Sure. Like we all have been begging for an "Internet service" without
any peering...
The consumers have been begging for unbundling of content and transport.
This does not imply fragmentation of either. That's a content provider
straw man. It is only reasonable to assume that all content providers
will see the benefit in mutual agreements for content exchange with all
other content providers. Just like it's reasonable to assume your ISP
will let you access services hosted by some other ISP.
Of course, if ISPs wanted to make money then they would have tried to
monopolize the market by fragmentation. Not..
Bjørn
Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> writes:
Perhaps, but I'm not entirely sure consumers wanted to spend US$10/month
on 10+ streaming services either.
Perhaps, as consumers, we were fairly ill-thought in assuming studios
and streaming providers wouldn't treat content like it's minerals.
Mark.
In the midst of Netflix + my linear pay-TV service, we actually rent
movies, on-demand, from the linear pay-TV service, which cost over &
above what you pay them monthly already. Fair point, it's US$2 - US$4
per movie, but that's movies that are still reasonably new (3 - 4 months
off the cinema circuit) that would only make it to mainstream TV or VoD
12 - 18 months later. And we do that only twice a month, on average.
Mark.
I'm not entirely sure.
A good portion of our wholesale business is selling access into Africa
to content providers. We have developed a reasonably good nose for which
companies are keen to come to Africa, and which aren't. And for those
that aren't, we have a good idea of when we think they'll have had
enough pressure to be present.
So the numbers are running about when/whether Disney+ will come to
Africa, which provides plenty of information about how we roll out and
plan for network. One data set also caters for how much interest folk
will have in keeping both Netflix and Disney+.
Mark.
Agreed.
It's either naive or presumptuous of any VoD provider to think that they
can each have 100% of the market. More so, that sharing the market
through fragmentation is a viable way to guarantee their going concern
over the long term.
Mark.
It's either naive or presumptuous of any VoD provider to think that they
can each have 100% of the market
Yes, rent seekers are going to seek rent so they will try and be the
tier 1 content provider and all the other content has to pay them
to be seen. They hope to lock up internet as they did with cable
More so, that sharing the market
through fragmentation is a viable way to guarantee their going concern
over the long term.
And try busting or buying each other as they fight to be the only
one.
Aggregators get away with it as there is some value in not having
to mess around buying each item individually but they get greedy
and there is easy profit in selling bundles of exclusive stuff
you won't use.
If they'd stick to just being frictionliess marketplaces for buying
any content you want they'd be providing a useful service (as IXP
help in peering).
brandon
The trajectory for all of this is that, ultimately, if the VoD providers
do not come together and federate or make a solid plan, we'll end up
right back where we started - content piracy.
I will cop to being an avid Napster user way back in 1999. For several
years since, my main music sources have been legitimate - iTunes, Apple
Music, Beatport and Traxsource. All these are, as you say, aggregators;
and in the end, they will be the winners. I have zero desire to pirate
music - also, I'm a DJ :-).
I also have zero desire to pirate video content because Netflix + my
pay-TV service give me everything I want:
\- They are in Africa\.
\- Performance is great\.
\- Uptime is great\.
\- Content is generally good\.
\- Content is plenty\.
\- Price is reasonable
I'm happily forgoing exclusive content on another VoD service, even if
it meets most of the above. That said, if they can integrate into a
single source, happily paying slightly more for the benefit.
Mark.
Music learned to not make stealing a better user experience than
paying. Sadly video weren't watching.
Making it impossible to buy in some locations or removing it from
services where people were paying, in the hope of selling it from
their own service instead, pushes people back to stealing.
I'm not conviced music really learned either, once CDs are gone
there will be little access to reasonable quality uncompressed
downloads as everyone chases quite compressed streams.
Bringing this back on charter, how many different CDN appliances
will we need to host for all these VoD providers? I'm just as
guilty there having made our own CDN for the BBC (as well as using
commercial ones).
brandon
There are quite a lot of places where you can buy DRM free lossless
audio files ranging in quality from CD (44.1 kHz/16-bit/2 channel) all
the way up to 192 kHz/32-bit/5.1 channel and beyond. These are
basically CDs (or better) without the physical CD media and packaging.
There are also streaming services that stream in "CD" quality (lossless
44.1kHz/16-bit) or better, if you prefer that model (and can live with
the fleeting availability of the content). There are even a few record
companies (as long as you do not want an American one) that will sell
you their entire collection of digital studio masters in lossless DRM
free format.
There is not, however, and equivalent for Video -- it is presently stuck
at the "compressed all to ratshit" video and audio level -- unless you
buy physical media and extract the data yourself.
There are quite a lot of places where you can buy DRM free lossless
audio files ranging in quality from CD (44.1 kHz/16-bit/2 channel) all
the way up to 192 kHz/32-bit/5.1 channel and beyond. These are
basically CDs (or better) without the physical CD media and packaging.
There are also streaming services that stream in "CD" quality (lossless
44.1kHz/16-bit) or better, if you prefer that model (and can live with
the fleeting availability of the content). There are even a few record
companies (as long as you do not want an American one) that will sell
you their entire collection of digital studio masters in lossless DRM
free format.
This is true.
On Beatport and Traxsource, you can buy WAV files, which are basically
lossless formats encoded at a 1.411Mbps bit-rate.
They are just marginally more expensive than MP3's (which are of
high-quality also, encoded at 320Kbps).
I normally play WAV files at large sound stages (15,000+ people),
otherwise, 320Kbps MP3 or 256Kbps AAC is just fine.
There is not, however, and equivalent for Video -- it is presently stuck
at the "compressed all to ratshit" video and audio level -- unless you
buy physical media and extract the data yourself.
Which is the reason I had a huge BD budget 2014 - 2016.
I don't subscribe to Netflix's UHD plan, as my 4K TV does all the
heavy-lifting of upscaling 1080p streams, but it's good enough that I
haven't had the urge to buy a BD in 3 years.
Mark.
Bringing this back on charter, how many different CDN appliances
will we need to host for all these VoD providers? I'm just as
guilty there having made our own CDN for the BBC (as well as using
commercial ones).
This is one of the practical issues we are having to consider with this
VoD provider fragmentation.
From experience, CDN's prefer on-net caches to peering/public caches,
and just about all of them are building away from the Akamai's of the world.
We, for example, host a number of CDN clusters at our CLS's along the
Eastern and Southern African coastline. As some of you may remember the
recent discussions on CLS's vs. data centres for co-lo, it presents a
real problem when trying to meet scale, and you want as much content
on-continent for your eyeballs as you can get.
Mark.
This started under the Cable regime, People were complaining about having to buy channel bundles instead of simply choosing the channels they wanted to subscribe to.
Owen
Isn’t NBCUniversal’s streaming service called Xfinity? Isn’t it one of the older ones?
Owen
No, their new service is Peacock and will launch in 2020. [1]
I’m sure they’ll have the same set of CDNs that service them as the other streaming services and that most of them will eventually go the Netflix (OCA) style route for their VOD content over time as well.
- Jared
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacock_(streaming_service)
This model is quite similar to what Multichoice (Africa's main pay TV
service provider) have done with their streaming service, ShowMax.
Basically, if you are an existing customer of their linear service, then
you get ShowMax for free, ad free.
I see that Peacock is going the same route for their existing
NBCUniversal, Comcast and Sky linear customers, which makes plenty of
sense to me.
Mark.
Each service *is a cable company*, requiring it's own set-top box (or a
plug-in that works on your current box/tv.
Note also that you can't DVR any of this stuff, and it *does* go away.
Cheers,
-- jra
Speaking as a consumer I tend to purchase content and things like OTA broadcasts are available overnight without commercials. Thus is worth it for me. Cut the 30 minute show to 18-22 and can download without geo locks wherever I am.