|
Broadband Access
Breaking the Internet video gridlock
GridNetworks’ latest technology designed to improve Web content management
by Jim Barthold
GridNetworks has introduced a suite of products designed to
improve the viewing experience for the increasing number of
consumers watching more conventional television—or some
non user-generated facsimile of it—on their computers.
Part of the company’s GridCasting technology platform, the
new suite of products is “very network-aware and very network-
efficient” because it chooses from among only the top 16
adjacent video sources to deliver user-requested content, said
Tony Naughtin, the company’s CEO.
“Unlike something like BitTorrent, which is an unmanaged
peer-to-peer (connection) this is highly managed and
directed,” he said. A BitTorrent request might result in
hundreds or even thousands of answers pushing content
toward the end user. GridNetworks’s technology selects from
only the top 16 responses to provide a distribution stream up
to 2 Mbps with video quality up to 720p high definition.
“In the course of watching a program we will continue to
monitor the session to make sure that the original 16 that
are serving up the data that makes up the video remain as
the best possible sources,” he said. “We will drop out an
undesirable sender and replace it with a better source … in an
ongoing way to make sure that the user experience is optimal
as much as it possibly can be to make it like a real television
experience.”
GridNetworks, which got initial financial backing from venture
capitalists Panorama Capital and Comcast Interactive Capital,
also has funding from Cisco Systems. Its current product
focus does not include mobile or user-generated video (UGV),
although both could be part of offerings as the company
matures.
“As an early stage company we’re not yet able to devote
significant resources to taking our managed television
delivery approach into the mobile and wireless marketplace,”
Naughtin said. “We’re designed to provide a television
experience of 720p or higher and there’s the question of
whether or not you really need to have that kind of
experience on a small handheld device.”
The company is also not focusing on live television because
that’s a “very challenging proposition,” he said.
Naughtin described GridNetworks’ business model as
a “conventional white label service model” where the company
works directly with content holders, either television or
satellite networks, movie studios or movie content distributors
who provide an existing production cut of a program or movie.
“If it needs to be transcoded we can facilitate that … if there’s
any sort of pre-processing for the television program or movie
and it’s not yet ready for Internet distribution. If it’s
something more than encoding or digital rights management
or tagging or other activities, we’ll work with one of our other
ecosystem partners to facilitate that,” he said.
|
