25 Cents to Stream a DVD Quality Film80 Cents for HD, a nickel for iPod TV... ( old news - 06:43PM Wednesday Sep 13 2006) tags: prices · Video · bandwidthDave Burstein crunches the numbers behind offering video via broadband and concludes that it costs a quarter to stream a DVD quality movie, 80 cents for an HD film, or a nickel for iPod or AOL TV shows. A much more reasonable analysis than the recent UK report that claimed it cost ISPs $39 to stream a two hour HD film. This compared to broadcast over the air video, which costs a few pennies per hour to distribute. "For providing managed servers and internet bandwidth, several content delivery networks are bidding $10,000 to $12,000 per continuous gigabit per month. That's enough for 700 1.5 megabit streams, almost DVD quality if pre-encoded in the latest MPEG-4, Flash, or Windows Media. Amazon's choice of 2.5 megabit encoding may be raising the bar. It's also enough for over 3,000 300 Kbps streams, appropriate for iPods or the quarter screen video AOL and ABC are distributing supported by ads." Burstein also comments on how players like Apple and Amazon will threaten TelcoTV's already fragile projected profit margins.
Related:- Friday Morning Links
- Cable Tries To Stuff The Internet Video Genie Back In The Bottle
- Cogeco Metered Billing Goes Live, Confuses Customers
- Mandatory Smartphone Data Plans Seem Hypocritical
- TDS Telecom Launches 50 Mbps Fiber
- Netflix To Offer Standalone Streaming Video Service
- ISPs Don't Really Want Per Byte Billing
- Verizon Offers New Prepaid Wireless Broadband Plans
|
 markopoleo
join:2003-04-02
Bonne Terre, MO
 ·Charter Pipeline
| Did not read report..but all the current services fail. Who cares what it costs to stream a movie, the fact remains no online movie store currently can offer a product worth it to consumers.
The only way to do it is to offer a full movie in compressed AND full format for cheaper than you can buy it at a store to make it attractive to customers. No DRM, no restrictions. Simple as that!
Why has it not happened? bickering between movie companies and online companies. Heck even major movie studios that want to open there own stores can't do it right.
Is it any wondering why movie piracy is rampant? The pirates do a better job than companies in distributing movies and giving what people want. lol | |
|  | chemaupr
join:2005-06-06
Alexandria, VA
| Re: Did not read report..but all the current services fail. Zero DRM will not work either. But DRM with reasonable and generous use may work. I'm hoping for more services like Vongo, and Vongo to increase the quality of their downloads. I do not believe they have HD yet.
The other problem I see is that diff studios want to go diff ways... they sould just concentrate efforts in one or two tech and services. | |
| | | markopoleo
join:2003-04-02
Bonne Terre, MO | Re: Did not read report..but all the current services fail. True true, i can see a time limited feature in every download that makes sense as long as its not restrictive other than time limit. But the ability to purchase full movies for a discount price online should not have any restriction imo. | |
| | | | | 
Digital_Boy
@sbc.com
| This is not meant to be an alternative to purchasing movies for ownership.
This would be a shot at the heart of services like Netflix or blockbuster and the transfer of physical media in and out of a residence for rental purposes.
You pay your fee, watch the movie X times during a set period of time (48 hours, whatever), then you delete the file when you're done watching it.
Buying a copy would be an entirely different set of variables. | |
| | | StEaLtHBuNnY
join:2002-10-12
Bergenfield, NJ | Re: Good Online Movie Store yup bittorent is my favorite movie store | |
| | vinnie97
join:2003-12-05
Mesquite, TX | quote:
open 27/7
Amazing, the "store" must be operating in another dimension.  | |
| | 
dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| said by 44402812  :There is only one good online movie store which is called BitTorrent  It is open 27/7, has no late fees, and you can get all the new release while they are still playing in the theatres! :P P.S. Did I mention all the movies are free with no DRM? this is exactly what these online stores dont get.
Its not that we're cheap its that we want to do with it once we buy it, i mean look, i can buy a DVD, rip it to watch either on my PC or on my bigscreen T.V. in stand-alone DVD player.
-
p.s. I shouldn't have to pay extra to burn!
--
You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
| | 
BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Yes stealing stuff must be nice. Why not just walk into Wal-Mart and steal DVDs because you think the price is too high? what kind of morals did you parents instill in you, if any? | |
| | | 
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
 ·Colbanet
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Good Online Movie Store The point is that the existing infrastructure is in place (and in USE) to deliver any sort of content, HD or SD. They just need to monetize the EXISTING (BitTorrent) infrastructure rather than coming up with new complicated, limited, and DRM'd solutions.
Imagine a legitimate movie store structured like a private tracker. Log into the site, download the torrent (And your account is charged), and it seamlessly allows you onto the tracker because the torrent file you downloaded includes a unique ID in the announce URL that uniquely identifies you securely.
It'd be so easy to implement (I could set up an entire movie/tv/music store in a few days, alone), and could be wildly popular due to the ease of use. But they don't want to do it that way, they want to force us to use THEIR store, THEIR software, THEIR players, THEIR drm, and follow THEIR restrictions. They just don't get it. People are willing to PAY for the content if they make it seamless enough, but people aren't AS willing to pay for it if you make them jump through hoops and follow arbitrary restrictions. If I buy a movie online, I want it to play on my computer, (any) portable media player, and TV. Apple is trying to move towards that with the iTV, but that forces me to buy an (expensive!) piece of hardware just to get it on the TV when I already have my own ways of getting it there. Apple won't let me transcode that video for somebody else's media player, or to burn it to a DVD to play in my DVD player, or whatever else.
The sad thing about DRM is that it only punishes the people who pay for it. Pirates will download DRM-free pirated copies, the only people getting DRM are those who purchase the stuff. So, somehow, we've come into a situation where pirates have a less annoying experience with content than people who PAID for it.
So, to sum up my arguments:
1) Bandwidth is "free" if only they'd leverage existing infrastructure (BitTorrent)
2) More people would pay for content if it was easier to use and didn't require specific custom software (ie, opensource BitTorrent clients versus iTunes Store)
3) DRM only hurts people who pay for content, not pirates | |
| amungus
Premium
join:2004-11-26
America
clubs:
| sounds about right. "I'm hoping for more services like Vongo, and Vongo to increase the quality of their downloads. I do not believe they have HD yet."
yeah me too... I'm a little miffed at Vongo for deleting my account for no reason, but they have a sound idea with subscription based movies online. If there were more content, the quality a bit better, it'd be worthwhile. Oh, and HD would really rock for sure.
The whole "raising the bar" makes me laugh though.. Over compressed video looks like garbage. Flash video is better than some mpeg, but it's horrible unless it's at very very very high quality. Scales badly. MPEG-4 is finally good after all these years, and I think it's the way to go for streaming, or most any online content. Microsoft essentially ripped it apart, and put it back together with DRM and a couple tweaks, their compression is about the exact same as DIVX/MPEG-4. ...Raising the bar would seriously entail some high quality video with surround sound. Otherwise, this is all a joke.
This is all still a HUGE step back from even standard NTSC IMHO... Until 'net video is at LEAST as smooth and clear as standard NTSC is on a TV, it's a WASTE of time. They can do quality video, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in doing it RIGHT for the regular joe who just wants to push play. Vongo has that part right at least, making it simple, wait a minute, play a movie, on a TV if you want. ..Quality/selection are the biggest problems.
We should have subscription based video like Rhapsody/Napster by now that beats the pants off of Vongo. Sadly, too many old school, slow to adapt people in charge of making it really happen. Until then, real DVD's, and real HD quality are the only way to go. Sure, it'd be nice to have zero drm, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. For now, drm that doesn't bug you much would be nice. I could deal with encrypted movies that can't be burned if 1) subscription deals are good, 2) quality isn't jerky, overly compressed, and sound was decent coming through good stereo/surround setups. | |
| | pnosker
Premium
join:2003-03-26
Stockton, NJ
clubs: | Re: sounds about right. Yeah, WMV has come a long way... though AFAIK it's Mpeg-4 based so that would make sense. | |
| | RadioDoc
58ef2c0
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| And that's per stream... OTA Broadcast still beats the diapers off of Internet streaming for one reason: There is no incremental cost per viewer. It costs the station the same amount of money to transmit to one TV as it does to transmit to six million. Satellite has similar economics, and cable does too but they have to actually connect the subscriber and maintain the delivery channel and bandwidth necessary to get to them so it's not the same as the "free" delivery OTA has.
Until a viable broadcast mechanism exists on the Internet this is all just a pipe dream (pun intended).
Dave might want to sharpen his pencil though: "This compared to broadcast over the air video, which costs a few pennies per hour to distribute." That's absurd. The electric bill for one transmitter is far higher than "a few pennies per hour", let along what the operator gets paid, the station's fixed overhead, and what it costs to get the program to the station in the first place. However, once you pay for that you're home free.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange. | |
| |
2lazy2register
@sbcglobal.net | Re: And that's per stream... IP does have something similar to OTA broadcasts.
Its called multicasting. Problem is that not too many ISPs have the hardware to support it. | |
| 
owenhome
keeper of the magic blue smoke
Premium
join:2002-07-13
Bentonville, AR
|  You can't compare the two reports!
In the other, the "UK report", the claimed cost is that which the ISP faces to actually deliver the content to the subscriber.
The ISP's infrastructure is INSANELY larger, and FAR FAR FAR more COSTLY than that of the distributer. We're talking billions against tens of thousands. When you consider the cost to deliver gig's and gig's of content to thousands and thousands of ISP subscribers and its associated infrastructure, of course the cost is going to be astronomically higher than that which the simple distributer faces with their one fiber line.
If you are a distributer, you have to build the infrastructure to distribute the media across the Internet. An ISP has to build the infrastructure for the user to actually connect to the Internet and receive the media. The two, both required for the others existence, are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT industries, with COMPLETELY different costs. If AT&T could light up a city for $12K a month, we would be paying a 10cents a month for a 100/100 symmetrical connection.
I am not saying the UK article is correct. I would think the entire BB industry would be in the dirt if it was. But, this news article makes no valid comparison. You're comparing apples to Porsche's. On one hand we have the cost the ISP (AT&T, TW, CC, etc.) faces, and on the other, we have the cost the distributer (Google, YouTube, etc) incurs. How exactly are the two comparable, and whats more, how are they even related?
--
Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. | |
| | algolly
join:2003-08-28
New York, NY
| Re: You can't compare the two reports! ISP infrastructure has multiple uses. While corps like to say that the cost of, say, a single phone call includes the price of building the transatlantic cable, the fact is that a large part of the infra was built for other uses and is already paid for.
In Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown, he cites a legal case where a company claimed that a document cost the _entire value of the minicomputer it was written on_ but the defense showed that the "confidential" document was available from the company's own store for $10.
Of course, I haven't read the reports either, just saying. . . | |
| | |
owenhome
keeper of the magic blue smoke
Premium
join:2002-07-13
Bentonville, AR
| Re: You can't compare the two reports! Well, that's true to a point. But real work vs. investment vs. revenue is all a very tangible, real world cost.
Like your computer example. If during the entire period that computer was in use, it only was used to produce that one document, their argument would have been just.
Broadband roll-outs cost their owners billions of dollars to deploy, any way you cut it. It's true that the vast majority of the infrastructure was in place, to some extent, but it is still very, very costly to adapt that infrastructure to support broadband. And then we have other situations, like FIOS, where the entire infrastructure is gutted and re-engineered. Now, each piece of equipment involved has a real cost. A DSLAM, for example, has a finite tangible cost. We can buy one and know what we paid for it. It will have a usable life span before it is outmoded, replaced, upgraded, etc. During that life cycle, it served X customers who paid X dollars for their service. We can look at those amounts and know what the real cost of that device was to each subscriber. Then we can look at how much data on average each subscriber used over that period and know how much it cost for that DSLAM to deliver a single packet to each customer. If we apply that same logic across the entire industry, to the bandwidth purchased by the ISP, to the equipment constantly rotated through the ISP, to the original cost of the original deployment of the BB infrastructure, and so on and so forth, we can put a real world cost on every aspect of Internet service. From each city, to each RT/node, to each block, to each customer, to each gig, to each packet, all the way done to the zeros and ones.
But what most people fail to realize is that with DSL, or with Cable, a part of the cost of providing Internet service is subsidized by other, more profitable services sold in conjunction with BB. Even if you come to the conclusion that a DSL service is sold at a loss, it is still profitable because it is sold along side POTS.
In the IT world, every part of our budget making and job costing must include life-cycle planning. The BB business is the same in that regard, but in many ways, much worse. In IT, we are not forced to upgrade our servers and networks every few months to keep up with the Jone's like ISP's do. We are not constantly undercutting ourselves, buying customers, just to get them under us. Consequently, Internet service provision is a revolving door of costs.
You could consider how much the ISP pays to push that data down the pipe to your computer, but that's not really relevant. You have to consider the ongoing cost of the entire infrastructure to find any kind of relevant real-world cost. When you look at that and see the big picture, it's a very large number. Much the same way that driving 20 miles doesn't just cost you in fuel, but also in car payments, service, tires, etc. putting the real-world cost of that 20 miles a lot higher than you'd think.
--
Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. | |
| 
nightdesigns
Gone missing, back soon
Premium
join:2002-05-31
AZ
·Cox HSI
| Stream DVD quality, Yeah right DVD quality my ass, DVD is MPEG2, no way you can stream that. HD compression is MPEG4, and true HD which is 1485Mb/sec, I'd love to see that streamed.
I already dis-credit it for false advertising.
--
[[Your signature here]] | |
| | Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO
| Re: Stream DVD quality, Yeah right Correct me if I am wrong, but DVD's have an average of about 3.5mbps (up to 9.8mbps according to the standard for variable bit rate DVDs).
Surely it can be compressed and streamed at a lower quality that wouldnt typically be detected as "flawed".
Also you are not representing the MPEGs properly. MPEG4 is the newer standard and allows for compression to go as low as 1.5mbps. HD may use that, but you can still compress the hell out of that just as much as anything else and still end up with crap at the end (see cable and sat versions of HD). | |
| | |
nightdesigns
Gone missing, back soon
Premium
join:2002-05-31
AZ
·Cox HSI
| Re: Stream DVD quality, Yeah right Yes you can recompress it, but then it's no longer DVD quality. Yeah i know it's a technical thing and the end user would probably never know the difference, but if you're advertising it as such, then that's what it should be.
It should be "equivalent DVD quality"
--
[[Your signature here]] | |
| | | | Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO
| Re: Stream DVD quality, Yeah right The DVD quality you speak of is relevant. The mpeg 2 standard has varible bit rate and constant bit rate standards that DVDs fall into. Sure one movie may look better because they use a higher bit rate (constant or VBR) for video (i.e. super bit DVD's), but who is to say one is DVD quality while the other is not when they both meet the standards?
HD is not exclusive to mpeg 4 as the above poster implies either. MPEG is nothing more then a compression standard and HD uses mpeg 2 as well so in the end it comes down to the relevant quality we speak of. HD obviously has more informaton to feed the player so it has to run at a higher rate. Running HD over a 2mb or even 5mb line will obviously cause a lose in the quality. No one can argue with the fact that if you compress a picture you lose quality and there is simply no way around that at this time and probably never will be. One only needs to compare over the air HD to Satellite and Cable to see the difference that compression brings.
In the end it will depend on the user's connection. If they are able to stream high bit rates then they will have a better experience then someone that has to stream at a lower bit rate. Local high speed caching will help, but that will effect the user experience if they have to cache a 2 hour movie for 1 hour before watching it in all it's DVD glory. | |
| | | |
|
|
Good Online Movie Store
·
Don't see any NUMBERS backing Burstein's guesses