I am pretty sure we are not becoming a VoD world. Linear programming is much better for advertisers. I do not think content providers, nor consumers, would prefer a VoD only service. A handful of consumers would love it, but many would not.

Gian Anthony Constantine
Senior Network Design Engineer
Earthlink, Inc.

On Jan 12, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Frank Bulk wrote:


If we're becoming a VOD world, does multicast play any practical role in
video distribution?

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Michal Krsek
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2:28 AM
To: Marshall Eubanks
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?


Hi Marshall,

- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience
- 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels
- the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers
- the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.

I'm a bit skeptic for future of channels. For making money from the long 
tail, you have to have to adapt your distribution to user's needs. It is not

only format, codec ... but also time frame. You can organise your programs 
in channels, but they will not run simultaneously for all the users. I want 
to control my TV, I don't want to my TV jockey my life.

For the distribution, you as content owner have to help the ISP find the 
right way to distribute your content. In example: having distribution center

in Tier1 ISP network will make money from Tier2 ISP connected directly to 
Tier1. Probably, having CDN (your own or pay for service) will be the only 
one way for large scale non synchronous programing.

            Regards
                    Michal