streaming video Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

I’m a pretty big motorsport fan, and have been since I first started being taken out to circuits by my parents at the age of 3 or 4. Weekends were either spent watching bikes or mainly cars dicing at high speed on TV or standing in the cold and rain at places like Brands Hatch and Lydden Hill, and I always loved it – I dreamed of racing and still regret not having quite enough determination and focus as a kid to give it a proper try, or making more of the potential chances I had when I started at Motorcycle News. One of my remaining ambitions is to enter a full competitive race in the next couple of years.

But in the meantime, I indulge myself with taking racing far too seriously in videogames, and watching as much as I can on TV, work and family permitting. So I was pretty excited about the start of Formula One again this weekend.

Well, at least I was. Because this year the coverage is split between the BBC and Sky, meaning that for many weekends, the BBC will be showing highlights packages that are pretty comprehensive, but that’s just not the same as live coverage.

Nevermind, I thought. I’d forgotten to check, but figured that in 2012, there must be a way to purchase live access. Sky obviously have it bundled with annual subscriptions to a load of stuff I’ll never watch or need, so those options were out – £30 for a couple of races per month seemed a bit excessive. So I checked the official site.

And you can buy live timing. You can buy access to highlights videos. But there’s no way to purchase access to live broadcasts.

How to do internet TV right:

When it comes to motorcycling, there are two options. The first is that World Superbikes is available via Eurosport for a more reasonable max of £34.99 for a year, or £3.99 per month, which is far better if all I’m watching will be on two-wheels. I’m guessing their approach and data suggests most people aren’t spending all day streaming, hence the low cost, so I just hope it doesn’t rise as more and more TV-connected devices are in use.

But for years, the premier motorcycle championship has had a great service for those obsessed with two-wheels (which is ironic as it’s also been available free via the BBC for a few years now). At MotoGP.com you can pay 99.95 Euros for a year, and you get HD live and archive video, live timing, interviews and an on-board camera experience, allowing you to control the cameras. I know quite a few UK fans who have signed up every year for probably close to a decade for the live timing and on-board extras, even when they could be watching on TV for free. Plus you can watch via iPhone and Android handsets.

Creating piracy:

Sadly I can’t find a link to a recent report on piracy in Latin American countries which noted many of the most popular pirated shows were ones which simply weren’t broadcast in those territories. But my instinctual reaction to being unable to legally purchase a way to watch Formula One races online is that someone is bound to be sharing it via a video sharing site – I’d put money on the typical game of ‘whack-a-mole’ which goes on during most large sporting events was taking place on Sunday.

But I don’t want to have to visit 10 different streaming channels to try to find the best one showing the race with the least delay, be part of copyright infringement and risk running out of streams before the race ends.

I’d like to be able to pay a reasonable fee and be able to legally watch decent coverage of a sport I enjoy. The cost/hassle ratio for music and films means I’d rather buy a decent quality download quickly and easily.

The exception to the rule:

There’s one exception to my desire to pay for only what I watch – a free-to-air ad-free service which provides a mixture of content both for me and for the wider benefit of the public. In the UK, I honestly believe the BBC does a pretty good job of this for TV, radio and online, although there’s always room for improvement, so even if the TV Licence wasn’t required, I’d be happy to pay a wider-ranging subscription, but for everything else, just let me pick what I want, when I want, in what format I want.

I’m watching the usage of Chatroulette carefully at the moment as it could be about to prove a theory I’ve had for a while…

When I’ve researched streaming video/webcam sites in the past, I’ve seen that besides some notable brand channels, the majority of broadcasters seem to be under 20, and the most popular ones then to be female. And due to the often disturbing nature of the conversations and videochats that arise, the likes of Justin.tv, Stickam etc have all tried to clamp down on this behaviour with automated and human filtering and moderation. They’ve tended to focus their efforts on encouraging brand content and integrating with platforms such as Facebook, whilst suffering the occasional challenge from their use for the illegal rebroadcasting of PayPerView sporting events etc.

Yesterday Chatroulette founder and CEO Andrey Ternovskiy posted a lengthy and thoughtful post regarding the service famed for the frequency of naked males appearing on webcam – the speed with which you cycle through prospective chat partners highlighted how many guys looking for an audience.

‘ Recently I decided to seriously look into issue again, and I’ve had a breakthrough.
Luckily we all live in a real world, and we can easily apply the laws of a real world even on an internet application. With the help of a few good developers we’ve started collecting information, such as IP addresses, logs and screen captures of offenders who actually break US/UN laws by broadcasting inappropriate content in a specific situations. We’ve captured and saved thousands of IP addresses of alleged offenders, along with logs and screenshots which prove wrong behavior. We are initiating a conversation with enforcement agencies and we are willing to provide all the information we have. I hope that with help of a Criminal law we can finally get the problem out of our shoulders and get existing organizations which usually solve these kind of problems to help us.’

I definitely agree with measures to prevent images being received by anyone who hasn’t chosen to see them, or those who are below the age at which they can choose for themselves.

But I’m struggling to see exactly how Chatroulette will continue to function without the reason it came to fame in the first place – the notoriety for nudity. The launch of Channelroulette means that there’s a specific part of the site for those wishing for more adult content, but there’s still no age restriction or barrier to anyone entering, and as the audience is split into groups, the serendipity of a large, random pool of potential connections is going to be minimised.

So I’m going with two hunches – the decision to crack down on offensive/illegal activities was prompted by the investors in the service (The ability to capture IP addresses and screen captures doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary), and traffic to the site is about to take a big dive.

Possibly there’s a revolutionary new video service about to spring out of Chatroulette which might leapfrog Justin, Stickam et al in their efforts to increase the revenue from broadcasting webcam streams. But there doesn’t seem to be a clear path at the moment, considering Ternovskiy ends with the hope ‘someday our service will become a beautiful video world, an internet country with no borders and locations’. Just after mentioning their new location-matching algorithm).

Video is definitely significant as broadband speeds increase (and sadly data caps often decrease), but it still tends to be primarily a consumption medium with significant streaming and distribution costs. And I’m not sure Chatroulette is going to move any further than the existing services in creating successful video-based businesses.

No a la carte TV option? Then you lose a customer

How to do internet TV right:

Creating piracy:

The exception to the rule:

Watch Chatroulette jump the shark….