Networked media

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Livio NPR Radio

November 26, 2009 in Consumer devices, Industry, Networked media, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | 1 comment

The NPR Radio by Livio_ NPR Shop.pngLivio announces its NPR branded Internet Radio Appliance. This device will offer a specialized menu to easily access NPR’s 800 radio stations. Of course, all other Internet radio stations can be accessed as well.

Are such “specialized” devices the future? We’ve seen the WikiReader recently which only does one thing: portable unconnected access to Wikipedia.

I don’t know but it makes great sense to me. I would love to see a CBC / Radio-Canada device like this. CBC/RC have great Internet offerings but they tend to “capture” the audience into their branded web portals. Because of this, many CBC/RC Internet radio streams are not accessible through Internet appliances other than full fledged PC’s. A branded device seems to be a good compromise to escape the PC prison.

Another very promising effect of this device is that it will help fund NPR’s programming since they will collect a portion of the proceeds. What an original way to fund public broadcasters!

   

Challenges for GPRS and 3G Radio

July 24, 2009 in Infrastructures, Mobility, Networked media, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

There is a nice post on the Public Radio Player (PRP) blog about some challenges for Internet radio when distributed over mobile wireless networks and some strategies used in the PRP.

“A dropped stream is the nemesis of any regular Public Radio Tuner user. Nothing is worse than being caught up in a great public radio program and have it suddenly cut out….”

Some challenges can be expected:

  • loss of signal while roaming from cell to cell. Networks are optimized for voice calls but not for data yet.
  • minimal bitrate like 32 kbps is desirable but connection is still not guaranteed and sound quality is no great
  • buffers have to be implemented in receiver to mitigate signal loss.

Results of a survey made by PC World suggest that 3G coverage may not be adequate for the delivery of sustained bitrates in major cities in USA. Like this table shows, networks speeds can be impressive but their reliability vary greatly so that live radio transmissions may be hard to achieve.

There is certainly a lot of room for experimentation here in this new area but I tend to believe that it could take a while before we see 3G replace true “physical layer” broadcast networks for live transmissions.

FLOSS Media Centers

July 7, 2009 in Consumer devices, Networked media by Administrator | No comments

Media centers could become the main interfaces to media content in home networks . The Telematics Freedom Foundation recently released a short report on Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) options here. The report compares features of projects like XBMC, MythTV, freevo, Moovida (Elisa) and so on.

Ads worth more on the net than on TV

June 30, 2009 in Applications, Industry, Networked media, Services by Administrator | No comments

PC world reports that for the first time, advertising during a specific “TV” show will cost more on the net than on traditional TV channel:

If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers.

In-car Wi-Fi Internet Radio

June 24, 2009 in Consumer devices, Infrastructures, Mobility, Networked media by Administrator | 1 comment

As Internet radio appliances are becoming available, there is still the issue that they can’t be used in your car.

This could change thanks to so-called “in-car WiFi routers” which are designed to provide Internet access through 3G mobile telephony networks.

AutoNet Mobile offers such device and service combination:

we create a Wi-Fi hot spot that allows everyone in the car to connect multiple devices to the internet, in and around the car! it’s the next step in in-car entertainment and productvity. we make internet in your car easier than ever because we provide both the in-car router and the monthly service. our affordable monthly service plans start at only $29 per month.

This still represent an expensive proposition for radio though. One hour daily consumption of good quality Internet radio content could easily reach the 29$ 1Gb limit.

iPlayer Reach

February 2, 2009 in Infrastructures, Networked media, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

Some important numbers about the use of iPlayer can be seen here in this TIMESONLINE story:

Before that, they appear on iPlayer, the free service which notched up 41m programme requests in December and 271m during the whole of 2008.

Video at VON 2007

March 21, 2007 in Industry, Networked media, Services, User Generated Media by Administrator | 1 comment

I spent the last three days at the new video track of the VON conference which has been dealing with Voice On the Net for the last ten years. As we know, video on the net is currently gaining ground on a daily basis with Youtube, Google Video, video blogging and many other passionate artists, producers and and so on. That’s the reason why video was inserted in the VON program this year and I realize that video on the net will probably face regulatory issues that VOIP had to go through in the recent years: intellectual property, copyright protection and network neutrality just to name a few. In fact, Jeff Pulver is being proactive on that issue by launching the Video On the Net Alliance to advocate for this emerging Internet video industry.

Voice over IP is disruptive. The flexibility provided by VOIP is an important factor for its success, but its impact is also quite important in that it opened the telecommunication playing field to new players that can operate outside the grasp of the incumbent telecommunication industry. Jeff Pulver officially stated that VOIP, an industry he triggered, is now well established. “We are now the incumbents who can be disrupted”.

In that respect, video on the net will allow the same type of disruption. Broadcasters and broadcast regulation can (and will) be circumvented by people and organizations who see the Net as an effective distribution platform.

Does Skype ring a bell? Well, they could potentially be #1 in both spaces. But that’s the topic of my next post.

Tags: video+on+the+net, VON2007,

P2P Superbowl 2007

February 5, 2007 in Applications, Infrastructures, Networked media, P2P by Administrator | 1 comment

Last year I reported that the Superbowl was not available off the Net. After my positive experiment last summer with the soccer WorldCup 2006, I knew I should be able to access a live peer-to-peer stream of the Superbowl somehow. Well, thanks to Technorati and this post at The Frog Blog, I was watching the show live within a minute.

Notebook vs TV

Here you see the two live scenes I could watch simultaneously earlier tonight; a wifi notebook with the P2P TVUPlayer software and my plain old 36″ tube. I observed a one minute latency on the notebook.
Like the WorldCup on TVAnts, the stream robustness was impressive. Once it got started, the stream simply never stopped. Its data rate fluctuated between 350 and 400 kbps. This is not great video quality but when that’s the only signal you have access to, it’s far better than nothing. For myself, I was happy to see the original CBS Superbowl commercials live for the first time. Here in Canada, the original commercials are always “Canadianized” by the local networks except on some pricy pay TV services.

TVU Player

So overall, it looks like P2P streaming works well. However, TVU Networks statistics would be required in order to really be able to assess what’s going on here. Also, I don’t know at this point if TVU is a pure P2P solution of if they rely on additional servers or CDNs to provide critical capacity.

Although I find these new P2P developpments very exciting, the real new trend in the States this year was certainly HD TV. With their new HD wide screens, sports fans got closer to mother nature this year; they could enjoy and observe each and every raindrop that fell on the field in Miami Gardens!

Tags: P2P+streaming, networked+media, Superbowl, peer-to-peer

TV-Like Content from The Net

September 7, 2006 in Networked media, Services by Administrator | No comments

Watching TV-like content through the net is certainly gaining ground these days. Jeff Pulver and his team just published a great list of “cahnnels” only available from the net.

Link

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