Tuesday, May 22, 2007

More on ABC streaming HD video - "Move" over Joost and YouTube

[Some excerpts from Forbes magazine article. Move is another nail in the coffin for traditional video delivery systems like cable TV and IPTV. Move is the technology being used by ABC to deliver their HD content. Thanks to Quentin Hardy, the author of this article for the pointer -- BSA]

http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0521/072.html

A handful of show producers are trading in the Web's old flavor of video delivery for newer technologies that deliver clear and smooth streamed images.

A company called Move Networks in American Fork, Utah is at the forefront of this next evolution. Move does for video what voice over Internet networks did for telephone calls: It breaks up the video into bits and efficiently reorganizes them over the network so there's no need for the special computer servers and dedicated transmission lines required on streams using Flash.

Move executives say they handle more than a million full episode streams a week, and viewership has doubled every month. Move says it is now delivering as much as 200 terabytes, or 200 trillion bytes, of streams per day.

Move gets bits from the closest storage cache (similar to technology from Web video giant Akamai) and brings them back to the screen at the best streaming rate based on the network's traffic load. It uses standard Internet protocols, which means it can take advantage of the many server farms around the world that offer up Web pages. Both ABC and Fox say there is nothing else that can stream at this scale.