I’ve been trying to watch the Clinton and Obama debate live on MSNBC.com and for the 10 minutes since it started, I can’t get more than 2-3 seconds of clear video without the screen freezing and delivering me a "buffering" message in the video window. The audio is very distorted as well with high-pitch feedback type noises. What a terrible experience. Anyone able to watch the stream without any problems?

Update: Within a few minutes of me making this post ten others have already left comments below experiencing the same problems. Not good, especially for those of us who have FiOS TV, which does not carry MSNBC.

Update 2: One of the folks who commented below gave a new link from another website where the video works. Now that’s the power of the web.

Update 3: I put in calls to Limelight and Akamai’s support numbers and both folks I spoke to in the network operations centers didn’t think their company was delivering the stream. I won’t know for sure until Wednesday where/who the problem is with.

Update 4: Limelight Networks has officially confirmed that they are not delivering the webcast.

Update 5: Akamai has officially stated to me that they were not involved in the webcast. I have a request into MSNBC, should hear back shortly.

In May, I’ve got a panel at Streaming Media East entitled "P2Ps Role In Delivering Online Video" and I am looking for speakers and suggestions on the content. What core topic or facet should the session really drill down on? What are the most pressing issues with P2P and who would make for good speakers?

At our last show, we did a whole P2P session with just vendors, so this year around I am looking to have speakers from non-vendor companies. Customers, ISPs, legal experts etc…. is the angle I am thinking of but am open to ideas. I am also looking for a really good moderator that is not employed by a P2P vendor.

Please leave content suggestions and topics in the comments section and contact me if you want to speak or know of a good speaker/moderator. Anyone who is helpful in securing speakers will receive a free conference pass to the event.

The StreamingMedia.com survey on CDN pricing and trends has now been filled out almost 1,000 times. I’ll be keeping it open for another week or so and then we’ll start to compile all the data and give away the free iPhone. Taking a look at some of the preliminary data that has been collected reveals some great data points which I will be showcasing all this week on the blog.

When it comes to the length of CDN contracts, customer commit levels and dual-vendor strategy, there has a been a lot of speculation in the market on what the trends are. Here is the data we collected from nearly 1,000 respondents, 25%+ of which are doing over 25TB of delivery per month.

• 60.8% of respondents said they had a 12 month contract with their CDN. Only 12.9% had a two year deal.

• 73.5% said that when they renegotiate their contract, they don’t plan
  to change the length. Only 12.4% said they planed to sign a longer term
  contract.

• 52.3% of respondents said their CDN contract had no revenue or
  bandwidth commitment at all. 25.3% have a monthly commit, 6.7% a
  quarterly commit and 11.4% have a yearly commit.

• 63.3% of respondents said they used only one CDN vendor for the
  delivery of video and static content. 26.% use two CDNs and 10.3% use
  three or more.

You can download the pie chart data for the questions here:(Download CDN-Contract-Data.jpg)

Pando Networks is currently looking to fill an immediate need for a Media Delivery Sales Executive located in NYC or LA. With nearly every major media company considering peer assisted delivery for long
form, high res content, this it’s a good opportunity for someone
who’s not afraid to sell into a developing market environment with an
emerging leader.

If you are interested, contact David at Pando Networks.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a
company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will
highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

Today, DivX announced that it would be shutting down the Stage6 video portal effective this Thursday. DivX originally planned to spin off Stage6 as a separate company late last year but then announced in December that it was looking for strategic alternatives instead.

I’m never pleased to see any service or video portal have to close but this is the best thing DivX could be doing. Operating a portal was not their core business and the last thing we need right now as an industry, or as consumers, is more video portals. Stage6 never got any real traction in the industry, was not a service I heard others discussing and had very little in the way of usage by content owners.

From the get go the service was destined to fail as DivX was using the site to showcase their own technology. The problem being that if the only way you can try to showcase adoption of your technology by content owners is by running your own website, it won’t work. The shut down notice on the Stage6 website says the service was started "with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience." I’m not sure what that "new kind of video experience" was they are referencing but I think too many companies in the industry think that just because they encode video at high bitrates or large window sizes, they will be successful. You have to do more today than just deliver video that looks good, you have to have a business model behind it and their needs to be a demand for the service.

A high-quality, high-bitrate, large window sized video content offering does_not equal success by itself.

Last Friday, Scott Guthrie from Microsoft gave out details on his blog about the next version of Silverlight. Scott says that Microsoft will soon release the first public beta of Silverlight 2, which will be a major update from the initial release of Silverlight nearly 7 months ago. Scott says he’ll be doing a bunch of blog posts over the coming weeks talking about Silverlight 2 in more detail. Head over to his blog for the details.

StreamingMedia.com is conducting a survey on editing systems, encoding software and content workflow. Also of interest are streaming formats and delivery methods. The survey should take no more than two minutes to complete and all respondents will be entered into a drawing for a free PlayStation 3. The winner will be notified on March 15, 2008.