New streaming media technology makes smarter use of peer networks
THE REEL THING
Until 2006, P2P Health Systems Inc. was a small, Vancouverbased company focused on a narrowly segmented market – developing remote monitoring systems to enable home healthcare providers to video-visit patients in their homes.
P2P’s prospects have leapt into the big time since its management team discovered a research team at UBC developing a streaming media technology with massive application potential in entertainment, education, health, corporate communications and community-based content sharing such as YouTube.
“This is cutting-edge and software-based – an opportunity we didn’t want to miss,” says Francis Lau, P2P’s vice president of technology. “UBC computer scientists, programmers and mathematicians are top calibre, and this technology has been in development for a long time – they’ve thought out all possible eventualities and problems.”
But P2P was stepping into what might be characterized as a bidding war in other markets. Randy Smith, technology transfer manager at UBC’s University-Industry Liaison Office (UILO), says, “We had two large U.S. cable operators interested in this technology. Although the revenues may have been greater to license the technology to a U.S. company, licence revenues are not our highest criteria. Our primary objective is to get these technologies out to the public, preferably via Canadian companies.”
In the end, there were three Canadian companies at the table, says Mr. Smith, and P2P’s strong management team and financing capacity were the deciding factors in the company’s favour. P2P now holds the option to an exclusive licensing agreement to “Reel Joe” and is working with the UBC research team to test the technology in homes.
“One of the big items we have is on-demand streaming – you can click on something like a movie and watch it instantly,” says P2P president Greg Thomas.
Unlike server-based systems, which must increase expensive server capacity as their user base grows, Reel Joe leverages peer networks that share resources and bandwidth.
The quality and speed of a Reel Joe download actually increases as the user base increases. The technology also offers content producers enhanced copyright protection as no single member of the peer group has more than a small segment of the content at a given time.
For content providers such as cable or movie companies, the bottom line benefit is an estimated 50-to-1 cost saving (see sidebar) when compared to a client-server model.
“If you imagine distributing a first-run movie through the Internet, on the opening night let’s say you expect 250,000 people to tune in. If you build a network to support 250,000 viewers and a half a million viewers show up, you have a serious problem. The server network would be hugely expensive; most certainly it would cut into your profitability,” says Mr. Thomas. “Ours is a scalable solution, a virtual network – and the day after the movie, there’s no network to maintain.”
Dr. Son Vuong, UBC professor of computer science and leader of the Reel Joe research team, says, “This is a disruptive technology. In terms of video quality, flexibility and cost effectiveness, we’ve managed to beat Joost.” ( Joost is a $100- million company that provides TV on a server network.)
“There are so many industries, many of them massive, that can use this sort of information delivery system,” says Mr. Lau. “Reel Joe can be used by a Telco or large content provider to peer together settop boxes, but it can also go to a user’s computer. You and I could bring in a movie on our computer and send the video feed out to our big plasma screen.”
With P2P now in discussions with content providers, Reel Joe technology may soon be delivering the real thing on PCs and TVs.
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