11 ms·

This is many years premature. It may come to pass, but is nowhere near that now. TV is still by far the most common way of watching television shows (and watchi

This is many years premature. It may come to pass, but is nowhere near that now. TV is still by far the most common way of watching television shows (and watching television shows is still the most common way of wasting time) and overall viewership is increasing every year. This trend doesn't seem to be changing for a few reasons. 1) TV screens are much bigger and cheaper. They don't need the resolution a monitor does. Watching on a small screen is something you're happy to be able to do on a plane, but would never want to do on a day to day basis. 2) Bandwidth is still not there, especially for HDTV, and progress seems to be stalled. I still have pretty much the same connection for the same price that I did 5 years ago, and I'll likely still have it in 5 years from now. Mark Cuban talks about this a lot. Fiber to the premises may solve this one soon for some subset of the country, but by no means everyone. 3) Live television is nearly non-existent online. It can't handle it. The bandwidth to stream the Superbowl to everyone who wants it doesn't exist. Sports are a huge part of the TV viewing audience. 4) Many people like to watch shows as soon as they're released. The internet is terrible for this. I personally download mine, but I do so knowing that I'm always going to be watching the Daily Show from 2 days ago. If I were a TV addict (i.e. normal American) that would be unacceptable. 5) Content quality is better than ever. Single camera sitcoms, pay channel dramas, reality tv (if you're into that). Almost everyone agrees this is a golden era of television. If you really think that more people are watching TV on a computer than on a good old-fashioned TV, you need to come down from your Silicon Valley mountain for a while.

pg 18y ago
Live television is nearly non-existent online. I wish I could post the graph of unique visitors that the founders of Justin.TV sent me. But while their actual numbers are presumably secret, I will say that I have never seen a steeper graph of a one-year period from any YC-funded startup. And I have seen some steep graphs now.
- apsec112 18y ago
  For the poor man's version, just check Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv
  - pg 18y ago
    The actual growth is steeper. I think few of their users have the Alexa toolbar installed.
- old-gregg 18y ago
  ... which supports a few other argumets Matt's making, because justin.tv is probably the most famous YC startup among my non-programming friends: we all watch live college football and european soccer games on it, re-translated by users with TV tuners. I don't think this is something justin.tv is happy about because it kind of transforms "broadcast yourself" into "share your cable subscription with strangers" and inevitably leads to a conflict with Fox+ESPN+friends [and possibly with cable/sat. providers too] It all comes down to bandwidth. It doesn't exist and the situation is not improving, I'm 100% with Matt here. Even ESPN's premiere 360 offering pretty much sucks, let alone Justin's streams: they're basically backups for people who don't have TV access (on the road, in another country, etc). Security-minded, TCP-dominant, firewalled to death "Big Internet" is simply the wrong platform to stream live HD video. Having worked at an IP-based HD video surveillance startup I was amazed at how hard it was to reliably push high-def streams over TCP/IP even within a large local enterprise network. Most of our IP was all about bandwidth management. I honestly can't even imagine what would it take to stream even CNN to all their viewers, let alone superbowl.
  - madh 18y ago
    Does this mean that typical cable (e.g. comcast) or fiber (e.g. FiOS) networks have more bandwidth than the internet? Or is this just a multicast vs unicast thing?
    - wmf 18y ago
      Both; cable networks have about 5Gbps AFAIK and it is broadcast to all customers.
  - DomesticMouse 18y ago
    Broadcast has bandwidth. Computers have brains. Why are these two competing? Broadcasting a signal that means something to computers, and having computers then marshal that for users is way more profitable. Easy place to start - start hiring a small TV station for an hour in the morning, somewhere in amongst the informercials, and broadcast a signal that people with TV Tuners can decode. Using some variation of colour 3D barcodes, say. Have the TV Tuner decode software use this hour to pump content into squid or some other form of web cache. Monetisation strategy: give people the ability to vote on what gets broadcast based on their cache logs.
- whughes 18y ago
  While I admire what justin.tv is doing, I think that in a way it's arrogant of the "Web 2.0"/Silicon Valley community to dismiss TV so quickly. Silicon Valley and the kinds of people who are adopting justin.tv are not the people who are watching TV in droves right now. I seriously doubt justin.tv commands the viewership in the tens or hundreds of millions that normal television does at its peak.
  - pg 18y ago
    The people watching Justin.TV are not sophisticated Silicon Valley early adopters, believe me. And while nothing streamed online has the numbers of TV yet, I believe Justin.TV's numbers are as big as anything else online.
    - tommyx 18y ago
      It's doing exactly what Stage6 did. Stage6 had amazing growth. The problem was that it was entirely fueled by the fact that they were hosting high quality pirated content. It's like standing on a street corner and handing out DVD rips of the latest movies for free. Of course you're going to be popular. Anyone with the balls and money to blow could do it, but why would they? It's a total gamble that you're going to sell the company before you get sued out of business.
- Mazy 18y ago
  Justin.TV is quantified: http://www.quantcast.com/justin.tv http://www.quantcast.com/justin.tv including embedded players: http://www.quantcast.com/p-16uNVwiyGoWyg http://www.quantcast.com/p-16uNVwiyGoWyg Also, some real-time data: http://live.justin.tv/ http://live.justin.tv/
  - aswanson 18y ago
    Those numbers have M after them. As in million. I never thought this would have ever worked. 100 percent convinced JTv was on a course with obscurity. Tell the honest to god truth -- weren't you?
    - Mazy 18y ago
      It is very cool that so many people are using the site, the problem though seems to be that the majority of the traffic is for illegal content. They have shown cases of big legitimate use, like the Jonas Brothers web chats, and the Keke Palmer web chat, however day-to-day it seems to be for sports, TV shows, and movies.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  There's still a tremendous gulf between Justin.tv and a live telecast of a sports game or award show. Not that what they've accomplished isn't impressive, but it isn't what most people would refer to as live tv.
EvilTrout 18y ago
overall viewership is increasing every year Are you sure about some of the claims you're making? http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/FREE/465255421/1010/rss26&rssfeed=rss26 http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2007... ^^^ This article seems to think viewership is down and I've heard that repeatedly over the last few years.
trezor 18y ago
3) Live television is nearly non-existent online. Hopefully IPv6 and global multicast should solve this once we finally rid ourself of this ancient thing called IPv4. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
- wmf 18y ago
  You're wrong. :-) ISPs have no plan to enable multicast -- ever. IPv6 "supports" multicast, but it can't force anyone to turn it on. See previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443599 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443599
- DomesticMouse 18y ago
  IPv6 makes routing packets harder, not easier.
  - trezor 18y ago
    Care to elaborate? I see people are saying that the hierarchical address-assignment is to some extent going out the window, but apart from that, how is IPv6 routing going to be a bigger mess than the current IPv4 routing?
kvogt 18y ago
You're generally right on #2 and #3. Even the biggest IP transit networks in the world only have capacity on the order of a few terabits per second (or a few million simultaneous video streams). However, "bandwidth" isn't really what matters. It's the last mile connection to end users. Big CDN's like Akamai have this figured out and can pump millions of simultaneous live streams directly into end user networks without congesting any internet backbones. It turns out that the main reasons we aren't all watching TV online right now is that big TV networks 1) are afraid of cannibalizing their existing revenue streams, and 2) think it costs a lot money. Neither of these are strictly misconceptions, but they aren't nearly as true as they were even a year ago. Justin.tv has developed technology and infrastructure that brings the cost of distributing live video below the cost of serving static video, so I guess that makes it all about the revenue streams. It should be interesting to see what happens to this space in the next couple of years.
- lasthemy1 18y ago
  Of course, iTunes movie rentals stream 720p (which is what most HDTV channels use). They spend about 1 minute buffering the stream, then you can watch the movie.
- Mazy 18y ago
  Are you including the cost of storage when calculating the cost of serving static video?
  - kvogt 18y ago
    Yes, that's exactly why it's more costly to serve static video. Live video can be served straight out of memory, which is cheap. The cost of software to stream live video has pretty much dropped to zero as well.
    - staunch 18y ago
      The big cost is bandwidth not hardware or software. Not a lot anyone can do about that in the short term.
DomesticMouse 18y ago
Broadcast bandwidth is currently being wasted big time by the broadcasters. It is actually worth more as a backfill conduit to feed desktop caches than to broadcast TV repeatedly.
dejb 18y ago
> 1) TV screens are much bigger and cheaper. I guess the majority of people still find it tough to hook their computer up to their TV screen. I can't see what the problem is myself. Surely soon most people will be able to do this soon.
lasthemy1 18y ago
Your example of the Daily Show doesn't really hold up. If you use torrents, a lot of shows are up before they even broadcast on the west coast. If you use Hulu, the Daily Show is available the next morning.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Where do you get your torrents? I've tried both Mininova and tvrss.net and neither seem to reliably get them to me before the following day.
  - Mazy 18y ago
    Private trackers all fight to get the torrents up as soon as the shows pre. I'd recommend http://ninjavideo.net http://ninjavideo.net - They fight for pre, but are public, and offer direct downloads as well as letting you watch via the DivX web player. Firefox/chrome/google are now labeling it as malicious, but I haven't seen any evidence of that.
  - lasthemy1 18y ago
    tvrss.net is an RSS for eztv.it For the Daily Show in particular I usually just watch on Hulu. The eztv link is http://eztv.it/shows/1/daily-show-the/ http://eztv.it/shows/1/daily-show-the/, and the March 2nd episode looks like it was posted about an hour after the east-coast showing.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      I get the Daily Show and Colbert Report from there. I'm on east coast time, and I usually get it in time to watch the next day, but not always. It never comes in at night.
      - mattmaroon 18y ago
        Hilariously right now I want to watch Daily Show and Colbert from yesterday, a full 24 hours after it aired, and it's not there yet.

pg 18y ago

Live television is nearly non-existent online. I wish I could post the graph of unique visitors that the founders of Justin.TV sent me. But while their actual numbers are presumably secret, I will say that I have never seen a steeper graph of a one-year period from any YC-funded startup. And I have seen some steep graphs now.

apsec112 18y ago
For the poor man's version, just check Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv
- pg 18y ago
  The actual growth is steeper. I think few of their users have the Alexa toolbar installed.
old-gregg 18y ago
... which supports a few other argumets Matt's making, because justin.tv is probably the most famous YC startup among my non-programming friends: we all watch live college football and european soccer games on it, re-translated by users with TV tuners. I don't think this is something justin.tv is happy about because it kind of transforms "broadcast yourself" into "share your cable subscription with strangers" and inevitably leads to a conflict with Fox+ESPN+friends [and possibly with cable/sat. providers too] It all comes down to bandwidth. It doesn't exist and the situation is not improving, I'm 100% with Matt here. Even ESPN's premiere 360 offering pretty much sucks, let alone Justin's streams: they're basically backups for people who don't have TV access (on the road, in another country, etc). Security-minded, TCP-dominant, firewalled to death "Big Internet" is simply the wrong platform to stream live HD video. Having worked at an IP-based HD video surveillance startup I was amazed at how hard it was to reliably push high-def streams over TCP/IP even within a large local enterprise network. Most of our IP was all about bandwidth management. I honestly can't even imagine what would it take to stream even CNN to all their viewers, let alone superbowl.
- madh 18y ago
  Does this mean that typical cable (e.g. comcast) or fiber (e.g. FiOS) networks have more bandwidth than the internet? Or is this just a multicast vs unicast thing?
  - wmf 18y ago
    Both; cable networks have about 5Gbps AFAIK and it is broadcast to all customers.
- DomesticMouse 18y ago
  Broadcast has bandwidth. Computers have brains. Why are these two competing? Broadcasting a signal that means something to computers, and having computers then marshal that for users is way more profitable. Easy place to start - start hiring a small TV station for an hour in the morning, somewhere in amongst the informercials, and broadcast a signal that people with TV Tuners can decode. Using some variation of colour 3D barcodes, say. Have the TV Tuner decode software use this hour to pump content into squid or some other form of web cache. Monetisation strategy: give people the ability to vote on what gets broadcast based on their cache logs.
whughes 18y ago
While I admire what justin.tv is doing, I think that in a way it's arrogant of the "Web 2.0"/Silicon Valley community to dismiss TV so quickly. Silicon Valley and the kinds of people who are adopting justin.tv are not the people who are watching TV in droves right now. I seriously doubt justin.tv commands the viewership in the tens or hundreds of millions that normal television does at its peak.
- pg 18y ago
  The people watching Justin.TV are not sophisticated Silicon Valley early adopters, believe me. And while nothing streamed online has the numbers of TV yet, I believe Justin.TV's numbers are as big as anything else online.
  - tommyx 18y ago
    It's doing exactly what Stage6 did. Stage6 had amazing growth. The problem was that it was entirely fueled by the fact that they were hosting high quality pirated content. It's like standing on a street corner and handing out DVD rips of the latest movies for free. Of course you're going to be popular. Anyone with the balls and money to blow could do it, but why would they? It's a total gamble that you're going to sell the company before you get sued out of business.
Mazy 18y ago
Justin.TV is quantified: http://www.quantcast.com/justin.tv http://www.quantcast.com/justin.tv including embedded players: http://www.quantcast.com/p-16uNVwiyGoWyg http://www.quantcast.com/p-16uNVwiyGoWyg Also, some real-time data: http://live.justin.tv/ http://live.justin.tv/
- aswanson 18y ago
  Those numbers have M after them. As in million. I never thought this would have ever worked. 100 percent convinced JTv was on a course with obscurity. Tell the honest to god truth -- weren't you?
  - Mazy 18y ago
    It is very cool that so many people are using the site, the problem though seems to be that the majority of the traffic is for illegal content. They have shown cases of big legitimate use, like the Jonas Brothers web chats, and the Keke Palmer web chat, however day-to-day it seems to be for sports, TV shows, and movies.
mattmaroon 18y ago
There's still a tremendous gulf between Justin.tv and a live telecast of a sports game or award show. Not that what they've accomplished isn't impressive, but it isn't what most people would refer to as live tv.

EvilTrout 18y ago

overall viewership is increasing every year Are you sure about some of the claims you're making? http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/FREE/465255421/1010/rss26&rssfeed=rss26 http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2007... ^^^ This article seems to think viewership is down and I've heard that repeatedly over the last few years.

trezor 18y ago

3) Live television is nearly non-existent online. Hopefully IPv6 and global multicast should solve this once we finally rid ourself of this ancient thing called IPv4. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

wmf 18y ago
You're wrong. :-) ISPs have no plan to enable multicast -- ever. IPv6 "supports" multicast, but it can't force anyone to turn it on. See previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443599 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443599
DomesticMouse 18y ago
IPv6 makes routing packets harder, not easier.
- trezor 18y ago
  Care to elaborate? I see people are saying that the hierarchical address-assignment is to some extent going out the window, but apart from that, how is IPv6 routing going to be a bigger mess than the current IPv4 routing?

kvogt 18y ago

You're generally right on #2 and #3. Even the biggest IP transit networks in the world only have capacity on the order of a few terabits per second (or a few million simultaneous video streams). However, "bandwidth" isn't really what matters. It's the last mile connection to end users. Big CDN's like Akamai have this figured out and can pump millions of simultaneous live streams directly into end user networks without congesting any internet backbones. It turns out that the main reasons we aren't all watching TV online right now is that big TV networks 1) are afraid of cannibalizing their existing revenue streams, and 2) think it costs a lot money. Neither of these are strictly misconceptions, but they aren't nearly as true as they were even a year ago. Justin.tv has developed technology and infrastructure that brings the cost of distributing live video below the cost of serving static video, so I guess that makes it all about the revenue streams. It should be interesting to see what happens to this space in the next couple of years.

lasthemy1 18y ago
Of course, iTunes movie rentals stream 720p (which is what most HDTV channels use). They spend about 1 minute buffering the stream, then you can watch the movie.
Mazy 18y ago
Are you including the cost of storage when calculating the cost of serving static video?
- kvogt 18y ago
  Yes, that's exactly why it's more costly to serve static video. Live video can be served straight out of memory, which is cheap. The cost of software to stream live video has pretty much dropped to zero as well.
  - staunch 18y ago
    The big cost is bandwidth not hardware or software. Not a lot anyone can do about that in the short term.

DomesticMouse 18y ago

Broadcast bandwidth is currently being wasted big time by the broadcasters. It is actually worth more as a backfill conduit to feed desktop caches than to broadcast TV repeatedly.

dejb 18y ago

> 1) TV screens are much bigger and cheaper. I guess the majority of people still find it tough to hook their computer up to their TV screen. I can't see what the problem is myself. Surely soon most people will be able to do this soon.

lasthemy1 18y ago

Your example of the Daily Show doesn't really hold up. If you use torrents, a lot of shows are up before they even broadcast on the west coast. If you use Hulu, the Daily Show is available the next morning.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Where do you get your torrents? I've tried both Mininova and tvrss.net and neither seem to reliably get them to me before the following day.
- Mazy 18y ago
  Private trackers all fight to get the torrents up as soon as the shows pre. I'd recommend http://ninjavideo.net http://ninjavideo.net - They fight for pre, but are public, and offer direct downloads as well as letting you watch via the DivX web player. Firefox/chrome/google are now labeling it as malicious, but I haven't seen any evidence of that.
- lasthemy1 18y ago
  tvrss.net is an RSS for eztv.it For the Daily Show in particular I usually just watch on Hulu. The eztv link is http://eztv.it/shows/1/daily-show-the/ http://eztv.it/shows/1/daily-show-the/, and the March 2nd episode looks like it was posted about an hour after the east-coast showing.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    I get the Daily Show and Colbert Report from there. I'm on east coast time, and I usually get it in time to watch the next day, but not always. It never comes in at night.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      Hilariously right now I want to watch Daily Show and Colbert from yesterday, a full 24 hours after it aired, and it's not there yet.