[opendtv] Re: Sling TV Struggles During Final Four | Multichannel
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 08:50:16 -0400
On Apr 9, 2015, at 8:13 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
The Internet is growing and reaching appropriate scale as these
new services are added. You said it yourself.
Craig, try arguing from a point of knowledge. If you claim that "the
Internet" needs another 10 years to handle TV traffic, then post your
justification for that.
Try arguing with a little logic.
Yesterday I used the analogy of physical highways and traffic congestion issues
that arise during peak usage periods. There is a strong parallel with the
infrastructure of the Internet. Our highway system has evolved over the past
century to handle the current level of vehicle traffic. It has grown in scale
massively, with networks of limited access Interstate highways, federal
highways, state highways, county roads and city streets. The system has varying
loads during different parts of the day, yet congestion still occurs routinely,
as it is not practical (affordable) to increase capacity to deal with peak
traffic. So we put up with some congestion.
Now imagine what it would look like - what the traffic levels would be - if the
current highway infrastructure had existed in say 1920, when only a small
percentage of the population owned motor vehicles. Capacity would vastly exceed
usage.
The reality is that our highway system evolved over a century to handle the
traffic that exists today. When congestion got too bad we added more lanes or
roads.
The reality of the Internet is very much the same. We are still living in the
"1920's" in terms of the traffic levels; only about 5% of the population uses
the Internet to stream entertainment video today. When a popular live event
occurs, demand may exceed capacity - not everywhere, just at intersections that
are unable to handle the demand. This helps the traffic engineers decide where
to add more capacity, or to develop work around like local edge servers, to
reduce duplicated traffic at the intersection.
When I say the Internet is not ready to handle a massive switch to IP delivery
of entertainment, you should think in terms of what the infrastructure will
look like in ten or twenty years. What it will look like AFTER the
infrastructure has been upgraded to the point that every home gets 25 Mbps or
better ISP service, server farms and the main Internet arteries scale up to
handle the massive increase in traffic, and edge servers are deployed to reduce
congestion at the bottlenecks.
This does NOT mean that you or I cannot enjoy a high quality streaming
experience today. We do!
But we are a tiny percentage of the traffic that will exist when everyone moves
away from the old horse and buggy technologies of broadcast, DBS and dedicated
cable/fiber linear video networks.
For your information, while these problems were occurring with Sling
customers, I was having no trouble at all watching Internet TV. So it seems
to me that "the Internet" was not being overloaded, or I would have noticed
the effects.
You might well have experienced the same problems, IF you had chosen to
subscribe to Sling to watch the Final Four. Millions of people were watching
Netflix too, with no problems. You were just using a road less traveled, and
benefit from the fact that only a small percentage of the population is
competing for access to that road.
Sling - which is a MVPD service
You have yet to articulate why Sling is different from any number of other
OTT sites.
I have articulated this several times, but to indulge you...
1. Sling offers a subset of the same live linear TV network streams as
traditional DBS, Cable and Fiber MVPD systems. Because they offer a core bundle
of twenty channels, the service is referred to as a "Multichannel Video Program
Distributor."
2. Sling offers add on mini bundles of additional live linear networks (i.e.
multiple video programs).
3. Sling offers on demand access to libraries of entertainment content - in
this they behave more like other OTT services (that are not MVPDs) such as
Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and HBO Now (to which you can subscribe as
part of your Sling MVPD service).
4. CBS All Access is NOT a MVPD service, as it only offers ONE live linear
channel of your local CBS Affiliate, not multiple channels.
Admittedly, some of this is linguistic semantics. All OTT services offer access
to multiple programs if you pay the subscriber fee or watch the ads. But we
still differentiate between live linear streams, and on demand streams. More
than 80% of U.S. homes subscribe to a MVPD service to have access to these live
streams. Many of the rest use an antenna to access some of these live streams.
As was the case with Sling and the Final Four, it is access to live and/or
first run content that creates large audiences. Overall demand for
entertainment is shifting from live/rerun streams to VOD, and the Internet is
playing a critical role in this transformation.
The ability to access live event streams is now where much of the action is in
terms of investments in Internet infrastructure, and in terms of enhancing the
perceive value of MVPD bundles.
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts: