By Gillian Shaw
Sun High-Tech Columnist
It's tucked away in a warehouse down a dead-end street in Burnaby, but
Hugh Dobbie's DENtv broadcasts around the world.
In downtown, Vancouver's Coal Harbour futurist
Frank Ogden runs his global television show from his houseboat.
Dobbie and Ogden are among the early adopters
of a streaming media - a technology that facilitates the sending of audio
and video across the Internet. By doing so, it takes television and
radio production from the realm of huge networks and multi-million dollar
budgets and puts it online at a fraction of the cost.
It's still early days for the technology, which
should probably be called "streamed media," but is universally termed "streaming
media." For one thing, it certainly doesn't duplicate the television
broadcast quality, but improvement is measured now in days and weeks -
not months and years.
Skeptics may have scoffed at its poor quality,
but with its growth far outpacing that of early television and radio, there's
every indication streaming media will prove them wrong.
"We took it on the chin everywhere we went,"
said Dobbie, president and chief executive officer INSINC (Interactive
Netcasting Systems Inc.) that owns DENtv and DENradio. "Quality was
so bad at first, but it has evolved.
"Criticism of the technology was harsh at times,
but you only have to think of early radio and television to know it's only
going to get better."
Early streaming video was hardly bigger than
a postage stamp in the corner of your computer screen and the action had
a choppy, delayed look of a bad home movie. And much of the streamed
video viewers are seeing today is still like that. However, depending
on your Internet access speed and the broadcast you're watching, you can
get close-to-television-quality streaming video to fill your computer screen.
The technology is now being taken seriously.
Over the last four or five months, it was like
a light bulb has gone off in the world", Dobbie said. "People have
stopped laughing and they're trying to get on the boat."
Bandwidth is a perennial issue when it comes
to pushing more data -- whether it's video or audio -- over the Net.
The increasing number of users turning to such
high -speed access as ADSL ( Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) means
that more Net surfers can take advantage of high quality streaming video,
unhindered by slow modems and dial-up connections.
Dobbie is counting on this shift to fuel the
trend to streaming video over the Internet.
"The magic piece of this whole formula that's
somewhat out of our control is the last mile," said Dobbie, whose company
what the fist in Canada to stream RealVideo -- with David Chalk's computer
show -- and the first to deliver programming to radio stations over the
Internet.
"As broadband capabilities start servicing
the last mile to the home that's when we'll see this technology really
explode. Right now it's expanding within businesses that have broadband
capability."
Video and audio applications now account for two per cent
of Internet traffic, a figure that's expected to increase to six per cent
by 2003. Some 200,000 streaming players are downloaded from the Web
daily, according to the International Webcasters Association.
It's a medium that fine tunes audience targeting.
In one DENtv Show, European Connections, host Chris Lindgren attracts viewers
all over the world, who tune in for his mix of Scandinavian / Canadian
news and culture, music and guest appearances.
Steve Dotto, a Net Works columnist and host
of his own show Dotto on Data, broadcast through the Knowledge Network,
has also expanded his show to the Web through DENtv. "It has given
us the opportunity to reach places we weren't reaching with our broadcast
signal," Dotto said. "For me it is a question of augmenting my reach."
Unlike television viewing, visits to the online
show can be tracked in detail and the viewers can interact with the show.
A host can track whether a viewer joining the audience is from Chetwynd
or China.
Shows are delivered in real time and they
can also be archived, so viewers can watch on their own schedule without
the headache of programming the video recorder.
The average time a surfer spends at a DENtv
site is more than 10 minutes -- an eternity in terms of Web page viewing.
The Internet also allows for a level of customization that is impossible
with television.
"When someone is watching TV, it's impossible
to get them to interact," Dotto said.
Now we can put a contest on and get people to interact with the
show."
Dotto isn't concerned about the video quality
that is delivered online. It's the potential that has drawn him to
the medium.
"It's improving, we're still at such as embryonic
time," he said.
"I'm sure when Alexander Graham Bell first
listened to a telephone connection, it was crap."
"The fact we have lousy video coming over
a tiny windows doesn't other me a bit, as quality improves more and more
people will come on."
"We have fairly high expectations today but
I don't think we have any other medium that will give us this ultimate
interactivity and customization."
Ogden, also known as Dr. Tomorrow, is parlaying
this ability to customize content into tightly targeted shows. Currently
he has eight shows running on his network, including his own.
One example of audience targeting is a Chinese-language
broadcast scheduled to debut this weekend that will coach would-be emigrants
to North America on cultural and business differences they can expect to
find here.
Ogden says streaming media will bear out his
earlier predictions of a broadcast universe that won't be limited d to
500 traditional channels, but will explode in growth to include alternate
broadcasting that's available to anyone with a camera, a computer, and
limited investment.
"This is the first time in history that a global soapbox has been made
available to anyone with relatively little investment." he said.
"I think the creativity this will unleash among the digerati will
be phenomenal."
While the television and radio stations are
the part of Insinc's operations that are the most visible to the Internet
public, it's the delivery of streaming media for corporate events, such
as annual general meetings, trade shows and other presentations that pay
the bills. Dobbie's company has broadcast such events as Rogers'
annual general meeting and the Banff Television Festival '99.
Dobbie see the future in a host of applications
that can take advantage of relatively low-cost broadcasting to targeted
audiences -- from distance learning to electronic commerce and sporting
events.
"That's where the business model is today," he said.
Such broadcasts can cost form $2,500 to $25,000
depending on the event and the requirements.
Dobbie's company can deliver a start-to-finish
solution complete with hosts and camera operators or it can simply provide
the network delivery for the broadcast, as it does with Ogden's shows.
Dobbie said the next step is to expand the
business in the U.S., where the company already rates as one of the top
10 streaming media companies on the Internet.
His company currently has a staff of 12 and
is expanding its Burnaby studio.
The technology doesn't likely have network
executives losing sleep at night yet and Dobbie says it won't. He
doesn't see it replacing traditional media.
"It's a completely different medium," he said.
"This is an interactive medium -- you can get into a dialogue
with your listeners and viewers. Wy pay to broadcast to 50,000 viewers,
when you can focus in on the five that really want to buy?"
Gillian Shaw has been a guest of Steve Dotto's Dotto On Data show
and Frank Ogden's Dr. Tomorrow, both on DENtv. She can be reached
at gshaw@pacpress.southam.ca
e-mail this article to a friend