Ahh, it feels great to be vindicated. Since the whole HD/Blu-Ray war began people in the tech industry raised a ridiculous notion: that the war itself was unnecessary because online video would render the formats obsolete. I always maintained this notion was utterly absurd and today, thanks to TechCrunch, it seems I’m right.
While the article focuses on the extent to which online video revenue can compete against traditional “linear TV” (it can’t) it also shows the limited growth of the Internet distribution model. In 2008 online video accounted for 7 billion hours worth of consumption by viewers. Sounds impressive, until you weigh it against the 389 billion hours of linear television people watched. Forecasts project that by 2010 online video will increase to 14 billion hours vs. linear television’s 342 billion hours. What does this tell us? In short, people aren’t spending a lot of time watching online video.
In fact, a television show and web page strive for the same thing: viewer attention. You want to keep people “tuned in” because the longer they hold interest the more ads you can serve up. With an hour long show that’s easy to do, with a three minute video of someone falling off a roof not so much. Sure, recent television sites like Hulu, which shows mainstream television shows, is trying to bring TV online the prospects look dim. The bottom line is, who wants to watch an hour long show at their desk?
Sure, some people will have a computer hooked up to a television in their viewing room of choice but I’m of the opinion these people represent the minority (I’m not even part of it). These I feel are the very people that were reporting on the would-be domination of online video which in turn would ruin the disc media industry. High-tech, early adopters, who hardly represent the rest of the US (and that’s to say nothing of North America overall). At the end of the day your core viewers are the ones who flop on a couch and turn on a TV instead of booting it up.
The other reason I was suspicious of online video domination is because North America just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support consistent video streaming online, especially in high definition. The national average download speed is 2.3 megabits per second compared to a place like Japan where people download at comparatively whopping 63 mbps. With that kind of speed a full movie can be download in about 2 minutes versus the 2 hours it takes over here.
Take all this into account and you end up realizing two things: 1) Traditional television is going to dominate distribution for the forseeable future, and 2) the ulitimate winner in the media war, Blu-Ray, will have a future whether tech journalists want it to or not. Online video distribution may be the future, but it won’t be in the immediate one.
Bob Starr, code named Starbuck, is a geek with a passion for film journalism and technology. You can follow Bob on Twitter (
