11.07.06

P2P Video

Posted in Technology Ventures at 1:41 am by Ray Wu

With YouTube’s lofty price, everyone is talking about Video distribution. Given the high bandwidth requirement of a video content vs html and voice, many people start to target P2P as a distribution mechanism. Businessweek has a blog on this topic recently regarding the Venice Project, a P2P startup from the Skype and Kazaa founders. This might not be as successful as the spype for the following reasons:

1. Venice is kind of late given there are a bunch of startups in this space already such as Voeh, NeoEdge, Red Swoosh, and skyrider. Of course, none of them has the same influence as Skype and Kazaa, but it would not take long before one or two of these vendors get acquired by large media vendors and then the space become crowded quickly.
2. Infrastructure vendors like Cisco is now working on P2P content distribution on its router and blades, so in a way, people will get the 80% of the cost benefits without downloading a client because the cost of the infrastructure will fall quickly once this is in place.
3. There is no better player on P2P than Microsoft given its global reach and ubiquitous installation. All Microsoft needs to do is to put P2P technology (either its own or from a acquisition) into the Vista platform, it would change the landscape overnight. Extending this logic, all it takes is a large PC vendor (ie. HP, Dell, Levono) to endorse and distribute with one P2P vendor, the landscape will change permanently.

In my mind, P2P is no longer a technology play as the technology is maturing, this is more of a marketing, sizing, and content play.

Permalink