It is working just fine, really. I mean, everyone wants everything to be much cheaper, but that is true of all things, and, without being facetious, our insatiable desire for more cheaper now now now will be our downfall.

It's just entertainment. It's not a fundamental right, you are most likely better off without it really, so this idea that $25 a month for HBO is outrageous is really just silly.

Tickets to 'The Book of Mormon' are well into the hundreds of dollars right now, that seems to be OK, supply and demand and all, but $75 a month for hundreds of channels is somehow considered offensive and broken.

Every one seems so sure that their aesthetic is the right one, that the injustice of paying into a pot that funds both Mad Men and Jersey Shore would some how be fixed by replacing it with an a la carte system that could never dream of a risk like Mad Men, as if we the viewer think we are capable, or that any one really, is capable of picking hits reliably.

Sigh. Show business is one of the riskiest businesses out there, sure the upsides can be huge, but the vast majority of projects barely break even and many lose epic amounts. Pay into the bucket as best you can, steal what you have to via torrent, and really, realize that things are just fine.

hello! hope all is well

Streaming refers to any media content – live or recorded – delivered to computers and mobile devices via the internet and played back in real time.

Live streaming requires three basic components: the encoder, the server, and the player. The encoder is responsible for converting video into a format streamed over the internet. The server is what distributes the content to viewers around the world. And the player is the software that viewers use to watch the stream.

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Technology has had a profound impact on the way television content is created, distributed, and consumed. Here are a few ways in which technology has transformed the TV industry:

1. Content creation: Technology has made it easier and more cost-effective for producers to create high-quality TV content. For example, advances in digital video and editing software have made it possible for small production teams to produce professional-looking shows.
2. Distribution: The rise of the internet has made it possible for TV content to be distributed online, bypassing traditional broadcast channels. This has given rise to new players in the TV industry, such as streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+, which have disrupted the traditional cable and satellite TV models.
3. Consumption: Technology has also changed the way people consume TV content. With the advent of smart TVs and streaming devices, viewers can now watch their favorite shows and movies whenever and wherever they want. This has resulted in a shift away from traditional linear TV viewing and toward on-demand, binge-watching habits.
4. Interactivity: Technology has also enabled a more interactive and personalized TV experience for viewers. For example, some smart TVs now come with voice-activated assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, which can be used to search for and play content.

Overall, technology has had a profound impact on the TV industry, and it continues to drive change and innovation in the space.

Flash video, once a popular way to deliver videos online, refers to a type of digital video content delivered using Adobe Flash Player. Here's the breakdown:

• File Formats: Flash videos come in two main formats: FLV (Flash Video) and F4V (H.264 video). FLV was the original format, while F4V offered better compatibility with other devices.
• Delivery: Flash videos rely on Adobe Flash Player, which used to be a widely installed browser plugin. The player would interpret the instructions from an SWF (Small Web Format) file, which could contain the video itself (FLV/F4V) or instructions to display it from an external source.

So, when you watched a Flash video online, here's what happened behind the scenes:

1. Webpage loads: The webpage containing the Flash video would load in your browser.
2. SWF identified: The browser would identify the presence of an SWF file associated with the video.
3. Flash Player activated: The browser would then activate the Adobe Flash Player plugin.
4. SWF instructions processed: The Flash Player would read the instructions from the SWF file.
5. Video playback: Depending on the SWF file, it might either contain the video data (FLV/F4V) itself or instruct the player to load the video from another location. The Flash Player would then decode and display the video.

Flash videos were popular due to their ability to deliver smooth animation and interactivity alongside video content. However, with the rise of HTML5 and its built-in video playback capabilities, Flash videos have become largely obsolete. Additionally, security vulnerabilities in Flash Player led to its eventual deprecation by Adobe.

Well let’s talk about what you really mean…

if you’re trying to film just get a camera even a camera off your phone and start filming something, then boom you’re a filmmaker.

If you’re talking about creating something cinematic, well that requires studying and research which can be self taught but still requires time and not something that is just done over night,

you have to understand the different camera angles, the different camera movements, lighting, score, post production including editing, with chopping, color grading, etc all as a way of portraying the story you’re trying ‘n to tell, meaning everything you do and show involves story telling

then there’s also certain things that “Hollywood” does that includes subliminals that makes the film look more natural and pleasing, like linears, rule of 3rds, source of lighting, etc

this while not required but helps make that desired look you want your video to have requires the proper equipment, Hollywood high end expensive equipment can cost a total of millions of USD, but there is definitely consumer budget friendly options preferably black magic design caneras, and cheaper version of equipments like dollys and cranes on Amazon so your spending considerably a lot less compared to spending hundreds of thousands, you’d also have to worry about how you’re going to edit your videos, from using the right software, to have an actual computer to edit with, and learning how to actually use said software,

Now you have to figure out YOUR process for creating a film with your knowledge, creative vision, and equipment, scheduling shooting days, find locations to film, following local laws for filming of course, etc

I wrote an article on the same. Hope it helps.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/basics-how-video-streaming-works-ashish-deshmukh

HLS files

HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) is an HTTP based media streaming communications protocol implemented by Apple Inc. This is the protocol most of the online streaming apps utilise. At the start of the streaming session, HLS downloads an M3U playlist containing the metadata for the various sub-streams which are available.

#EXTM3U 
 
#EXT-X-VERSION:3 
 
#EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=268400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=268400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/hls/..../master_Layer3.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=268400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=268400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer3.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=510400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=510400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer4.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=510400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=510400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer4.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=950400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=950400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer5.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=950400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=950400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer5.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1500400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=1500400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer6.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1500400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=1500400,CODECS="avc1.66.30,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer6.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=2270400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=2270400,CODECS="avc1.42c01f,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer7.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=2270400,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=2270400,CODECS="avc1.42c01f,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer7.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=72600,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=72600,CODECS="avc1.42c015,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer1.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=72600,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=72600,CODECS="avc1.42c015,mp4a.40.2",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer1.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=134200,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=134200,CODECS="avc1.42c015,mp4a.40.5",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/.../master_Layer2.m3u8 
 
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=134200,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=134200,CODECS="avc1.42c015,mp4a.40.5",FRAME-RATE=25.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE 
http://ipl20171-i.akamaihd.net/..../master_Layer2.m3u8 

As you can see in above sample m3u8 playlist, there are various profiles according to the bandwidth they stream on. Player picks the best suitable profile according to the bandwidth of the network on which streaming is being done.

M3U file and .ts Chunks

As seen in the above m3u8 playlist, there are many different m3u8 files available. These m3u8 files contains .ts files which are chunks of the transcoded video. Below is such an example

#EXTM3U 
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:10 
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0 
#EXTINF:10, 
3340/33400.ts 
#EXTINF:10, 
3340/33401.ts 
#EXTINF:10, 
3340/33402.ts 
#EXTINF:10, 
3340/33403.ts 
#EXTINF:10, 
3340/33404.ts 
#EXTINF:10, 
. 
. 
. 
#EXT-X-ENDLIST 

The "#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:10" suggests that every chunk is of 10 second duration.

When playback starts, player first fetches the hls files, then the m3u8 file based on the network conditions and then individual .ts files/chunks from the selected m3u8 file. These smaller chunks are easy to download for player and require less bandwidth rather than trying to stream one whole huge file.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

If you are targeting worldwide audience or your servers are somewhere far away from your targeted location then CDNs come in to picture. CDN is nothing but proxy server deployed on a data centre. Since its a globally distributed network, it brings your content closer to the user so that data and package loss is less compare to streaming from source server. Akamai, Cloudflare, Cloudfront, Limelight etc are such CDNs.

To improve the streaming quality on Mobile data network, carriers also provide their own CDNs. This in combination with OTT service's CDN makes the streaming experience far better on respective mobile data network as it brings the content server more closer to the end user.

So when next time you are watching a video on Youtube, Netflix, Hulu or any other OTT provider, you know what is going on inside the player on your network. Every minute change in video quality is a switch between video profile which is called Adaptive Streaming. Every playback failure is a missing chunk or corrupted m3u8 file.

Even though video streaming software is very complicated to build, the model that operates the process can mostly be broken down into major steps:

Capture

This step is the obtain of the video from a source which can be anything like video camera, smartphone, flip camera, etc. From the input device, the video is then fed to something which is called the encoder.

Encode

The main objective of this step is to dice the video source into many pieces. The actual video get from the source will be bulk in size. For simple transportation over the internet, encoders break the videos into tiny pieces or packets. This is why encoding is one of the most main steps in video streaming.

Delivery

The final step is delivery in the process and involve streaming the video to the end user.

Even though different video streaming platforms work differently and have multiple features, everyone works with the same model of capturing, encoding and delivering the content. Every step of the process can be optimized and made better, leading to streaming better video online faster and more efficiently.

Webnexs| Video streaming services

The late 1990’s had a variety of plugins, such as RealPlayer, Windows Media and Quicktime. A few used Flash, although at this stage it was more for animations only. It wasn’t all that difficult in terms of being compatible, but required a handful of these browser plugins installed to watch.

The challenge, in terms of online, was having a fast enough connection speed to watch it. I recall many times I would start the process and then walk away, sometimes for 20 minutes or more, to do something else while it loaded. Afterwards would come back to watch the full video.

Many times I would download the full video so I could watch it later to avoid this… or many times it would be the only option. That came with it the challenge of finding the right codec sometimes, as there were tons back in this day and many of them required their own plugin before these started to get consolidated a little as the years went on.

Video streaming is nothing more than sending and receiving of video packets using standard IP protocols.

There is a server with the stream (say a movie).
There is a client that wants to watch the movie. There are two options: download the whole movie and then watch it (rather slow..) or request streaming. During streaming, the server starts sending packets. When there are enough packets in the client to form a few frames, the client starts playing. While the client is playing, the server keeps sending packets. If there is not enough bandwidth and the client runs out of packets, the client stops and keeps "buffering," otherwise the video is streamed until the client plays the whole movie. On the client, packets viewed are discarded, so there is no requirement to store big movies, unless you bought them and you can watch them again.

It wasn’t hard. We all used RealPlayer, which also functioned as a plug-in for your browser. That was the ubiquitous way to deliver online video then (though a few sites used online Quicktime video, which also existed as a plug-in). The problem was the low bandwidth on a dial-up ISP connection. So the video quality was lower than it was when Flash video first got going.

Video wasn’t used as often, because of the bandwidth issues, and what was shown was short clips. There was no such thing as YouTube, or the other cloud-based video services we can access now. There were probably video hosting services that sites used to host them, but if they existed, they were on contract. You couldn’t go directly to them to view anything. You viewed videos through the sites that wanted to show them. My impression is that usually they were hosted by the sites that showed them.

As far as I can see it isalready highly evolved as a one-way delivery stream. The primary streamers have much better programme guides than the broadcasters. They are at the forefront of technical innovation in that they already deliver large amounts of 4K content. The only missing piece is high latency in live transmission, but this issue is slowly being improved and sub-second latency can be expected in high bandwidth connections fairly soon.

The major evolution will come with enhancements to the return channel functionality. Streamers already know what you watch, for how long, and what your viewing preferences are so they can tailor their recommendations accordingly. But the return channel can theoretically do so much more than that, allowing individual viewers to interact directly with the stream and to modify it.

Think of this as a combination of video narrowcasting and video gaming. The streamer provides a virtual world that the viewer interacts with. No game downloading via the network or Bluray player - everything is available live on-the-fly. Viewers can choose to play solo or to play against each other, singly or in teams, while broadcasting their own feed and getting points and endorsements from others.

A lot of this is already a reality in the world of online gaming but its the integration with the live unicast stream that has yet to be developed. Social media integration is also key that gamers already use.

This is turning the passive viewing activity into an interactive one. It is likely to launch first on PC’s and mobile devices but will evolve into smart TV’s as soon as the TV manufacturers make their large screens smarter. They may have to offer replaceable modular signal processing hardware (GPU’s, CPU’s and RAM) as the lifetime of a gaming PC is far shorter than a smart TV display screen. Or they may just leave it to Sony and Microsoft to integrate streaming services into the X-box or Playstation.

As Sandro mentioned, this has already being done to a limited degree with sports networks (e.g. ESPN3.com); however, the Dish Network has shown that more widespread and comprehensive internet simulcasting is possible when they recently rolled out their TV Everywhere application which lets subscribers watch all of their live and recorded television programs on compatible smartphones, tablets and laptops.

After seeing this, I now think it is only a matter of time before other MSOs follow suit and launch similar applications, but from a network's perspective, I think the following steps need to occur for them to completely get behind internet simulcasts:

1) An authentication portal. Cable networks will not risk losing their affiliate fees and a live simulcast would reduce consumers need to maintain their cable subscriptions. Furthermore, I don't think a pay-wall that charges per stream would be feasible either, since the cable model is built on the bundling of networks into one subscription payment, and a pay-per-view pay wall would negate that. For broadcast networks, this may not be as critical an issue, but since all broadcast networks own or are affiliated to cable networks, some form of authentication is a necessity.

2) Same ad load as linear broadcasts. An average hour of television has about 15 minutes of commercials and the reason that some people say that internet video is exchanging analog dollars for digital pennies is because internet videos have not yet been able to support this type of ad load. For this to happen, I think either advertisers have to increase their online video ad spend, which would allow networks to sell more online-only ads, or networks have to mirror the ads that they deliver in their linear broadcasts and convince advertisers to count these online views in the calculation of total impressions. Both Nielsen and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) are in the process of developing rating systems that will accommodate this and Nielsen has announced that they intend to release the initial results of their "TVandPC" system at the end of this year.

3) Must be built on stable and secure system. I think that what has prevented widespread internet simulcasts from even being discussed up until recently has been bandwidth issues and yet I don't think anyone assumes that the internet is stable enough where this isn't still an issue. For reference, President Barack Obama's inauguration (1/2009) was at the time the fifth most watch internet simulcast of all-time with 5.4M viewers. This was a single event that internet providers knew of well of in advance and yet many people still had problems connecting (or were put in waiting rooms). In contrast, the 'American Idol' finale this year drew 19.6M viewers and that show airs twice per week. The other issue relating to the system is piracy and copyright infringement, but YouTube (since 2008) has shown that a comprehensive content tagging system can alleviate most of these concerns.

As an added note, networks would also potentially run into problems with their music and media licenses (not so much on the talent side, since those are typically all inclusive now), but I assume that if this were a large initiative moving forward that they would just re-negotiate those contracts.

Flash isn't just a video player, it is also a front-end runtime and vector graphics system that was later adapted to serve video. Flash became a popular choice for serving video mostly because the plugin was already widely installed by the time Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. There were many incentives for users to install Flash, like the player was free to download without adware and it could be used to play games and animated web content. Up to this time, there were many alternatives for playing video on the web such as QuickTime, Windows Media Player, and RealPlayer, but the first two were Macintosh and Windows specific while the last was often bundled with adware. By being free and because of the games and interactive content, Flash was a good choice for consumers.

In 2005, Flash was not yet suitable for premium video content, but it didn't matter because the codecs it did support were just good enough for sharing low bit-rate video over the Internet. A little website called YouTube was founded and made extensive use of Flash as a video platform because of Flash’s wide install base. Soon Adobe would extend the video features beyond the FMV codecs with support for DRM and licensing, making it acceptable to big content studios who were paranoid of piracy. By the time competitors like Sun’s JavaFX or Microsoft’s Silverlight arrived, Flash had already become defacto.

Flash is historically significant but not nearly as relevant today because many of its capabilities have been eclipsed by JavaScript enabled browsers, HTML5 video, and native mobile apps.