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NewsCisco: 90 Percent of Consumer Web Traffic will be Video by 2013

Posted 06/10/09 at 08:30:44 AM by Paul Lilly

According to Cisco, global IP traffic will skyrocket to a zettabyte -- or one trillion gigabytes -- by 2013, which is more than five times the amount of traffic today. Consumer IP traffic will account for a whopping 90 percent of the total, the company says.

Cisco also sees video leapfrogging mobile data traffic in the next four years, growing from 33 petabytes a month in 2008 to 2,184 petabytes (or 2 exabytes) a month in 2013. If true, that would mean mobile video would see a 131 percent annual growth rate.

Cisco, who bought the maker of the Flip video camera, certainly has a vested interest in seeing online video playing a bigger role, but potentially standing in the way of such a future is the increasing prominence of consumption based billing among ISPs. The future of broadband billing hasn't yet been decided as several ISPs continue to test market tiered consumption models.

Comments: 8
TAGS: streaming, video, online, Cisco, web traffic

NewsMovie Studios to Release "Epix" Streaming Movie Service

Posted 06/08/09 at 05:30:10 PM by Andy Salisbury

Lionsgate, Paramount and MGM have all come together to create a new TV network called Epix that will show their own recent films in HD before they’re released on DVD. They’re also bringing this channel online with an on-demand website that will offer HD streaming of the very same films. And, best of all, it won’t have any advertising and won’t show up on your cable bill.

Epix will be bundled directly into cable packages, and according to their current business model, won’t show up as a separate charge on your bill. If Epix can convince enough cable operators to sign on (they haven’t announced any partners yet), they will be able to gain a competitive edge over pay-TV channels that have a monthly fee.

The best part of it all is the site, epixhd.com. The films will stream in 720p, all for free. The video will be offered through Flash and is multi-bitrate enabled. The player will check your available bandwidth every ten seconds to see if a larger or smaller stream is required. Epix is currently working off of six different encodings for each film, ranging from cell phone quality (500Kbps) all the way to full HD.

But, there’s reportedly a catch (surprise, surprise). In order to use the website, you’ll need to be signed up with an ISP’s Internet and cable. This is primarily because Epix is looking to install caching servers directly in the data centers of ISPs that partner with them.

Comments: 9
TAGS: media, streaming, movie, Epix

NewsHulu's Free Ride May Soon be Over

Posted 06/04/09 at 10:31:16 AM by Paul Lilly

Brace yourselves for this one. Hulu -- the free video streaming service that has others, like YouTube, trying to emulate it -- may not be totally free in the not too distant future. Or at least that's how Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s new chief digital officer, envisions things.

According to AOL's Daily Finance website, Miller said he sees Hulu making at least some of its content available only to paid subscribers. At the same time, he was also quick to clarify that he won't attend his first Hulu board meeting until next week, meaning his speculation doesn't necessarily reflect that of Hulu's.

"In my opinion the answer could be yes," Miller said. "I don't see why over time that shouldn't happen. I don't think it's on the agenda for Monday [but] it seems to me that over time that could be a logical thing."

Keep in mind that News Corp. co-owns Hulu and it's Miller's job to find ways of getting revenue from from News Corp.'s properties.

In other words, enjoy Hulu while you can - in the long run, it may all have been just an extended free trial.

Comments: 17
TAGS: media, streaming, tv, television, videos, Hulu

NewsHulu Launches Hulu Labs With New Desktop Client

Posted 05/29/09 at 04:20:32 PM by Andy Salisbury

Just this week Hulu launched their new service, Goog—err, Hulu Labs in the interest of letting their users get a more hands on approach to the development of the site.

“To help us learn from user feedback […], we’re excited to open up a new Hulu Labs section on the site today. At Hulu Labs, we’ll provide sneak peeks at some of the upcoming releases from our product roadmap, some of which are personal projects and hobbies our devs have been cooking up,” wrote Eric Feng, Hulu’s CTO on their official blog. “From new recommendation algorithms to tools for building custom widgets to a time-based view for browsing your favorite shows, we’ll be sharing a variety of these new creations with you at Hulu Labs and looking forward to your thoughts on how to make these products better.”

They also released the beta for Hulu Desktop, an application that has been optimized to let you watch all of your favorite shows (so long as they’re hosted on Hulu) on your desktop or media center PC. The UI has been designed with a small Microsoft or Apple remote in mind, making it a very reasonable contender for all the media center PCs out there.

Comments: 7
TAGS: media, streaming, Desktop, labs, Hulu

Posted 05/21/09 at 05:30:46 PM by Andy Salisbury

Chances are good that if you’re a fan of streaming music online, you’ve heard of Pandora. And, apparently users of the service like it so much that they’ve actually been asking about ways to pay the company to guarantee its survival. At long last those (strange) questions have been answered, with the introduction of Pandora One.

Pandora One is a subscription-based model allowing users that shell out $36 a year access to some premium options. First off, premium users will no longer have to put up with ads of any kind (this includes the in-stream audio ads). Secondly, and most notably, they’ll gain access to a Pandora desktop app that includes high quality streaming audio (bumped up to 192 kbps), a personalized look, a mini player, and extended player time outs.

For many of us, the free-to-use service is just fine as is. The ads that are currently keeping it alive aren’t very invasive (even the audio ones), and with apps such as OpenPandora out there it’s admittedly a tough sell. But, for those looking to show their love for their favorite online streaming service, $36/year isn’t too bad a price.

Comments: 3
TAGS: Software, streaming, music, Pandora, Radio, Pandora Radio

News4chan, Ebaumsworld Launch Porn Attack Against YouTube

Posted 05/21/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Jonas Brothers fans and those looking for marblecake recipes on YouTube may get more than they bargained for today. That's because 4chan and eBaum's World have teamed up for "Operation Porn Day," which involves uploading explicit video clips to YouTube using innocuous tags.

Many of the clips have already been removed, but according to Arstechnica, it was able to find others that haven't yet been caught (still reading?). In addition to the false tags, a lot of the clips contain 20 to 30 seconds of seemingly legitimately content, such as a newscast, before getting down and dirty.

"It may take some time for video search results and thumbnail images to disappear from the site," Google spokesperson Scott Rubin said. "Typically, this should not take more than a couple of days, but the videos themselves are no longer viewable."

In other words, you may want to keep your kids and nephews occupied with something other than YouTube for the time being.

Comments: 14
TAGS: streaming, video, youtube, prank, videos, 4chan, ebaumsworld, porn day

NewsNapster to Relaunch Again with New Streaming Strategy

Posted 05/18/09 at 09:41:51 AM by Paul Lilly

Let the streaming music wars begin. Just last week Microsoft went on the offensive and attacked Apple's iTunes service over its pricing model compared to the Zune Pass unlimited subscription service, which serves up all-you-can-listen-to tunes plus 10 free tracks for $14.99/month. Looking to leapfrog ahead of them both, Napster, now a Best Buy commodity, is planning to relaunch its subscription music service with a $5 deal that includes 5 free tracks every month.

"There's no need to settle for 30-second clips to decide if you want to buy a song," said Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster. "For five bucks now you can have access to our entire music catalog and get five MP3s to add to your permanent collection."

The new pricing model, which goes into effect tonight, could put Napster in contention with more popular music services and put the one-time P2P pioneer back on top. Napster's catalog sits at over 7 million strong and includes more than 60 commercial-free radio stations, which seems like an obscene amount of content for the same price as a Subway footlong.

Anyone plan on giving Napster a second look? Hit the jump and sound off.

Comments: 8
TAGS: Software, streaming, mp3, music, Napster

NewsHulu Still Trying to Keep Foreigners Out; Blocks Proxies

Posted 05/08/09 at 05:31:56 PM by Andy Salisbury

Hulu is currently one of the hottest video sites available on the web. It’s about to take over the number two spot amongst streaming video sites (behind only YouTube), and it just signed a deal with Disney that will give it even more content. Though, these great features are only available to those that live in the US, and they’re making damn sure it stays that way.

In the past, if you weren’t living in the US and you wanted access to Hulu’s massive library of footage, you had to use a proxy server workaround. For a while, this worked without a hitch, but Hulu wised up to the tricky practices and began doing geo-checks. Still, a few VPN creators like Hotspot Shield would work by making your IP address anonymous. Sadly, these days have ended.

Hulu’s techniques for detecting location has once again changed, and they’re blocking all anonymous proxies. If you’re one of those looking to use the video site through a VPN, you’ll be met with this message: “Based on your IP address, we noticed you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu.”

Too bad, so sad.