Last Week's Overlooked News Items

Last week was a busy one for news. By now, everyone has already read many articles about the Microsoft and Adobe announcements along with many other mainstream news from IBC. In addition to the major announcements, there were some news stories and articles less mainstream that I found of interest.

• From Rich Miller over at DataCenterKnowledge.com, which is a great blog about the data center industry, Rich has a post from last week entitled "Dueling Data on Volume of P2P Traffic" which talks to some new data released in the market that about what percentage of traffic on the Net comes from P2P. Lots of competing data, lots of different results.

• From the last100.com website, a post from last week entitled "11 video download stores compared" gives a good detailed overview of the services lack of innovation and technology choices on how they are implementing DRM.

• Scott Kirsner, who runs the CinemaTech blog is putting on a class entitled "Digital Distribution and Marketing" at The Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco. The class will be featuring a lot of case studies and Scott's asking for help in spreading the word. I am always up for helping to promote anyone who is trying to educate the industry. Don't know if Scott is still looking for good case studies, you can contact him at his website.

• There was plenty of talk last week about how the Justice Department said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. Some sites already covered the news, but if you have not read about, do so now. It's important.

• Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee.com had a great post last week entitled "What Constitutes an Online Hit?" where he addresses the problem with the way video sites measure traffic. Chris addresses a great question and one that I have been complaining about forever when it comes to online video metrics. This industry lacks any and all standards.

The History Of Flash Video

Troy Dreier over at WebVideoUniverse.com published an except from the "Hands-On Guide to Flash Video" book, by Stefan Richter and Jan Ozer, which looks at the history of Flash video and how it started life as an animation package called SmartSketch, to it's current incarnation at Adobe (ADBE) today.

Makes for some interesting reading if you want to learn how Flash started and the steps it took to evolve into the platform it is today. You can read more details about the book and it's table of contents on Amazon.

Major CDN Providers To Announce P2P Service By Year's End

Love it or hate it, the topic of P2P delivery has been coming on strong over the last twelve months. While our industry has been talking about P2P for many years, this year we've seen many signs of actual adoption on the way. As I outlined in a post back in April entitled "P2P Delivery Networks Can't Survive On Their Own" the biggest thing stopping P2P from becoming a mainstream product is companies thinking of it as a replacement for CDN, as opposed to a compliment. That is about to change.

By the end of this year many of the major CDNs will announce a hybrid CDN/P2P service for customers who want to leverage P2P in situations where it makes sense. No one solution of any kind works for all customers and for all types of content, so it's only natural that CDNs are going to be forced into offering the widest selection of delivery options possible. While these P2P services may not be commercially available until early next year, expect to see three or four of the major CDNs announce a service sometime in the fourth quarter. I won't say what companies are launching, when, and with what P2P technology or platform as I am not at liberty to share the details I've received from multiple people, but the service is on it's way sooner than people may think.

For content owners and CDN providers, this is a good thing. What content owner really wants to deal with how their content is delivery and the protocol or technology used? They want it delivered to the right user, at the right time, to the right device and for the right price with performance, which is defined in many ways. And for CDN vendors, why not give customers more options and potentially different levels of performance and price?

This will be a positive step in the right direction for all involved as with choice comes more adoption and with more adoption comes more growth.

Other P2P Posts

- Confusion Reigns Supreme When It Comes To P2P Delivery Networks

- Do P2P Networks Really Support Streaming?

- P2P Delivery Networks Can't Survive On Their Own

- Online Video Distribution Requires A Hybrid Approach

- Carriers Speak Out On Peer to Peer

Moderator Needed: SM Europe, "From the Web to your TV: New Media Delivery Revolution"

I had a last minute cancellation from a round-table panel at the Streaming Media Europe show taking place in London next month. If you are interested in taking on the role as moderator for the below panel, please contact me ASAP. This is open to everyone, vendors included. The first qualified person to write in gets it. Thanks.

Friday, October 5, 2007
3:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m. - B204
From the Web to your TV: New Media Delivery Revolution
AppleTV, TiVo, Slingbox and a host of other hardware and software products are starting to deliver new media content from the Web to TVs. Learn what latest devices are being used to deliver consumer content and find out how content creators big and small are utilizing these new tools. Also discussed will be how online content is being treated differently from traditional broadcast content and what potential business models are being created for the monetization of consumer content.

Thomson Acquires SyncCast Delivery Network

This morning, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Thomson has acquired SyncCast Corporation for an undisclosed amount. California based SyncCast is best known for providing tailored digital rights management solutions to customers in the media and entertainment industry since early 2001. While SyncCast really focused on building products for the protection of digital media content and the entire ecosystem around protected media, they also distributed content via their regional content delivery network.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, my guess is that it was less than $30 million.