and making sure they all work seamlessly is commonly known as managed webcasting. In any event, the extent to which each procedure is managed is a topic of many discussions and something we wanted to discuss with folks involved in the streaming media industry or people/entities who have ordered streaming media services from companies such as iStreamPlanet.
DRM Dilemma
When discussing digital rights management, or simply DRM, the two most frequent questions that come up are:
1) does it work on multiple operating systems or interoperability, and
2) can it protect content on multiple devices if content is moved from one device to another, or transparency.
At iStreamPlanet (www.istreamplanet.com/) we took a hard look at all available DRM technologies and found none that fully meet both requirements. The next logical step was to look at technologies based on market share. In this particular case we looked at market share of underlying technology that runs DRM components. By now we have all heard how iPods only play ‘iTunes’ music and on the other hand content sites such as URGE, Napster, CinemaNow and others don’t offer their services on MACs. Latter mentioned use Microsoft DRM technology that works on Windows based PCs, phones, portable devices, set-top-boxes and only certain non-windows but MS DRM compliant set-top-boxes. In the computer world Windows PC still has a commanding 94% market share and many of us were content to build DRM services and products on its platform.
1) does it work on multiple operating systems or interoperability, and
2) can it protect content on multiple devices if content is moved from one device to another, or transparency.
At iStreamPlanet (www.istreamplanet.com/) we took a hard look at all available DRM technologies and found none that fully meet both requirements. The next logical step was to look at technologies based on market share. In this particular case we looked at market share of underlying technology that runs DRM components. By now we have all heard how iPods only play ‘iTunes’ music and on the other hand content sites such as URGE, Napster, CinemaNow and others don’t offer their services on MACs. Latter mentioned use Microsoft DRM technology that works on Windows based PCs, phones, portable devices, set-top-boxes and only certain non-windows but MS DRM compliant set-top-boxes. In the computer world Windows PC still has a commanding 94% market share and many of us were content to build DRM services and products on its platform.
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