Microsoft, Intel and IP to Bring Changing of the Guard in VOD Server Markets (Video on Demand )

Broadcasting and Cable ^ | May 19, 2003 | In-Stat/MDR Research Highlight

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Microsoft, Intel and IP to Bring Changing of the Guard in VOD Server Markets

Companies that make Distributable Servers are expected to take over the VOD server market with lower cost points and smaller form factors.

In-Stat/MDR Research Highlight
May 19, 2003

With Video On Demand (VOD), Subscription Video On Demand (S-VOD), Network Personal Video Recorders (N-PVR), and "Anything On Demand" (X-VOD) all being made ready for wide spread deployment by service providers throughout the world, the market for VOD Servers is heating up, reports In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com). The high-tech market research firm expects that efforts on the part of Concurrent Computer Corporation, SeaChange International, Inc., and nCube to promote the market for VOD Services are finally ready to pay off. However, market dominance of these three players will begin to wane, out in 2006, as companies that make Distributable Servers take over the market with lower cost points and smaller form factors.

The 'big three' VOD Server companies have worked hard to establish this market, but Microsoft, Intel and the Internet are catching up, providing lower bit rates for each VOD stream, and higher performance at lower cost points. Network-based Personal Video Recorders (N-PVRs) work best if small, inexpensive, VOD Servers are placed out near users, on the edge of the network. Companies bringing these new distributable VOD servers to market include Entone, Kasenna, and MidStream Technologies.

In-Stat/MDR has also found that:

• Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series is being accepted as a new compression standard for VOD Services, providing DVD-like quality at about 1 Megabit/second, and High Definition TV (HDTV) at about 5 Mb/s. This reduces both storage requirements and bandwidth consumption for VOD Services, and will make some new opportunities possible that were not available even just one year ago.
  
• New companies are appearing that have lower-cost VOD Servers, which take advantage of the ever-increasing performance of Intel's Pentium line of central processing units (CPUs). Many of these new solutions are using Microsoft operating systems, development tools, and Windows Media 9 Series, to provide robust VOD solutions. Internet Protocol has "grown up" enough to support broadcast quality video services that run over Ethernet. Specifically, Gigabit Ethernet is finding its way into many VOD products and services.
  
• Linux permits companies to create customized "extensions" to support VOD, and Linux does not require any licensing fees. Microsoft has responded to the threat from Linux by reducing their licensing costs and royalty fees, making Windows-based VOD solutions much more attractive. Finally, MPEG-4 will, eventually, reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to deliver VOD. These five phenomena - Microsoft, Moore's Law, Linux, IP and MPEG-4 - are likely to cause a changing of the guard among manufacturers of VOD Server products during the next five years.
  
• The value of VOD Servers was about $196 million (US) during 2002, and is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of about 32.7% through 2007.

This Market Alert is drawn form the In-Stat/MDR report, Video On Demand Servers: Intel, IP, Linux & MPEG-4 To Bring A Changing Of The Guard (#IN030589MB), which presents In-Stat/MDR's finding on the technology evolution in the Video On Demand Server market, and defines four categories of VOD servers. The report presents in-depth, five-year, regional and worldwide forecasts for each catergoy of VOD server, including unit shipments, number of streams shipped, cost-per-stream, cost-per-server, and market value.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[goldstategop]

Once the price of broadband drops substantially, you will be able to get crystal clear DVD quality movies piped in over the Internet to your home theater Big Screen without having to leave the house!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And they now deliver groceries !

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ping!

[martin_fierro]

It's out on video...

...but ain't no one demanding it. <|:)~

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

White Paper Download The Top Ten Drivers of the Converged Home Network By: Mike Wolf, Director of Enterprise and Residential Communications Date: April 2003 Number of Pages: 10 The Connected Home is a strategic market for every company in the PC, consumer electronics and consumer technology marketplace. The market has already started to gain mass acceptance in the form of broadband sharing home networks, and will take another step forward in 2003 and 2004, as the first real move toward a converged home network begins. However, the move to this converged network will take time, perhaps as long as a full decade. Over this timeframe, a number of market drivers will push the market toward this fully converged network. This white paper from In-Stat/MDR explores what these market drivers are and contains information (including primary research results and a forecast for the number of service provider managed home networks through 2007) derived from reports published in In-Stat/MDR's industry-leading Residential Connectivity service. Click Here to Download Free White Paper Contents: The Top Ten Drivers of the Converged Home Network Broadband Growth and Sharing Emerging Network Physical Layer Technologies Masking the Difficulties of Home Networking Using Intelligent Software Gaming Digital Audio Drive for Broadband Services by Service Providers Home Security Video Sharing Over a Home Network Networking Connectivity Integration into EVERYTHING The Home Network Multiplier Effect List of Tables: Table 1. Service Provider Managed Home Networks List of Figures: Figure 1. The Converged Home Network Figure 2. Primary Reason for Home Network
	All registration information is confidential and is used for internal purposes only. Under no circumstance will In-Stat/MDR sell or otherwise redistribute this information.
	v3.0

[Atlas Sneezed]

This will be big, VERY big.

In a generation, the kids will laugh at the notion that any of us kept our own hard copies of movies for viewing.

This will also be the chance to actually get some material for HDTV viewing other than the material selected at the broadcasters' whim.

[Abcdefg]

The technology is good and the bandwidth is fairly low, but it isn't crystal clear. At 5M it is, but so is DVD.

[goldstategop]

I get pixels on video that I see with a dial up connection. That's what you expect with a clogged pipeline but its going to take another $10 drop before people begin switching to broadband for good.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Recommend looking at the White Paper.

I see in-home education possibilities!

How about interactive Math Lessons!

[mpreston]

Then there's the wildcard:

Kazaa, Brilliant move will spanner MPAA, RIAA
Content locality, pure and simple is the key
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9801

".... This is where Brilliant is, well, brilliant. Their plan is to send out content to users of Kazaa, in an encrypted form, and ?hide? it on their machines. The users don?t have any idea what content they have on the computers, and while technical details are still scarce, any single user will probably not have anything close to the full file on their system, this would only encourage hacking. When someone buys a file from the network, it does a simple search across the hidden, encrypted files, and downloads them just like any other Kazaa file. The users never realize that they are being used in this fashion, but do get a small fee for doing it. If Brilliant is not overtly stupid, and all signs point to them not being so, they will keep the bandwidth used by any single individual low, and give them less than the bandwidth would cost them on the open market. Since uses of the network tend to buy net access on a monthly, all you can eat plan, they don?t pay the additional uploading. It is a win/win situation for both the users and the network....."

The implementation is a distributed, scalable network. No more need for the high performance central server. Performance scales as the user base expands. They might even give you a discount based on the amount of storage you provide and some availability factor.

- Mark