Streaming New Year’s Resolutions for 2014
Making New Year’s resolutions before Thanksgiving, 在我写这个专栏的时候, feels akin to planning to buy Christmas gifts on Halloween, which will fall on a Friday in 2014, giving retailers an excuse for a pre-Black-Friday Black-Friday sale.
Still, when it comes to streaming, it’s worth making a few New Year’s resolutions, so here goes:
1. 增加音量.
By volume I mean provide more helpful content for 流媒体 readers. 这是已知的 流媒体杂志 is moving to nine issues per year in 2014. Let’s hear it for more (random or focused) Streams of Thought!
2. Hold a wake for VP6/7/8 and RealMedia.
I’m not one to wish ill on any codec, but the time has come and gone -- long gone -- for non-standards-based codecs that seem intent on disrupting the market in a negative way. 是时候使用谷歌了, the free and open source software (FOSS), and other laggards on the standards-based bandwagon.
This is equally important on the desktop via browsers (Chrome and Firefox) and on the myriad mobile devices that use non-H.264编解码器. The FOSS argument is valid for many solutions, 包括媒体服务器, but in the case of video streaming codecs, it’s a stance that’s holding back adoption for no valid reason.
3. 工作保存模拟.
Maybe this should be stated as “analogue,” since the vast majority of television and media consumption still occurring in analog can be found in phase alternating line (PAL)-based countries. Analog is by no means dead, as one finds out by reading the quarterly “数码电视研究” reports put out by Simon Murray or by talking to the NewTek team, which sees its TriCaster analog-only product being sold into a number of emerging markets.
4. 别等H了.265 (HEVC).
If there’s anything we’ve learned about standards adoption in 2013, it’s the fact that politics and technology are strange bedfellows. One need only look at Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) to see that adoption of standards with clear-cut benefits are being slow-walked in some circles.
Many will argue that HEVC and DASH adoption should occur simultaneously, at the time when 4K emerges for online video delivery, but my prediction is that DASH has a higher chance of being relegated to the dustbin if it waits around for HEVC.
5. Expect at least one major multicast innovation in 2014.
The rapid growth of Netflix in North America, which is repeating itself in European markets, will put additional pressure on the company and its Tier 1 rivals-cum-providers to figure out a multicast model for mobile and set-top box (STB) delivery.
The argument so far has been that on-demand content doesn’t require multicast, as not everyone is watching the content at the same time. 然而HTTP流的出现, via delivery of multiple small segments -- in essence massive small-file delivery -- brings with it the potential that rapidly growing on-demand content viewing audiences could result in overlapping requests for the same content at the same time.
换句话说, we might just have a live-stream equivalent audience on our hands when it comes to on-demand content. 像这样, there’s a technology need beyond real-time transparent caching that might lead to an innovation or two around P2P or multicasting.
6. Prepare for the rise of eMBMS and LTE in the United States.
In our post-PC world, there’s another need for multicast, this time in the mobile environment. 幸运的是, there’s a move afoot to put eMBMS (evolved multimedia broadcast multicast service) into LTE (long-term evolution) -- perhaps more easily described as multicasting into the next generation of GSM (Groupe Spécial Mobile) -- that is rolling out across Europe and the rest of the world.
2014 will hopefully see adoption of this technology in the United States so that mobile viewing of live events, 比如大联盟运动, can be a thing of beauty and delivery consistency compared to what we’ve faced in the recent past.
This article appears in the January/February 2013 issue of 流媒体杂志 as "Streaming New Year’s Resolutions."
2014图片 通过在上面.