I’m not so sure of the AWS route – you already mention that it would need to scale early, and that bandwidth costs would be an issue. For all of its benefits, AWS pricing would chew through dollars much faster than comparable capacity at a colo.

They were the winner of the Amazon Web Services challenge: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi%2dcontent=NEWS%5fVIEW%5fPOPUP%5fTYPE&newsId=20071206006270&ndmHsc=v2%2aA1196946000000%2aB1197040954000%2aDgroupByDate%2aJ2%2aN1000837&newsLang=en&beanID=202776713&viewID=news%5fview%5fpopup

James

Nice post. I have been working on a similar idea for the past 8 months. Just last night (here in Atlanta) I had a similar conversation with the guys at Konsole Kingz (see: http://www.konsolekingz.com) about a start-up HD distribution platform. They have a deal with MSFT and the the Xbox team – they produce most of the urban HD content on the Xbox Live network.

In our conversation we agreed that:

1) There are enough HD box (i.e. Sony PS3s, Xbox 360s and Tivo HDs, etc.) in the world to support a low overhead startup.

2) Openness of these boxes is key – I think that Sony has the right idea – having a browser on the box. If they would only implement the same RSS reader on the PS3 that is found on the PSP, the world would be a much better place for HD content.

3) There is a ton of content already in the wild that simply needs to be converted to the proper format, wrapped in a little meta data and published in a user friendly way. For proof, head over to the iTunes podcast directory and peep out the growing amount of HD content. There are also dozens of content start-ups that are producing wonderful HD – think MariposaHD – It’s so well done that it almost drove me to buy a new PC just to watch it.

4) In the end, RSS is everything and Torrents might be a waste of time. The ability to subscribe to content, and have a slow, direct download, is much better than hunting for something interesting (think Pirates Bay, Vuze and Stage6) and waiting for the peers to feed you. This is why the iTunes podcast directory is so popular globally. If this were not the case Vuze would be the answer – trust me it’s not.

In the end a graceful directory, workable publishing standards and amazing content will win out over any other (YouTube like) model.

Sites to sample:

http://www.ps3stage.com – example of a Stage6 hack that proves how painful a “wack” directory and user experience can be. Great way to find HD Divx content for the PS3 if you have time to hunt and peck.

http://www.MariposaHD.com – one of the best of broadband HD content. howerver, they are at the mercy of the torrent crowds sadly.

http://www.konsolekingz.com/blog/ – doing a great job in focusing on their niche, and MSFT has brought them an international audience via their very closed Xbox Live network.

Paul, if you would like to talk about this in person hit my up at jharris9999 at gmail.com. I might even have a few bucks to toss into the pot.

All the best and happy New Year,

James Harris
CEO and Chief Storyteller
Elemental Interactive / ListenShare
Atlanta, Ga

That said, personally I like the Quicktime delivery method on onegoodmove.org, having the option to download right there on the page but on anything other than the Mac at home, (read: work computers), Quicktime is a pain to use.

Stage6 sometimes is a bit unreliable, and it can be slow to have ones videos activated on it by its browser based upload feature.

Also bandwidth from Stage6 sometimes is not fast enough for HD content, especially to Europe, at least as far as I have tested it. So it’s just fine for DVD quality, but for HD quality sometimes it looks like the bandwidth provided is not fast enough. DivX says they have 10 million visitors per month on Stage6, so they must be using huge amounts of bandwidth, which can explain some of the occasionnal downtime or slow activation of new uploaded videos. But certainly the quality is better than anywhere else.

I’ve been posting my 500 HD videos in 1280×720 DivX 3.5mbit/s. 95% of computer screens support 720p and it looks great on those.

I think the new $200 720p camcorders from Kodak, Aiptek, Exemode are very interesting, hopefully one of these shoots good enough quality in terms of optics. If not I think the Sanyo HD1000, HD700, HD2 are very usable for HD video-blogging now. Samsung, Toshiba are also coming with some that look interesting. And of course the 1080i AVCHD from Sony and Panasonic. I’ve been using my Sony HC1 HDV since September 2005, so I am looking for a solid state HD camcorder upgrade, perhaps one of the $200 ones would do the trick for me, as long as the optical quality and encoding quality is satisfactory.

There’s a time limit and I’m not sure if that video is embedable on a website, just viewable on theirs, similar to Vimeo. Also it appears as though the video is just MOVs etc and not converted to HD Flash 9 for better loading times. I’m not 100% but that’s what I got from briefly checking out the site. Thanks for the comment.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/video3

Secondly the bandwidth problem presents huge technical hurdles. Not to mention the net neutrality debate, where the ISPs will come after you (remember BBC iPlayer).

This service will need to exploit P2P like architecture, where content can be downloaded with minimum hops (if it exists). Neither Adobe or Amazon can help here. You will have rely on the likes of Kontiki or Limelight.

PS — What about IPTV players? Can’t they enable such an infrastructure?

Running Windows at least, watching HD movie trailers is a pain because Quicktime launches externally (and sporadically) and why bother with WMV-HD. If studios published in FLV format I would go there to watch new trailers for sure.

I think practically – some sort of a netflix model would work easily – unless something special happens for bandwidth.

But I would ask this basically – Is there a need? If so what is the market? I certainly don’t see the market for 8MB photos version of flickr! Hope you get my point.

Niche market however will surely exist. Disney, Big well-known independent artist. you have to think of it in a bootstrap way. Not for common you and me :-). Of course, unless you are rich and in the US/South Korea.

Great article Paul!

Talk soon….