The advance program for the Streaming Media West show is now completed and online. You can download the PDF by clicking on the cover image or you can see all the session topics on the website.

If you are from a content company, major portal, TV broadcaster or ad agency and did not send in a speaking request, contact me ASAP if you see a session in the advance program you’d like to be involved in. I am not accepting any more submissions from vendors as I already have over 800 submissions I have to go through and I only have 110 speaking spots.

We’ve got 33 panel and demo sessions taking place at the show. Here are just a few of the topics:

• YouTube for the Enterprise
• Compelling Video Advertising Campaigns
• IPTV & Video On Demand Cable Services
• Video Search, Finding Content In A Thousand-Channel Universe
• P2P and Next Generation Delivery Networks
• Publishing Media for Microsoft’s Silverlight Platform
• Marketing Your Institution with Media
• The Outlook For Investment In The Online Video Sector
• TV’s Last Gasp, How Broadcasters Are Making The Move To The Web
• CDN Pricing, Costs for Outsourced Video Delivery
• Using Adobe Flash Media Solutions to Encode, Deliver, Protect, and Monetize Video

You can view all 33 of the sessions, along with descriptions of each here. We’ll also be having some unique sessions this year called demo sessions, with the intention of showing more real-world examples of video content across many verticals. We’ll also be having a P2P vendor bake-off session and two different sessions with the analyst community and the financial analysts.

The only way to fairly compare any product or service from one provider to another is via a level playing field. Sometimes this can be hard to do. But when it comes to the content delivery networks, for many aspects of their services, it is extremely easy to do, but it seems most don’t want to. I continue to read articles and blog posts and hear from institutional
money managers who are not comparing vendors in the CDN space properly.

Everyone wants to compare one company to another even though most times, the companies involved offer many different services and have cross over with only one product. When that is the case, you can’t compare one company to another, you can only compare that specific product the companies have in common.

There are a lot of examples of how this is being done wrong when it comes to the CDN space. I keep hearing or reading that Panther Express is a competitor to Akamai for video delivery. That’s inaccurate. Panther Express currently supports video delivery by progressive download only, that means content delivered via the http protocol. So yes, Panther Express can compete with Akamai for any customer who wants downloads. But that is not streaming. If you want to stream content in the Windows Media, Flash or Real formats, or want to broadcast something live (webcasting), Panther Express does not support this. It’s not a knock against Panther, they are focused and support one kind of delivery. But is it then fair or accurate to say they compete against Akamai for streaming media delivery? No.

It’s the same thing I hear every day about Limelight Networks and Akamai. Money managers say Akamai did over $400 million in CDN revenue last year and Limelight Networks did over $60 million. No, that is wrong. Akamai offers products and services Limelight Networks does not offer nor wants to offer. Stop comparing the companies as a whole and only compare the one product between the two companies that is similar.

There is really no excuse for all of this confusion in the market. When I point out many of these differences to people, they act all surprised and amazed how I have all this great info. Yet, all of this info I tell them in regards to the differences between the companies is right on the companies websites, in their press releases, and in their marketing materials. Or, you could just ask them. For instance, no where on the Panther Express website do they even use the word "streaming". Kudos to Panther. They don’t pretend they do something they don’t do and they use the proper terminology. Anyone who reads their products page can see very clearly, Panther does not do streaming delivery, only download.

All this info is out there. It’s easy to collect and not very hard to compare one product to another via multiple content delivery networks. I’m happy to continue to give people all the info they want and educate as much as I can, but as more vendors enter the CDN market and more exposure continues to be focused on the CDN space, we need more clarity in the market and a sharing of accurate data and facts, as opposed to statements that are untrue that no one ever questions.

In all aspects of the online video industry there is confusion. But I think more than any other facet of the space, the CDN market has become one of "perception" becoming reality, instead of facts becoming reality. Do we want to be a market that only cares about any info put out there, or instead a market that cares about accurate info? You can’t make informed business decisions off of inaccurate info.

Back in April, Digital Fountain quietly announced at NAB that they would be building out a CDN for streaming media delivery and last month, again quietly announced they had hired a GM to run the CDN business unit. I had the chance to speak with Digital Fountain last week about the build out and get a sense of where they see themselves competing in the market.

While I believe that there is still plenty of time left for companies to be bale to enter the CDN market, Digital Fountain did say that they don't expect to be able to offer their CDN service until the first quarter of next year. That time frame is going to position them really far behind most of the competitors, especially when the service when it launches will be so limited.

When the service is ready next year, it will only support streaming media, no progressive downloading options will be available and they will only be targeting customers with long-from content at bitrates over 500Kbps. They plan to only support H.264 at launch and customers who want to use their delivery services will need to have end-users download a client based plugin, similar to what you need to do today if you use Move Networks platform.

I had a long chat with Digital Fountain about many aspects of the CDN business today and the needs that customers have for content delivery. But we don't see eye to eye. Digital Fountain really believes that if the quality of video on the web can be increased, then more consumers will watch more video and the CPM rates will then increase. I disagree. If the technology and quality is the hurdle, then why don't content owners today encode all of their content at 750Kbps? It would not take much to increase the quality. Most of the broadband content today is encoded at 300Kbps, the same bitrate it was 2-3 years ago. The problem is not the technology but rather the additional costs content owners will have to pay to distribute the additional bits. If a company can increase the quality and also decrease the price, great, but that is what the P2P providers and others "claim" to be able to do, but to date have gotten very little traction at all. I think they forget that it's not about replacing traditional CDN delivery with P2P or any other technology, it's about using the right combination of technologies based on many factors. Does streaming media replace progressive downloads? No, they are compliments to each other and choosing the right combination is based on many factors surrounding the content, the device and the user. Delivery is the same way.

Does Digital Fountain have a chance? Possibly. In this industry I think anyone has the ability to carve out a section of the market since here is still do much business still out there. Will the market still be like that come Q1 next year? I believe it will. But Digital Fountain will be very limited in who they can sell the service to if it only support streaming and H.264. There may be a market out there for only H.264, but it is a very small one at that. If Digital Fountain expands their offering a bit and supports more in the way of what customers want, they have a better shot at being able to go after a larger percentage of the market and a greater chance at success. But only time will tell. By the time they launch the service, they are going to be years behind their competitors.

I think it's great that new providers are entering the market for all kinds of services, especially those for delivery of video content. But I would also think that by now, these new companies entering the space would realize that you can't win business or market share simply by using a lot of buzz words and marketing terms with no data behind them. And you can't enter a market by making broad statements about how all the CDNs today are crap and you are going to revolutionize the industry.

Yesterday, EdgeCast networks, a company based in LA that has been building a CDN for the past year, with two rounds of private funding, announced via their press release that they have "emerged from stealth to change content delivery forever." But reading the release and their website gives you zero data on how they plan to do this and is filled with lots of marketing terms, but no real details.

For starters, they talk to how they have built a "multi-million dollar, four-continent content delivery network architected especially for today's rich media Internet." That's great but your competitors, like Limelight Networks for instance, plans to spend close to $40 million this year alone on network improvements. So spending multi-millions does not guarantee you success or give you any kind of advantage.

The worst part in my eyes is that for years, all the networks always say they are better than one another with lots of marketing terms but them don't back them up. EdgeCast says in their release that "the EdgeCast network outperforms rivals by significant margins" and "dramatically outperforms rivals." What margins would this be? Why is there no data to back this up? Do you mean your networks reach? Capacity? Speed? How can you make that statement without backing it up? And where is the proof? And why does your website give no metrics when you make such a bold statement?

The press release goes on to say, "The last couple of years have given rise to an explosion in rich media, leaving media companies struggling and rendering the previous generation of CDNs inadequate," said James Segil, president of EdgeCast." If previous generations of CDNs are inadequate, then how did the CDNs do over half a billion dollars last year combined in revenue? That's a big market for companies that are supposedly "inadequate". You can't make statements like that and expect anyone to take you seriously, when you are implying that you are the only company out of 20 delivery networks, that has  delivery technology that works.

If EdgeCast is as large as they say, then why aren't they a Certified Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service provider or a Certified Windows Media hosting provider? If you're not in either of those programs, then in the Adobe Flash case, you're not using the latest build of Flash that the certified providers get access to.

EdgeCast seems to be really focusing on how their pricing model is different and will be more attractive to customers, but don't give any details on how. They say, "EdgeCast's groundbreaking business model separates the cost of bandwidth from the cost of services, freeing publishers from the constraints of fixed, contractual bandwidth pricing." That doesn't mean anything. If I am taking storage and delivery services from a CDN, then what are you separating from the bandwidth cost? All I am paying for is bandwidth. Where are the services? And their website says "our bandwidth buying power works to your benefit, giving you access to our volume discounts". Great, but that's what all the CDNs already do, discount the price based on volume. Not groundbreaking by any means.

Their press release goes on to say, "EdgeCast is the only CDN that gives publishers their own virtual CDN without the hassle and cost of building one." They say they do this by "leveraging bandwidth from the top ISPs", "maintains content caching points of presence located in tier one data centers", which are all "strategically located near primary Internet exchange points". Sounds like every other CDN out there. So how is EdgeCast the "only" CDN to do this?

Their release does say that they have a very detailed reporting and analytics package, which if true is good, but then they don't give examples of what data the product provides and the website has no details either. And I would have left it at that but they had to go and say that they reporting package is "A first-in-the-industry Media Control Center delivering unprecedented visibility and control along with near real time reporting." Their website says their reporting is "calculated every hour ," but I know of other CDNs who provide data every 10 minutes. So they are not the "first-in-the-industry" and other CDN do it faster.

To EdgeCast, I think it is great that you are entering the market. I think more CDN providers are needed especially as the demand for video delivery increases. But you have to realize that you can't enter a market like the CDN space, that has been around and evolved for the past 10+ years, and make the kind of statements you do in your press release and on your website. To call out the CDN market as being a failure up until your company arrived is not the best way to launch a company and is not the marketing angle to get traction.

If you really want traction, use less marketing terms, less buzz words and less references to being the "first" at everything. Say what you do clearly, give examples, say how you do it in detail, show real data and back up what you want to do with real knowledge that customers can use to make informed decisions.

And last of all, give the other providers in this space who have helped build the CDN industry into a real business over the past many years some credit. You don't have to like what they do or copy the way they do it, but they are responsible for creating the market you just entered.

Update: Adobe has informed me that EdgeCast is a Certified Flash Hosting Provider but that Adobe has not updated their page which lists the partners. Adobe says it will update the page by the end of the week to reflect EdgeCast's logo. Odd though that EdgeCast didn't even mention in their launch release that they are in the program.

Last month, Business Week had an in-depth article entitled "The Mobile TV Wars" talking about how Qualcomm’s MediaFlo and MobiTV’s service are going to compete with one another to try and dominate the market. While the article is a god read, I think it misses the major point. That being that it’s not MediaFLO versus MobiTV.

MobiTV is simply an aggregator that is filling a spot in time similar to the role that Moviso and Infospace once filled for ring-tones. Once the content market matures and mobile discovery is more effective, MobiTV will become a footnote. MediaFLO is a $800M Manhattan project that is built on the belief that video cannot be delivered in-band due to a scarcity of spectrum. By taking the delivery out-of-band MediaFLO simply trades a scarcity of spectrum for a scarcity of content.

I’m not the only one that thinks that the capabilities of broadcast delivery compared to unicast are more economic than technical. Just as airlines use different aircraft depending on load and demand; video will be delivered via different mechanisms based on demand. The real issue is how to deliver the appropriate experience at the appropriate time. The best way to do this is develop tools, systems, and delivery networks that are designed for the mobile use case.

I’d like to see an article that really details the economic differences between broadcast and unicast. It’s not a technical issue as most make it out to be but rather, it is simple economics.

Why is it that so many writers doing a story about some aspect of the streaming media industry always want to portray our technology as one that has not evolved over all these years? The NYTimes.com has a story today entitled “Nothing to Watch on TV? Streaming Video Appeals to Niche Audiences” which brings good exposure to the value of streaming.

But in the very first sentence of the article it speaks to our technology as if it’s still 1998 by saying, “Buffering … buffering … buffering. Seeing these words blinking at the bottom of the postage-stamp-size screen…” I don’t disagree that there is buffering, that’s how streaming media works. But to say that the window of a video clip is the size of a postage stamp is just flat out inaccurate. The average window size of videos on the web today is 320×240 pixels. That’s more than 8x larger than a postage stamp. Has anyone seen any video over the past few years in a window as small as the postage stamp above? Absolutely not.

To some, it may seem like I am splitting hairs here, but to me, it’s an important distinction to make. We’ve worked hard as an industry for many years to get away from the misconceptions that people still talk about like the “Victoria’s Secret webcast” or “postage sized video” and it’s time these writers doing stories on our industry and technology get it right.

Last week, there was a lot of speculation about whether or not Amazon has built out a portion of their content delivery network specifically to deliver video via streaming media protocols. Based on a post two weeks ago on the Amazon blog, which spoke to a Justin.TV webcast, many believed Amazon may now be delivering streaming media services to content owners.

While Amazon did work on the Justin.TV webcast, it was Akamai that delivered the streams. Content owners who want to deliver Flash streaming can use Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) along with a CDN to deliver streaming media based content. Another way technical savvy customers are utilizing Amazon’s EC2 and S3 service is with a product like the Wowza Media Server Pro.

Combining the Amazon services with Wowza Media Server Pro and you have a cost-effective and elastic hosting environment for Flash streaming applications. For those not familiar with Wowza, every Wowza Pro edition server has four key features that make it especially well suited for deployment on Amazon’s EC2/S3 for live and on-demand streaming:

• Live Stream Repeater: For live streaming, you can configure one server as the “origin” server to which you will send your live stream. The origin server then sends streams to each edge server in EC2, and the edge servers send the streams to viewers. Adding capacity is easily done by adding more edge servers.

• Load-Based Load Balancing: For live or video on demand, load balancing is a key factor. You don’t want to have one server overwhelmed while other are mostly idle. Wowza Pro has very effective capability that enables you to ping a server over http to determine its load. This capability enables you to set up the system so that the latest viewer always attaches to the least used server in your cluster of EC2 servers.

• Efficient Code: Wowza Pro is a very efficient server application that is well suited to the low power CPU of an EC2 instance.

• Simultaneous Recording: Live events can be streamed and recorded on S3 at the same time.

Combining these features with Wowza Pro’s high reliability and performance makes the combination with Amazon EC2/S3 a potentially very attractive solution for Flash streaming. The ability to dynamically add or reduce capacity on Amazon EC2 matches well with the audience fluctuations and the need to dynamically provision for time-limited live broadcast events and when an on-demand video becomes viral.

Amazon’s EC2 is a reasonable and a cost-effective way to go if you know what you’re doing and have a technical and operational experience. As with any webcast, not just for EC2, the quality of live video is very much dependent upon the quality of the link from the video encoding source to the streaming server. Companies have seen some great results with EC2/S3, but your mileage may vary depending upon your connection.

So far, Amazon shows no signs of getting into the CDN business themselves for streaming media delivery. That’s not to say they couldn’t if they wanted to, but to date, they have been happy to work directly with the CDNs and other solutions on the market like Wowza that tie well into EC2/S3. All in all, it’s great to have a broader range of options, and given the economics of both Amazon EC2 and Wowza, this one warrants a serious consideration for tech-savvy content owners who want to delivery their content themselves.