Thanks steve for reminding me about the peak bandwidth issue. That ups the complexity.
Back in the .boom days I was responsible for the development of a market data web portal. We got nailed during the market day and so of course had to buy peak capacity bandwidth, meanwhile all that capacity went unused at night and on the weekends. If they're going to do a morning report they're going to have a lot of peak bandwidth issues. Especially if they're doing video. Argh, more complexity. I was thinking about finding someone with a really well developed solution like Eric Rice and possibly use his front end with and independant host since the hosting issue is going to be such an SOB. I believe that would be ideal. But is just one option. Plus, on a side note it'd give us a chance to help develop the infrastructure (ie. transcoding and specialized feeds) to push this stuff to everything from cell phones, to pda's, to set top boxes to PSP's) not just iTunes and the iPod. However, that's a pipe dream if they're going to need paid subscription... they're going to need a custom developed solution and it's going to up the cost and complexity tremendously. Not to mention the complexity of just getting a proposal together. That's why I ask if anyone has a pay subscription mechanism either in use or in development. It would make a lot more sense for vlog and podcast hosting services to develop those services rather than building custom solutions. Damn, they should just get in the game and get their feet wet and monetize later when the paid subscription mechanisms are more highly developed. That's the third direction btw, custom solution, service solution, getting in the game and bugging apple about montization. That said I would hate for Apple to have a monopoly on monetization in this space. It's contrary to everything we've worked for. Beside.. I strongly believe selling "codified secirity" crosses a line that leads to legalized racketeering. Everyone deserves the same protection under law, law is not a place where we want to introduce have and have nots. Peace, -Mike Michael Meiser http://mmeiser.com/blog - fun stuff http://mmeiser.com/backchannel - del.icio.us link blog http://evilvlog.com - serious lunacy has a new domain On Nov 16, 2005, at 1:31 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: If you are dealing with a very high number of subscribers and time-sensitive show contents, you may need to look at bandwidth in a different way. For example is it likely that a large number of people will be trying to get the video at the same time? If you you'll need to look at load-balancing, having multiple physical servers, and the size of the pipe connecting them to the rest of the net, whether the host has multiple different connections to big internet peering companies (backbone?) stuff. Lets say you expect 50000 people may be wanting to download a video in a specific one hour window. Maybe at any one moment there are 1000 users downloading. What is an acceptable download rate before they get annoyed? lets say 100kbytes/sec is acceptable, oh that means during this peak time you really need servers & pipe that can handle 100000kbytes/sec. Well all these numbers are just made up, but hopefully Ive demonstrated the point, that if time is a factor then some of the bandwidth issues of streaming stuff comes into play for downloadable stuff too, as everyone trying to download at once causes a similar strain to live streaming video to the masses. For sure there are ways you could force stuff to be 'spread out' and delivered over a 12 or 24 hours or whatever period, such as having multiple feeds taht update at different times for different users. Depends how time-sensitive the video contents are and whether the viewers are likely to have similar patterns of behaviour (eg I want to watch this stuff just before I head down to the trading floor to shout stuff at big flashing boards at whatever time am) Anyway if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers, such hosting probably goes beyond the stuff that is advertised with a visible price on the internet. Id look for a few companies that brag about dealing with big corporations with insanely busy sites, like CNN for example, and give em a ring to get a quote on a cluster of servers that can handle whatever peak data rate youve worked out you need. For the lower estimates and if time is not a factor, some of the more normal hosting options will probably do, just need to work out how much resilince you need, just how annoyed the viewers ma get if the server is ever unavailable. When trying to price up these options, the main complication is the amount of untruth that finds its way into the blurb of some hosts marketing. Some hosts that say 'unlimited bandwidth' arent always being upfront, and there are still limits. Theres always the network connection pipe limit as I mentioned earlier, but some hosts also get upset if you use the available pipe to the max 24/7, or hit a very high number of gigs. And there may be a disparity between the size of the pipe youve got connected to the server, and the actual sustainable rate that server can send the data. Unfortunately Ive never hosted a popular site so this is all theory to me. Ive hit physical server limits before, eg a popular forum with hundreds of people simultaneously trying to use it, really begs for a better CPU and more RAM in the server. I think paid content delivered by RSS feeds is still in its infancy, its something Ive been meaning to look at again recently so I'll let you know if I stumble on anything interessting. I think I saw that nathan peters was doing a members-only video site for a specific audience. Technically thers quite a few ways to do it. Off the top of my head Id probably go for a method whereby subscribers are sent a unique link to an RSS feed, to discourage people giving the feed url to their friends because its identifiable, to allow tracking of such abuse, and to avoid problems with password protection causing aggregator incompatibility. DRM stuff is wished for by many businesses because without it people could redistribute or at least share with their coleagues, but how much of an issue this is will obviously depend on the audience. Hopefully most types of business can afford to forget this, and avoid the downsides of DRM. Magazines and other specialist-knowledge publications have always had to live with the fact other people might read the subscribers copy, they should apply the same attitude to this stuff. Of course the net scares them more because of the potential to share the copy with millions of people, but they should still employ non-DRM methods to deal with it, like sending the lawyers after anyone who redistributes on a grand scale. Cheers and good luck with it, I hope this stuff catches on, it makes sense and should appeal to busy people who know what they want and arent afraid to pay for it (because they can afford to and their time becomes more precious than a bit of money). Steve of Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Meiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ok, I actually have the same question. I ran into some old friends in > Chicago at a prominent investment research company and found myself > giving my an impromptu presentation on just what all this new media > stuff is about. I tried to tone down my enthusiasm, but I knew I'd > just sold them on video blogging and podcasting. (It was that damn > pretty itunes interface with all it's CNN and Wallstreet Journal > podcasts that did it.) While this is not a bad thing by any mean I > have to get out a proposal out this week. > > I've illustrated 3 different plans for them and I pretty much have > all the numbers. But what's really hard for me to grasp is the > bandwidth and numbers. We're talking 3-6 minute videos 5 days a week, > or at the very least 2 videos a week just to start with. There > subscribership would be very high as they're quite prominent. So I'm > trying to figure out numbers for say 5,000k, 10,000 and 100,000 > subscribers and while I can do some math I'm asking about peoples > experience. How much bandwidth are you guys using, how many > subscribers do you have? > > I personally just used like 40gig of bandwidth in 48 hours with one > video clip of David Cross from Arrested development. But I don't > normally host videos as I'm a revlogger ad a promoter of all your > fine works, not a vlogger myself. So, this is an incredibly usussual > thing for me. > > > Off topic point one... > > Is there anyone doing paid vlog or audio podcast subscriptions? > > On a side note, there's the big monetization issue. Does anyone here > know if anyone's tried doing paid subscription video casts. I'm sure > sooner or later Apple will offer RSS podcasted DRM'd feeds of music > and / or audio podcasts. After all it makes a hell of a lot of sense > to subscribe to an entire season of Lost or Desperate Housewives and > have it delivered right to your computer than to have to constantly > wait for it to come out and then buy it a la carte. However, I'm not > waiting around. And I believe DRM is like putting a ten dollar bill > in a half ton safe. Complete overkill and a stupid arse pain in the > arse for everyone. So, what I'm asking is what mechanisms for paid > subscription are people using? Are there any? or is everyone just > doing advertising? Advertising will not fly for this product. Not > the client and not the customers who'll be day traders, brokers and > people who'll be getting the morning report on their way to the > trading room floor. They're going to be very willing to pay for a > good product and won't put up with much advertising at all. They're > the sort of people who believe in money in hand and paying for what > they want and don't fuck around. It's the perfect demographic really. > So... it'll probably a paid subscription morning report... witht he > same content being offered free after 11pm. Timeliness is everything. > > > -Mike of mmeiser.com/blog > Yahoo! Groups Links ------------------------ Yahoo! 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