[-empyre-] brief reply to Felix

[adam <adam@xs4all.nl>]

Hi all,

>
> While the seemingly obvious coherence of streaming media and the web
> can be easily
> dissolved I guess we still have to wonder why it was there in the first
> place.

I think this link between web and streaming is historical and has  evolved
as a development strategy by software houses such as RealNetworks. Since
these entities have provided some of the early technologies they have set
the paradigm. Why they did this I have no idea. However, I can think of
many reasons why its not a good idea, as I outlined in the previous email.

> The accessibility of streaming content in the net may be one possible
> consideration
> (among others).

Yes, but for a longtime there have been ways of linking to content
without using a browser. Winamp has tried to break this connection by
providing a 'minibrowser' which can (for example) show lists of 'stations'
winamp can play (eg. www.shoutcast.com).  In the cultural sector,
HelpB92 did this sometime ago by building its own player and linking to
B92 specific content from within the player. Also, it is pretty trivial
to build a search system into a media player to search  meta data about
streams that can then be played in the player. There is no need to rely on
a browser for searching for, or linking to, streaming content.

I'd say that one of reasons why we connect streaming
content to the web is not because the web provides a better mechanism for
this, but because proprietary codecs are guarded jealously.

Codecs are the core of streaming, in a sense they could be equated to
HTML. What a codec is to a media player, HTML is to the browser. They are
the technologies at the start of the chain, enabling the replay or
re-display of the content.

IE and Netscape largely battled for ownership of users screenspace by
often taking slightly different rendering strategies so that
'standardised' HTML (even W3C approved HTML) appeared different in
each browser. After a while the browser with the larger distribution
achieved a critical mass of developers and the others could just be
expected to fade away. Netscape, with fewer users, appeared to many people
to display webpages 'wrong' -  users didnt appreciate that
Netscape actually conformed closer to the rules of rendering HTML than IE
did. So in a sense IE came to 'own' HTML. HTML ceased to be the standard,
IE became the standard.

Most developers (especially for commercial sites) just simply gave up trying to
keep dual compatability for the website in Netscape and IE, and as the
numbers of Netscape browsers hitting their site got fewer, this strategy
was easier to justify.

With streaming we have a similar battle. This time the battle isnt over
the re-display of HTML content, it is over the replay of audio and video
content.

This is a battle over the proliferation of the media players and
hence its a battle of the distribution and use of codecs (and all
streaming media producers play a role in this).

One of the strongest tools in this struggle for dominance, which  each of
the main propietary codec developers has - is their media player, the
other tool is the ability to prevent other players using their codec(s).

While this state persists we won't see many applications developing that
allow a codec-agnostic approach to content replay. Making a universal
codec player is a threat to the status of RealNetworks and Microsoft. They
want people to use _their_ players.

The more content produced to replay _only_ in a particular player, the
larger the revenue opportunity for the people that own the player -
RealNetworks, Quicktime, Microsoft.

As they gain market dominance they can charge more for putting your
content behind the channel buttons in the interfaces of their media
players.

I think revenue is the reason why these players have commercial channels
embedded in their interfaces and dont allow for a 'community' or
non-profit channel listing. This is why Disney and CNN can exist within
the 'tunable' media player and 'we' are relegated to linking to content
from the web. 'We' get second best because we cant pay.


> The Real Networks and other software already featured the concept of
> channels reintroducing
> some sort of radio feel to the game. But then the dependance from a
> company's commercial
> partners influences the possibility to select these services, a major
> difference to airwaves where an
> initially state-controlled frequency range is open to the browsing
> process.


Infact its worse than this. There are three major pproprietary codec
owners so its like having three spectrums, all regulated by competitive
commerical interests, all requiring a different 'tuner'.

Anyways, more later.

adam



Adam Hyde
r a d i o q u a l i a
http://www.radioqualia.net


The Streaming Suitcase
Streaming Media Consultant





Free as in 'media'