SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Oprah's Webcast: The State-of-the-Art, But Not What You Think

By now everyone has heard about Oprah Winfreyamp8217s webcast debacle earlier this week Oprah the smartest richest most successful person in the television business decided to do a webcast She promoted it as only she can To execute her people assembled the absolute best practices organizations available anywhere They used the best online distribution platform Move Networks One of the best content distribution networks Limelight And served it up on Oprahcom which is as industrial strength a website as you are likely to come acrossWith all that going for her it was reasonable to assume that a fairly large group of people could come to the party and expect to be served But thatamp8217s not what happened According to dozens of published reports the demand that an Oprahsized audience put on the Internet and the related infrastructure was just too great and the system crashed Pundits everywhere used this particular event to tout their own theories about how many gigabits of bandwidth can actually be handled and more importantly why the Internet is not suited for live streaming at scale Many were comparing this event to New York Magazineamp8217s problems when they published nude photos of Lindsay Lohan on their site Others were reminiscing about the Victoriaamp8217s Secret streaming crash of 1999 And still others put forth the idea that amp8220millions of people will never watch TV onlineamp8221 They all got it wrongMove Networks does not use ordinary streaming techniques to move video around the Internet Their platform uses a clientside request schema that is more related to downloading little gif files than it is to playing back streaming video packets from a server They have moved over 200 million streams of video for ABC alone The platform truly provides one of the best longform online televisionlike viewing experiences availableLimelight also lives up to its reputation They have servers all over the place and as far as content distribution networks are concerned you can pay more but you canamp8217t do much betterWhat actually happened According to an executive closely tied to the project they were up to about 800000 users when a logical error in the caching servers caused the system to crash It is important to understand that the only way to ever find a coding error like this is to put a system truly under stress You canamp8217t simulate 800000 users in the lab you need to play with live ammo Kudos to Oprah and her team for pushing the envelope this hardThe crash was not caused by a lack of bandwidth an overwhelming number of users or any infrastructure issues at all It was a simple coding error amp8211 nothing more The error was identified and is now fixed It is entirely possible that next Mondayamp8217s webcast will enjoy over a million users maybe morePerhaps the key takeaway from this experience is the fact that the Internet is truly global This webcast was available in 149 countries Oprah has the communicative power to bring people together from all over the world and this technology makes it possible with twoway interactive connections What a fantastic use of the Internet Iamp8217m pretty confident that next weekamp8217s webcast will easily reach all of the people who want to watch it liveAs a practical reality the current limit on a Move NetworksLimelight CDN system is probably 2 million simultaneous users This number is a function of infrastructure but it has nothing to do with the public Internetamp8217s capabilities Itamp8217s about the deployment of certain pieces of Move Networks technology around the net If I had to venture a guess I would say that Move will be the first organization to demonstrate 10 million simultaneous online viewers and I donamp8217t think that demonstration is too far in the future As for Online Video is quality it is of course in the eyes of the beholder But a quality video signal could be described as a continuous viewing experience with good color space at resolution that is acceptable to the viewer and suitable for the content Oprah has a very large diverse audience with feet firmly planted on both sides of the digital divide When a viewer asks amp8220why canamp8217t I get good qualityamp8221 the answer could be a simple as amp8220your machine is too old and the CPU or video card is not fast enoughamp8221 Or as complicated as amp8220there is too much contention on your LANamp8221 The benefit of Move is that it amp8220breathesamp8221 correctly lowering or increasing bit rates to match the best possible or expected playing environment This native capability to leverage caches is the best way to get the job done Itamp8217s not TV amp8211 itamp8217s Online TV and when taken as a whole the benefits are hugeSo letamp8217s debunk some myths1 The Internet cannot handle a televisionsized live streaming audience False2 No current system can deliver over 1 million simultaneous video streams False3 The cost of delivering that many onetoone connections is prohibitive False4 Oprah is so popular she crashed the Internet False5 The Internet cannot handle a Super Bowlsized live streaming audience True but thatamp8217s what Television is for Oprah is one of the most futurethinking media executives in our business and her vision is second only to her ability to assemble extraordinary teams What is the stateoftheart for longform video distribution on the public Internet You can see an ondemand version right now at httpwwwoprahcomondemand or you can catch the next show live on March 10thShelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2006 Focal Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmyamp174 Awards He is the ViceChairman of the National Academy of Media Arts ampamp Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology media and entertainment Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmyamp174 Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media You can read Shelly39s blog here Visit Shelly39s website at wwwShellyPalmerMediacom or reach Shelly at shellypalmernetCheck out the Shelly Palmer Report archive

Become a Thought Leader. Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Oprah's Webcast: The State-of-the-Art, But Not What You Think

Author

Publish date

Channel

Shelly Palmer

Hispanic Leadership Roundtable: Inclusion, Mentorship, and Building the Next Generation (Video) - By Juan Ayala

More Videos:

Become a Thought Leader. Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Oprah's Webcast: The State-of-the-Art, But Not What You Think

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Shelly Palmer

Hispanic Leadership Roundtable: Inclusion, Mentorship, and Building the Next Generation (Video) - By Juan Ayala

The payment was successful

Cookies