It’s hard to get much said in a five-minute limit, but hopefully I made a few points that got people thinking.
Thank
you for allowing me to offer this presentation on the Future of Digital
Media. Its great to be back in Pittsburgh. A city that continues to
grow in its vibrance, entrepreneurial spirit and verve to continually
reinvent itself. I’m proud to have grown up here.
The future of
any technology can be defined by the economic opportunities it creates.
One just has to look around Pittsburgh to see the explosion in the number of
businesses built around advances in medical technology to see the
importance of entrepreneurs focusing on new technology. The impact has
been enormous.
Which brings us to today. What are the opportunities in front of us to get excited about in the digital media field ?
The
first thing to understand is that digital media is not synonymous with
the internet. There is a vast and growing world of digital media
opportunities that exist outside the internet. Here are some examples:
1.
While the wonders of the internet often keep us glued to our screens
and at home, they also contribute to our need to get away. One of the
shortest term opportunities is out of home entertainment. One
opportunity that will expand is the use and implementation of 3D
entertainment. While it’s not unusual for movies to be produced in 3D,
there is a market for other types of 3D entertainment that is ready to
take off. The Dallas Mavericks did a live 3D broadcast of one of our
games this past season that we broadcast to a local movie theater
enabled with a 3D digital projector. It was a huge success, fans loved
it, 3D glasses and all, and have asked for more. We have seen the same
demand for other types of content as well. Fortunately, there are not
any production trucks dedicated to 3D live programming, so we are
looking at building one.
From games to gaming to concerts to
plays to specially developed events. 3D will be a mainstay of the
future of digital media. Using entertainment as the starting point, the
technology will advance, decline in price, and applications will be
developed that will expand the use of 3D from entertainment to
corporate to medical and personal and more. 3D is and will continue to
be an exciting digital media application for a long time to come.
In order to support future digital media applications such as 3D, the
networks that will carry them will need to evolve. That evolution will
lead to new and exciting digital media applications, but will require
new protocols and a far greater integration into the fixed routers of
existing networks.
2. The second opportunity is with application
specific networks. Unfortunately, the best networks cant be all things
to all people and applications, which is exactly what the internet has
to be. Not only does it have to be all things to all people, it has to
be dumbed down to continue to be open for everyone and anyone. i
believe we will see an expansion of networks that are optimized for
specific protocols, performance guarantees and applications.
The
most obvious example of this is are satellite and digital cable
networks. These networks are optimized for broadcast and on demand
applications at as high a quality as their bandwidth can support. They
also have become platforms for application development and are starting
to see increasingly robust toolsets. Unlike the internet, which is best
delivery effort, with no promises or guarantees, the networks which
deliver our digital TV are optimized to be reliable to five 9s with
near instantaneous delivery.
These networks create unique
opportunities for interactive applications, and for the delivery of
content to mass audiences. There are open, or reasonably open standards
such as Docsis 3.0/Tru 2Way that are now becoming available to any and
all developers. I would strongly recommend that those of you who are
looking at digital media applications to consider the opportunities
available on these networks which already reach almost every home in
the US.
That said, while platforming on an advanced media
network is enticing, there are risks here. The consolidation of
ownership among video distributors , who own both the networks and
content could create roadblocks of discrimination towards their own
products, or for the products of major media corporations with
considerable market clout. These could preclude small programmers and
entrepreneurs. Which is why HDNet is supportive of a shot clock to
resolve these conflicts and to encourage those here to consider
applying these same conflict resolution elements to not just content,
but to software developments as well. However, even with these risks,
as an entrepreneur, I think application development on proven digital
media networks is a great opportunity for myself and others.
There
is one last point I would like to make in my allotted time. The one
area of digital media that will create the greatest opportunity for
entrepreneurs is the ability to develop and or control applications on
fixed routers on internet connected networks. As those who want to see
better performance of digital media, particularly live streaming over
the internet will realize, best performance will come from utilizing
application specific protocols such as multicast. This will create
significant demand that will quickly and easily outstrip providers
ability to support the demand. This will have the affect of putting
ISPs in the role of gatekeeper for determining who gets the ability to
broadcast over the internet vs who has to deliver content on a one to
one, unicast basis. At some point in time, someone will realize that
the holy grail of distribution of digital media over the internet will
come from partnering with the many ISPs to enable multicasting and its
related protocols, and to peer them as an unwired network. It wont be
cheap, fast or easy, but it would be a game changer.
