In RAIN this morning, we reported (here)
that troubled radio streaming provider BroadcastAMERICA planned
to
auction the bankrupt company as a whole -- and that their merger
deal with SurferNETWORK was apparently off.
Now, AllAccess is reporting that a US bankruptcy court is
making BroadcastAMERICA.com
hand over copies of their radio contracts to BA Funding, a subsidiary
of SurferNETWORK.COM.
It was originally announced that SurferNETWORK had made
a $1 million investment in BroadcastAMERICA. That amount is now
being called a loan, and BA Funding sought the copies of the over
400 client contracts as collateral.
BroadcastAMERICA.com is still reportedly seeking a buyer.
The next scheduled court date January 19th.
The AllAccess story is here
(look in Net News, registration required).
Reprinted from this morning's edition...
BY RALPH SLEDGE
What we saw a very short time ago between Netscape Corporation
and Microsoft was "Darwinistic Capitalism"
at work. Healthy competition (and probably a pretty good dose of
monopolistic behavior) resulted in the narrowing down of the browser
field, and few competitors have sprung up to challenge either ever
since.
But the so-called "browser wars" weren't anything
compared to what it looks like the "streaming wars"
will soon prove to be. So far, almost every website that streams
must carry at least two formats to be universally accepted, and
if anything, it looks like that number might go up.
Once again, the biggest players on the field are Microsoft
and somebody else who was there first -- Real.
Competition between these two has seen faster changes in technology,
more version numbers, and far more heated and infantile rhetoric
than was ever witnessed in the battle between Microsoft and Netscape.
A December 14th's StreamingMedia.com article (here)
will give you an idea.
But though Microsoft and Real dominate the streaming field
for the personal computer industry, they are not 
the
only players. What's more, these other players may be coming around
to present a united front, in the form of the Internet
Streaming Media Alliance, or ISMA (see RAIN
story here)
-- an organization consisting of heavyweights such as Apple, Cisco
and Sun, but not Microsoft or Real.
So, who should you use for your streaming? Which one is
going to see the future through? Who's the most "cutting
edge?" At this point the sad news is that it's very difficult
to tell. According to a December 14th InternetNews article
(here)
(along with countless others on CNet, Yahoo, etc.),
Microsoft and Real are both saying the same things countless times
and in countless ways -- that they have the best quality and the
lowest bitrates, that consumers prefer their format to the other,
and that their user base is growing faster. As is customary, the
consumer is left to guess the truth.
The Players
Microsoft and Real currently dominate the streaming
industry: most sites, if they're streaming anything, are 
streaming in one of the two formats. Again, according to the InternetNews.com
article, Real has 22.7 million users, where Windows Media has
a mere 13.2 million. However, the same study suggests that Windows
Media is growing faster.
Apple's Quicktime still has a piece, albeit a small one,
of the streaming pie. iFilm,
for example, makes most of their online movies available in three
formats -- Windows Media, Real, and Quicktime.
Quicktime is also a favorite for movie trailers and game demos.
And yet another format, not to be ignored, is the venerable
MPEG format in all it's forms. Until it's "beta 8" version,
Windows Media was based on the MPEG-4 technology. MP3's are streamable,
and Shoutcasting is still a popular (though often noncommercial)
streaming method. Furthermore, the ever-popular underground
DivX ;-) (the emoticon is part of the name) codec is a hacked
version of MPEG-4.
MPEG is also the standard that the ISMA wished to promote.
The ISMA (not
to be confused with the International Snowmobile Association,
the International Stress Management Association, or the International
Seminar on Modal Analysis) is
made up of Apple, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Kasenna, and Philips,
and was formed "in an effort to accelerate the market adoption
of open standards for streaming rich media over Internet Protocol."
That Microsoft and Real are not part of this organization is highly
significant: it is very unlikely that any industry standard will
exist without the cooperation of these two players, who, at this
point, seem very interesting in keeping their solutions proprietary.
Yet another major name who is (and has been for some time,
actually) developing streaming technologies, according to StreamingMedia.com
(December 14th, here),
is Intel. They have
already worked with Real to help in developing the RealVideo 8
codec.
What they're developing
If it seems a bit odd that companies such as
Cisco and Sun are taking an active interest in streaming, it's
important to realize that the development of these technologies
will soon come to mean much more than simply making better and
better codecs. Intel and Microsoft
have both already demonstrated technologies for making Internet
Appliances active gateways for streaming. This often involves
making systems simpler for users: having them be able to detect
proper network settings without a user having to set them up,
for example.
But another reason that these companies are all interested
in the same thing is because there is a synergy between companies
who provide the streaming technology, and the companies who provide
the pipes and computers to run them on -- Sun and Cisco being
the major examples. This is also another reason why Microsoft
may be wary of joining into a league with companies such as Sun,
with whom they have competed in the server technology arena for
years.
Microsoft, of any of the involved companies, seems to have
shown the most active interest in controlling streaming from server
to user, as evidenced by their development of technologies for
almost every stage of the process: Windows 2000, Windows Media,
and Microsoft-designed and -powered Internet Appliances.
Showcases
With the technology moving as fast as it is, most sites
can't stay as up-to-date as perhaps the vendors might wish, though
Quicktime generally stays solid and steady. See the newest Microsoft
(here)
and Real technologies (here)
at the respective showcases.
Initial Impressions
Sometime in the near future, one of the major computer
magazines (check out ZDNet)
will likely do a very comprehensive and scientific comparison
of the two big video formats. For now, however, the general impressions
count -- that's what most users will use to decide anyway.
Suffice to say, the technologies are indeed getting better.
The new Windows Media encoder does indeed produce .wma's that
sound a bit better than what we here at RAIN have been
using
for RAINRadio. The obvious question is then: do we encode all
those songs again? As soon as these technologies move out of beta,
every webcaster is going to face that question -- and then, a
few months down the road, you'll face it again...
It's also worth noting the somewhat misleading descriptors
that these companies are using to describe these new technologies.
Windows Media, for example, uses sound quality descriptions like
"FM Quality," "Near-CD Quality," "Near-VHS
Quality" (for video, of course), and "Near-DVD Quality."
All these "nears" are like to open quality rankings
up to wide interpretation, and neither format is going to provide
you with anything like what you're used to seeing on your television.
Keep in mind, a TV displays pictures at a far lower resolution
than a typical computer monitor, so even a full VHS quality video
will appear in a small box in the corner of the screen -- and
if you blow it up to full-screen, it isn't going to look anything
like what you're used to on the 50" in your living room.
And while the videos are getting smaller, I couldn't stream
either of the highest-quality video's from the Microsoft Website
over my cable modem connection: thus, I can only assume that the
percentage of users with connections fast enough to handle these
bitrates is still relatively small. Microsoft allows you to download
the clips so you can get an idea of what's coming, however. The
audio streamed without a hitch.
Surface
The companies listed aren't the only ones working on
Streaming technologies. Emblaze,
Octiv, and Qualcomm
are just a few companies working on technologies for pushing audio
and video over wireless. It doesn't appear that the task of streaming
is going to get simpler or easier anytime soon: quite the contrary,
the complexity will be on the rise.
BroadcastAmerica president John Brier, in an e-mail to publisher
Kurt Hanson, tells
RAIN
the company
has
"decided not to convert to Chapter 7, and instead are busy
preparing to auction the company in total to the highest bidder."
Brier continues saying that "with a successful sale
of the company would come what we hope to be a rapid return to streaming
for our partnered stations." BroadcastAmerica has been unable
to provide streaming for the majority of its clients since a court
order allowed Real, Sprint, and MCI to halt service to the company
because of their failure to pay.
RAIN reported that the BroadcastAmerica site was down on
Friday afternoon, perhaps due to
developments
in the troubled company's situation. However, Brier explains this
was due to "some technical changes to reduce operating costs
for the near-term. The site is up and functioning in some capacity...some
content is still streaming."
In November, RAIN reported (
here)
BroadcastAmerica's Chapter 11 declaration, and the announced merger
with SurferNetwork -- including a reported $1 million investment
from Surfer. That deal appeared to be off when reports surfaced
that BroadcastAmerica may accept funding from Bowman Investments
(
here).
Now the fur may be beginning to fly between BroadcastAmerica
and SurferNetwork -- their deal all but
fallen through. According to Radio Ink (
here),
Brier is accusing Surfer of trying to acquire the company simply
for the money it already invested.
Contrarily, SurferNetwork CEO Gordon Bridge tells Radio Ink
(
here)
that it's BroadcastAmerica who isn't operating in good faith. He
calls the situation between the two companies "more than strained"
after BroadcastAmerica accepted the funding from Surfer, and then
acted strictly in their own interest, without regard to documented
intent from both companies to merge.
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From
the company press release: "
iM
Networks, Inc. (formerly Sonicbox, Inc.) announced today
at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that it has
licensed its iM Tuning Service
to
Philips Consumer Electronics.
As a result of the agreement, Philips will employ the iM Tuning
Service on their new FW-i1000 Internet Audio Mini System.
"For the first time, the iM Band is alongside AM and
FM on the radio dial, allowing consumers to listen to Internet radio
from around the world. The company formerly known as Sonicbox, Inc.,
also announced its name change to iM Networks."
Read the press release
here.
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Internet radio ratings company
MeasureCast
has released their first monthly "Top 25" rankings report.
The latest results are available
here, or anytime by clicking the link in the left-hand
menu under "Metrics."
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