Online TV is failing
Zattoo, Joost, Hulu, iWatch (in Belgium), … they all want to bring TV to the web and to my honest opinion, most of them are seriously failing. First of all, all these services are depending on your current internet connection and that’s their biggest mistake. Why, you ask? Simple. I’m on the road a lot and that is really the only time I would consider watching TV online (if there’s anything decent to follow in the first place, off course). And that’s where the problems start. Hotel internet is in this case the only internet connection I have available to me and if you’ve ever tried hotel internet, you know that that’s not always the best and most reliable connection you can get. Most hotels claim they have high speed internet but when 100′s of people are using it at the same time, it’s not so high speed no more.
Tonight in a hotel in Paris, I tried watching a show on iWatch.be. iWatch is the online video on demand service from the Belgian commercial TV-stations VTM, 2Be and JIMtv. The internet connection is currently clocking at an average of 25KB per second… so how am I supposed to watch a 1MBps stream on that? But first let’s take a step back. Currently, most of these services are using some sort of DRM. Most of these services rely on Windows Media DRM… Emphasis on the “Windows” since this doesn’t work on a Mac. I’d like to think of Mac users as tech-savvy early adopter type people like myself. But isn’t that the exact same target audience online TV is aiming at? Let’s face it, my mother is not going to watch TV on her PC. The people who are going to do this are people like me. People who want to control when (and where) they watch their favorite TV-show themselves. Luckily a Mac can also run Windows these days, so I started my Windows VMWare and launched the iWatch website. The show I wanted to watch costed 2 euros, a price I was willing to pay since it was a lot cheaper than renting a movie on the hotel network. After I paid the 2 euros, I could finally start watching the show only to realize that my current bandwidth wasn’t nearly enough to serve that video… The only thing I got to see was:
Why don’t these types of services offer a DRM’ed self destructing file download option? At least then I could download the file overnight and watch it the next day. At least then my 2 euros would have been worth something, ’cause right now it’s just money wasted. Don’t get me wrong. Not all of these services are bad. Some are really on the right track by choosing a cross-platform delivery system and ad-supported content that the use can just watch without too many hassle but a DRM’ed self destructing file download option is really what I want/need. And I’m sure that there’s a lot of people in the same situation that would love to be able to download their favorite shows overnight with a 24 hour license to watch it… even when they’re offline like on a train with no internet connection or in a hotel with limited internet connection.
Hey… Isn’t that what the Adobe Media Player is all about…?
3 Comments
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Hi Serge,
When you are in London next week I recommend trying BBC’s iplayer it works really well and also compatible with iPhone. I stay in hotels weekly and have not experienced any bandwidth problems. Also it’s flash based on the desktop and works well on Macs but you can’t download the programmes. I believe it was developed by Adobe consulting but I might be wrong!
I’m also still waiting for a good video-download service. iTunes looks great but it will probably take lightyears before we can use it in Belgium. And I am really willing to pay for good quality video. Specially video for the iPhone. That’s just one great device to always have some TV shows on in case you have to wait somewhere for a few minutes. My options now: illegal downloads or ripping de DVDs myself.
Hey, Zattoo works really well. Requires only about 0.5-1mbps. I few years ago this would have meant that I need to connect to a fixed broadband connection. But nowadays public hotspots, hotspots in hotels, and even mobile networks are achieving this bandwidth nicely. Just wait until 3G is ubiquitous which will happen very soon and you will be able to watch TV literally anywhere. This is already the case in many locations. I was in Munich the other day, and my wireless connection on my laptop said it has 1.3 mbps – that’s plenty. Paris will follow shortly, I am sure. In any case, all this discussion will completely go away within a few years only…