Developments in video and the Internet

Until relatively recently two main issues held back the widescale delivery of video on the Internet:

The limited access to high bandwidth required to view video without long waiting times
Numerous competing and incompatible video formats and players

This position has changed in recent years with the increasing availability and affordability of broadband and the development by Macromedia (now Adobe) of the Flash video format (FLV). Through the utilisation of the ubiquitous and cross platform Flash plug-in this video format has now become by far the most common video format available on the web utilised by all YouTube type systems (e.g. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, GoogleVideo, Yahoo etc).

Building on this technology and the availability of cheap easy to use digital video recording (now available in most mobile phones and digital cameras), the Web2.0 phenomenon has extended into on-line video. This is typified by the highly popular video publishing and sharing websites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.

Through providing a news feed to notify potential viewers to new videos as they are published (a practice sometimes referred to as Vodcasting ), regular video producers are now able to publish on-line video channels. The PC based media players (e.g. Windows Media Player, iTunes, Democracy Player) all provide functionality to subscribe to these channels and automatically download new video episodes as they become available. These can then be watched at a PC or even transferred to a mobile device such as a video iPod or mobile phone. This ability allows a more commercial approach to be taken to video publishing more akin to traditional media. In general such on-line video shows are freely available, have high productions values and use advertising to generate an income. To provide a platform for such channels, sites such as blip.tv provide video hosting, bandwidth and advertising in return for a percentage of the revenue.

Breaking news (2007) …

Microsoft's Silverlight plugin now competes directly with Flash and Flash video. This appears to offer some technological advantages over Flash but is likely to suffer from limited installation of the plug-in in the short to medium term.
The Adobe Media Player has been designed specifically to meet the needs of on-line subscription video channels with several dedicated advertising features and competes directly with Windows Media Player and iTunes.
The iPhone has increased the quality of video playback available on mobile devices through offering a large clear display that takes up most of the device. Combined with with wireless internet technology, the potential for mobile, internet delivered video continues to develop.
Bloggers have raised the possibility of university lectures being published on YouTube, either officially or not... A Philosophy professor proposes to publish videos of his entire course openly on YouTube. John Mayer describes a very believable scenario where students record lectures themselves and individually publish these on YouTube with the legal issues that this may raise, and this does seem to be occurring according to this Inside Higher Ed article.

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