HD Internet Movies Finally a Reality?

[Audioholics]

<A href="http://www.audioholics.com/ces/CEStechnology/Itiva-content-delivery-network.php"><IMG style="WIDTH: 125px; HEIGHT: 44px" alt=[logoitiva1] hspace=10 src="http://www.audioholics.com/news/thumbs/logoitiva1_th.jpg" align=left border=0></A>A surprise visit at the Wynn Hotel with a company called Itiva&nbsp;opened up our eyes to a new technology that is poised to literally change the Internet as we know it - at least all concepts of streaming content and media. Itiva is a new Content Delivery network that basically changes the way users pull and receive content. It also changes the way content is transmitted around the Internet. The web was made for a series of static pages, not large blocks of data common with media streaming. Itiva uses the current proxy-server-happy configuration of the Internet to deliver data in smaller packets that closely resemble static html pages - then reassembles them on the user's machine. The result is the ability to download and stream HD content faster than ever before - and I mean FAST.</P>
<P>[Read more]

 

[mikeyj92]

The result is the ability to download and stream HD content faster than ever before - and I mean FAST.

How fast for, say, a 2.5 hour HD movie to download?

 

[JKL1960]

I see this as the future for all video content and possibly audio.

Our homes are becoming nothing more than a node on a network run by the cable or telco companies. I see a future where all content is delivered on the network and I see an all on demand all pay-per-view future. I predict micro-payments for content rather than flat monthly rates. I like the idea of only paying for what I watch. The content itself will dictate the charges. It might be a dollar for an HD movie and it might be ten cents for a network sitcom. But you'll be able to watch the sitcom anytime you want. Sports may cost more when live as opposed to an archived copy. It would be great to be able to watch the game you missed.

I have heard some say that we need bigger hard drives for this future but I think that the industry doesn't want us to store the material and if the micro-payments are reasonable enough who cares if you have a permanent copy. I'm sure physical media will still be around.

Standing in the way if this future is bandwidth and broadband availability. I'm lucky where I live the telco is a crown corporation (Sasktel) and always keeps us on the front edge of technology. They installed the first fiber in North America and are now busily installing fiber everywhere. I'm sure they would like to get fibre to my door as their old POTS wire is a problem for them. Whoever gets 1gb service to my door first will be a big winner. However, unless most of North America gets broadband access the market will be too small for such a big change.

Anyway, enough rambling on about my vision of the future. Who agrees? Who disagrees? What will happen?

 

[jonnythan]

I don't even have the bandwidth to stream a decent DVD, much less some 720p content.

American Idol the other night was, I think, going at about 14Mbps. How many of us have that kind of bandwidth?

Maybe they'll just compress the hell out of it and essentially stream DivX.

Actually, after reading the article, it sounds like the method Blizzard used to distribute some World of Warcraft content. It's essentially installing a BitTorrent client on your computer that you have no control over. In other words, you can't limit the upload speed or turn off uploading.

Their big thing here is that instead of using big servers and big pipes like Akamai, forcing users to supply the content to each other. It's good for content providers because they don't need much if any infrastructure, but bad for consumers because it will be mooching off their bandwidth.

It doesn't get around the "last mile" problem. Home internet users simply do not have the bandwidth to stream quality HD video. Most don't have the bandwidth to stream DVD-quality video. I've got 4.7 Mbps of download bandwidth.. that barely covers an average DVD, and I have more bandwidth than most people.

 

[davo]

How would that work with HDCP, considering the new Windows o/p 'Vista' is going to be full on in this regard? (read: most of us are potentially screwed!)

 

[mtrycrafts]

How fast for, say, a 2.5 hour HD movie to download?

If you have Verizon fiber optic capability, it would be 10X faster than Comcast cable modem
I called both. Verizon would like to bring it to my area. Comcast couldn't care less.
when can I get my Verizon, 50meg download and 5 meg upload speeds, same $ as comcast

Oh, your HD might take 17 min for a 5 gig movie If, the movie provider could upload that fast to you.

 

[jonnythan]

How would that work with HDCP, considering the new Windows o/p 'Vista' is going to be full on in this regard? (read: most of us are potentially screwed!)

This method of delivery can be used with any file. Content providers can easily provide DRMed content that can only be played with an HDCP-compliant player, video card, and monitor.

 

[Audioholics]

This technology is DRM- and file format-independent. It works with anything because it doesn't discriminate in how it manipulates files.

It doesn't get around the "last mile" problem. Home internet users simply do not have the bandwidth to stream quality HD video.

This method improves throughput and enables much lower speeds to handle much larger files (HD) - smoothly. You will still need broadband, but you won't need fiber to your house.

 

[jonnythan]

Well Clint, I've only got 4.7 usable megabits per second, and that's simply not enough.

This technology doesn't require less bandwidth to the consumer. Microsoft can stream the exact same content from their servers to my computer just as well with a traditional system as they can with this Quanta technology. All the Quanta technology does is reduce the bandwidth the *content provider* needs.

A 10Mbps video still requires the viewer to have 10Mbps for streaming. If the content provider wants to stream to 10 people simultaneously, they'd previously need a total of 100Mbps from their various servers. With this technology, they may only need 20Mbps from their servers, because those 10 people are all sharing the incoming bits with each other.

The idea is that it reduces bandwidth requirements for the content provider, lowering the infrastructure and hardware needed. However, if the consumer wants to watch a 5Mbps video, they still need 5Mbps of bandwidth at their house... and 5Mbps is not enough for good HD video. I watched 24 Monday night at ~10Mbps 720p and it was visibly sub-par.

You say that this method improves throughput and enables much lower speeds to handle larger files smoothly, but that's simply not the case. The sole aim of this technology is to reduce content provider's bandwidth requirements. They're not doing anything magical to the video. The entire point of this technology is that it's completely independent of the content itself. Any content - movies, games, Windows Service Packs, whatever - can be served using this content. Blizzard has already done so for World of Warcraft packages.

It's not even anything new.

 

[MDS]

The idea is that it reduces bandwidth requirements for the content provider, lowering the infrastructure and hardware needed. However, if the consumer wants to watch a 5Mbps video, they still need 5Mbps of bandwidth at their house... and 5Mbps is not enough for good HD video. I watched 24 Monday night at ~10Mbps 720p and it was visibly sub-par.

That is the key point that seems to be lost on people. It doesn't matter how fast the server can send the data (any data), whether each packet comes from the same server or a million different servers (grid computing). What matters is how fast YOUR connection can receive the data.

Take 802.11G at 54 Mbps or one of the 'accelarator' routers that claim to double that to 108 Mbps. That's wonderful for streaming between machines on your local wireless network. But if you are downloading something and your downstream bandwidth is 5 Mbps, you get data at 5 Mbps, regardless of how fast the router can turn around and send what it received to your machine.

Maybe their implementation is much better than others but it does sound like a combination of many methods that already exist and it is definitely aimed at reducing the bandwidth requirements of the content provider.

 

[jonnythan]

Yeah. It's a content-agnostic content delivery method. Akamai does something similar by having lots of high-bandwidth servers all over the place sending the same content. So if I'm downloading a 3GB ISO from Microsoft, I'm probably getting the packets sent to me from five different Akamai servers simultaneously in order to maximize the bandwidth.

This system does a similar thing, except I might be downloading the content from 25 people who are also currently downloading or just recently downloaded it. This is just a delivery method, and there's no magic to it. It's just a way for the content provider to use the *user's* collective upload bandwidth instead of having to pay for their own.



"Itiva’s customers are companies that want to deliver video (even HD video) to a mass audience at low cost "

"Edge-server CDNs, like Akamai, have built successful businesses delivering media content over a closed network with servers pushed out closer to the viewers. However, in order to handle additional traffic, new bandwidth must be built out – an expense that will be passed on to the publishers."
This is the traditional content distribution network. Additional users equals buying additional servers and additional bandwidth at additional cost.

"Itiva’s hybrid approach uses three types of hardware. Itiva uses the proxy servers that ISPs have installed to keep content in their networks; it also uses viewers’ hardware augmented by Itiva’s servers distributed through the Internet to maintain a predictable quality of service."
In other words, Itiva makes it cost less by augmenting existing Akamai-like bandwidth from the CDN with the user's own upload bandwidth.

 

[WorldLeader]

It doesn't work right now on OS X. They lose.