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February 12, 2004
brave new video.
funny how things work. i was typing notes for a paper on the future of video distribution when i came across andrew grumet's proposal for an RSS scheme for PVRs. Makes sense. Sounds familiar to eli's thoughts on video metadata. Browsing andrew's blog, I also came across a dowbrigade post about why we need video aggregators in order to decentralize the media, moving control away from the center. politically and technically, i agree with most everything he says.
my personal take on the thing is that once we open up the bandwidth to the last mile and video goes ip, anyone with a streaming server can be a quote-unqoute-broadcaster. more importantly, anyone who can read someone else's rss video metadata feed and aggregate their favorite content can become a video "channel." (video boingboing anyone?)
and therein lies the true disruption of a marriage between rss and video over ip: in a world where there is more bandwidth than video cache (on-demand content) and the number of distribution points (blogs) are near infinite, finite channel space (broadcast, cable) becomes irrelevant.
more importantly, branding becomes king. even if you've never distributed video before, if you have an audience that already trusts you for a particular opinion on whatever it is that you do, they will continue to go to you when you diversify into a different medium. that is why vice magazine can have a clothing store in nyc. if you trust their taste in music and movies, you'll probably be open to the idea of having them sell you a pair of pants.
it is the reason why the audience followed cnn from their cable box to the browser and it is why i think entities as diverse in purpose as wbai, the catholic church, the nra, and eyebeam will all have "video feeds" within the next 5-10 years. when you marry decent downstream bandwidth with the ease of weblog publishing and the simplicity of rss aggregation, anyone can be a rich-media content distributor. anyone can be a "teevee channel."
there will always be a need for live video events (sports, presidential speeches, the victoria's secret fashion show.) but if the video isn't time sensitive, it won't be distributed through a TV lineup. one day the idea of waiting until 8PM to watch the latest episode of My Favorite Sitcom will seem as antiquated as contacting a switchboard to put a local telephone call through for you.
i can't wait for the day that my grandchildren laugh at me when i tell them how video channels were once programmed in sequence. ; )
Posted by yatta at February 12, 2004 1:48 AM
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» Great Minds... from sindikk.aeshin
Wow. Kenyatta Cheese, Andrew Grumet and I are thinking along very similar lines. I really need to get in touch with these guys (and Eli Chapman too). [Read More]
Tracked on February 12, 2004 3:27 AM