At: ashok.videdot.com/2007/stream-vs-download
Chris pointed at a piece in the NYT where they say:
Streaming video, unlike downloads, never resides on a viewer's computer. It usually cannot be replayed as a downloaded file can be, which is another reason that content creators like it.
Pay attention, especially any lawyers hanging around at the back.
Here's the important difference between streaming and downloading:
That makes streaming harder to do, as a server, and theoretically nicer for the end user. The down-side is that once you have that harder performance problem of sending enough bits quickly enough it gets tricky. You can buy yourself better performance by distributing some (or all) of the information from a central server, but that gets expensive.
The next thing you can do is just to use fewer bits, that makes it both cheaper, and the technical problem gets easier. The consequence is to make the quality suck, to the point of being unwatchable for me. Content owners are well placed to compete on quality, right now they're losing to the ad-hoc torrent people.
Streaming is exactly better than downloading. I can pretty much always take a streamed thing and make it feel like a download. Doing the reverse is hard, and fun, and I have a student looking at some of the corners of that right now.
If you think that offering it streamed stops people recording it, you're deluding yourself. You're probably relying on some notion that there isn't a shiny button in players like the realplayer to record the stream. Except there is in the latest beta. (Real are playing a tricky game, since they peddle the delusion that streamed and downloaded are significantly different. The new RealPlayer will respect DRM restrictions, but it is interesting to see Real positioning themselves to better thrive in a post-DRM world.)
Some part of the BBC, alas, seem to think that there's a significant difference. Listening to the Now Show, streamed, is a far better experience than the MP3. In ordinary circumstances the MP3 would win, hands down, as you can play an MP3 on pretty much any music player, on any computer built this side of about 1995. Unfortunately, the version they offer as an MP3 is crippled. Some of the punchlines are missing, due to some problem with clearing rights for certain clips. I'm sure the tech-savvy parts of the BBC know this is bone-headed, but either they have the rights to send this stuff over the internet or they don't and I'd like the straight answer.
Tagged: Rants, Business, Distribution, Media, Technology
Posted at 09:32 BST, 7th August 2007.
2 Comments
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Streaming and downloading are the same thing provided you're technologically savvy enough… But to most people, if the UI doesn't offer a save button, then they won't keep the "streamed" data.
They're not different from an information theory perspective, but they're sociologically different - offering a stream is an implicit request to do certain things with the data and not others.
It's a bit like the difference between buying someone a boxed DVD set of a TV series for their birthday, and downloading the exact same information and presenting them with it on a load of DVD-Rs. Same data, different meaning.
I agree, but that will become less true over time, as people build shiny bits of kit for capturing information from popular sources.
It doesn't take much for someone who can do it to wrap that in a shiny, easy-to-install package and it becomes simple for anyone who wants to – say – 'record' BBC radio programmes from the RealPlayer rather than over the air.
I'm sure at some point reel-to-reel recorders were expensive, but the kit got smaller, simpler, cheaper and much easier to use. The radio industry didn't lose their shirts, but their customers changed their behaviour.
You're quite right about gifts, but a lot of the time it isn't someone's birthday. I'll recommend a show to someone, and if I have a digital recording of it I'll give them that too, just as I used to with VHS tapes. Passing shows around as recordings has been going on for a very long time, it has just got easier to do well, and with higher quality recordings. What's sad is that right now I can get much higher quality recordings from a dodgy aerial connected to a Freeview box than I can from the BBC's fancy iPlayer. It's the same programming, but the latter is chock full of DRM.
When I record it for myself it's pretty clear that I'm not breaking any laws. When I lend a recording to a friend or two, for no commercial benefit, I also can't see the harm. If I build something that copies programmes I fancy watching to my laptop when it's in the flat, that also seems reasonable. Now what happens when other people's laptops visit my flat. Am I supposed to build some complicated "are you part of my household" logic into the system?