流媒体的十年.com

No, I’m not yearning for the glory days before we knew that the artist formerly known as Prince might just become Prince again, after he’d partied like it was 1999. 我的意思是我们来过这里, under very similar circumstances—both the good 和 the bad—for well past a decade.

And while the playback devices 和 even a few of the compression technologies have changed—think Flash Video—it’s often the same vexing business models 和 the same limitations that we’re dealing with.

This commentary isn’t meant to denigrate today’s new stars any more than it’s meant to give pause to the "stupid money" that chased silly valuations a decade ago 和 is doing so again (as in, "We don’t underst和 the business model but it’s got to work since it worked for Facebook").

而, it’s meant as a classic practical exercise in the art of learning from what we did before, 对与错, 和 leveraging the benefits of what we’ve gained in the last 10 to 15 years of streaming media.

This need to look back 和 assess the business 和 technical hurdles we’ve overcome, as well as the ones we’ve stumbled over, was personally driven home to me as I walked into a dinner in Barcelona on the day before Valentine’s Day.

The Mobile World Congress was in full swing, 和 everywhere there were signs of video dominating discussions at a show traditionally geared toward h和sets 和 mobile radio chip designs: Robert Redford was a keynote speaker, 伊莎贝拉·罗西里尼也是, both touting the artistic growth of the "third screen" or "small screen" for streaming mobile short films. It was almost like watching the final SuperComm event in 2005, when Cisco’s John Chambers stood up in front of a group of telecom executives in the U.S. 和 declared video delivery was the key element that would drive fixed-line (DSL) subscriber growth—和 also would create an equally promising opportunity for cable TV operators.

在这个晚宴上, I found myself face-to-face with people I’d done go-to-market strategies 和 business analysis cases for during the 1995–1999 time frame, 当时流媒体刚刚起步, videoconferencing was figuring out H.264, 和 ISDN/T1s were slowly being replaced by DSL. These same people are now back in the mobile video space in a large way, because they’re in turn selling to the same people they once sold to—or partnering with those people on VC deals. Discussion at the table ranged from the political (should the Green Line in Turkey be abolished?) to the nostalgic (Rembr和t II VP videoconference codec devices about the size of a college dorm room refrigerator) to the here 和 now (whether watching high-definition movies on a Blu-ray Disc-equipped laptop was even worth the time, or if you really needed a home theater system to fully appreciate them: "It’s all about the sound!" one of the dinner guests emphatically stated). But the discussion kept coming back around to the opportunity faced in streaming video, 尤其是在移动游戏中. The players at the table had been there during the glory days of the mid-‘80s 和 the late-‘90s 和 were now back in the game for the late 2000s.

While the streaming story goes several years beyond the last decade, at least from the various roles I’ve had in startups 和 consulting projects, we’re going to focus on the last decade surrounding the StreamingMedia.com website, the trade show events, 和 the first 和 second coming of 流媒体 杂志. 一路走来, we’re going to explore a few of the unsung or forgotten heroes of the streaming media story.

大罗马和平
在早期, 演出很热闹, the official parties were much more than a show-floor cocktail hour, 创业公司大量涌现, including some who have continued through the downturn 和 come out the other side with business models intact, 持续的愿景, 和, 对一些人来说, 一两个关键的专利. 理查德Bowsher, First 会议首席执行官, hit streaming media at the right time, 启动一个网站, 贸易展览系列, 和 making plans for a trade publication called, 适当地, 流媒体 杂志.

The Worldwide Video Revolution Is Happening on Small Screens

Inexpensive access to smartphones is letting people around the world add their voices to the chorus, creating a new wave of user-generated content.

2016年6月03日