Streaming

Within the next year FM broadcasting will come to an end in Switzerland in 2024 and people with old cars are sad. So are people who want to hold on to FM for nostalgic reasons. For hobbyists it’s a shame too, because then all FM radio equipment will become obsolete as we will no longer have content available, for people to listen to.

We Have Already Shifted

Having said this, it has already been replaced by Internet radio in people’s homes, and DAB+ in cars, and by people who switched to digital. The advantage of DAB+ and DVB-T2 is that you get many more programs thanks to a smaller antenna.

For the last week, or less, I have been choosing what to watch, not based on what’s new, or recommended, but on what is leaving Netflix soon. With netflix it is very easy to think “I don’t know what to watch” and “I don’t want to watch anything that is being recommended.

By noticing the films that are “Leaving Soon” the challenge of choosing what to watch is simplified. If you have to choose what’s vanishing within a few weeks then the choice is smaller.

The Guardian has an article from yesterday that dicussses the fragility of content ownership in the digital age. Specifically it looks at how “My whole library is wiped out” after a streaming service stopped streaming content. It told people “pay 200 USD to move to service B”.

I encountered this issue eight or more years ago. I was using Spotify for a year or two, and one day realised that I was spending 300 CHF when I never spent more than 90 CHF in music on a single year. I stopped my membership and for my loyalty I found myself with nothing. I paid for a membership and from one day to the next I was left with nothing.

Yesterday I started exploring CuriosityStream, a video streaming website that makes finding and watching documentaries easy. You can have a trial run of seven days but after watching three documentaries since yesterday evening I am convinced that it is a place where I want to watch more content. 

I like documentaries that are well produced and enhance my understanding of topics. The documentaries I have watched are Dawn of the Oceans and the first episode of Quantum Physics yesterday. Today I watched Ships that Changed the World. 

A few days ago I was watching a Magnum PI episode where Higgins had a film camera pointed at the television screen to record a game of snooker broadcast from “half way around the world” by satellite.  Today I noticed this article speaking of the way in which twitter’s Periscope app and Meerkat were used to pirate a fight. Piracy is nothing new but the simplicity with which people can pirate and share content has evolved. Piracy required rolls of films at first. These rolls had to be developed and then copies had to be made. This could take several days. VHS came along and made it easier. With several VHS decks you could make several copies at once. Steve Jobs is well known for the boot leg tapes he had of music concerts. My generation streamed live music concerts using mobile phones. Football enthusiasts used satellite receivers and streaming software to re-distribute live football matches years ago. This is true both for european Football and American football. The live streaming of broadcast content is now so simple that multiple people, using social media, redistribute content as it happens. There is no lag time. There is no exclusivity possible. PeriscopeTV and Meerkat have made it very simple to share live events circumventing the gate keepers. Gate keepers provide the highest audio and video quality possible for their customers and for this reason they are safe for now. The pirated copy has low video and audio quality and is filmed by a mobile phone camera. Social networks such as Twitter and sporting organisations will need to strengthen their collaboration. Both of them can and will benefit from joining forces. If PeriscopeTV and Meerkat both get paid by the Fight promoters to carry the signal as premium content then the pirate streams will be of less interest. Price will have to reflect the platform on which content is being shared of course.

If you are living within the European Broadcasting Union member countries you can access live footage of the FIFA World cup matches as well as highlights by going to EurovisionSports. Highlights are also included at the end of the individual games so that you may relive the highlights. There is also a Facebook page where you can hear about the games as soon as the streams start. User feeback so far has been positive so have a look.

The European Broadcasting union are providing live coverage of the Vancouver Olympic games to Eurovision member states. There are 6 live channels in Standard definition as well as a channel for certain events in high definition. Also available are the live broadcasts that members of the European broadcasting Union are making available to their home audiences. As a result you have a wealth of streams in a number of languages. Vancouver live is where you will find this content. I am mentioning this because a lot of blog space and articles are dedicated to covering how the United States are providing streamed content to that part of the world but without demonstrating that streaming also has a place in the European market.

Documentally - Dec 3, 2008

Wow, looks really heavy.. you going out in it? Looks like there is a strange red UFO hovering over the roof there.. ;)

For the first few seconds, then I opened the windows and everything was fine once more :-). There’s a chance I’m going out in it a little later today. Want to get some video of a flash mob in Lausanne.

Here, some qik snowfall, on the last day of the year

Everyone’s always sitting in an office or at least in cities. I’m breaking away from that to stream the countryside. Remind people that it also exists.