A curious question popped into my head as I was writing the last entry -- what is the long term prospects of streaming media compared with downloadable media? Is streaming media something that will persist, or will it fade away as technological shifts occur that destroy its advantages over downloadable media?
Ok, so first of all, what are the advantages of streaming media over downloadable media:
- The entire file does not have to be downloaded at once. You can start viewing the media as soon as you click the link.
- Its easier to assert control over the use of the media.
- The media is always up to date.
- Streaming media as opposed to downloading tends to not fill up disks.
Here are some of the advantages of downloadable media:
- Consumers like downloadable media more than streaming. They like to be able to take the media on the train, burn it to CD, and manipulate it locally. (If the countless anime and video game remixes are any indication.)
- Downloadable files tend to be less proprietary than streaming media. People are more likely to run across a RealAudio stream than download a proprietary file.
- Downloadable media is easier mirrored.
From this perspective, there's currently a control and bandwidth argument that can be made for streaming over downloadable media. On the other hand, streaming servers can cost a pretty penny where downloadable media can be placed on vanilla web servers or P2P clients. It's my expectation that the bandwidth bottleneck will eventually disappear. (Of course, we can argue that larger and larger files will simply be used instead,. but I doubt that this can keep up with bandwidth growth.) On the control front, things like increasingly sophisticated DRM technology (an example is Apple's iTMS DRM, not the autorun.inf crap of late) may be able to take care of the control question. Using things like CC licensing metadata, the problem of checking if a file is up to date is solved by players that implement license metadata checking.
Since control and bandwidth issues may be a thing of the past, it seems that the only thing that streaming media offers over downloadable media is the ability to preserve the traditional broadcast model where a bit of media is only played in a certain time slot. However, given the growing popularity of Tivo and like, I'd suspect over the long term that the broadcast model will disappear. Sure, you would have to wait until next Wednesday for the next Smallville, but you may be able to download a DRM'ed file of the episode instead of having to watch it or Tivo it. (Tivo in this case being an implementation of a device that translates streaming media to "downloaded" media.)
Anyways, those are a few of my thoughts. Is streaming media here to stay despite my Gilder-esque predictions, or will it survive only as a life preserver for the traditional broadcast advertising industry, or is it doomed for good once DRM and bandwidth reach the point of being adequate for both producers and consumers?
Thoughts?
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All four of your "advantages" are false.
Of streaming media, that is.
There are copyright and other legal differences between streamed and downloaded. I don't know all details, but generally viewing (streaming) has fewer restriction than does 'obtaining' (downloading). It's also generally MUCH easier to get copyright owners to agree to streaming than to download -- despite the obvious hackability of streamed media. Rgds, Richard
We often want to keep useful resources locally. But we need to find then and we don't usually want the complete catalogue of say the one million plus records in the BBC audio catalogue. Nor do we individually want all the related audio files. What ones or bits of them do we want? We listen to find out nd perhaps what we hear is satisfies our needs. Perhaps we want to bookmark that and send the bookmark to someone else? Or perhaps we want a 'photocopy' (a clip)?
But as we get vast digital libraries on-line I think streaming will continue to have a central role....
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