Video Births the Internet Star

Convergence

You've heard it all before, and not that long ago. Teleconferencing was supposed to drive airlines into the ground. Telecommuting was going to make office complexes obsolete, and we were all going to work in our bathrobes. Television was going to converge with the Internet and the computer to form one big box.

It's easy to mistake the progress of the present day for the revolution of the near future. In 1993, Time magazine wrote, "Suddenly the brave new world of video phones and smart TVs that futurists have been predicting for decades is not years away, but months." And that was not the first time such a promise had been made.

Gad Liwerant, president and CEO of VideoShare, a provider of Internet video services in Watertown, Mass., says, "More than 35 years ago the big telecom carriers were always saying the phone was going to come with a screen, but it never really took off."

Well, this time it's different. Really. This time there's not just one silver-bullet technology that will supposedly revolutionize the ways in which we do business but rather a convergence of technologies that are all advancing at once. And they will all help deliver cheap, convenient high-quality video over the Internet. "Video's going to be integrated into everything from your PC and your TV to your cell phone or PDA," says Neal Manowitz, vice-president of marketing and business development for Vingage, a Reston, Va., company that creates server software for online video delivery. "If you launched a Web page today, you'd be shocked if there wasn't a picture on that page. Five years from now, you'll be surprised if you don't see video. It would be like turning on the TV today and seeing a still image."

Sounds like the grandiose pronouncements of the past, no? But here's what's different now: advances in the software used to compress and deliver video, combined with increased computing power and the spread of high-bandwidth delivery services, are fostering the creation of new Internet video technologies. Providers are already creating wild new consumer services. Sony's ImageStation.com, for instance, allows users to archive and share home movies online. And on the way are new tools that will offer even small businesses the capability of using live and recorded video for everything from Web brochures to training to customer service.

Of course, we heard the same kind of promises about the picture phone. And a video clip, or even a two-way live videoconference, will never replace a face-to-face schmooze with your best customer or lead investor. "People have been dreaming about video as a travel substitute since the oil crisis," says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future, in Menlo Park, Calif. "It's a myth. The more we communicate electronically, the more we go to face-to-face meetings."

So the new promise of video is not the replacement of air travel or television or telephones as we know them. It's about technologies that are satisfying, cheap, and easy to use, and that don't require special equipment. You can see the difference already with devices like Web cameras. "Even a few years ago, you had to open your machine, install software, and then set up the camera," says VideoShare's Liwerant. "Now all you have to do is plug the camera into a USB port."

In the same way, Internet video is finally getting good. "Video technologies are going to provide a revenue-generating opportunity that never existed before. It's an entirely new channel," says James Canton, president of the Institute for Global Futures, a high-tech think tank based in San Francisco.

Canton's research predicts that E-commerce sites with live video will generate more sales than competitors without such features will be able to do. Right now, says Canton, 75% to 80% of people who are looking to make a purchase online fail to do so, largely because they get confused. "There's no one there to help them," Canton says, adding that video -- either a product demo or a live, two-way help center -- could conceivably provide that assistance. "Small businesses should be adopting this stuff faster. It will give them a chance to establish brand awareness, whereas big companies aren't going to change so fast."

Taking that step shouldn't be too scary, says Dominic Milano, editor-in-chief of DV (digital video) magazine, in San Francisco. "There's no real barrier to entry anymore. The tools are more powerful, and they're really cheap. It really all came to a head at some point in the middle of last year. It's like somebody threw all the pieces in a big stew pot, and it started to congeal."

The new promise of video is not the replacement of air travel or television or telephones as we know them. It's about technologies that are satisfying, cheap, and easy to use.

One of the advancing technologies bringing better video to the Net is compression software. Here's how it works: A piece of software reviews a video file, effectively "deciding" which parts of the picture don't have to be duplicated for every frame. Think of the passionate beach scene in From Here to Eternity, in which Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster are all over each other on the sand as the surf encroaches. A compression algorithm would review that scene and see that the sand and the sky are pretty much static. Only the wriggling actors and wild waves would need to be updated in every frame. That cuts down the size of the file.

Once the file is compressed, it's translated into file formats (such as those developed by RealNetworks, Microsoft, and Apple) and delivered to viewers through streaming-video service providers (such as Yahoo Broadcast, I-Beam Broadcasting, Activate, or Digital Island). Competition among such developers and providers has kept up pressure to make delivery more efficient. RealNetworks now uses an Intel compression system called SureStream, which functions like the advance team for a presidential candidate. When a user clicks on a video file, SureStream shoots out ahead to detect the speed at which he or she is connecting to the Internet. Then it matches the downloading speed to the user's connection. That way, even users with slow-modem Internet connections will be able to watch the clip, although not with the same quality enjoyed by someone with a broadband connection.