RSSAOL to Utilize P2P for TV Shows, Videos
By Nate Mook | Published November 14, 2005, 3:55 PM
Warner Bros. is preparing to make available for download thousands of old television shows, all free of charge and sponsored by advertising. The effort, dubbed In2TV, will roll out on AOL.com early next year and utilize a new video format called AOL Hi-Q that combines P2P distribution with Windows Media.
Full-length episodes of popular programs such as Welcome Back Kotter, Beetlejuice, Lois & Clark, La Femme Nikita and Growing Pains will be offered through six content "channels." 15- and 30-second ad spots will be mixed into the video, but limited to 1-2 minutes of advertising for every 30-minute show.
The move by Time Warner to make the Warner Bros. television archive available online is intended to draw more broadband users to the company's AOL portal, and follows the launch of iTunes video downloads last month.
But unlike Apple's approach of charging $2, TV shows from AOL will be free and rely on customers' bandwidth for distribution. To make this happen, AOL has partnered with Kontiki, a peer-to-peer video on-demand platform that runs in the background as an Internet Explorer plug-in.
AOL Hi-Q is based on the Kontiki technology and promises DVD-quality full-screen playback -- as long as users are connected to the Internet and sharing videos they have downloaded. Because the new format is based on Windows Media Video with a Kontiki P2P wrapper, only Windows XP and IE6 are supported at this time.
An AOL spokesperson explained the technology to BetaNews, saying, "To make it faster to deliver a video to a user, AOL Hi-Q grabs bits of the specific video content from other PCs on the network. AOL Hi-Q works in the background to minimize any impact on the consumer's use of their PC as bits of the video are being grabbed."
Still, it's unclear how consumers will respond to such a service that places restrictions on usage and could slow down Internet browsing. AOL says that TV shows will be downloaded and cached, rather than streamed, but they will not be viewable unless the user is connected to AOL's P2P network.
Nonetheless, AOL and Warner Bros. are confident that users will jump at the chance to view old TV for free, even with advertising and P2P requirements. "Visitors will be able to program their own personal network, making it a TV lover's dream come true," said Eric Frankel, President of Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution.
AOL Hi-Q will also be used beyond just television shows. As part of a trial, more than 100 videos have been encoded in the format and can be viewed on AOL.com, which include music videos and movie trailers. More content will be added in the AOL Hi-Q format over time.
"We aren't planning to re-encode the entire AOL Video archive, but rather we're focusing on optimizing the most relevant content for AOL Hi-Q," an AOL spokesperson told BetaNews. "Moving forward, our goal is to make as many new videos as possible available in this high-quality format."
Excellent idea, no matter how belated & riddled with growing pains... it portends of a leading widespread internet commerce platform-- not just for multimedia, but also for software, including OS: we are careenering towards predictable models/solutions(foreseeable to all, that is, except the shrill hard-liners on both sides of the DRM debacle)...and soon ALL of us will realize the ridiculousness of all past conflict. We are seeing this gradual process unfold with former branded outlaws and/or pariahs such as Napster, Kontiki, etc. integrating into mainstream & corporate environments.
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|KingMotley, remember it's the first beta for crying out loud!
My download speeds are over 600kb/sec, and I have a satellite connection and only get an average of 80-100kb/sec on regular downloads.
The video quality and sound are great too.
http://hiqvideo.aol.com
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|I won't be using it because I no longer use IE. [shrugs]
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|Sounds cool, but apparently I won't be participating. Lack of both IE and WinXP tends to do that. :P
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|I have to say, I'm not impressed. Trying the beta... Windows lock up, server errors trying to start videos, unable to rewind/fast forward in the videos, and a terrible download speed. Limited to 2 downloads at a time, and getting around 500kb/sec on a 10Mb/sec connection isn't what I would call "fast".
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|My goodness is AOL late at this!!
I was paying $51 for monthy dsl with aol back when they first pushed broadband in late 2001 and when they merged with Time-Warner, I foresaw this development; had they had content that justified broadband to offer then, they could've converted at least 50-60 percent of their then 21 million customers to broadband and tripled their profits. And they could've kept customers like me that moved on to a more affordable dsl service. Instead, they sat on this potential development (which I actually thought they would go with Divx, which was already had a distribution method of hi-quality video virtually on-demand for broadband users, but was mostly limited to porn titles [an industry always ahead of the technological curve]), sat on their hands and I sat out on their service.
Of course, this move is obviously AOL's way of tailgating Google's AND Yahoo's video search feature, albeit with classic tv programs.
Bottom line: AOL can't have it both ways. They can't try to lead the pack while boosting the strategies of their competitors. Besides, the majority of the populace who moved to broadband have no idea what "Welcome Back, Kotter" is or couldn't name a single character from "Growing Pains". But I guess these are properties that are neither on dvd or currently in syndication(?), or in other words, properties not too many people care about. And neither will they care about AOL's latest bid to recover a lot of faith lost in them after their greedy, short-sighted practices over the past few years.
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|Hopefully this move will inspire AOL to reduce the # of integrated ads in their client ...
This is what AOL should have been looking into much earlier -- being the HBO of the Internet with premium content that is high quality -- and what better way to make use of the AOL / Time Warner partnership? Good idea - although it might be a good idea to offer the videos for download without commercial for a fee for additional revenue.
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