Film and TV broadcasters have enjoyed a lot of control over the last century in the way we watch our content… There was no way anybody could produce content and then submit it to the B.B.C. and have it aired within minutes or even years for this matter. Actually, now I think about it, your submission in most cases would have been looked at, at once, if you were lucky! and then screwed up and chucked in the trash can!
Now with the rise of the broadband, this has opened up the channels for content producers to have a platform for one global audience. We love the ease of which you can create, encode and upload content on to the internet for everybody to see. This is great for the bedroom producer or maybe semi pro.. who wants to create an audience.. But we want to see the good stuff!
Here is where a major problem pops up and smacks the industry in the face. This is affecting our audiences and we are having to suffer billions of very poor quality content as a result…. Yep you guessed it “Rights issues”.. This means Hollywood and other major players around the world who produce the quality stuff, are only giving access to programs and films to internet companies that can pay for it and protect it. Most companies can’t protect the content yet, there are very few solutions which are good enough for Hollywood to let get of their content. Hulu.com is a major force and one that has done really well in the US, and we are about to see it come to the UK very shortly. The Kangoroo project that the UK broadcasters have been struggling to get off the ground, failed for these reason, rights! I believe anyway and not competitive clauses that the press fed us! (maybe I’m wrong, but it stands up)
How does a company solve these issues?, if they want their content to be seen over the web in particular territories, for example, Hollywood want French broadcasters to have the rights to show the content in France and not in Germany. So far the major players in the market are Flash & Microsoft. Lets face it, the flash player wins hands down, although Microsoft has a brilliant solution, but it does not look as pretty as flash. The problem with flash so far is that there has been no DRM standard for Flash and trust me Adobe is pushing for a DRM solution. Check out this article Adobe pushes DRM
This is a massive subject and there are two different sides to DRM, 1, which is protecting your video delivery over the internet via streaming or HTTP download. 2, Stopping people use your content without a license. We hear about Warner Brothers and other majors deleting videos off youtube.com. I hope to go into more detail in another blog..
I’m more concerned with the content and the production of it, but in this changing market you can’t help but get swallowed up in Digital delivery of video…
ROCK ON ADOBE FLASH!
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