Since he started with the Scoble Show, Robert Scoble has taken quite a lot of flak over the length of some of his videos. Now whilst I certainly think that some of the ones I have watched could do with some editing, I’m not massively concerned if the videos are of different lengths – if the people on the video have something interesting to say then I’m happy to watch.
Perhaps the ultimate example of the long video, is the Vista v MacOS X debate that he posted to coincide with the launch of Windows Vista which is in two parts, as it lasts just over two hours.
The video is long because in essence Robert just brought a group of friends together, pointed the camera at them, and got everybody to start talking. As such they quite often go off at interesting, but unrelated tangents. However there is a lot of interesting discussion. Participants alongside Robert and Maryam include Fred Davis, who co-founded Wired Magazine, Harry McCracken, editor in chief of PC World Magazine, Sam Levin, who founded the Stanford Mac User group, and Jeremy Toeman, who used to work for Sling Media.
This is the first hour:
Interesting stuff in this hour includes a discussion of TV technologies, including quite a heated debate between Jeremy Toeman and Fred Davis over whether broadcast TV, or TV over IP is the better medium. Toeman argues that because of bandwidth issues, broadcast is still the best way to offer large scale distribution. Davis argues that IPTV is the only way to make multi-view sporting broadcasts for example viable. Now whilst it may be true that in the US people aren’t seeing that, anybody with UK digital TV will know that both the BBC and Sky are doing what Davis says needs IPTV right now…
The second hour is here:
This is where more of the Vista related stuff can be found. Interesting points is that nobody seems to recommend that the average consumer should be rushing out to upgrade, and also an interesting discussion about which platform is right for which sort of user.
Certainly well worth a watch if you’ve got a spare two hours!
Well, with regard to the multi-view sporting broadcasts, currently the BBC and Sky have to pick which matches to show. For example, today there were eight football Premiership games, of which Sky showed two – and both of those were pay-per-view. Due to Sky’s dictate, I had to get down to the Madejski Stadium for a 12:45 kick-off today, where we’d prefer to play at the traditional 3pm. Our away game at Spurs has been moved from the original 3pm on 31 March to 4pm on the Sunday, 1 April, again to suit Sky.
In another coincidental piece of schedule shuffling, Reading’s away FA Cup game at Manchester United next week is now to be played at 5:15pm, to suit the BBC’s schedule this time.
If I want to watch any other Reading matches that Sky have not deemed fit to show, it _is_ possible to find them on the Internet, using various peer-to-peer streaming programs. What you actually get is the broadcast from assorted foreign broadcasters. In some cases that’s with English commentary; in other cases, not, depending on which channel you find. The stream isn’t usually great quality, but it’s just possible to see what’s happening. The system delays the stream a lot, though – up to three minutes with the Man City-Reading match last week. Listening to the live radio commentary versus the delayed pictures was a little challenging!
The radio spectrum is really just too crowded to get enough channels to show all the matches live simultaneously. Even if we moved DVB-T to MPEG-4 or VC-1 to reduce required bitrate per channel, and allowed for the analogue switch-off which will free up a number of frequencies (some of which may be used to provide a greater number of multiplexes) there’s just not enough space. I also don’t see much greater market penetration of satellite TV – the initial cost remains too high.
Richard,
Thanks for watching! I wrote some follow-up thoughts on the broadcast vs IP topic on my blog this past week – http://www.livedigitally.com/2007/02/10/is-tv-really-opening-up-soon/ – it’s not exactly a black and white issue, and as you mention, the topic changes dramatically when you think about it from an international scale.
Best,
Jeremy
Jeremy, thanks for your comments, and the link to your blog. In terms of the UK, IPTV won’t be practical without increased bandwidth, for example large parts of the country have only limited access to fast broadband. Here I can get 8 meg, but the next village, parts of it are lucky to get 512k because the village is on a telephone exchange in another neighbouring village. Some areas have cable, but not everywhere.
However most people can either get digital TV either from Sky, or Freeview, and combine that with a PVR, and whilst it’s not quite video on demand, it’s certainly pretty close.
Alongside that, both Sky and Freeview offer ‘red button’ services for selected sporting events, offering multiple viewing angles, alternative commentary and so on. Whilst as Mike pointed out in his comment it has limits, it is certainly something which I’ve not seen done on the digital TV setups I’ve seen in the US and Canada.