STREAMING MEDIA: The digital revolution
Gabriel R Lopez
VMT360
Prof. James Cho [Nevada State College]


The internet offers a wide range of entertainment choices when compared to videogames television and radio. No longer are we limited to choosing one form of media over the other. There is a new way to experience media across the global network of information that incorporates videogames, television, and radio. This technology is the next level of high tech interactive media. This streaming media uses Peer-to-peer protocols, and accounts for more than half of all internet traffic. In the information age, where the internet has rapidly become the most important communications people all over the world, there is a demand for more efficient way to communicate ideas. Unfortunately, the internet is also used for illicit purposes such as fraud and piracy. The internet is also powerful, with streaming video as one of its many tools, its power rivals that of other forms of media such as television, newspapers, and virtual gaming.

Streaming video on the internet provides us with a window of opportunity, much like on demand programming, Streaming video has already changed the way consumers enjoy media. Currently, streaming media has only a handful of popular formats, they are Windows Media, RealMedia, Quicktime, Dvix, and Flash. Eventually, streaming media will go direct to your television replacing products like TiVo, and Microsoft’s once popular WebTV with something combining the elements of both. Offering a wider range of entertainment and services, this fusion of media would use the internet to become the next generation of gaming, television, and radio.

Arguably there are only two ways to experience digital media on the web, through streaming media or download. When you download a file, the entire file is saved on your computer. Waiting for a file to download can be tedious and the entire file has to load before it can be experienced. Streaming media on the other hand can be enjoyed almost instantly, as packets of information or streaming data is immediately sent to your computer as a media player or plug-in unpacks the data that is being transmitted.

From personal experience I know YouTube, iTunes, Atom Films, Newgrounds, Dailymotion, and other websites offer streaming video. Digital media has changed over the last decade, download and compression rate of computers has improved dramatically. In ’97, using a 56k dial-up connection and a real media player, one would have to wait five hours or more to download a seven megabyte zip file containing a low resolution video clip of your favorite cartoon shows. At that time there were a few websites dedicated to Samurai Pizza cats & Sonic SatAM that were used for accessing and downloading media. By the year 2000 one could easily invest fifteen hours or more downloading a 147mb DivX file through bit torrent, only to receive a fifteen minute raw file of pirated Anime, such as Bleach or Invader Zim. These were the humble beginnings that lead to today’s streaming media, and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing.

According to recent book regarding peer-to-peer file sharing (Setton & Girod, 2007) since the appearance of Napster in early 1999 Peer-to Peer networks have experienced tremendous growth…and, at the end of 2004 P2P protocols represented over 60 percent of the total internet traffic.

Read any resource about the internet and you will learn from the time of its conception, the internet was designed as a communications tool. It isn’t surprising that we have graduated from the basics of sending e-mails to more complex way of downloading, uploading and transmitting information worldwide. The internet takes a home computer and transforms it into a supercomputer, connected to an international database with bandwidth restrictions limited only by a modem, and ones imagination. The Internet is used to share ideas with individual from a variety of different cultures, subcultures around the world. Through file sharing, and interacting on the internet, we can communicate not only ideas but experiences of success and failure, which is something beyond entertainment.

On the other hand, Not everyone thinks this is a great idea, (Minar & Hedlund, 2006) Some objections site legal and moral concerns. Other problems are technical. Network providers set up and designed their systems based on the idea that users would spend most of their time downloading [content] from central servers. Arguments have been made by network providers, that P2P sharing consumes too much bandwidth for illicit purposes.

Others argue that these illicit purposes are what keep the internet alive. I think the musical production of Avenue Q put it best “The internet is really, really great [for Porn] There’s always some new site [for porn] I browse all day and night [for porn]…” the song continues in much the same way revealing that the internet is really nothing more than a tool for exploring ones fantasies, or to attain a unhealthy level of personal gratification.

For every argument there is a counter argument, and while it is true that the internet is used for “pr0n,” everything manmade from airplanes to zippers have been used for illicit purposes. Anyone who denies the previous statement, I believe, is either very naive or in a state denial. Like every other form of media the internet has been commercialized, becoming both a wholesaler and the first internationally recognized garage sale. Everything you ever wanted or needed is available at the click of a mouse. Not unlike the city of Las Vegas, with the internet you can get anything you want for the right price. Everything and anything from Pokemon to pirated videos or software is available to the consumer with little or no consequence.

How does Peer-to-Peer sharing relate to Streaming Media, you may ask. If one were to browse Wikipedia or other online resources, they would learn the internet is nothing more than a large P2P network that was originally developed to share computing resources between colleges across the United States. Starting as a relatively small network connecting UCLA, UCSB, the Stanford Research Institute , and the University of Utah, the internet grew into a network connecting billions of servers worldwide. Eventually, the P2P network developed Network Access Protocols which gradually improved from sending and receiving e-mails to putting the NAP in Napster.

The origins of digital video began during the late 70’s and early 80’s, studio’s began experimenting with digital video effects, this took standard video and internally digitized the footage for editing purposes. In 1990 the scientific community was informed by researchers that high quality sounds could be encoded, compressed and processed by a Motorola 56000 Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The digitally compressed file could later be transmitted to a digital to analog converter for playback. This form of digital compression was then known as MPEG, which would later develop into MP3 and MP4(DivX) formats. (anonymous, 2007)

Early software developers took advantage of this technology and found ways to incorporate it into their software. Streaming video players such as Quicktime, Real, and the Windows Media Player are all examples of this…and then came flash. Flash blurred the lines between video and interactive media, the resulting union became known as content. According to an article Digital Web Magazine, Flash is available on more than 97percent of all internet enabled computers. Making Flash the standard software for streaming media and content in the world. (Green, 2006)

Websites like YouTube make use of flash, which is not necessarily streaming video, but progressively downloaded streaming media. This provides an opportunity for artists, hackers, and pirates to upload animated music videos, home movies, independent films, and foreign movies. This provides the average web surfer an ability to select their favorite programs and watch them at anytime without commercial interruption. Consumer products, such as TiVo or On Demand programming, offer channel surfers the same luxury.

A psychology professional might say the ability to control what you can see and when gives consumers a sense of control, and gives them a false sense of accomplishment. Similar arguments have been made for video games, which in recent years have given players the opportunity to immerse themselves into a parallel universe, allowing them to interact with the story of a constructed reality. One could also argue that having the ability to control all that you see and when could limit your knowledge or experience of the world. Additionally making you vulnerable to suggestion or influence by outside sources. If that was true then what does that say about the force of the media that exists today controlling all that you see and hear now?

There are lobbyist and interest groups, politicians and corporations telling you what to think, what to buy, and how to live. Everyone knows they are full of crap, and yet it seems there is no one to protest the injustices that they wish for us to accept. People need a variety of choices to help us make good decisions. The power of streaming media and the internet has opened up a dangerous new frontier. However, this frontier also gives people the opportunity to explore new ideas, visit fantastic new worlds, and gives them a right to choose between what is given to them, or take a chance on something different.

The impact of streaming video is revolutionary, not because it is new, but because it opens a window of opportunity. All media exposes the viewer to a new experience, rather than just an idea and breathes life into the dull and lifeless text based interaction that occurs in newspapers or websites. The world has changed within the last decade, as computers have become more sophisticated, so has digital content over the internet. Entertainment providers are no longer limited to production studios, a person need only a camera and an internet connection to be exposed to the world. The internet is the ultimate communication tool, despite it’s flaws and drawbacks. Streaming media has contributed to the commercialization of the internet. Everyone who uses the internet, for example, artists, hackers, politicians, professors, and students have are all connected through streaming media [in the same sense that Kevin Bacon and Spyro the dragon are separated by six degrees of separation]. Streaming media also gives you a new freedom to choose between what you want and what you need or desire. All media outlets are a temporary distraction from reality, regardless of form. Life is tough

Bibliography

Girod, B. & Setton, E. (2007) Peer-to-Peer: Video Streaming (pp. 2-8)Spring Street, NY: Springer Science and Business Media LLC. Retrieved 11-22-07

Minar, N & Hedlund, M (2006) Peer to Peer: harnessing the power of Disruptive technologies . Retrieved 11-29-07 from
http://www.freehaven.net/doc/oreilly/freehaven-ch1.html

Green, T. (2006, October) The Rise of Flash Video: Part one of three (paragraph 14) Digital Web Magazine, Humbler Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Toronto. Retrieved 11-22-07 from
http://www.digital-web.com/about/contributors/tom_green



a/n: sorry for the delay in updates, but School takes priority.