Stephen Reading - Technical Liason: Progress So Far - Investigation of Competition and Similar Projects

Democracy Player
Allows content creators to publish channels traditionally by HTTP or by Bit Torrent.

To start I downloaded NBC Nightly News from Feb 24, 2007 on Sunday Feb. 25, 2007 at 2:50 pm. Average Speed = 286 k/s, Top Speed = 410 k/s, Total Download Time = 6m:40s. Length 21:27, size 112 MB, Video Rate 89 kB/s.

The quality level was significantly worse than the standard 350 MB/hr (142 kB/s) rip that I believe is necessary for this technology to catch on. At this speed it would take 20 minutes to download that quality of file.

Next I downloaded from the Terra channel : Signs Of Life: The Search for Life on Mars: Part One. Downloaded Sunday Feb 25, 2007 at 3:00 pm, size 94.1 MB, length 11:57, download time: 5m:20s, average speed: 301 kB/s, video rate 129 kB/s. The quality level was noticeably worse than the standard tv rip, but watchable.

Itunes Video Store
Current implementation of the product we are analyzing.

Video comes at 640x480 resolution, which is good, but doesn't go full screen ever as far as I can tell from the previews. At $2 per episode regardless of whether it is half hour or hour long show the pricing scheme feels as if it is ripping off the customer for shorter shows instead of giving them a deal for longer shows. I could not determine the file size of tv shows.

Movies are 1 to 1.5 GB. At 1.25 GB even at a high speed of 300 k/s it would take 1.2 hours to download. Currently since it is not BitTorrent the file is downloaded sequentially which means you can watch the movie before it is done downloading. This means (assuming constant download speed) that as long as the total time it takes to download the file is less than the time it takes to watch it, you can begin watching immediately upon purchase. If Apple switches to BitTorrent the entire file will have to download before it can be watched, which will most likely frustrate the user more and more as file size increases. This means video quality will have to be balanced against user impatience as Apple evaluates the potential of HD content. Since there is currently not much way to watch the video on a tv instead of a computer screen, increased quality would seem unnecessary given the smaller screens.

Sopcast
Uses peer to peer network to stream live tv from a limited number of channels.

OK quality (320x240), but frequent pauses for buffering due to lack of users. Received about 100 kB/s download speed when trying to watch Barcelona vs Athens on GOL TV on Sunday Feb. 25, 2007. 54 other fans were watching the channel at the time.
Since it is p2p live tv buffering works differently than normal web video. It is possible for the buffer percentage to decrease even while you download if you don't download fast enough. This is because a node that is behind all the other computers isn't able to upload useful data. So people with slow connections will see nothing, instead of taking longer to see something as might be expected.
From experience, during the World Cup there were often 1000 people watching, which didn’t improve quality but allowed for no pauses for buffering. CCTV 5 (China Central Television Sports) is usually the one with the most viewers.

Joost
Streaming TV distributed through a peer to peer network,f rom the creators of Skype and Kazaa.

I signed up for Joost Beta weeks ago but have not been accepted yet, and invitations to join seem to be rare.

Bit Torrent TV Rips (eztv for this example)
Illegal rips allow for download of full episodes of copyrighted tv shows with no drm.

According to the site the typical hour long Bit Torrent TV rip is 608x336 resolution at a compression rate of 142 kB/s. The rules for these communities stipulate that files must be under 350 MB/hr.

From this and other file sharing sites it appears that:
1080p movies = 20 GB
1 hr (aka 40 min) 1080i tv shows are ~4.2 GB
1 hr (aka 40 min) 720p tv shows are 1 GB
So called HR releases are 1 hr (aka 40 min) 700 MB at an unknown resolution since I can’t download it.

According to HDTV Info Port these analog measures convert into the following digital resolutions:
720p - The picture is 1280x720 - 60 complete frames per second.
1080i - The picture is 1920x1080 - (60/2 interlaced frames per second)
= 30 complete frames per second.
1080p - The picture is 1920x1080 - 60 complete frames per second.

Even the lowest quality format that qualifies as HDTV, 720p, has three times more pixels than Apple’s 640x480, which would mean tripling file size and download time.