I’m trying to watch the spectacular launch videos of the Shuttle on the Nasa website. Seven crazy folk sat in the space-going equivalent of a 1978 Chevy Malibu strapped to a bomb with a wee nozzle at the bottom. (Yeah, they added a CD player and a iTrip, but it’s still a flying ‘78 Malibu.) It’s always going to make for a spectacle.
Unfortunately, NASA went for a “streaming” video experience. Indeed, a Windows Optimized one. Which means I can’t just download the launch video and watch it. No, I have to sit through a thousand “buffering” messages and herky-jerky broken video. It’s totally crap. Rewind and watch without the gaps? Nah, buffer, buffer, buffer.
Streaming is a totally cretinous concept for anything other than live events.
PS — And people think MS is going to deliver a great IPTV experience? Pfffsst haw haw! All the codec experts in the world aren’t going to help you if you don’t focus on the basic user experience issues.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:33 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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you can always run a download manager that knows how to d/l streaming content. like fllashget or nettransport.
Posted by: at July 31, 2005 01:26 PM"Streaming is a totally cretinous concept for anything other than live events."
-- Streaming is useful for more than live events. Streaming allows the content provider to focus on the experience and not the delivery (file format, size, etc.) and mainitain the rights to the content. Streaming also means no worry about storage on a multitude of devices. I work at Orb - and Orb enables people to stream audio, video, live and recorded TV, and photos from their home computer to any web-connected device. That means at work I can listen to my music at home without worrying about an ipod or such device in the office, or storing music on my work laptop. Orb is free - you might try it before you write off streaming. www.orb.com
So would that suggest that streaming in uncretinous for place-shifting, but thoroughly daft for time-shifting?
Jeff Hawkins and Steve Jobs would disagree with you, and seem to think you should just bring your media with you on a fixed drive.
I'm option to persuasion, but I think Odlyzko's arguments that it's all about faster-than-realtime data transfer still hold water. That said, Orb may fit into a transition period of slow broadband, and serve a need for some time to come.
Posted by: at August 9, 2005 08:38 PMFlash memory gets denser and cheaper at an amazing rate. Disks get bigger in capacity, smaller in physical size, and lower in price at an even more amazing rate. Bandwidth is...less bad than in used to be. I just don't understand why some people think that everything is going to be streamed just-in-time over hypothetical networks so you won't have to have storage on your device when storage is already really good and really cheap and getting better rapidly while bandwidth to the home is slowly getting less bad and mobile bandwith is...we'll have those 3G networks any time now! I'm sure the prices will be reasonable!
I can't see how streaming would let the provider "focus on the experience and not the delivery." Streaming has to work right *right now*, but I could let the download go overnight if we're having a bad Internet day. Streaming doesn't solve compatability woes. If anything, it adds to them. Most of the incompatible file format problems would be solved if the people making the files used the most standard rather than the most proprietary formats possible. As if they wanted people to be able to view the content, rather than thinking of viewing the content as a side issue in the battle for control.
Posted by: at August 10, 2005 10:44 PM