TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® Streaming Media Demystified Michael Topic McGraw-Hill New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distrib- uted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-140962-9 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-138877-X. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. 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McGRAW-HILL TELECOMMUNICATIONS Bates Broadband Telecommunications Handbook Bates GPRS Bates Optical Switching and Networking Handbook Bates Wireless Broadband Handbook Bedell Wireless Crash Course Benner Fibre Channel for SANs Camarillo SIP Demystified Chernock Data Broadcasting Clayton McGraw-Hill Illustrated Telecom Dictionary, Third Edition Collins Carrier Class Voice Over IP Faigen Wireless Data for the Enterprise Guthery Mobile Application Development Harte Delivering xDSL Harte 3G Wireless Demystified Held Deploying Optical Networking Components Kobb Wireless Spectrum Finder Lee Lee’s Essentials of Wireless Lee Mobile Cellular Telecommunications, Second Edition Louis Broadband Crash Course Louis M-Commerce Crash Course Louis Telecommunications Internetworking Muller Bluetooth Demystified Muller Desktop Encyclopedia of Telecommunications, Third Edition Nichols Wireless Security OSA Fiber Optics Handbook Pecar Telecommunications Factbook, Second Edition Radcom Telecom Protocol Finder Richard Service Discovery: Protocols and Programming Roddy Satellite Communications, Third Edition Rohde/Whitaker Communications Receivers , Third Edition Russell Signaling System #7, Third Edition Russell Telecommunications Pocket Reference Russell Telecommunications Protocols, Second Edition Sayre Complete Wireless Design Shepard Optical Networking Demystified Shepard SONET/SDH Demystified Shepard Telecom Crash Course Shepard Telecommunications Convergence Simon Spread Spectrum Communications Handbook Smith Cellular System Design and Optimization Smith Wireless Telecom FAQs Snyder Wireless Telecommunications Networking with ANSI-41, Second Edition Sulkin Implementing the IP-PBX Vacca I-Mode Crash Course Wetteroth OSI Reference Model for Telecommunications Whitaker Interactive Television Demystified CONTENTS Preface xv Acknowledgments xvii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 The Medium 9 What Is Streaming Media? 10 A New Distribution Channel 17 No More Downloads 20 Audio/Visual Web Stuff 22 Web Radio 23 Video on Demand 26 Distance Learning 27 Synchronized Multimedia 29 Simulcast 30 Mobile Streaming Media 31 Streaming Chat 32 Corporate Communications 34 Streaming Cameras 36 Special Interest TV 37 Streaming Media and e-Commerce 39 Independent Film Making 41 D-Cinema 42 High-Definition Streaming 45 Time Shifting and Live Pause 47 Streaming and Advertising 49 Interactive Tutorials 52 v For more information on this book, click here. Information Blitzes and Search Randomizers 53 Streaming from DVD (WebDVD) 54 How Does Streaming Media Work? 55 Compression 59 Bandwidth 65 Pipes 69 The Personal Computer and Streaming Media 75 Players 76 Microsoft Windows Media Technologies 77 QuickTime and Sorenson 96 MPEG-4 100 Content Delivery Networks 121 Edge Servers 124 Quality of Service 127 Real Video and Real Audio 136 Streaming Media Servers 148 Multicasting 149 Audio and Video Cleaning 156 Synchronized Multimedia 157 Peer-to-Peer Replication 159 Rights Management 160 Other Things That Go “Stream” In the Night 168 Why Was Streaming Media Invented? 169 Corporate Communications 171 WANs Are Cheaper than Airlines 172 Distance Learning and Interactive Learning 173 IPTV 173 Microsoft Video for Windows 174 Microsoft NetShow 175 Real Audio 176 Liquid Audio 177 How It Panned Out 178 Why Is Streaming Media Better? 179 Better Than Text 180 On-Demand Viewing 181 A Universe of Choice 181 Global and General 182 Wide Reach 183 Interactivity 184 Enriched User Experiences 184 Targeted Advertising 185 Contents vi Immediately Measurable Response 186 Enhanced E-commerce 186 Mobile and Portable 187 Distribution 188 Content Production Costs 190 Democracy and Media Control 192 Setting the Agenda 192 Encryption 193 The Joys of Unregulated Media 194 Play It Again, Sam 195 Searching and Filtering 195 Copyrights Rule 196 Fingerprinting and Watermarking 198 Archiving 199 Using Metadata 199 Simulcast Synchronized Multimedia 200 Standards Conversions Obsolete 201 Information Density 202 Tracing Sources 203 Trust Networks 203 Viewer Reviewers 205 Not Dictation 206 The Return of Community 207 Everyone Is Beautiful—Avatars 208 Content is King 208 Who Is Driving Streaming Media’s Innovation? 208 Microsoft 209 Real Networks and Intel Architecture Labs 211 Apple 212 Sorenson 213 The Moving Picture Experts Group 213 Other Vendors 214 Research 215 What’s Wrong with Streaming Media? 216 Audience Critical Mass 217 Profitable Business Models 218 Ubiquitous Broadband Networks 219 Standards and Lack of Adherence to Them 220 Quality of Video Service/ Quality of Experience 221 Quality of Network Service 221 Receivers and Players 224 Contents vii Content Providers—Where Are the Big Names? 225 Fresh Searches 226 Web Publishing Issues 227 Mobile Networks and Devices 229 Cost-Effective Content Production 230 A Killer Application? 231 When Will Streaming Media Be Ready for Prime Time? 232 Broadband Penetration 233 The Fight for Rights 236 Digital Rights Management 236 Mobile Media 241 Appliances and Receivers 242 Finding a Killer Application 242 When Standards Prevail 243 Sound Business Models 243 Media Search Engines 244 Fast Seeking Support 245 Chapter 3 The Audience 247 Who Will Watch? 248 Demographics 248 The Multitasking Viewer 249 Values 250 Expectations of the Media 251 Community Spirit 252 The Need for Speed 252 Expectations of Search Relevance 252 The Need to Contribute and Interact 253 Respect for Digital Rights 253 Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Streaming Networks 254 Protection from Perversion 256 Silver Surfers 257 Serious Business 257 Learners 258 How Will We Watch Streaming Media? 259 The PC Platform 261 Set-Top Boxes and Beyond 261 Mobile PDA and Web Tablets 262 In the Car 263 In Public Places 263 At the D-Cinema 264 Contents viii On the Fridge 265 Around the House 265 Surveillance Centers 266 When Will We Watch? 267 The Competition for Attention 268 Time Is Precious 269 Saving Time 270 Every Business Is in Show Business 271 Getting What You Need 273 When You Don’t Know 273 When You Want to Know More 274 Anywhere 275 Anytime 275 The Simulcast Experience 276 Personal Streaming Universes 277 Why Watch Streaming Media? 277 Better Than Books? 279 Fast Variety 280 Whenever You Want 281 A Personal Information Shadow 282 Video Beats Text 283 Informative and Interactive 283 The Best Mentors 284 The Best Salesmen 284 Body Language 285 Intimate Connections 286 Natural Modes of Thought 286 What Will We Watch? 288 Hyper News 289 Effective Education 291 Help at Hand 292 Love Interactions 293 Immersive Entertainment 293 D-Features 294 Video Instant Messaging and Mail 294 Special-Interest Magazine Shows 295 Archives and Vaults 295 Streaming Auctions 296 Fly-By, Walkthrough Streaming 297 Extreme Retailing and E-Commerce 297 Honey, I Shrunk the Children 297 Contents ix TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® [...]... to appreciate just how essential the efforts of other people are in the process and what a great debt they are owed I, therefore, offer my humble thanks and appreciation to the following people: Peter Symes for suggesting that I write this book and for making the necessary introductions I hope my book is half as good as yours Steve Shepard—thanks for the helping hand and encouragement when I was in... Portnoy—thank you for being there over the years and for your generous information on the film industry and its internal workings Ben Roeder—thanks for introducing me to the Kendra project and for giving me some understanding of what it is like to be a broadband service provider Ross Summers—thanks especially for the insights into the streaming media industry and for tramping through all the trade shows with... all of the data pipes entering the home, locally store content of interest and serve the household’s lightweight screens and handheld wireless devices directly (Figure 2.4) The potential for new and exciting consumer appliances is vast The same holds true for authoring and delivering digital media Today, the media producer must author separately for each individual medium and delivery channel In the future,... even the most casual of users, the medium will undoubtedly achieve widespread acceptance These setbacks are temporary Part of the process of demystifying streaming media is, then, an exploration into why the medium is still in its infancy and why it will inevitably change in the future This book will guide the reader through the maze of acronyms, proprietary and open technologies, business models, and. .. communications and digital media technologies used to create and deliver streaming media We unravel the medium itself, including its component technologies We examine the audience for streaming media, to understand what is driving demand for the medium The business of streaming media is also investigated, to provide a fiscal context for its supply and demand Finally, we look at the upsides and downsides... owned and controlled by a handful of powerful media companies With analog media, the producer of the content had great control and the most profitable products were those that appealed to a mass audience, since economies of scale applied to the manufacturing and distribution of media products The advent of the desktop computer created an opportunity for the invention of new media types—digital media These... to make (often, these were the same companies) Distribution of media was a non-trivial financial undertaking and the media was geared toward serving mass audiences, as we have already noted People like what they know, so vast amounts of money were spent making sure that the public knew about products that the producers wanted to ship in volume The more they knew about them, the more they bought Broadcasting... significant problems The Internet was designed to be resilient Data is broken up into small packets and each packet finds its own route to the end-user The Internet was designed this way so that if part of the network was destroyed or busy, subsequent packets could follow other routes The lost packets could also be resent, the packets all assembled back into the correct order by the receiver, and the payload... lost 13 The Medium and must be resent, you cannot stream The loss of even one of these packets causes the pictures to freeze (Figure 2.3) Buffering can help, so that there is enough time to resend and recover data lost during transmission before anybody notices, but the longer the buffer, the less responsive the streaming player feels It starts to feel less like changing a television channel and more... packets Part of the answer to this fundamental problem has been the invention of protocols to ensure quality of service These protocols, like RTSP and MPLS, will be discussed later in the book Suffice it to say that they attempt to maintain the integrity of the stream and hence allow streaming to take place uninterrupted In addition to these new network and communications technologies, there are new . 334 Sizing the Potential Market 334 Sizing the Potential Audience 337 Streaming Media and Democracy 337 Streaming Media and Ignorance 338 Streaming Media and Knowledge Capital 338 Streaming Media and the. argument, without some basic understanding of the people the technology is for, what it will do for them and why they might buy it. 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