P2P start-up snags almost every film in Hollywood

Web video services gold rush

By Faultline • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 4th May 2007 08:02 GMT

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But in the same week, a UK launch is right on the money in the form of RawFlow, a P2P PC client that has a track record, offers streaming, and can do it in the ever so popular Flash Video format.

We have been waiting for this to come along. Flash video powers systems like Brightcove and much of the YouTube video, simply because it is so easy to load onto a website compared to other video formats and it comes with its own On2 Technologies codec. There is starting to be a substantial tools market with offerings from both Adobe, which owns Macromedia Flash, and from On2.

But what was missing from the equation was a P2P system that can reduce or eliminate the content delivery costs of bandwidth, which in most systems takes up about 30 per cent of the total system costs.

RawFlow is the first to offer streaming Flash in its Intelligent Content Distribution (ICD) latest version, but our guess is that it won't be the last. RawFlow isn't a service like Vudu, it's enabling technology, but we are happy to bet that if it can work out how to drop this into P2P, then so can an number of other P2P systems out there, and this is the start of a flood of applications that allow this. And one or more of these will open up the capability of set tops that house the P2P client and cost a lot less than $300, taking the signal direct to the TV.

Which is one of the reasons we would expect Vudu to not take off. This type of offering is going to become more and more common, and paying $300 for a new device (from a company which is not guaranteed to be around in three years) is unlikely to set the world on fire, especially if it turns out that we are right and the Vudu player turns out to be an Intel based stripped down PC after all.

Vudu is what Moviebeam should have been when Disney had it, and under the Disney brand it might have worked. But that was launched at a time when the studios did not believe that anything which had P2P inside it, or ran over the internet in general, could be used for anything other than piracy.

In the meantime, this week Joost, which perhaps has the lead mindshare in P2P video distribution, took several steps closer to its own vision of bringing P2P TV and films to every PC on the planet, when it announced the companies that have pledged advertising support for its service.

This is led by The Coca-Cola Company, HP, Intel, Nike in the US, with a whole raft of majors in Europe including Kraft, Lionsgate, Microsoft, Motorola, a Nestlé sub-brand, Procter & Gamble, and Sony.

In all it says it has 32 blue-chip advertisers on board and reveals that there are 150,000 beta users and 500,000 individuals registered and waiting for the service. Various sources suggest that the initial three month ad campaigns will cost between $50,000 and $100,000 and bring in well over $3m globally during ramp up.

If it ramps to even a fraction of the popularity of Skype, then this will quickly rise to hundreds of millions of dollars. Joost has said as a guideline that one minute of advertising will be offered per hour of viewing time, and that both conventional video slots and channel sponsorships will be used, and the aim will be to minimise the disruption in the viewing experience. Joost also added content deals this week with Adult Swim, CNN, Hasbro, the National Hockey League, Sports Illustrated, and Sony Pictures Television for comedy, cartoons, animation, film, news, documentaries, lifestyle and, of course, sport.

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