Saturday, May 7, 2011

Web Broadcasting: Present and Future

Author: Abhirup Das, Devdut Saha, Amit Sarangal, Ashutosh Sinha

Web Broadcasting

Internet has become an important source of information sharing and gathering medium. Information technology is most probably one sector that is changing rapidly with time. Everyday new technologies are coming into the scenario which are making our work simpler and eventually making us dependable on them. Initially we used to gather information through the internet in the form of texts and now with the advancement of technology, the information is supported with photos and videos. Now in the era of web2.0 users can contribute to the content of the websites that are on web2.0.
            Streaming has become an important feature of the web2.0. Streaming media are multimedia that are constantly received by, and normally presented to, an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g., radiotelevision) or inherently non-streaming (e.g., booksvideo cassettes, audio CDs). The verb 'to stream' is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner. Internet television is a commonly streamed media.

History:
            Attempts to display media on computers were made date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century. However, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware.
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to display various media. The primary technical issues related to streaming were:
·         Having enough CPU power and bus bandwidth to support the required data rates.
·         Creating low-latency interrupt paths in the operating system (OS) to prevent buffer under run.
However, computer networks were still limited, and media was usually delivered over the non-streaming channels, such as by downloading a digital file from a remote web server and then saving it to a local drive on the end user's computer or storing it as a digital file and playing it back from CD-ROMs.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Internet users saw:
·         Greater network bandwidth, especially in the last mile
·         Increased access to networks, especially the Internet
·         Use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IPHTTP, and HTML
·         Commercialization of the Internet.

These advances in computer networking combined with powerful home computers and modern operating systems made streaming media practical and affordable for ordinary consumers. Stand-alone Internet radio devices offer listeners a "no-computer" option for listening to audio streams.
In general, multimedia content has a large volume, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant; to offset this somewhat, media are generally compressed for both storage and streaming.
Increasing consumer demand for streaming of high definition (HD) content to different devices in the home has led the industry to develop a number of technologies, such as Wireless HD or ITU-T G.hn, which are optimized for streaming HD content without forcing the user to install new networking cables. Increasing consumer demand for live streaming has prompted YouTube to implement their new Live Streaming service to users. In 2008 Steve Chen reported to Sarah Meyers of ‘Pop17’ that "Live video is just something that we've always wanted to do, we've never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year." 
A media stream can be streamed either by live or on demand. Live streams are generally provided by a means called true streaming. True streaming sends the information straight to the computer or device without saving the file to a hard disk. On Demand streaming is provided by a means called progressive streaming. Progressive streaming saves the file to a hard disk and then is played from that location. On Demand streams are often saved to hard disks and servers for extended amounts of time; while the live streams are only available at one time only (e.g. during the Football game).

Web broadcasting:
      The concept of web broadcasting is derived from the advancements in the streaming and is becoming popular day by day and who knows it can substitute the television in our home if the technology becomes more advanced and cheaper.
            The web broadcasting can be classified primarily into two categories:
·         Live broadcasting
·         On-demand broadcasting

The live broadcastings are the videos, audios or any multimedia items that are uploaded into the website and received at the same time. Examples of such can be a live telecast/broadcasting of the cricket match, football match or IPTV. The content of the live broadcasting is lost after the broadcasting period is over.
On-demand broadcastings are the videos, audios or any multimedia items that are uploaded into the website and can be accessed at any later point of time. Examples of such can be YouTube. This service provide the user with a large subset of  functionality including pause, fast forward, fast rewind, slow forward,  jump to previous/future frame etc.

The broadcasting service is based on offerings of different tools and services to the customers. The tools and services used in broadcasting can be classified as follows:

o   Live broadcasting: Refers to various types of media broadcast without a significant delay.
o   Scheduled broadcasting: Planned & timed broadcasting.
o   On-demand broadcasting: Get at your preferred time.
o   Embed live video/recorded video: Video as a part of a webpage.
o   Integrated text/video chat: Text & video chats occur in parallel.
o   Webcam/mobile capture: Live stream of video data.
o   Images
o   Music
o   Add titles
o   Multiple participants: Conferencing option.
o   Import video: Get the video for use on your web page or local disk.

Let us look at different players in the market in terms of the services that they offer.

Players
Live broadcasting
Scheduled broadcasting
On-demand broadcasting
Embedded live video
Mobile phone capture
Operator11
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Stickam
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recorded
U Stream
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Kyte

Yes
Yes
Yes
Live-images
Youcams
Yes


Yes

Splashcast

Yes
Yes
Yes
Recorded


   
Players
Import online video
Pre-recorded video
Still images
Music
Multiple Participants
Add titles
Operator11

Yes


Yes

Stickam

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

U Stream






Kyte

Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
YouCams
Yes



Yes

Splashcast
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes


A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips on internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video. The website, mainly used as the video hosting website, is usually called the video sharing website.
The Purpose of video hosting is to save on bandwidth costs, often eliminating costs entirely. It creates a common place and makes a hassle-free experience, where uploading a video and streaming or embedding would normally require advanced programming knowledge. It is now commonly achieved through a web browser, with little or no programming experience.
The next stage of broadcasting saw the entrance of the live streaming on web. A mobile live streaming software called Qik allows the users to upload videos from their cell phones to the internet. The videos will then be stored online and can be shared to various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Videos will be stored on the servers and can be watched from both the mobile devices and the website. Later on Bambuser has made strides into the live streaming and outperformed Qik . It streams live video from mobile/webcam using 3G /WiFi network. It also interact and communicate through web to mobile chat and provide feature of Geo-tagging via cell-ID or GPS.
The advantage of Bambuser over Qik is that it has lower latency in transmitting the video to the web due to superior technical approaches adopted by Bambuser. With Bambuser streaming can be done from both mobile and computer and to Facebook wall. The challenge with live streaming to web from mobile was the poor mobile network but Bambuser has overcome the challenge by transmitting as much as data possible and simply skipping the data that can’t get through the networks and saving it for later. Data dropped during broadcast is uploaded afterwards and the video is completed and is provided on demand.

The application ( Bambuser/Qik) has to be installed on your mobile and has to be used in place of the normal video capturing tool. The application uses the networks (EDGE, GPRS, 3G or WiFi) to transmit the video data from bambuser servers to the web and needs operating systems like windows, Symbian S60, Mac OSx.

Business Model:
On-demand broadcasting:
The user accounts are created for free in the on-demand broadcasting sites like YouTube, Metacafe etc. The source of revenue for this type of service providers are the advertisements on their website. Video on demand sites have advertisements flashing on the homepage along with the video. For e.g. let us take the case of YouTube which is the 2nd most visited site in the world has different subscriptions rates depending upon the number of ads as well as the duration of the ads on YouTube.

Live streaming:
            The live streaming sites provide the user with two kinds of accounts: free account and premium paid account. The free account user gets the basic streaming services and the revenue is mainly through the advertisements in the websites. The premium account holders pay for the extra services provided by the service providers. The extra services includes the ad-administration system for the account holder, supporting services, editing functions on the videos uploaded, a dedicated higher bandwidth for the upload and viewing of the videos and extensive management tools for various activities.

The above diagram is a pictorial representation of the business model of the live streaming service providers.

Threats:
The threats to the On-demand broadcasting service are the upload of the copyright and pirated videos or contents and also there can be inappropriate contents that can be uploaded to the website. Now many sites are coming up for on demand videos and it has increased the bargaining power of the advertisers. The websites has to show the number of hits to get the ads. Another challenge to the On-demand broadcasting is that they have to support as many audio and video formats as possible to attract users.
On the other hand the live streaming websites has problems with the network coverage of the telecom service provider. There are also substitutes available for different services like Television for IPTV, which indicates that if a person s in home then he/she will prefer to watch TV than IPTV. The live streaming service providers has to continuously update the technology they are using to survive in the business and they have a huge dependency on the mobile devices on which their software can run. They have to compete on latency with the other players in the market.

Future:
          The future of Web broadcasting seems promising as technology is getting better and cheaper day by day. The mobile live streaming industry is growing at a rate of 99% year on year basis in 2009 according to Gigaom. More and more people are using internet and high-end mobile sets which has enhanced the chances of web broadcasting industry to attract these people as user. The important thing to notice in the future is the competition on the basis of technology. The one who has the better technology will outclass the others.

References:
  1. http://www.wikipedia.com
  2. Bambuser: Live from your mobile presentation
  3. http://gigaom.com/
  4. http://www.go2web20.net/   

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