In the world of broadcast television, there are two basic formats for viewers to watch video content:
- Linear Television: A continuous stream of content, which the viewer has little or no control over the playlist. Examples include cable TV (AMC, MTV), Network TV (ABC, CBS) and Premium Channels (Starz, HBO, Showtime).
- Non-Linear Television: A non-continuous, user selected, method of content viewing. The user has full control of the playlist as well as the ability (usually) to skip, pause, fast-forward and rewind. Examples include On Demand television, YouTube, Netflix and HBO GO. Good (but somewhat dated) reference for this stuff here: http://www.itvdictionary.com/vod.html
On the technology side (e.g. how a video player is created) of things the approach is important because it defines what type of video player is needed:
- Passive Streaming: In which a movie is sent by a server and watched by one or several clients. Content is served in a linear format meaning the user has no control over what is playing in the Passive Streaming player beyond selecting the file to play. Files are sent and opened by the users (as opposed to URLs called). Examples include playing a DVD on your laptop or PC, downloading and playing a torrent, hooking your tablet up to a DVD player, watching .mpg or other video files on your device. Windows Media Player and QuickTime are two popular examples of Passive Streaming video players.
- Video on Demand (VOD): In which each client asks for its own stream. Video files are played and navigated via a network connection to the file (as opposed to downloading from a server and playing it directly off of your hard drive). Examples are YouTube on your laptop, Netflix on your phone and Amazon prime on your tablet.
With that established we can examine the two types of internet broadcast television which are defined as follows:
- Live Streaming: Essentially, a camera connected to a network. If the stream is recorded at all, it is not done at the camera level but rather at the server level. Examples include watching a conference on your device or computer, or, for that matter, participating in a video conference call or watching news or sporting events over the internet.
- Video on Demand: Pretty much everything else that you watch directly instead of downloading as a file. YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO GO and other internet video all share categorization here.
At the end of the day, the type of internet video player to be implemented is most often determined by the source video file type and location. In short, there are basically two options when building a video player into a web page:
- Self-Hosted: The video files are hosted (stored) on the host’s server. This allows for full control of the content in terms of copyright and editing. Most professional organizations use this form of internet video distribution (CNN.com, Wired.com, NYTimes.com, etc.)
- Embedded/Distributed: These are videos hosted on a server not controlled by the poster. The most clear example would be a video on a blog (such as in this post). Videos are hosted on a video sharing or distribution platform and “called to” by a player embedded within the post or page.
A Bit on the History of Streaming, Sharing and Internet Video Evolution
It is worth noting here, perhaps, that internet video essentially evolved from a Passive Streaming model (in which video files were swapped between early adapters and then opened/run on their hard drive and viewed with a Passive Streaming video player) to the current state of VOD (where video files are mostly viewed by navigating to a page, shared via a public URL and watched via an embedded VOD player). I make the distinction for two reasons: 1) Now we can understand that concepts such as “viral videos” have always been around. Back in the day they were just the hottest files to own, trade or host. Going back even further, “sharing” was accomplished via swapping or curating VHS tapes (think Grateful Dead enthusiasts swapping concert footage or even TV shows such as America’s Funniest Home Videos that curated and collected VHS files before the popularization of the internet). 2) The evolution from file swapping to URL calling allowed for commercialization since now statistics such as file plays, views, user ratings, comments, etc. could be centralized and counted, thereby enabling valuation and monetization. A feature that wasn’t reliably possible during the file swapping era.
The above represents notes I’ve complied as I experiment with internet video publication. In addition to these notes, I am also running some tests. The tests are currently hosted on my web site and can be found here.