#6 "What is 'Over-the-Top' Internet Broadcasting"

Speaker 0 00:00 Welcome to the workflow show episode one Oh six. I'm Meryl Davis and alongside Nick gold this week. We're talking about over the top and no, I don't mean the awesomely cheesy 1980s movies, starring Sylvester Stallone, which I love dearly. It's about arm wrestling. It is as most eighties movies are, it's about a special move called over the top. It is. And it actually just, just in the side, I love that movie so much because I feel like it's a great like father and son story. I get teary eyed every time. But the funny thing about the arm wrestling move over the top, you watch it and you're like, that's kind of like cheating in thumb wrestling. You like whip out your pointer finger from around the side. And like, just like go over the top with your pointer. That's right. Arm wrestling, version of arm wrestling, version of cheating. And that's a good a segue as any to talk about what we actually mean by over the top and or as it's referred to as OTT. So OTT is a fairly new term as far as the buzz word. And you know, we love Speaker 1 01:06 Buzzwords here on the workflow show. We try to use acronyms and initialisms as, as regularly as we can, Speaker 0 01:13 You know, it just doesn't feel smart and like, you know, the government cause they do that all the time too. Yeah. Goodman. So what exactly is OTT? That's a good question. That's a good question because I think it's both technological and kind of revolutionary. Yes. So, uh, I guess we have to start on a pretty abstract level here because we're going to talk about the internet and how the internet comes into play when somebody's talking about over the top and how that differs from traditional stuffs. So I'll take it from the top. Meryl, how about that? Why once you take it from over the top, we're going to be riffing on that this entire episode. We each get another allotment of two and then we're done. Okay. Make a note of this. So in the world of broadcast, back in the day in the day, Speaker 1 02:04 People built like radio antennas. I'm pretty sure I saw that in some movie once and you still drive by them and Baltimore. There's several really tall ones and I'm always like, God, if a hurricane came through here, that's just going to be a disaster. It's like a hundred years of infrastructure that all of a sudden it's starting to seem a little, uh, archaic. Yeah. So, but it was all about over the air broadcasting, getting your content to the masses. I mean, it was the definition of a broadcast and the way that you could get content to people was by sending it out through the airwaves as radio signals, obviously that began with radio and it moved into the realm of moving pictures with sound, uh, later. So, you know, the antenna thing gave way, I guess probably what in the seventies to cable systems and actually having cables run Speaker 0 03:00 In the ground between cable companies, which were very kind of local and regional at the time to the end users. And, um, that was a glorious time. And, and, and I love television. We had one of those like cool little set, top boxes with a real physical push button kind of things. I remember the six movies I showed on Cinemax Theo. And there was like Nickelodeon man. Those were the days of like being like a five-year-old watching Nickelodeon. I was like old school. The Morissette was on that man. Oh, I know. And you can't do that on television. Great times with thought that she would then go onto national television talking about breastfeeding. I, I wouldn't have it's okay, David, you can edit that out. I wasn't, as funny as I thought was, I think he's gonna keep that part. Um, and then obviously kind of around that similar timeframe, maybe a hair later, you know, some consumers move to putting up satellite dishes of their own. Speaker 0 03:57 At first, this was kind of like almost like the whole little hacker ethic where people were literally pulling signal off of broadcasters satellites that weren't really intended for end users to get content off of. And there was a bit of that and wasn't, well, they had to use the scramblers and there was this whole like underground of getting D scrambler codes and all that. And were also people who just lived in a region very much like, you know, when broadband internet first came, you know, there were people who were in the region where the infrastructure was viable and there were people who were in the middle of nowhere, uh, yeah. Also meant, you know, using satellite. Um, and, and then of course we, that satellite gave way to kind of dish TV and direct TV and more kind of akin to cable broadcasting. And then it was totally legitimate. Speaker 0 04:47 They were, they, they themselves were kind of a network bundling a bunch of licensed television channels together into a set of offerings that a consumer would just, you know, kind of legitimately have access to no, no D scramblers or any of that, you know, out of the back pages of, you know, weird magazines for geeks and then it all changed. Well, yeah, it all has really changed. And I'd say over the course of, uh, the first decade of the 21st century is when we saw all of that. And what happened while this, this tiny little thing we like to refer to as the interwebs, the tubes, the tubes, that sweet little sweet tubes, the TCP IP tubes. Yeah. Well, you know, so something strange should happen and, and probably the best way to explain to everybody what exactly OTT is. As far as internet is concerned. Speaker 0 05:39 Think about things you use every day. You probably are our member of Netflix. You're probably a member of Hulu. Um, but while you might even just watch videos on YouTube. Yeah. All these things are what are known as over the top applications. They sit on top of the internet. They are not controlled by, um, the purveyors of internet. Not by Verizon, not by Comcast, not by anybody. Yeah. So that's the crux of it, right? So now we all have these high speed, high bandwidth, internet connections that are capable of spitting. Sometimes in some cases I've noticed high Def video that looks better than what you get through your cable provider or whatnot on their set top box. That's true because, and, and it's known that many of the cable providers do use heavy levels of compression. They can stress the heck out of that stuff. Speaker 0 06:29 And now you've got like, I've got a 50 megabit Comcast connection at home. They just upped it. I don't even have to pay any more for it. And, and you can get crazy video in a fraction of 50 megabits. And the thing with over the top and the crux of what over the top implies is that the content creator and distributor is using the public internet to get to the viewer to some device. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit that the viewer is watching this content on, but they're the internet service provider that they get their internet connection through is not acting as a gatekeeper for that content. You're just using that pipe that they're giving you to access to the internet, to get whatever video and media content you want. And this is the way that we would hope it remains well, it's, it's cool. Speaker 0 07:23 Right? But it's a totally radical departure on so many levels. It disrupts business models. The technology is way different than how traditional broadcast even worked a few years ago. If you're an old school broadcast guy, right now, you kind of shaken in your booties because you know what paid the bills for the last 25 years really doesn't pay the bills anymore. And this is sort of part of a more prevalent change that we've seen in multiple industries, the recording industry, certainly in the movie industry, um, and in all the associated, uh, you know, uh, distribution methods associated with, with media in general. So here is just, you know, the next in the long line. And it's, it's just, it's so much more anarchic let's, let's start with kind of looking at this world of over the top content and quote unquote broadcasting from the viewers perspective. Speaker 0 08:22 How about that? Cause, cause again, this is what a lot of people are familiar with. They're using these services. You mentioned a few. Yeah. So I go home, I, um, I fire up my PlayStation three and then I look for some new releases on Netflix and then, uh, I press play, what does this happen there? Well, Netflix has their videos that have been encoded that are sitting on servers, both at their primary location. And I'm sure Netflix kind of seeds servers out at key points in the internet distribution world. And you know, you're using your internet connection. Who, who do you have? I use Comcast at home. I use Comcast as well. It's, uh, it's mostly by, uh, not choice. Well, and that's the funny thing about internet connections is that, that the reality is it's not a terribly competitive market. I'd like fires, but the infrastructure here is such that I can't get well, they just don't have it in Baltimore city. Speaker 0 09:22 It just doesn't exist in Baltimore city, but you've got your internet connection. You're paying for X amount of bandwidth at a given moment and probably X number of gigabytes per month. That's true. And the tier I have, they have a three gig cap per month. So I, um, I have to actually attenuate the quality of video that I stream. If I watch a lot, instead of doing, uh, the best quality streaming, I might do a mid range one just because I do have a, a cap, but, uh, so, but you've got this pipe, right. And you've got this device, you've got a game system in the case that you were just talking about, it's running basically an app that was developed specifically for that platform, correct. There's Netflix, who is the content provider here, but Comcast really is kind of left out of this equation here. Speaker 0 10:15 Yeah. Well, they charging you for the internet connection. They're trying very hard in their own business models now, too, to make sure that what happens is that you still have to pay them in some respects. Certainly the, uh, Olympics this past summer would be an excellent example of where they're still trying to pigeonhole you until you go to the Comcast website, or I think even the NBC website, but you'd have to enter in credentials that proved that you were kind of like a customer of a paid cable service that would have given you access to, I think like the, the MSNBC sports channel or whatever they call the whole caboodle. And they are actually trying to roll out and are actively rolling out their, I think they're calling it extreme or X play, uh, whatever, uh, the Xfinity rebranding of their on demand video services are. Speaker 0 11:09 Um, they obviously, this is interesting just to give you sort of some perspective, Comcast will not, um, will not charge you against the amount of, um, uh, bandwidth. Yeah. If you use their on, on demand videos. So I can go to xfinity.com and Comcast makes television channels, movies, all that content fast majority of what you can get access to on TV or through your cable set top box using the on demand functions or even Hulu, you can get through their site on your computer. But again, this kind of looks like over the top, but it's not over the tonight because they are still acting as the gatekeeper for that content. They are forcing you to prove that you're paying Comcast every month, not only for your internet connection, but you are a paying television customer. And so that gives you access to that television content on their website. Speaker 0 12:12 And again, that's like to compete with this over the top landscape where there's a million other people on the internet who are willing to give you video through just your internet connection, but this is for premium content. And again, the business models that they have dictate that you have to be paying them as a television customer in addition to being an internet customer in order to get that stuff, which I'll have to say as far as the Olympics were concerned, was a real slap in the face. As I have terrestrial television, I have an HDTV with an antenna and I can get access to all the NBC, um, televised publicly, uh, through, through, through a broadcaster from, from, uh, um, one of these antenna stations we're talking about before, but somehow magically, if I wanted to do the exact same thing, sitting in the exact same room, looking at the exact same television, if I, if I wanted to, I'd have to have an Xfinity subscriber, there is a difference. Speaker 0 13:08 And I think it's worthwhile pointing out to customers and, you know, putting on kind of the devil's advocate role for a moment here, why the reason is because of established business models, these companies are, you know, if you just get the raw feeds, like those Olympics feeds that you could get through their website were very raw. They weren't giving you all the same commercials that you were seeing in the, over the air or cable broadcast. I'm not sure I wasn't able to watch it. No, I think they were like very raw feeds of the games. And you mean without Brian Adams and the whole world talking about, I don't know how much of their, of that there was, but, but again, they can't turn their whole model of making money to give viewers content off overnight. And even if there was kind of another model out there, they can't get to it very easily. Speaker 0 14:04 Like I'll give you another example. HBO has an app called HBO go, you can watch it on your computer screen through a web browser. You've got it on your, your iOS devices. I think there's probably an Android version and, and probably a number of other platforms. There might be HBO go for your Roku box, which is another one of these receiver boxes for kind of over the top content on your television. But that's really just using your internet connection. HBO requires as well that you enter in credentials that prove that you are a paying television HBO customer before you can watch that HBO content through those apps, through that HBO app platform. I mean, largely that's also because HBO is owned by time Warner. Well, but, but think about it, right? I'm HBO. I have an existing set of contracts with cable providers with satellite providers I have of which are, uh, I'm wholly owned by well, but that's besides the point, let me, let me, let me make the point here, which is that if I'm HBO and I have a certain amount of revenue that I know is coming in annually based on existing on the books, contracts with a well-established distributors of content, cable companies and satellite companies. Speaker 0 15:30 And I have this model where I could sell my content directly to end viewers and have a true over the top application and just charge viewers directly for it would be awesome. And they would be awesome. Our money hand over fist helps that Marilyn, how do you get there from point a? How do you, you don't get there, throw out all of your contracts overnight and say, well, we don't, we're not going to have any revenue for the next 24 months, but eventually, eventually there will be enough direct subscription. The way it operates now is because of the existing paradigm. Of course they have to play it conservatively. They owe it to their shareholders, but it's also like a show like game of Thrones, which is by far the cash cow of HBO right now, that does well. It's actually, I think it's like the number one most pirated show right now as well. Speaker 0 16:19 Um, with a show like that, uh, the market is already, uh, they've already demonstrated, but you tell me, and now they can get into purchase, but you tell me how they can get there in a way that isn't the marketplace you need, you need, that's the thing. And this is the challenge, right? There's this glorious future that I think a lot of people see, which is that the people who produce content can sell it directly in a very itemized piecemeal way to the end viewers, without any of that extra cruft of the middleman. And the middleman simply becomes the purveyor of packets, right? It's purely a TCP IP internet distribution system. And your relationship with Comcast is just the internet pipe and or, or Verizon or whoever it may be. And then beyond that, my ability to get as much content as I want is just between me and the person making the content. Speaker 0 17:18 And we're all kind of paying for internet use in between. And I think like that would be glorious except to the existing people who make tons of money off of being the gatekeepers of all the content. You know, I, I appreciate your devil's advocate argument here, which is that, of course, there's, there's a lot of stuff that's already in place, but you know, history will tell us, certainly like, uh, with the record companies that holding onto an old model, simply because it made you like just tons and tons of money, um, and feel entitled to continue to make that level of money without changing anything in your, your industry over a period of 10 plus years is not sustainable. It's just not. And you, you make a really good point, which is that, given that you have this established kind of media establishment, right? That the main broadcasters, the big premium channels, the people producing content, you know, and, and the viewers obviously, and now there's radical new way of being able to get content to people directly who does this benefit and who does this threaten well, well, the people who are locked into their existing business models, the reality is they're late taking our money. Speaker 0 18:31 Well, they don't have a clear path forward, but for any person who wants to be a broadcaster now for anyone, who's like, I'm going to create content and I want to get it to viewers. And you are not relying on an existing distribution network. You're not relying on an established business plan, but you can kind of do whatever you want to do. You know, that the technology allows for it's like the salad days, man. I mean, you, now I can just be a broadcaster and there's no technical challenge to getting video content to pretty much every single set of eyeballs on the planet or, or single eyeballs. People who maybe have lost an eye. Right. Okay. Leela from Futurama. Yeah. Like her well, but she didn't lose one. She's a Cyclops. Yeah. Actually she's not a Cyclops. She's a mutant. Yeah. I know I saw that episode, but, uh, so really all you need is, is something on the front end, something on the back end and something in the middle. Speaker 0 19:37 Yes. And the thing in the middle is just, you have an internet connection. So, so let's talk about it from both ends. We talked a bit about the viewers and you mentioned your PlayStation, right? Yeah. There's obviously special boxes and there's like a dozen of them, probably more than a dozen of the Apple TV kind of technically counts because it certainly has a certain level of integration of things like Netflix. And it's got a few, but it's not wide open. If you look at things like, um, the Roku box, which is great, that's wide open, cause it's pretty easy for content producers to create channels for Roku and Roku. Who's wanting to sign up as many people who want to do Roku channels as possible because it gives people more reasons to buy Roku boxes. My other one is boxy. Boxy is like boxing extreme example, because box, he actually gives you a way of basically pointing your boxy box at any video content and on the internet. Speaker 0 20:35 I mean, there are, there are ways that certain content producers try to block you from getting to their content through boxy, but you know, an over the top of broadcaster is thrilled to have you watch their content on your box. He box and box. He is a very open kind of platform. So say box again, boxy box box, um, the box, your box rocks. Well, yeah. And then there, you know, so we could, we could just write off the list of logic. Tech has one. I think Microsoft has one, there's the Google TV that hasn't really taken off, but that's an example. There are these specialized set top box. I even had my Samsung Bluray player. I have an ability. There's an <inaudible> TVs have them built in. Now the Xbox three 60 is huge for this. There's tons of quote unquote channels for Xbox three 60, including Netflix though. Speaker 0 21:24 You need an Xbox live gold membership. I think that's such a quick, yeah, it's just, you know, you don't need that on your, your wee or your PlayStation three though. Just, you know, putting it. Yeah. No, I think Microsoft, ah, anyway. Yeah. So there's all these actual boxes, but of course there's your computer in your web browser, right? That's a perfect example and your iPhone and your iPad and Android, right? All of these platforms, whether they're their set top boxes sort of, but just to connect to the internet, whether they're your mobile devices, your tablets, your smartphones, your computer just itself, and a web browser. These are all over the top content viewing systems. Whereas traditional broadcast is pretty much your TV with either a set of rabbit ears or the cable providers set top box, or maybe Verizon for files or something like that, or the, the dish TV or whatever they're called, you know, satellite receiver system. Speaker 0 22:26 And that's all you get, you know, if you want to get those systems content, whereas these other platforms, it's basically just, I'm a consumer. I got this device and I got an internet connection. Woo. I'm ready to go. And the world is your oyster. Cause there's like a bajillion, different people putting out internet content, you know, web video content on the web. Now. So if I, if I was a guy that said, I have, uh, a specific set of video content that I want to generate and I want to get it out to the world and I don't want to deal with traditional broadcasters. You, those guys they're old fogies. They don't know what they're talking about. Right. So I want to have to sell my show to anyone. Why should I have to prove myself to enhance the cost of entry is so low. Speaker 0 23:12 As far as of the technology associated with generating the video content, I can get my HD cameras. I can buy a light kit. I can, you know, if I know what I'm doing and I want to generate a chat show or whatever, um, I can create something that is a very high level production quality. And then I can take that and I can get it H two, six, four, and coated and, and share it to the world. Is that what you're telling me? Well, yeah. And I mean, so let's take it from the simplest, right? Let's let's look at the real bare bones set up. You got your content, right? You got a video, you spit something out Speaker 1 23:45 Of final cut or premiere. Your avid it's done. It's edited. Okay. Pretty much any computer that you're editing video on, we'll let you transcode it to some kind of a web delivery flavor of video, just like an H two 64 quick time movie. That's a quick just example. Pretty much all video delivered on the internet now is at its core H two 64. So all you need is to use, you know, quick time, uh, or final cut itself or compressor or another transcoding application. Like the one that comes with, uh, Adobe production premium, um, any transcoding app or a specialized one, like episode from Telestream or many, many others Sorenson squeeze. And I'm just going to turn my video that I made from kind of the edit quality video into a high quality looking, but very delivery oriented format, like long <inaudible> me, you know, maybe wrapped as an MP four or.mov, right? Speaker 1 24:47 So I want to get this into the eyeballs of every single person on the interwebs. What do I do? Like if I want to be really cheap about it and hit everyone, I can post it on YouTube, right? What's this YouTube. I've never heard of that. So YouTube was like, as most of our listeners will know one of the very first widely adopted platforms for allowing pretty much anyone to post video content on the internet. Boy did I love the early days of YouTube back before Google bottom. Yeah. It was an interesting time and lots of interesting content, no question. There's still interesting content. I mean, there's so much, it's like this. See, and I mean, YouTube, what is YouTube? But it's a website that I go to as a customer or on the iPhone. It's a particular app. Although apparently that's not going to baked into iOS six anymore. Speaker 1 25:40 I would, I would venture to say that the customer of YouTube isn't necessarily the end user, the customer is the advertiser. Well, so that's so, so YouTube is two things. YouTube is a sophisticated website and backend system for allowing users to post their content. So the whole world can see video through the internet, to a many different devices that are capable of showing YouTube content. But you know what YouTube also is, it is an, it is an advertising delivery platform. It is, it's owned by Google and what's Google the world's biggest advertising company. That's what they do. Remember how to monetize just if you are using Google and you're not paying them any money, you are not the customer. You are the product just like Facebook, any of these online websites where you're using them for free and there's advertising involved. If you're the one using it for free, and you're not the one paying them, you are the product and it's your eyeballs and attention and brain and your digital footprint that are exactly all of your like browsing history and all the weird stuff. Speaker 1 26:52 The cookies that they're installing on your web browser are picking up about you. That's all getting sold to the people who are actually paying those companies money, which are their advertisers. And so YouTube tied into Google set of offerings for people who want to advertise has a way of monetizing the, the content that you present through YouTube. And so this is interesting because then the person posting the content can be making money off of the platform, but the, and actually getting paid kickbacks by Google officially use the phrase kickbacks though. But yeah, after, after a certain number of impressions, if you have a video that is popular, you will, these, these certain functions in YouTube or unlocked that will allow you to, it ties into their ad sense platform. And so, you know, if you want to post videos through YouTube, YouTube slash Google has a revenue generation model for you as a content creator. Speaker 1 27:54 And you as an advertiser who may be, want to advertise through kind of the world's biggest video broadcast network, AKA YouTube, you know, you have ways of feeding your video ads into that. So they're getting peppered throughout a variety of people's videos. You know, in any given day, though, I will say this, this is not something that you should hang your hat on because I think at this point it's, um, a fairly inundated platform and it's a new platform and the business models just aren't really fully hashed out yet. And the truth of the matter is, is that you will hear stories of people. Who've really made a lot of money through YouTube, but they are few and far between, and lots of times they made stupid videos with cats. So, so, but that's one example. And you know, the flip side of it is YouTube is maybe a good place for a content producer to start building an audience. Speaker 1 28:48 It's obviously you can't customize the look of your YouTube channel all that much. It's not going to be wrapped within all the other stuff. I mean, you can embed YouTube videos in your own page to be sure, and just have your web developers create, you know, a web identity that you want your viewers to see. Uh, but the reality is it's, it's, you know, you're still obviously posting your videos on YouTube and some over the top content creators and quote unquote new school over the top, broadcasters are really gonna want to control the overall experience. And so you could take, and he's not really my cup of tea people, and I'm not going to like get into politics or any of that stuff, but just overall, he's not my cup of tea, but Glenn Beck Glenn Beck is no longer doing stuff with Fox. He, he, he started own absolute over the top of broadcast network through the internist Leo LaPorte. Speaker 1 29:47 And like this week in tech, yeah, more people in the world now know who Glenn Beck is than Leo LaPorte. And that's a sad thing that speaks poorly of our culture, but he's probably the biggest traditional broadcaster who pulled away or was kicked off of, depending on whose story you believe a traditional broadcast network, and then decided, you know what, I'm going to go over the top. And his model is to control the whole experience for his viewers. It's all of his web content I believe is just delivered through his a website and you pay a membership fee to him cause he figured, Hey, I can count on this many people wanting to continue to watch me being crazy on quote unquote TV. So if even a fraction of them pay this much per month for access to my kind of Glenn Beck over the top television network, you know, I'm going to make XYZ and that's enough to cover my costs and, you know, make some money and you know, that could be a good model. Speaker 1 30:46 And I think that kind of thing, we're sure you're partnering with a content delivery network. You're probably not hosting these videos yourself. You're probably using <inaudible> or limelight networks or one of these content delivery networks that specializes in hosting, you know, rich media content for you that you can still point to through your webpage, but they're actually holding the videos and doing the streaming and you're probably going to partner with them, but then you're going to just point to their stuff through your own webpage. And maybe you have a paywall that you create. And if you think you can be a good judge of how much, you know, viewership, you're going to be able to get to pay for that say on a monthly basis or per download, that might be another good model that, that, you know, might be a little more predictable than some who the heck knows how much we're going to get paid on a given day, you know, Google ad sets set up. Speaker 1 31:38 I mean, and that's, that's sort of a crapshoot when you upload to YouTube. I mean, you may or may not get those eyes and the ebb and flow of the internet world and what rights the top. It's not always, it doesn't always make sense. Well, yeah. And you know, another good example of someone who just ran with the over the top thing, uh, Louis CK, the comedian, he decided that for, I think it was one of his latest, you know, just recorded video, standup things. He said, I'm going to post this video on my internet website. I'm not even going to put digital rights management, you know, copy protection on the video. I am going to make people pay to download it. But once they've got the video, I mean, heck they could put it on internet sharing websites and there's not going to be anything blocking that. But he did it as an experiment to kind of become his own broadcaster. He knew he had an audience, he knew people would probably download it to a degree, his costs weren't that high to create this thing. And he posts this video. And I seem to remember that within like a few days he had made millions of dollars and it was way more than it was expected. It was millions of dollars Speaker 0 32:47 I think, over, over time. But, um, I think, uh, if I recall, um, he certainly made of that amount of money total. He made more of a percentage than if he were to have used traditional, uh, channels, like if he were to have sold content to HBO comedy channel. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, these are all Speaker 1 33:10 Examples of over the top, because again, at the end of the day, it's the content creator either through some self-created platform or more of a readily accessible platform, like a YouTube, like a Vimeo, like even iTunes, right? I mean, video podcasts that you're kind of finding through iTunes or even technically audio podcasts, much like this one are two examples of kind of over the top delivery. Cause it's just the people making the content with some platform to hook the viewers up to the content, the internet connection that we all share. Um, you know, that's all there really is. And again, it's just crazy, right? Cause there's only so many advertising dollars out, Speaker 0 33:55 But Nick, I don't understand how is this a viable solution? How, how can somebody make money if the crux of everything that we've done up until this point rely so heavily upon advertising? Speaker 1 34:10 Well, that's the thing, right? It's, it's, it's a whole new way of getting content out there. And it's a whole new business structure for people creating content. Cause again, you don't necessarily need to have that relationship with the middleman, who's distributing the content. And yet those middlemen did fulfill a decent role, which was marketing the content. And at least being able to say, we're going to put it in front of this many people through our established network, right? Like making a movie, right. I want to make a movie used to be, yes, showed it at Sundance, you did this, you did that. And he tried to pick up a distributor and they couldn't necessarily tell you exactly how many theaters they were going to get to run the film for how many weeks. But at least you kind of could count on them, putting some effort into that and trying to get you some returns. Whereas these days go going to Netflix, I'd say most of the movies on there are people who probably planned to have them be primarily distributed through Netflix in the first place. And a lot of documentary content I've been, Speaker 0 35:17 I've been in a lot of marketplaces, uh, at film festivals. And, uh, one of the things that is very prevalent is Netflix is actually carving themselves out as a content distributor for original content. You all may recall reading last year that the, the next season of arrested development is coming exclusively to net Fox. Thank goodness too, because that's a show that just needs to last forever. I hope, I hope it's not like visiting, you know, an old girlfriend. You remember all the reasons you liked it, but anyway, I've always completely shut down my relationships CSE. There's no, there's no previous visits, but, uh, but so there's, so yeah, they're getting into the company in game. Red envelope is their company and um, and they do a lot of original content purchasing and distribution. Um, and this is, this is really viable. So, but you, you bring up this good point, which is that this is all so different and there's only so many advertising dollars out there. Speaker 0 36:17 And none of this has really jelled quite yet. And there's been some successful experiments. There's been some knots successful experiments. And then you've got folks like the traditional quote, unquote distributor middlemen, be they the Comcasts, the Verizons, whatever, you know, trying to hold up net neutrality legislation because they actually want to be able to like slow down content. You're getting from other sources that aren't going through them. Imagine a world where if you wanted to watch the exact same video on YouTube, you could only download it at X amount of kilobytes per second, versus the exact same video through Comcast network that that sets tiers of the internet. And it, and it goes against everything that the forefathers of the internet, as far as I'm concerned, um, wanted the internet to be free, moving knowledge and data back and forth without any restriction. You know, it seems pretty dangerous. Speaker 0 37:17 It seems. I don't like the sound of it. I mean, you hear some counter arguments about the amount of money that these companies have to invest in the actual physical infrastructure. And that they've got to recoup that. But listen, I think if I'm paying for an internet connection, you charge me, you know, if you want to say, it's this much bandwidth, you know, this many megabits a second, this is how many gigs of content I can get a month. That's all come up with a dollar amount for those things that I can just pay that you're happy charging me. Those amounts no matter who I'm getting my content from, that should be separate from the content. They're not happy. They're not happy because they're not making enough money. They want more money. They do already highly profitable, but they want more money. They do. But, uh, you know, capitalism, Oh yeah. You know, this is good for the new school people, but the business models aren't fully developed and, and there's, you know, experimenting as we said, and there's things like the revision three network, which I think would be an early or an earlier experiment in sort of internet to look at what happened to them. They got bought recently by discovery. Is that true? Communications? Yep. Rev three got bought by a discovery. I know this because discovery is a client of ours and they mentioned it to me recently. And I was like, Oh, it looks Speaker 1 38:35 Like they purchased it. It says a discovery communications, $30 million. So if you start your own content network, keep at it for a couple six years and then eventually discover your buyer. But look at it discovery. I mean, they aren't a Comcast. They, they, they are certainly a partner of Comcast and that Comcast pays them for their content, but discovery is realizing, Hey, maybe we can have like this alternate tier of content that we can kind of somehow monetize and get to the viewers directly just through their internet connection. And maybe it's not going to necessarily be the exact same stuff you would see on the discovery channel through your cable provider, but it's just another potential revenue stream. And even these biggest stablish more broadcast. Traditional broadcast oriented companies are seeing that they have to kind of get in this space. And the fact is this space is occupied by so many different entities. Speaker 1 39:34 You know, again, the folks who are really rooted in traditional distribution, you know, not so sure what to do, but maybe we can at least talk about the technologies a little more specifically. So like people know, you know, we talked about kind of the YouTube approach we talked about kind of maybe just building a website, let me, let me, uh, um, paint a picture for you. And we'll use this as an example. Sure. So we got a local chat show guy. Maybe, maybe he had, you know, like a public access television show, but he really wants to take it to the next level. So he has an existing viewer base, but you know, he knows that he's got a two camera set up and he's got a studio space and he wants to take it to the next level. Let's just say he interviews people about their alien abductions. Speaker 1 40:20 He interviews people about their ailing. What, well, I, you know, I'm thinking like those weird things you see on public access TV in the middle of the night. That's true though. I, to be honest with you, I don't see public access television anymore. And while there's very little of it compared to what there used to be, let's say there's a guy. He once had a late night public access channel and he's got the goods, but he doesn't know. And maybe he's an old school guy who's who has been at this for a while, but really doesn't know how to take it to the next level. He doesn't get the airtime. He doesn't, you know, he can't get out of the region. What does he do? So while we talked about the poor man's approach of just spitting out his video set and turning it into an inch to 64, uploading it to YouTube, maybe using their advertising system so he can get paid on that. Speaker 1 41:03 But what's like beyond that, right? Well, we mentioned partnering with a CDN, like an Akamai. And again, what CDN stands for Nick. It's a content delivery network and these guys have servers all over the internet, literally. I mean, you located co located all over the place to buffer content across a wide geographic and kind of networking geographic range so that when you want to watch a video, you don't necessarily have to watch the exact same copy in Milwaukee. I can watch a copy of it. That's on a server here in Baltimore and get much quicker speed without as much internet traffic in between blocking the quality. So an Optima, you can pay a certain amount to host videos. And again, you just point to them through your website. But so what's this content producer do well. He needs to have a website probably because probably one of the primary means that his viewers are going to get to this content is by opening their web browser and pointing it to his website. Speaker 1 42:01 And he's got videos on it. Maybe it's a novel idea. Yeah. Maybe he's got a pay wall there. So you have to sign in and you're paying your $5 a month or $10 a month. Or maybe it's a per download. You're paying a certain fee, but whatever he, or maybe it's just ads, maybe he's just got ads baked into the website. He's getting some advertisers have, you know, maybe alien abduction spray integrating into his, his, uh, his video content. You know, it's yeah. Maybe he's doing little, like, you know, if you want to keep the grey aliens from doing horrible things to you in the middle of the night use, Sparky's only and repellent. It's funny you say that because this is really at its core, going back to the very beginning of television with the Colgate hour. I mean like there was a time when it was appropriate, sponsored by hour, brought to you by my missing left tooth that I can't even say that as if you were missing your eyes, dude. Speaker 1 42:56 I don't even think you intended to do that now. It's like, you just really got into the character I did. But so, you know, that's interesting that, um, that is a model and I think that's a good, a good moment for me to mention that the workflow show is sponsored by Chesapeake systems. You're suave purveyors of internet and media technology, and such visit us on the [email protected]. If you have any questions or comments about the workflow show, send it to, is this like creepy, sexy guy reading us? Like, like aren't those mutually exclusive terms be sexy. Well, maybe not. I don't know. But anyway, yeah, that's an, I mean, you may do this. You may have your cool little web podcast and you just have sponsors that are paying because they want to get to your niche audience. Right? Cause a lot of this content is going to be pretty nichey. Speaker 1 43:50 You're going for like the 75 people on the planet who are really into green socks. I don't know. I was going to say, uh, X-Files fan fiction, but green socks works too. Whatever it may be, whatever you want to make your video podcast. So, so you've got your website. Maybe you want to take it a little further. Maybe you want everyone with an iPhone or an iPad or Android to have an app to get to your video content. Well, what are you going to have to do then? Well, you're going to either have to yourself or through some kind of contractor or a permanent employee that you bring on build mobile apps, right? And maybe in conjunction with that, maybe you want to have a, a Roku box channel that you want anyone with a Roku set top box and an internet connection to have a channel for, you know, whatever your weird show is, uh, or excellent show as any of our clients were weird or weird and excellent because those are not mutually exclusive. Speaker 1 44:51 In fact, I would argue that most excellent things have a certain element of weirdness that's creepy and slightly sexy. So, you know, you need developers, you need web developers, developers, developers, I'm sorry. Whoa. You just channeled Steve bomber, but you weren't pounding on your chest nearly as bold or sweating. So you need, you need to develop, right? What don't you need? Well, you don't necessarily need a television broadcast engineering staff that knows all about how to feed video signals into cable head-end systems. That's right. You just need a really smart guy who can maybe program an app. Well, that's the thing, right? It's all about it. And, and granted, even the world of traditional broadcast technologies, most of that gear is it equipment at this point, however, work addressable. It that's the thing. This is all just about networking and TCP IP and developing web pages or mobile apps or set top box apps that often are not much more than kind of web pages wrapped up in a little extra. Speaker 1 45:57 And you're really controlling the entire experience for your viewer. And, and, but it's about app development. It's about writing some code. It's about compressing the video. We mentioned Telestream and some other tools that can be used to, to generate, you know, good quality H two 64 video. Now there's another element to this too. Most of what we've been talking about has to do with kind of on demand, right? Everyone wants on demand. And when you go to the internet, everything is on demand. I go to YouTube and any video that's on YouTube, I can just kind of click right then and there and see boom. And if it doesn't load them irritated, but I do think there's another model which probably will start to evolve, which is something that mimics traditional scheduled broadcast television, but purely within the context of over the top technology. So, and I'll give you an example, right? Speaker 1 46:50 So you go to CNN, CNN has an iOS app and you can watch quote unquote, live video on the CNN app. Or you can even go to CNN website and they've got a video section. Now that's not really over the top because again, I think they still, at least, especially for the you're full on web browser version, they make you enter credentials that prove that you are a paying cable television customer. So then they let you have the live feed. Cause they don't want it to interfere. Continuing to pay as an unpaid, uh, CNN user you can do is basically access the pre uploaded in already vetted a video clip. Let's say you weren't CNN, the cable news network. Let's say you were Inn the internet news network and you want it to start this whole thing from scratch. Right? Well, you know, you could have your own app. Speaker 1 47:38 That's still was like a live broadcast. Sure. You could, you could build out a schedule with something like tools on air. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about, let's say you wanted to have something that basically just looked like watching CNN, but you were watching internet news network through an app on your iPhone. What, what would you need? So with, with on demand, it's really easy. Cause you're basically uploading a set of videos that people are essentially streaming or downloading as they click on them and watch them right then. And there live is a little different, like, let's say you just had a schedule that you were running through and you have half hour segments and hour segments and you got a talk show at four and you know, it's not the Oprah Winfrey show. It's the Oprah Winfrey show. Yeah. In the weird internet bizarro world. Speaker 1 48:29 Yeah. MOPA prim free. She's have you checked out our book club? She's actually I found her fresh and appealing to a youthful audience. Yeah. I mean, when a mom trues came on there, that was an awesome episode. Oh, when he was jumping up and down on that waterbed. Yes that's right. And then it popped. That was funny. And then he electrocuted her. So, so in this alternate world, you need to have a system that is spitting out, kind of live television and a combination of both live content and stuff that you've already produced, but as being played out on a schedule, so it's still live in the sense of when you turn on your television, your, if you miss the first 15 minutes of Seinfeld, you missed the first 15 minutes of Seinfeld because it's 15 minutes past the hour. Yes. But you're doing it through this over the top delivery system and not through your, your cable or satellite providers set top box. Speaker 1 49:32 So what do you need? Well, you mentioned tools on air tools, on air as a software development company that we're friendly with. I mean, we do, we're a reseller and integrator for them and they basically make software for the Mac platform specifically that can turn your Mac into a television playout server with kind of, what's usually referred to as an automation system, but isn't like their, their slogan is like, turn your Mac into a TV station. It's actually a TV station on a Mac, I think. Oh no, it's TV station in a Mac. In a Mac. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And now they're all the same thing. Now they show it all off, running on Mac minis. Right. So what could this play out? Server B? Well, it's a Mac mini plugged into like a Thunderbolt Aja or black magic video IO device. Like with, with, uh, with Aja, it's the T it plugs into the Mac mini with, with a Thunderbolt cable. Speaker 1 50:31 You know, you've got the Mac mini with its built in hard drive or SSD. And maybe you'd like, you know, just tether another hard drive on Twitter. That's where you've loaded up a bunch of video content. While you install tools on air is a software package called just play on the system. And maybe you even install a copy on another system and just play you use to build schedules basically, and just play and play. And in fact, that uses a slightly separate piece of software. That's bundled with it called just out and what's just out. It just plays out video out of say that HIA or black magic card, but you're making playlists like this is your iTunes. Think you're making playlist, you got to schedule, you can schedule out months of stuff in advance. If you want to, you've got a little calendar and a schedule and you're dragging stuff in and you even have graphics capabilities. Speaker 1 51:20 You can put bugs in there and crawls and graphics and you know, all sorts of neat little stuff. And it, it would look like it is a television playout server. Like the ones that major broadcasters use, except it's like one, 100th the cost to set one of these up and it could be running off of a Mac mini in your basement or wherever. And now you've got like HD SDI video spitting out of this, running on a schedule. You can schedule live events. So you can kind of like cross over to something that's happening, live in the studio. And then at the 30 minute break, you know, where you're ready to switch back over to prescheduled, you know, pre-produced content, boom. It goes back to just playing movies that are on that hard drive. That's connected to the system. Nothing would stop you from integrating into your playlist here by the way, advertising. Speaker 1 52:11 Oh yeah, absolutely. You just make arrangements with whoever wants to pay you to have little advertising slots. Right. And so now I'm spitting boom, HD SDI digital video out of an age of a card, but that's not what we send across the internet to viewers. That's a broadcast standard of video. So now I need an encoder. I need a live video streaming encoder, and one that's real time. That's going to do it right on the fly as it comes out in the full and compressed from, from back of the McWhinney that's right. So, you know, another one of our vendor partners that we, we, we like and make great products that fit into this space, it's called high vision. High vision makes a device called the Kula byte. H a I vision. Yeah. And again, we're going to put all these folks in the show notes on our website <inaudible> dot com. Speaker 1 52:56 And when you go there and find this episode listed, um, we'll make sure David Ryan, our marketing director makes links to tools on air and high vision, but high vision has a encoder box for live streaming called the cooler bite, the HD SDI digital video that you have spitting out of your little tools on air system and it's Aja or black magic interface. It goes into the cool bites, HD SDI input, and what's the cooler bite got on it. It's got any internet port and you put it on your internet connection and you generate a stream and, or Mo more likely several streams, different bit rates, different streaming formats. They're all probably going to be H two 64 video as the actual video codec, but there's HTTP live streaming, otherwise known as HLS, which is the streaming format, how that video actually gets packetized and spit out. Speaker 1 53:52 Um, that's appropriate for iOS there's other formats, uh, there's there's um, you know, several primary streaming formats. Now that all use H two 64 video, and this cooler byte box is going to generate multiple streams, probably at multiple, but writes in multiple flavor of stream. You're going to have an arrangement with a party like Akamai or limelight networks or one of these other content delivery networks. You basically shoot them those live streams. And there's going to be a little bit of latency from when you are encoding. Maybe it's 15 seconds, maybe it's 25 seconds and you send that stream or those streams to your <inaudible> partner that you're paying monthly for a certain amount of content. They then are divvying those streams and spreading them all over the interwebs. So your viewers anywhere can go to your website or your app, click the button for the live channel that you're sending out. Speaker 1 54:51 And boom, they're watching this broadcast. That again, is being generated on the tools on airplay out system is getting encoded by your live in coder made by high vision, say the cooler bite or something similar. That's getting bounced off of the content delivery network and they're disseminating those streams on the internet. And then you then are kind of pointing to those streams through your website that you're monetizing or selling advertising space on that you are pointing to using your mobile app that you're selling through the app store on, on iTunes. And people are watching on their iPhones while they're waiting for the bus. This is the heart of 21st century broadcasting. This is what it looks like. You know, as you're saying all this I'm thinking, wow, I want to get out of selling this stuff for a living and actually kind of like start my own television channel. Speaker 1 55:46 I know, I think about this every day. The thought I had though was of all those countries out there that may have internet infrastructure, but may have oppressive regimes, uh, as far as the government is concerned, uh, there are certainly other ways, um, you know, I look at, uh, it's, it's disruptive to say the least it's certainly, um, it circumvents a lot of, um, existing in prevailing censorship as it relates to terrestrial broadcast. Well, that's right. I mean, you look at a lot of countries, not a ton, but enough of them where the main broadcasters are very directly state sponsored entities. Granted, of course, there's many ways to filter content on the internet if you're an oppressive regime, but you know, this at least puts the theoretical ability to generate this content out there in the hands of almost anyone it's, it's, it's pretty radical. Speaker 1 56:40 And again, I think really threatening to established broadcasters because again, there's only so many advertising dollars out there and it used to be, there were three main television networks, and then there were four and then there was like a dozen. And then there was like two or 300 on your cable channel. And now there's like technically hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people generating and distributing video on the internet. And they're all competing for a certain amount of advertising revenue. And this is like shocking the heck out of traditional broadcast. And it's like, wait, wait, why are we having to fight so hard for, for, for advertising dollars now? And you know, the truth of the matter is, is that there are still probably the same number, if not more actual people consuming content. It's just, there's a lot more contribution of, you know, what those numbers are, um, is, has significantly changed. Speaker 1 57:39 But also on top of that, the, the, the method in which to use to report it to, to, to, you know, capture the metrics. I mean, they're, they're not accurate well, and it's, and again, it's all kind of jelling right now. It's all coming together and it's a, it is the wild West. It's like this really is if, if the internet itself was the wild West of just getting kind of print and maybe even eventually photographic content into the hands of everyone, what we're now seeing as the wild West of anyone can get high Def video in the hands of anyone. And it is just dramatically shaking up, you know, the business models, the established paradigm of, of, of broadcast and who controls it. And there's a lot of fighting going on and it's important for people to kind of keep their eye on. Literally what's even happening at the level of politics because, you know, there's five main companies that, that, that own most traditional media outlets. Speaker 1 58:37 And now there's all of these new teeny little bit players coming into the field. And it's just, it's like, it's kind of crazy, but, you know, we've talked about from the viewer perspective, all the platforms that are out there, we've talked about how from the content creator perspective, it's really pretty easy. And again, we obviously at Chesapeake systems do deal with setting these types of content creation and distribution systems up distribution is like the newest side of our business, right? Like we used to basically just do post production systems, sands, workstations, asset management systems, you name it. And now when we started to realize a year or two ago that, you know, it's almost like, you know, there was first desktop publishing and then, you know, desktop audio recording and then desktop video editing. Well, now we're like at this point of like desktop broadcasting, which is insane, and yet that's where we're at. Speaker 1 59:34 And we said, you know, we need some partners in this area and we need to kind of be able to enable our clients if they want to, to become these 21st century over the top internet broadcasters, and think about it. That's a huge emphasis for us. I agree. I agree. And just to, again, as you're saying this, I'm thinking well, okay. It's not just for Joe Schmo who wants to do a chat show, um, think about, um, all the houses of worship. Uh, certainly I know we've dealt with a number of houses of worship that actually had Sunday morning television shows. Absolutely. Yeah. Who, for whatever reason, no longer have those shows, but are still generating the exact same content on a weekly basis. I mean, I think, I think so who can be a broadcaster right now? Who should be a broadcast or regiments churches, um, corporations. Speaker 1 00:22 Why not? Why not? I'm I'm you know, what, if a sports arena Joe's were to just, Oh, well, let's take their video feeds direct again. It's all possible. It's did their existing business models allow for such and such name stadium might lose that such and such name. Exactly. I don't know if the Verizon center is necessarily going to want you to bypass horizon, but, but you're absolutely right. I mean, corporate entities, why not? Why not have a, uh, Frank's sugar water, you know, channel on the internet? You know, if you sell soda, you know, to people, you know, have your own video identity, president has his weekly address. Why shouldn't a CEO of a, of a company smaller, mid sized, otherwise have the exact same. I'm also thinking, think tanks, I'm thinking, you know, non-government organizations, if I'm a, if I'm a not-for-profit and I want to like, get lots of really cool video content out there. Speaker 1 01:17 Well, yeah, and there's a TV and you can go to the NASA website, like a whole, like over the top NASA programming, I watch it all the time. They take that guy who had the Mohawk from the, you know, he's man make him that guy's gonna have day milking it for the rest buddy I'm Mohawk guy from when we landed like a robot on another planet. It sounds like a blaxploitation film when you put it that way. Mohawk guy who landed a robot on another planet, I guess one of the weird ones though. Yeah. Weird and excellent. Really underground and sexy and creepy as well. So, so I mean, any, any one, here's how I envision it. Right? Cause I mean, to, to wax philosophical for a moment, you know, there was a point at which, you know, thousands of years ago, writing itself was this crazy technology that only like the priest class of society had access to literally no one else knew even how to write. Speaker 1 02:16 It was just for the priests and the kind of political and money to establishment of, you know, ancient Egypt or whatever. And eventually writing became more common and other merchant classes of society began to use it. And then average people began to use it. And then the printing press came out and that really just dramatically, but he can say whatever they want and that people are nailing creeds on church doors and stuff. And I guess that was important, but I don't really remember much more because I didn't pay a lot of attention to those classes, something like that. And you know, that technology of being able to put the printed, the printed, the mass produced printed word in pretty much anyone's hands was radical. The internet was obviously radical enabled to allowing pretty much anyone with access to it, the ability to get ideas out there. Speaker 1 03:06 And we all know video conveys information in a way that is just so visceral and so dramatic and so direct. And so just empowering, you know, you sh you, you mentioned that someone, you know, gets beat up by someone big whoop, but the moment there's like a cell phone video of it, it's like the biggest thing on TV. Right. And so, you know, now that it's so easy for anyone to get video content to anyone through this hole over the top, you know, thing that I don't know, I think we're just in the real baby stages of where this should go. And, you know, I know that as an organization, we are hungering to help enable more organizations to, to stand up these types of operations. The reality is now it's out there for anyone in any story, you have to tell any opinion you have any product you're trying to sell any change and, you know, political, you know, law or anything. Speaker 1 04:08 I mean, you name it. There's no reason you probably shouldn't be trying to communicate a lot of your ideas in the form of video, because it's so easy to go over the top over the top. All right. So that's the end of the workflow. And I'll mention that on September 20th. Um, I think the exact time has not been determined. It's usually around 7:00 PM. I, Nick gold will be speaking at the DC chapter of simply the society of motion, picture and television engineers, I think at any be headquarters in DC, the, the national association of broadcasters headquarters in Washington on this very subject for the DC chapter meeting of symphony on September 20th, it's going to be an open invite. If you go to chessa.com over the coming days, we will have specific information on how you can attend. Um, but you know, I feel strongly that traditional broadcast engineers embrace these concepts. Speaker 1 05:04 I think that people who are doing over the top broadcast be kind of ushered into the world of broadcast engineering. I think there's many lessons they have to learn from traditional broadcast engineering, but traditional broadcast engineering needs to expand its definition of what television and broadcast even is in the 21st century. And that's what Nick's going to talk about. It should be, it should be interesting. September 20th in the evening, check our web page chessa.com for more info. We'd love to have tons of people there. Another final mention, if you're listening to the workflow show, please, please do give us a good rating on iTunes. We'd appreciate it very much. I mean, I think it's a little inappropriate to ask for a good rating. I think you just ask people to write the show and you hope that out of the goodness of their hearts, it just came out of my mouth. If you like us rate us, if you don't like us, you can also rate us. But then again, you did listen to us for an hour, which I, yeah. If you're getting to this part of the, of the broadcast, you really probably ought to be getting us five stars purely to help you kill your time. So thanks so much for listening until next week. This is Nick gold and I'm Meryl Davis signing off.