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Viodi View Newsletter - May 17th, 2006
Indie Telco Local
Content Workshop Advertisement
Serving Up Video
By Ken Pyle,ken.pyle at viodi.com, Managing Editor
Complicated normally means the consumer has to invest a lot of time in order to achieve certain results. Pixpo just launched a new product that promises an easier and, maybe, different way for consumers to serve up videos and images. Pixpo’s software provides the interface that allows customers to easily organize and share video and images with friends or the connected world. It supports Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and has a search engine that seems to work...............................
What makes Pixpo unique, in a world where free network storage is readily available from the likes of Photobucket and Yahoo!, is that the Pixpo software turns a consumer’s PC into a server. One advantage of this is that the consumer has control of their content. He can also turn on and off access to the content when they want. Of course, there are some downsides to this, such as the consumer’s PC has to be online in order for the service to work and there is no telling how much upstream bandwidth is required.
Jim Wallace, Director of Business Development for Pixpo indicated that Pixpo uses a combination of proxy and temporary caching to relieve the stress on the upstream. There are definitely limitations, as it only supports Windows Media video formats, as well as common image formats (e.g., gif, jpg, bmp, etc.). Flash is not supported at present nor are text or PDF format files. This was a bit disappointing, as it has the potential to be a very simple way to organize content and feed it out via RSS.
They are working with entities to customize the look and feel of the interface for specific applications. One of the first applications will be for Twitch TV. Twitch TV is apparently a specialized internet-based video channel that will be part of Tom’s Hardware web site. They are also in discussions with a few Canadian telcos. I imagine that they are looking at creating telco-specific, differentiated video portals. Their business model seems to be a little in flux as to whether they will be ad supported, premium service or combinations of both.
Viodi gave it a test drive with some videos that can be found at this link. We tested the service with two lap-tops connecting via a wireless router to the Internet. The server lap-top was connected to the same wireless router. In that scenario, it is not clear whether or not the video went upstream or whether it stayed within the network. The two receiving lap-tops were simultaneously viewing different streams.
Click to go to Viodi's Pixpo Web Site
Sure enough, when we disconnected the server lap-top from the network, the video stopped streaming to the receiving lap-top after a few seconds. If we would have been a bit more scientific we could have compared the difference in buffer time between unplugging the server lap-top from the network versus one of the receiving lap-tops to try to determine whether or not the video was going outside the network.
This is definitely software that is worth a closer look for both Viodi, as well as Independent telcos. In fact, if any readers are interested in helping to test it, please try to view a video at 12:00 P.M PST (1 PM MST, 2 PM CST & 3 PM EST) this Friday, May 19th.
Let’s see what happens to my upstream signal. I am also very curious regarding the performance of the downstream signal to the viewer.
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