Windows Media: Encoding

Having worked with streaming media since Quicktime 1.0, I've always noticed the gulf that seems to persist between video people and computer people. For those born and bred on analog editing the step to non-linear editing on Avid systems has resulted in increased productivity. But for some reason the step to streaming video seems to elude many of these normally creative and talented people.

Consumer Market

Windows Media has been rapidly gaining in popularity and recent studies indicate that it has already taken the lead in the important corporate sector. The industry shake out has shown that consumers are not a currently viable business model for streaming media. The bandwidth is still too narrow to supply high quality streaming media to the consumer user. Not only is the bandwidth narrow, but it is also unreliable and fluctuates during the course of the video; causing the video to stop and buffer. Consumers will not pay until the Quality of Service (QoS) and the video clarity rivals that of VHS. To get to that point requires major infrastructure upgrades to terrestrial networks that will not be implemented for years.

Corporate Markets

Corporate markets are beginning to use of Windows Media to provide such services as corporate communications, e-learning, and video channels. Imagine the power of having the CEO speak to everyone in a corporation at their desktop in real time. This ability to deliver a unified message to a global user base is unprecedented. In the past this type of service, usually delivered over closed circuit TV, was very expensive and required major studios to be run by the company. Wealthy Fortune 100 companies only used such services. With the advent of Windows Media this price point has dropped to the level where Fortune 1000 companies can now take advantage of it. Also external providers have also arisen that can deliver video as a service. This frees the companies from having to maintain internal resources to produce and distribute the video. Akamai and Yahoo have entered this market and are the leading providers.

Unfortunately, these services suffer from the same poor quality that effects consumer users. One solution has been to use satellites to bypass the Internet and deliver Windows Media directly to the corporate LAN. This allows video to be delivered at high quality and also be distributed globally. While this is generally more expensive than terrestrial streaming it provides the only alternative that has decent QoS and global reach. It also has the ability to multicast video so that many users can watch the same stream without increasing bandwidth — more on this later. The leader in satellite delivery of streaming media is Loral Cyberstar providing integrated video services and video portals for Fortune 500 customers on a global basis. IBeam has also entered this space though they continue to spend valuable resources on the consumer market where profit is non- existent.

Now that we have given a summary and examined the two markets in which Windows Media is used, let's define some terms before proceeding.

Terms - Page 2