Chapter 14 2. Prime time is our time for renting out bits

Many people think that "Video on Demand" will be used as a new technology, and its successful application will provide financial support for the information superhighway.Their reasoning: Suppose a video rental company with 4,000 tapes finds that 5 percent of the tapes account for 60 percent of all rentals.The 5% of the tapes are likely to be new releases, and if it has more copies of these tapes, the rental rate may be even higher. After studying these characteristics of videotape rental, we can easily draw a conclusion: the electronic video on demand system should only provide the most popular 5% of the movies, mainly new movies.Not only would this be convenient, but it would also provide concrete and convincing evidence for what some see as an experimental form.

Otherwise, we would spend too much time and money to digitize (let's say) all the films made in the US up to 1990.If you want to digitize all the 25 films in the Library of Congress, it will take even more time. As for European films, the thousands of films shot in India, or the 12,000 hours of TV dramas produced by Mexican TV stations every year, Just don't even think about it.The question remains: Do most of us really only want to watch the top 5 percent?Or is this just a mass phenomenon brought about by the old technology of spreading atoms? In 1994, Blockbusier built on its solid business foundation and expanded aggressively, opening 600 new video rental locations (a total expansion of 5 million square feet).Founder Wayne Huijanga claims that 87 million American households have invested $30 billion in VCRs over the past 15 years, and that Hollywood is betting big on selling him VHS, daring no more VOD deals.

I don't know about you, but I'd be throwing away my VCR tomorrow if I had a better option.Using a VCR for me is like carrying (and returning) a bunch of atoms, how can it compare to bits that don't have to be returned, don't have to pay a deposit?As much as I admire Brockbust and its new owners, Wellcome, I don't think the video rental business will be dead in 10 years. Huijanga's argument is that pay-per-view television (pay-per-viewte1evision) clearly didn't work; so why should video-on-demand succeed?However, the rental videotape is exactly the method of billing.In fact, the success of Brock has just proved that the pay-per-view method is feasible.Right now, the only difference between renting videotapes and video-on-demand is that browsing the store's rented Atoms is, after all, proportional: it's much easier to browse Bit's menu.However, the situation is changing rapidly.Imaginative, agent-based systems will make electronic browsers even more fascinating, and by then video-on-demand will not be limited to a few thousand choices like the Brock & West chain. Instead, it will offer arguably limitless options. "No matter what, when, where" TV Some of the most senior executives in the global telephone industry recited the phrase "no matter what, whenever, wherever" catchy, as if it were a song praising modern times. The poetry of social mobility in general.But my goal (and I presumably yours too) is that unless it's timely, important, interesting, relevant, or something that sparks my imagination, I'd rather "nothing, ever. Nor, not anywhere."As a paradigm of telecommunications, the mantra of "whatever, whenever, wherever" has become clichéd, is a good way to think about the new realm of television. 15,000 TV Channels When we hear talk of 1,000 TV channels, it's easy to forget that even without satellite, we already receive over 1,000 TV programs at home every day.These shows run continuously 24 hours a day, including at odd hours.If we include the 150-odd TV channels listed on Satellite TV Weekly, we have another 2,700 or more programs available for viewing in a day.

If your TV could record everything, you'd have five times as many choices as most people think of as the information superhighway.Suppose, instead of keeping all the shows, you have your television agent pick out one or two shows that might interest you, and record them for your later enjoyment at any time. Now, let's expand "whatever, whenever, wherever" TV to a global framework of 15,000 TV channels, and we'll see interesting changes in the quantity and quality of television.Some Americans might watch Spanish TV to improve their Spanish, others might watch uncut German adult programming on Swiss cable Channel 11 (at 5 p.m. New York time), while 2 million Greek American-Americans might watch Greece's three national television stations or seven regional channels with great interest.

Perhaps, more interestingly, the British spend 75 hours a year broadcasting the chess championship match, while the French spend 80 hours watching the Tour de France.Chess and cycling fans in the United States will naturally enjoy watching such shows - whenever and wherever. If I'm planning to visit Turkey's southwestern coast, I may not be able to find a documentary about Bodrum, but I can read from National Geographic, PBS, BBC Find video clips or pictures of wooden boat building, night fishing, underwater monuments, oriental rugs, and more, among hundreds of other sources.I can combine these pieces and edit them into a piece that just suits my particular needs.It's unlikely the film will win an Academy Award for Best Documentary, but that doesn't matter.

Video on demand can breathe new life into documentaries and even boring infomercials. A digital television agent can edit a film transmitted over the air, just as a university professor edits an anthology using chapters from different books and articles from different magazines.Copyright lawyers, buckle up!Unlicensed TV stations On the Internet, everyone can be an unlicensed TV station. In 1993, 3.5 million home video cameras were sold in the United States.While homemade videos are ultimately not as good as prime-time television (thank God), mass media is now about more than polished, professional-quality television.

Telecom managers know that we need broadband to get signals into our homes, but what they don't see is that transmission in the opposite direction requires equally high-capacity channels.Practices in interactive computer services rationalize this asymmetry: Sometimes information is sent to you using high bandwidth and receiving your information using low bandwidth.Here's why: Most of us type much more slowly than we read, and recognize images much faster than we draw them. However, in video services, this asymmetry does not exist.Channels must be bidirectional.To take an obvious example, teleconferencing is the future of great consumer media, whether it's for grandparents or divorced parents without child custody.

This refers to live video information.Think about what it would be like to be "dead".In the not-too-distant future, individuals will be able to operate electronic video services in the same way that the 57,000 Americans operate electronic bulletin boards today.The appearance of future TV will gradually become like today's Internet, full of small-scale information producers.In a few years you can learn how to make couscous with Juliet Child or a Moroccan housewife, or discover wine tasting with Robert Parker or a vintner in Burgundy, France.The Logic of Topology Currently, there are four electronic pathways for signals to enter the home: telephone, cable, satellite, and over-the-air.

Their differences are mainly in the topological sense rather than in the alternation of economic models.If I were going to send the same bits to every household in the continental United States at the same time, I would obviously use a satellite that spans the east and west coasts.Doing so is most consistent with the logic of topology.Some actions, such as sending bits to each of the 22,000 telephone exchanges in the United States, defy this logic. Conversely, if I'm delivering local news or advertising, over-the-air broadcasts are fine, and cable TV is ideal.Telephones work best in point-to-point situations.If I were to decide which media to use purely by the logic of topology, I would use satellites to broadcast the Super Bowl and the telephone network to deliver the interactive, personalized Weekly Wall Street Report.We can decide whether to transmit a signal via satellite, over-the-air broadcast, cable TV, or the telephone network, depending on which path is most suitable.rewriting the meaning of distance however, in the "real world" (many people keep reminding me of this, as if I'm living in an unreal world), every channel wants to make money and so tends to try to be themselves Least good at things.

For example, some operators of geostationary satellites want to provide land-based point-to-point network services.Unless the area you serve is trying to overcome some particular geographic or political barrier, such as island topography or censorship, it doesn't make much sense compared to the advantages of a wired phone network.By the same token, it would be very difficult to transmit the bits of the Super Bowl to every household at the same time by means of over-the-air broadcast, cable television, or the telephone system. Bits eventually move slowly, and in due time, to the proper channels.If I wanted to watch last year's Super Bowl, it would be most logical to dial in to watch it (instead of waiting to see which network would rerun the game).After the game, the Super Bowl suddenly becomes archival material, so the appropriate broadcast channel is very different from when it is broadcast live ("live" material).

Each transmission channel has some anomalies of its own.When you use satellites to send a message from New York to London, the distance the message travels is only five miles longer than when you send it from New York to neighboring Newark by the same method. Therefore, as long as you are within the coverage of a certain satellite, whether you are calling from Madison Avenue to Park Avenue in New York or from Times Square in New York to Piccadilly Circus in downtown London, the cost of the call should be the same. Fiber also forces us to rethink the cost of moving bits.When we use a fiber-optic trunk line to carry bits between New York and Los Angeles, it is very difficult to know whether the long-distance fiber-optic transmission is cheaper or more expensive than the suburban capillary network of telephone networks. Hard to say. In the digital world, distance means less and less.In fact, Internet users have completely forgotten about distance.On the Internet, distance also often seems to have the opposite effect.I often get replies from distant people more quickly than from close ones.Because of the time difference, distant friends can answer letters while I sleep at night, so it feels like they are closer. When we apply a transmission system similar to the Internet to the world of mass entertainment, the earth becomes a single media machine.Today, homes equipped with satellite dishes can enjoy a variety of programming beyond geopolitical boundaries.The question is only how we should respond to this change.The Internet will drive change, both literally and practically.The Internet is fascinating not just because it is a mass network that spans the globe, but also because it evolved naturally, without a designer to plan it, like a mob that came to be what it is today.No one is calling the shots, but so far all parts of it are progressing admirably. No one knows exactly how many people use the Internet because, first and foremost, it is a network of networks.As of October 1994, the Internet has more than 45,000 networks and more than 4 million main processors (growing at a rate of more than 20% every quarter), but these are not enough to estimate the number of users .It's quite possible that one of these machines is a public gateway to, say, the French Minitel network, so suddenly there are another 8 million potential users on the Internet. In the US state of Maryland (Mary1and) and in Bologna, Italy, the Internet is open to all residents, obviously not all of these people use the Internet.But in 1994, there seemed to be 20 to 30 million people using the Internet. My guess is that by the year 2000, a billion people will be online.This guess is based in part on the fact that in the third quarter of 1994 the countries with the fastest growth in the number of Internet hosts were Argentina, Iran, Peru, Egypt, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, and Indonesia.All of these countries grew by more than 100% during these 3 months.The Internet, as we nicknamed it, is no longer exclusive to North America.The rest of the world accounts for 35 percent of all hosts on the Internet, and these are the fastest growing places.