Blu-Ray disc use receding faster than expected

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Derek McCabe

When you use a cloud service to host your videos, all you do is include a link or embed your link on the internal company intranet. A normal corporate network can easily handle the playback traffic. That is the entire point of outsourcing your streaming video needs to a professional cloud service. Dropbox, Google, HighTail, FileFactory, among others all all getting into cloud video services.

That is not streaming a video over your Intranet. That is streaming a video via your Internet connection.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Derek,

Apparently NY is unique in the US. I live only 18 miles from an international airport and only got access to broadband cable 3-4 years ago. Telcos have very limited reach, so I don't ever expect FIOS or DSL here. As in most areas of the country, I live in a broadband monopoly area. I pay $100/mo for poor service. I won't be bringing flowers to Comcast any day soon. More appropriate items might include pitchforks and torches.

For some humor on the topic, this is a must-read. The comments echo the author's experiences:
An Open Letter to Comcast / Xfinity | Ramblings

BTW, I was at an event in Hollywood last week where Netflix and Comcast were featured speakers on one panel. The Netflix technical representative recommended 25 mbps or more for a consistent 4K experience. Behind the scenes, the organizers had specifically asked the speakers not to bring up net neutrality as it could be divisive. What was the first question from the audience? Net neutrality, of course! Responses were, um, properly restrained. :)

Anyway, don't assume that the Internet infrastructure in NYC is any more representative of the rest of the country than it's public mass transportation system is. And if net neutrality is dead, the cable monopolies won't only have power over their subscribers. They will have power to throttle back services as well.

Then we have the proposed Comcast, Time-Warner Cable merger. Gee, that will help.

Subscription TV and ISPs Plummet, Cell Phone Satisfaction Climbs-American Customer Satisfaction Index

"Customers rate Comcast (-8% to 57) and Time Warner Cable (-14% to 54) even lower for Internet service than for their TV service. In both industries, the two providers have the weakest customer satisfaction."

[Derek McCabe]

When you hire a private secure cloud service for your video streaming needs, it IS part of your "intranet".

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

That is not streaming a video over your Intranet. That is streaming a video via your Internet connection.

So I guess you now admit it CAN be done? Streaming 1080P video to a client's computer.. in the U.S. is possible.

But you made the argument to deliver SD on DVD, because 1080P video streaming is not working in the U.S.? Or what is your argument? What was your statement about limited email attachment size... oh never mind.

Let's get some facts straight. In 2014 (according to Akamai reports, do a Google) .. the United States rates 10th in worldwide internet speeds. The U.S. average speed is about 10Mbps, up from about 7Mbps in 2013... 5 Mbps in 2012.

10Mbps is fine for streaming 1080Pand 720P. Period.

Now that is the AVERAGE to households. And MOST city areas in the U.S. offer 25+Mbps. I am sorry if you can't get that speed where you live, but MILLIONS of U.S. customers do.

AND Corporate connections are MUCH HIGHER than household averages. If you have a corporate client, it is real easy to ask them if their company portal can handle 1080P video streaming. (It's an opportunity Gary!).

But what about wedding customers? Stick with DVD if your wedding customer doesn't own a $50 Blu-Ray player. Go ahead, argue all you want about exceptions to the norm, but ALL of my corporate clients have no problems with me delivering HD content.

My first post was in reply to a hospital that could not accept HD content. I find that amazing. I do not know the details of the specific hospital in Canada, but if I were selling my video services to a hospital, I WOULD DISCUSS HD solutions. Don't want to sell your client that solution, that is your business model -- but if someone is here on DVINFO stating that you can't sell HD content to clients in 2014, then you deserve be out of business.

This initial discussion was about streaming HD 1080p video. A solution for not having to deliver SD content via DVDs. I am glad we can discuss solutions for 4K streaming, as it is coming... but the bar was set for HD streaming - not 4K. The fact that we can even discuss streaming 4K should tell you where we are with regular HD streaming.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Derek McCabe

My first post was in reply to a hospital that could not accept HD content. I find that amazing. I do not know the details of the specific hospital in Canada, but if I were selling my video services to a hospital, I WOULD DISCUSS HD solutions. Don't want to sell your client that solution, that is your business model -- but if someone is here on DVINFO stating that you can't sell HD content to clients in 2014, then you deserve be out of business.

Don't tell me... you started shooting five years ago with a dSLR.

I've worked behind corporate firewalls with dedicated IT departments for the past 10 years and one thing I can tell you is that IT folks routinely get bored and look for things to shut down.

Not saying a hospital CAN'T accept HD content, I'm just saying that The Cloud isn't a magical gateway that allows unfettered access to whatever whimsical, magical media you've promised your client without considering access issues.

I currently have a client who is trying to get media to stream from a Vimeo Pro account inside the firewall and can't because the distributed OS on the computers that are part of the Intranet are running Windows XP and a web browser version that won't allow the streaming protocol.

I DOUBT you'd be able to convince an entire health region to update their OS solely because you want to stream HD content to them.

[Shaun Roemich]

The above scenario is fairly common in healthcare facilities in Canada at least (and no, we don't all live in igloos...) where the end user has ZERO control over what is installed/installable on "their" desktop.

This is the reality of "playing" in the Big Corporate Sandbox - some corporations encourage The Web as a resource, others see a massive security risk. And I can't blame them when I receive an email every couple of weeks from some service I subscribe to telling me my password may have been compromised.

[Bruce Dempsey]

What a coincidence, just got an email from Tmpgenc promoting a file system that can deal with menus and chapters etc
I have no affiliation other than use a couple of their products
TMPGEnc PGMX? CREATOR - Video, Subtitles, Slideshows and Menus, all in one file.

down side is needing their player which may or may not be a deal breaker

[Derek McCabe]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

The Cloud isn't a magical gateway that allows unfettered access to whatever whimsical, magical media you've promised your client

It's 2014.

Benefits of using a Cloud Service for Video Streaming:

1. Plays on all modern browsers, including TVs, tablets, phones, ebook readers and computers.
2. Cut and paste the link to embed video into your own websites and emails.
3. Highly scalable, with servers on every continent. No limit to simultaneous streams and viewers get the stream that's closest.
4. Quality will autodetect high resolution and 30 FPS when possible.
5. Completely playerless. Viewers don't require apps or plug-ins to view the video.

[Tim Polster]

Derek,

I have been a member of this site for many years. I like exchanging information, interacting and learning on this website. It has a very deliberate, respectful tone.

One thing I have learned after these many years is that we all do different things in this industry. There is no one size fits all. Seriously, there are all facets of possible situations on this forum from broadcast to cinema to complete newbies.

You only have 21 posts, so you are rather new here. Sorry to be blunt and give unsolicited advice, but take a bit of a chill pill. We all love HD and great images but work holds many different realities for all of us. Just because one might deal with DVDs does not say anything about their expertise or abilities. Sometimes it really is just what the client needs or wants.

Frustrating but that is reality.

[Andrew Smith]

On a side note ....

Cloud = somebody else's web server/computer

There's nothing magical about it except in marketing circles.

Andrew

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Derek McCabe

When you hire a private secure cloud service for your video streaming needs, it IS part of your "intranet".

Actually, it is not. You seem to have a tremendous misconception about the differences between an Intranet and the Internet.

So I guess you now admit it CAN be done? Streaming 1080P video to a client's computer.. in the U.S. is possible.

That wasn't what you said that I originally responded to:

Originally Posted by Derek McCabe

Does the hospital have email? Is that secure? Then they have a secure intranet that can offer videos.

If by that you meant you can share YouTube links, then the last sentence is nonsensical because the Intranet has nothing to do with it at all. Again, a completely misunderstanding of the difference.

What was your statement about limited email attachment size... oh never mind.

Yes, because of your statement above. What you actually said strongly implied that all they needed to do was to share actual video files via email, because streaming "over the Intranet" like you keep typing it, does not involve YouTube, because that's not part of a company's Intranet. It would involve a package installed on their internal servers that can serve up video.

AMD has such a package, and commonly uses it internally. But most businesses do not, because it's an expense they cannot justify.

10Mbps is fine for streaming 1080Pand 720P. Period.

Blu-ray is routinely 30-40Mbps. That means your 10Mbps "just-fine-for-streaming" is a third of the potential bitrate it could possibly have. And it may not seem to make much a difference, after all, macroblocking is hard to detect on an iPhone, but if it ever happens to be viewed on a 70" TV (which I routinely use at a business) then it's just as bad as delivering a SD DVD, except you don't have that excuse to fall back on.

Now that is the AVERAGE to households. And MOST city areas in the U.S. offer 25+Mbps. I am sorry if you can't get that speed where you live, but MILLIONS of U.S. customers do.

Marketing an often a lie, especially when video streaming services are concerned. I just watched a short 3 minute Colbert Report clip in HD and it buffered three times, each time paused for about 5-8 seconds. And my service is advertised as being 75Mbps. Yet something else that you seem to woefully misunderstand.

AND Corporate connections are MUCH HIGHER than household averages. If you have a corporate client, it is real easy to ask them if their company portal can handle 1080P video streaming. (It's an opportunity Gary!).

Clearly you have not had the pleasure of asking a corporate client a technical question of this kind. On top of that, there are things that are outside of your control now, using a third party service to stream video for you. I had a single video go down on Vimeo for a client. Just stopped working. Did they call Vimeo? Of course not, they called me. What can I do in that instance? Provide tech support for a browser? That's what you want to do?

My first post was in reply to a hospital that could not accept HD content. I find that amazing. I do not know the details of the specific hospital in Canada, but if I were selling my video services to a hospital, I WOULD DISCUSS HD solutions.

I give the client whatever they ask for. If they ask for SD, that's fine by me. What's the problem?

Personally, I have never had a client as specifically for SD. Only HD.

[Jon Fairhurst]

I work for a US research lab that is an arm of a Japanese company. Man, I wish they could view Vimeo content at our offices in Japan, but it's blocked by the corporate IT department. They probably don't want people watching cat videos on the job. So, I often set up an ftp account, forward it, and... few people watch the content as it's more than a click away (at least not in Explorer, and they all use Explorer.)

Next week, we will produce several demo videos. How will we deliver them? As HD files (probably 720p) on data (not video) DVDs. We will FedEx them and hope people insert the DVDs into their computers.

If computer manufacturers had adopted BD drives years ago, it would be a different story. In an office environment, people simply don't have BD players at their desks (even at companies that make BD players!) And if the IT department blocks video streaming sites by policy, ftp and DVD is all we have left.

[Derek McCabe]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

If by that you meant you can share YouTube links

No Gary, I never said YouTube. But I did mention specific video streaming cloud companies, maybe go back and check my posts.. but you keep trying to work around it... it is clear to me you have never streamed video with any cloud services. You make assumptions about my experience, you have zero knowledge of who I am... or the Fortune 100 companies I work for... It is useless to go on with this discussion. You are here just to argue...

If you want real-world solution.. working right now... check out Amazon Web Services. http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/
— Amazon CloudFront Support for Custom SSL allows you to use your own domain name and your own SSL certificate to deliver content over HTTPS.
— Support for On-demand Microsoft Smooth Streaming. Use CloudFront to deliver video using the Smooth Streaming format without the need to setup and operate any media servers.

Amazon CloudFront is also not blocked in Japan. And if you are wondering who uses CloudFront.. Netflix uses CloudFront for streaming 4K.

[Jon Fairhurst]

There's also Aspera, which was started by IBM: Aspera - High-speed file transfer software

It's super fast and used by Hollywood, but it's not for those who can't write big checks.

Regarding Japan, it's one thing to get a connection into the country and another to get it behind a corporate firewall. Trying to convince somebody in the IT department to change policy can be "difficult".

And then there's China. I was there late last year. The Internet is, um, different there...

[Derek McCabe]

Need to show a client HD test footage (large files) ... overnight? Forget burning or sending hard drives in the mail.

I have been using HighTail (formerly yousendit.com) for transferring LARGE files back and forth between clients. But for the service to work best, both ends needs to have accounts. You "can" share out files, but if the other person is not a HighTail member, they get slow downloads.

Almost all cloud sharing now offers "unlimited" disk space... the catch is the monthly bandwidth limits. There has been a price war between DropBox and HighTail for the professional market, and they keep increasing the monthly bandwidths - since they already offer plans with unlimited storage, they can't increase that area.

Both DropBox and HighTail will soon be offering services specific for video streaming... at the consumer price range. Amazon and Google and other cloud video streaming is still at corporate prices.

Many advertising agencies use this service for sending big files back and forth (larger than 10GB files). Much faster than FedEx.

[Mark Fry]

Originally Posted by Derek McCabe

20Mbps for 4K streaming... here in the New York tri-state area my FIOS connection is 80Mbps, and ALL the other cable services offer 50+Mbps...

Well bully for you! That's certainly not the case in many parts of the world, and even where it's available it's not necessarily affordable nor reliable.