At 03:54 p.m. 27/06/2003 +1200, Ewen McNeill wrote:
In message <5.2.0.9.0.20030627141054.038683c0(a)pele.citylink.co.nz>, Richard Naylor writes:
[Multicast] Well the biggest part of the business is video on demand and that can really only be unicast as getting viewers to agree on what they watch is like agreeing on a TV Channel in a huge flat - hopeless.
Even aside from the live situation you mention (eg, LOTR last year), general overseas experience with video-on-demand has shown that people really only want (to pay for) video-soon-after-demanded. Eg, for a 1-2 hour thing, having to wait, say, 2-5 minutes for it to start isn't a big deal. Even waiting 1 minute for a 10 minute thing isn't _that big a deal.
Which means that for popular stuff that is "on demand" it might not be enough to have one channel with it, where the wait time is, say, 15 minutes for it to cycle around -- but it might be fine to have 10-20 channels, suitably staggered, where the wait time was 1-2 minutes. (Add channels to reduce the wait time.)
ah - its that word "channel" that I don't see in the future. Such a dated concept. Instead, you're interested in Alastair Cook. Why should you wait til Monday at 8:45 every week and then miss it because you were on the phone. Hey you have 10 minutes now and would like to catch up with what he said last Monday (when you were on the phone, remember). So why can't you click in now and view it ? Most TV progs come off a cart player at either Avalon or TVC. Saturn used to stream them off Sun boxes at Petone. Why couldn't they just provide you with a link to the files and you can watch when you want. TV news clips are typically 1:30 and are finished thru the day as the day progresses. Why should you have to wait until 6pm to see them in the sequence they determine. If the clip is ready now ? Why wait thru 20 min of news you don't want to see, so that you miss the one you do want. Turn the running sheet into a web page and let the viewers click on the ones they want.......kinda a unicast thing. Multicast is great for synchronous events like TRADITIONAL tv. I just don't see that continuing. rich