Original Idea Blog Entry:
http://anotherfinemess.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/open-web-tv-platform-a-new-idea-is-born/
This wiki page is the 1st pre-stage in order to outline this idea, laying the foundation for developing this service. The need of building this wiki is essential in order to form collaboratively the basic idea behind this web service, working as an early thinktank, examining all the technological implications and aspects of it. This project although its main concept is expanded below, will need some extra expertise from people who have collaborated in creating opensource services. Drawing the needed attention to this project is also essential so the appropriate team of developers can be formed. Because the creator of this wiki does not have the appropriate developing and financial abilities in order to fully develop it, thought since he is aware of how open source is successful in achieving various services and software, he started this wiki as an idea mockup of this service: The Open Web TV Platform. This web service will be a blend of many unsuccessful web services that exist today in the internet, thus making a more user interactive web based platform for watching online video content. It’s key elements will possibly be the following: Consistent and easy to use fullscreen flash interface for watching online web TV content, semi automatic and smart choosing of the content, user content submissions, content is feeded from 3rd party video hosting websites, full rss syndication expanding its overall uses, community driven and opensource, collaboratively built. I have made the following categories in order to explain this concept with examples of existing websites:
[All below categories require further expansion from people who are interested on participating in the development of this service who have the appropriate technical expertise]
Sculpting the Concept
In order to build this project, there should be a great deal of extensive brainstorming in order to develop the core concept of this service, project & financial planning, aw swell as core programming. The initial concept of this idea was conceived by Nick Kounis though he had no extended core web programing skills in order to be able to develop service. So inspite of doing nothing, he initiated this idea by a blog entry, and opened this wiki in order to form the concept of this service. The main aim of him is, through distributed web collaboration, to recruit a team of capable developers, in order to shape the final concept of this service. Please update this category with any web communities specialized on this goal, of developing services through open standards using collaborative techniques. Signing this project to such a community is important in order to draw the attention to it, and examine its potential to succeed.
Key benefits of this service
This service will blend the benefits of classic linear TV channels with the vastness of web video content. The main aim will be to provide a balanced need for user interaction. Video should play, one after another, not prompting you whenever a video ends, but nevertheless in the case of interacting it will provide the freedom to skip, pause and rewind content, some of the main benefits of digital media. By making a single video selection, a like minded topic theme playlits should be able to generate automatically. Choosing video content should be done either by entering a search term, thematic category, prebuilt channel, personal user likes, new content in his interest, thus dynamically building a video channel according to the above selections. Video content should be shown fullscreen like www.tubecast.tv or Free TV Tube or Joost formerly did, making the media take a 1st role in this interface. There will also be no need for video storage space an bandwidth. Video content will be feeded through the original video hosting servers, as long as the link of it known to the Open Web TV Platform. Video link data, catalogs and maps of video users interests prexist in many websites, so that will save on having the initial users build the interest map.
Interface
This is one of the most important element of this potential service. Various web video technologies exist today (Quicktime, WMP Embeded video, Flash, Java) though Adobe Flash based video is most widely used by major video hosting websites, using the .flv format to encode and store video. So speculating, Flash is the most appropriate and flexible interface to use. Today many websites and services exist that use a fullscreen flash interface which shows web video content. Some examples are the following: http://tubecast.tv, http://www.neave.tv, Joost's Flash Version, http://www.xplsv.tv as well as many plenty more i am not aware of. Some of them do not host the videos but rather feed through interface the content. The most clean cut and promising flash interface is tubecast.tv, which on mouse hovering shows an interactive menu with the next videos, dynamicly building the video timeline. It probably is inspired by TiVO and other TV set-top platform’s interfaces which record digital content. Another worth mentioning web service that comes really close to this idea, is FeedBeat. In simple terms it is a Video CMS, with a very effective flash interface. Though the content is not dynamically built and each channel provides a linear end user video choosing ability. It resembles a youtube channel, with a single user’s picked content, which streams through the FeedBeat interface, which feeds through the original video hosting page. This service provides RSS syndication features, making it able to connect via feed with Miro, an opensource IPTV viewing platform. FeedBeat resembles this concept, though its content can only by viewed in user created channels, and does not provide an end user interactivity as the content is concerned
Content Source & Smart Content Choosing
After several years since the 1st video hosting services appeared, thousand of user and TV network video productions have been widely available online. A great example is Youtube, Google Video, which hosts the biggest part of the online video content. Somehow though, it is pretty hard to choose from quality and interesting productions, because conent in a great part is created by amature users, so many catalogs and linksites of TV productions have appeared: http://www.alluc.org, http://www.moviesfoundonline.com, http://www.peekvid.com and many other that list TV content and public domain video links, which are available online reducing the effort of having to search them. Some of them are hand picked from the webmaster and some rely on its community. The technology they use is rather simple but effective, just acting like a catalog of picked video links. There are also a new breed of these types of video linking websites appearing on the internet in the form of video directories and search engines such as: http://www.screenjacker.com , this type of website indexes video link websites allowing visitors to find their video content in a more user friendly fashion. With the use of these types of portals the Open Web TV Platform will be able to build its database, or even use one of them through rss from catalogs and then feeded through its interface, proving the initial database of quality video productions.
Apart from the dozens of linksites, a new emerging technology is social bookmarking. It acts as an online community on dynamically reporting pages, likes, dislikes. These pages also involve flash web videos, taging them and linking them to any interest category (http://video.stumbleupon.com/). This page simply embeds video content from various sources, uses an extensive tagging and categorizing system in order to build video playlists based either on personal interests, or by choosing a prexisting category. It has 2 like and dislike buttons, feeding this information to your profile, gradualy learning to adopt to your viewing preferences. Non interesting videos somehow stay out of these playlist because stumbleupon users have sorted them out from watchable ones. On initially building the Open Web TV Platform's database, the preexisting category/tag/interest data from some popular social video bookmarking webpages could be feeded, thus making the platform more adoptive from start to the web community video interest map. Offcourse in case the video social bookmarking communities provide an API the above feature (interest maps) could be easily be built in to the system. A potential cooporetaion such a service with the Open Web TV Platform, could also be a possibility. Sumarising this bookmark and vote system will leed to a smart content choosing system. Taking in mind the system learns from your interests, likes and dislikes and from your recommendation of new videos, the video watching experience will require less searching, and gradually less skipping of content. The content will not be shown as a fixed playlist like classic TV, but rather a non linear and affective way of lining up videos according to your personal interest or thematic category. Practical examples of this technology apart from social video bookmarking is the last.fm music player. Though its community has succeeded to build up in a similar way, the map of music interests that developed gradually, provides a personalized song chooser (last.fm radio)
Community
Another key element of the Open Web TV Platform, is its community, one of the reasons of the success of Web 2.0 services. This service will rely on its own registered users, on users who originally provide this content on the video hosting websites this interface feeds from (youtube, google video users), as well as video cataloging pages and offcourse from its developing community which will make its service possible. The end users, which will be a part of its community will build up their likes and dislikes through time, being able to submit themselves links with content. Offcourse a great extent on freedom of this service’s will be provided, though security is always an issue with web services
Price
The short answer to the answer of how much will it cost the end user is: it will be Free. The most successful internet services have no price tag, but nevertheless achieve in various ways to gain profit through time. The Open Web TV Platform could not be an exception to this rule, where profits will eventually build up through personalized advertising (Adsense), subscriptions with extra features or instead by donations.
Openness
Open projects are in most cases, a good and feasible way of building web service. The Open Web TV Platform could be another service like that. The practically benefits of open technologies are many: Linux OS, Wikipedia and numerous opensource products that despite of being free in charge, compete closely to proprietary paid software products. Opensource technologies do work, are wide spread and are free (as in freedom and in money terms).
Technology and Feasibility
The most important part on building this service are the technologies that should be used. Buidling this service will have to rely on the knowhow of the opensource community out there in the cyberspace, and there is many regarding the quality of the end open products that exist in the internet. Offcourse a Linux Based hosting service should be used, but the biggest cost would be in human work hours. I am willing to spend my time on this project but i like previously mentioned i have no core developing skills whatsoever. Making a rough guess the technologies/skills required are: Adobe Flash, PHP, MySQL, Ajax, XML as well as a lot of documenting, organizing and financial planing. In addition plenty apart from open web technologies, plenty of CMS’s and premade pieces of software could be used that are under the GNU/GPL license. This category, i guess needs a lot of expanding when the wiki of this project is approved
Financial Support
Offcourse programmers and people generally involved need money to live so this is also an issue. Open source services and products in most cases are free of charge to the end users, so there are others ways of gaining financial backup. One way is by 3rd party funding, donating and advertisements. On the first developing stage i guess it will rely on funding it from co-minded companies that profit from opensource. Offcourse on laying out this project financial needs and goals in order to make it reality a project/financial manager should give us our advice. On the long term a successful reciepy of gaining financial support is by end user subscriptions with extra features and advertisement
Software Applications
An obvious application which will use this service is a web browser with Flash and Javascript enabled, thus making it automatically cross platform. A web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera) is the most widespread web tool used today and comes preinstalled with popular OS’s like Windows, MacOSX and Ubuntu Linux. It will be the main tool in order to support this service’s flash interface. Also the RSS feed technology has a broad range of uses, from news reading to watching online Video. Miro can clearly show that potential,using it as an online web video content feeder and viewer. Web widgets are also used for displaying video. An actual software application is also feasible, using preexisting open technologies like the VLC Video engine and Miro, thus making a Joost like interface. It will not rely mainly on the software application because the cross platform supporting of it will cost and will not provide the initial boost this service would require.
