Internet video is about where film was 100 years ago
I was talking to a company who will be announcing a video infrastructure solution when the CEO mentioned something he called the “video performance/quality vise.”

Here’s the problem: a video stream requires both capacity and bandwidth. Higher quality video requires more bits per second and more capacity. Bandwidth and capacity both cost money.

So as Internet video quality rises, the financial cost to provide the video rises too. An HD video stream is 4 Mbit/sec.

500,000 channels and somethin’ on
As cute as YouTube, et. al. are, they suck. Movies are small, picture and audio quality awful, and viewing options limited – like films 100 years ago.

Bandwidth limitations are part of the problem, at least here in the US. But those are being addressed, however slowly.

What happens when Internet video becomes competitive with broadcast TV in quality? Popularity will soar. As TiVo has shown, people love choice. And the Internet will have the most choice.

The price/performance/popularity vise
Digital Fountain’s raptor codes will change the Internet landscape for video. High quality video will drive be much more popular, just as long-form movies took film to the next level.

Bandwidth costs are dropping fast to pennies a GB. So infrastructure costs – especially storage – are critical to Internet video’s commercial success. The more popular it gets, the more storage will be needed. It is a huge opportunity.

The StorageMojo take
Massive data storage is still a very young technology. The ultimate cultural impact will be more profound than film because of the many-to-many nature of the Internet and the low barriers to entry. Should be fun!

Comments welcome, please. I don’t think the firm wanted me to mention their name, so I haven’t. If we get that cleared up I’ll update the post. Or maybe wait a while to write about them.

Update: Joe, thanks for catching the 4Mbit mistake I made. I corrected it above.