CBC to release a TV series via BitTorrent

As previously predicted and then reiterated last week another public television network has started to dabble in DRM-free BitTorrent distribution. (yeah!)

According to Michael Geist the CBC is going to use bittorrent to distribute the program "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister" which airs this Sunday the 23rd.

This is not quite as adventureous as Norwegian Public Broadcasting's first try, but it's a good start.

Pardon me I spoke to soon. Upon reading up on the CBC's "Next Prime Minister" show, I see now it's an ambitious ongoing show, not just a single special as I had prematurely assumed. This release of an ongoing show is a very ambitious start for the CBC as it will give viewers a chance to establish regular viewing habits week after week. By the end of the series the CBC should have a really good idea if they can establish a regular audience for Internet based TV viewing.



While I haven't heard of anything from the Participatory Culture Foundation I certainly hope the two are working on a specialized distribution of the Miro open source TV platform for the CBC, as this would not only be tremendously beneficial to both parties, but I believe it may be essential to the success of the CBC's trial. (hint hint ;)

My guess is sometime in the next six months either the BBC and PBS will be the next to embrace BitTorrent distribution on limited programing. Once again I must point out that the model of distribution that the Participatory Culture Foundation has attempted to promote with Miro is exactly what I believe to be the winning model and that a partnership with the CBC would be a logical step on forging alliances with either the BBC or PBS.

As to my supposed success in predicting the popularization of BitTorrent by public TV providers it doesn't take a genius to spot this trend. It is one I and other video bloggers have been promoting since as far back as 2004 and it's one the Participatory Culture Foundation has been working on since at least 2006.

P2P technology is the only distribution technology that can effectively scale to meet the demands of timely full length and high definition TV programing on the Internet. It is an inevitable part of the future of media distribution on the Internet especially as Internet distributed video gets more timely and gains the attention of large global audiences.

Add to this the fact that public radio and television stations such as NPR, the CBC and BBC were some of the first to embrace audio and video podcasting and you have to deduce that sooner or later they would be among the first to start dabbling in BitTorrent TV distribution as well. In fact I have to point out that I'm still amazed that NPR has over 500 podcasts.

With this embrace of podcasting by public radio and TV it was only a question was timing, and with Norweigen Broadcasting taking the lead January of this year other public broadcasters were likely to soon follow.

If the trend continues then sometime possibly before the end of 2008 we may well see a commercial TV network dabble in BitTorrent distribution as well.

Counterpoint Hulu.com

Speaking of commercial TV networks there is a very interesting counter point with the launch last week of Hulu.com. Hulu.com is a very centralized, "page centric", albeit fairly sociable attempt at offering full TV and movie screenings to users. So far in my limited experience with it it seems to be holding up (scaling) well to the traffic. However I don't believe demand has been overwhelming do to Hulu's the very inconsistent offerings.

To be specific even though there are some great TV and Movie offerings that I think the early adopter / high tech crowd would be interested in (i.e. Battlestar Galactica, Serenity) these offerings often have very inconsistent episodic offerings. It would seem that instead of building viewing habits (an audience) Hulu.com and it's partners are "expiring" older episodes in what I can only guess is some misguided attempt to "tease" fans into purchasing further options. However this just leaves would be fans just as befuddled as the TV scheduling experience, perhaps more so.

In short, they have failed to fix the major problem. Hulu.com does not even solve the basic problem that Tivo has solved in letting your return to old episodes you may have missed or might want to see again.

If a user has missed an episode there is once again no alternative source for the fan to find these episodes but turning to the bittorrent grey/black markets. Hulu.com should be this catch all, not continue to perpetuate this problem of TV scheduling.

Hulu should be offering back episodes so a fan can catch up with an episode they may have missed, or would be fans can preview early episodes to determine if a show is something they're interested in. This does not undermine TV viewership or DVD sales of a show. In fact it supports them.

Hulu.com is not, nor is it likely to be an *alternative* to TV. Hulu.com's role in this future should be a *supporting role*. I know of no one who would rather watch their favorite TV show on a computer rather then live on TV or via DVD with no commercial interruptions.

As long as content creators struggle to understand this new medium fans will keep returning to p2p grey markets as that catch all solution.

It is all about building viewer habits, and as long as media companies fail to provide solutions on which fans can form good habits with good quality alternatives to cable or satellite fans of shows will build habits around p2p grey markets and it will be increasingly costly to lure them from those habits. This is particularly true of younger generations whom are growing up in this age of digital media prohibitions where all they have known is getting their media from the local speakeasy (p2p nets) because there has been know other digital option.

To continue with this metaphor... once the prohibition is removed, and work is done to rebuild trust and remove the taboo of digital media consumption.. when these goods come back to an open and sociable market the people will return to the digital sidewalk cafe's of the future and business will be brisk... but it must be natural, and open. No one is likely to return to this market with an attendant watching over them like a hawk, eavesdropping on their conversation and constantly reminding them of the time.

Respect, balance and trust must be restored to the digital marketplace and given how badly generations feel it has been betrayed it is not likely they will easily return. It's going to be costly.

We need to drag media and digital culture back out onto the open Internet where it can benefit everyone and be a part of a naturally sociable vibrant and bountiful marketplace. This digital prohibition has gone on to long. This last week was the ten year aniversary of the mp3 player. TEN YEARS and only this year have the major labels finally started selling mp3's.

If you failed to respond to your customers for ten years where would your business be?

HDTV Series Mass-Distributed for Price of an iPhone

Some people took exception to my recent(ish) post about DRM-less peer based distribution being the future of IPTV. Their primary issues being that "people can skip the ads" and/or "cut out the ads and redistribute ad-less shows".

My points are as follows.

People can already cut out the ads with now common solutions like TIVO, and people can and do already cut out the advertisements and redistribute TV shows via bittorrent. No amount of DRM is going to stop this. Period. The promises of DRM are a myth. It only takes one person to crack the DRM... and the very fact that you can hear and see TV means it is fundamentally re-recordable and copyable with little to no loss of quality.

Secondly, If there is an "official" peer based release, a legal, legit and secure alternative that offers a sufficiently user friendly experience (i.e. not to excessive of advertising or to cumbersome an interface) this greatly diminishes the demand and interest in grey market or black market alternatives.

Thirdly, Advertising is already evolving away from 30 second interstitials into integrated product placements, overlays and sponsorships which are not as easily removed or skipped. I always use the example of the NFL game: Advertising and sponsorship is seamlessly integrated into every aspect of the experience... both on the actual field, in the stadium, on the uniforms and equipment, even the stadium name, as well as overlaid with scoring and stats on the screen. The advertising model is increasingly independent of the proverbial 30-second spot.

Finally, These above points brought up by readers are not even the primary issue.

The primary issue is as such: centralized distribution systems are increasingly cost prohibitive and do not scale well at all for the mass market.

The infrastructure and inherent cost in distributing media from a centralized point or non peer based CDN (content distribution network) such as Akami or other is tremendous. In fact with more popular and mainstream content where there may be real-time demand for HD quality video upwards of 400,000 this distribution model completely short circuits.

Timeliness is an important factor both to the media (ie. news and content) and the experience (ie. skipping video). Peer based distribution such as bittorrent therefore become not just a logical alternative but in some cases a necessity.

Peer based systems are not just the most efficient means to scale distribution with demand, they are fundamentally the only way when dealing with economics of scale in an increasingly global market.

Protecting this future is yet another reason why protecting net neutrality is so important to the future of the internet. Peer based mechanisms are a fundamental and important part of the internet. Not just with media but in all aspects of social networking and communications of which media in the form of VOIP, video sharing, podcasting and such are increasingly the killer applications of the network. In short communications are fundamentally peer based. All that's changing is we're making them media rich with video, VOIP, podcasting, and blog-like mechanisms.

The following is a recent post from the Miro blog providing further details about the Norwgian Public Broacasting's use of bittorrent to distribute programing.

Norwegian Public Broadcaster, NRK, recently made waves with the success of their pilot project where they put one of their full series online, in HD, without restrictive DRM, over bittorrent.

The initiative has been a huge success on every front — viewers love the super high-resolution picture and most people have reported incredibly short download times (given the file sizes). Furthermore, viewers have been downloading the episodes en-masse (around 80,000 times in the past 3 weeks). To top it all off, NRK hasn’t broken the bank to deliver the goods; in fact, they haven’t even broken a sweat.

To-date, NRK has paid a total of $350 for storage and delivery of the entire series. This information was disclosed to me by project manager Eirik Solheim; he also estimated that the bandwidth bill would have been roughly $8,000, had NRK chosen a more traditional delivery method.

Eirik shared the secret sauce behind the project:

All the HD video files were stored and delivered using Amazon’s S3 data service, which has optional bittorrent capabilities. NRK syndicated the .torrent episodes over an RSS feed, which allowed the program to work something like a podcast.

NRK recommends that people use Miro to subscribe: it’s the easiest way for folks to use BitTorrent and it fits their public-interest mission. The estimate that a high percentage of their downloaders (50% or more) are using Miro.

The ease of use is very important, because it encourages more people to participate in watching and sharing the shows. Technically, the cost to the producer for distributing to a handful of viewers, say 300, is basically the same as doing so for 1,000,000 people. This is because after a point, distribution is handled by the viewers themselves; as the number of viewers rises, the work that NRK does stays constant.

All in all, the pilot has been a major success, and is blazing a trail to wider adoption of bittorrent delivery for NRK programs. We’ll definitely post here when we get more details.

RSS + Bittorrent distribution for TV and online video

The Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) has made their most popular TV series available DRM-free via BitTorrent, even better it's available as a subscribe-able RSS feed via software like Miro. Shown here is the subscribe-able feed in Miro the popular open source video aggregater.

I just wish the show was available in English. :)



Entire and partial news programs like CNN, ABC and CBS nightly news are already widely available via subscribe-able RSS feed (podcast), and the Daily Show, Colbert Report and other highly popular TV shows have been widely distributed unofficially via similar means on TVRSS.net, but this may be the first TV show to officially embrace this technology pioneered by video bloggers.

I expect that this form of distribution (RSS + Bittorrent) will become increasingly popular with TV producers as they realize it does not threaten their traditional advertising supported models.

To start with I expect PBS, BBC or other distributors less threatened by peer based distribution (P2P) culture to officially embrace the RSS + bittorrent distribution model.

NPR has already widely embraced RSS distribution (aka. podcasting) for audio programing with over 500 subscribe-able channels for their radio shows, and PBS has a dozen or so subscribe-able video podcasts though they are currently just partial shows or show clips. I expect timely news programs such as Frontline will be the first to officially embrace the RSS + bittorrent distribution model as bittorrent scales much better for popular, timely, high definition content, much like the Daily Show and Colbert Report.

RSS + bittorrent distribution is a counter point to new proprietary distribution services from content creators like Hulu.com (currently only available via private beta) and NBC.com and which are only currently available by visiting and watching programing on website, have no subscription mechanisms, and are not available beyond desktop computers.... i.e. on your TV or hand held device.

There are also alternative systems like Joost and Veoh but while these proprietary 3rd part networks have a high degree of usability and interface polish as is typical of proprietary solutions they lack the flexibility to scale to handle the wide variety of newly available content on the web and the various cellular, hand held and set top box platforms.

Of course there are also solutions from Apple, and Tivo for television producers, but these are increasingly complimentary to RSS / Podcasting and perhaps in the future even added bittorent distribution.

What makes RSS + bittorrent such a powerful combination is it's increasingly openly accessible to virtually anyone who wishes to distribute media online via various services, and RSS / podcasting is already starting to be adopted by set top box, cellular, and handheld manufacturers like Apple (AppleTV, iPod & iPhone), Tivo, Nokia, Akimbo and many others.

Bittorrent is the final piece of the puzzle allowing extremely rapid scaling for the distribution of high definition content but it may take much longer to popularize do the greater technical requirements in implementation on various hardware platforms.

Washington Post on new media

From: Apple - profiles - washington post

Video: apple_pro-washington_post_720x416.mov (video/quicktime Object)

Today's theme is snarky-ness. I'm blogging this just for reference. I despise it but it is interesting. So let's kick the tires.

It's a slickly edited piece from apple. It has no authenticity. It's only interesting because it give a fakey insight into the Washington Post's video journalism group. They have 50 people on staff roaming with camera's... that's interesting. But it's low on real information and insight.

I'm sure the people involved are very interesting people but apple does a nice job of making them seem like passionless boring people without original ideas... because heh, it's not about the people, it's about selling Final Cut and apple computers, and if the people are boring it makes the technology look more interesting.

"I like it when the technology just goes away and you can focus on the aesthetic." Are we on message? Yack. Fluff. Apple needs to rethink their marketing strategy. But then Apple boycott's the blogging world, and doesn't get authentic and real people. Rather ironic.

The most interesting point was what Jim brady, the Exec VP, called "appointment viewing". Apparently "appointment viewing" is the misguided idea that people will come back once a week to re-visit a story to see a new five minute video clip.

Here the opportunities for internet based distibution for media are wide open and Jim is taking the worst thing about television, that it's not space or time shiftable and recreating it on the internet in a vain homage to obsolescence. The only thing he's missing is to make their video pieces disappear after being online for an hour, which is why there content isn't a complete failure because shows stick around long enough that enough people stumble on them. And stumble is the word.

Here's a hint washington post. Throw out the interactive flash storytelling crap put the story in a nicely packaged downloadable video format like MP4 and throw it in a good subscribeable RSS/Media RSS feed with some permalinks to some supporting web page based information. It's called "subscribership"... and you should know what that is because you've been delivering newspapers to people's doors for a century. So why do you make people work so hard to follow up on stories online? Why don't you just work on a virtual baseball bat that can beat them over the head. You're version of delivery is akin to leaving the newspaper laying half way to the front porch in a puddle in the rain.

I don't know why mainstream press people are so resistant to getting a clue. I guess they've just started grasped the web1.0 idea of the "web page" and can't see anything beyond it. They think they have... but they haven't realized "flying type" is not real interactivity. RSS, metadata, microformats... beyond the web page... beyond the desktop even. Clue into it.

Tags: brand interactive-brand nprness washingtonpostness storytelling video-editing tom-kennedy apple final-cut washington-post laptop-editing video-on-the-net distribution jen-crandall journalism creative-class rob-curley appointment-viewing=bs