Coming to a PC near you: a world of film and television in high definition

Dec 22, 2008

As you read this, audiences in Britain could be watching CBS from Miami on their computers, while in America, others get their first taste of MTV Europe... and if the transatlantic exchange goes ahead, it will be thanks to a billionaire media entrepreneur and his team, who have devised a new technology that allows people to stream high-definition videos over the internet even if they have a slow broadband connection.

Alki David, founder and chairman of FilmOn.com, an online video streaming website, and Rich Crosby, a television engineer from Miami, have developed what they call HDi, a turbo-charged streaming technology that they say will transform the broadcasting industry.

Thanks to services such as BBC iPlayer, Hulu.com and YouTube, Gartner, the technology analysts, predict that almost 20 million people will be subscribing to internet TV platforms by the end of this year, a rise of 64 per cent in 12 months.

However, slow internet speeds can cause images to judder to a halt and make watching high definition (HD) films unthinkable. It takes about eight hours to download HD-quality films over a normal internet connection of about two megabits per second. By contrast, over the same internet speed, Mr David's HDi delivers live TV programming, video-on-demand and web content without any buffering or lag.

The service, which goes this week, at present can be used to watch content only on FilmOn.com, but Mr David, 40, ranked by the Sunday Times Rich List last year as Britain's 47th- richest man, has already struck deals with content providers, including Turner Network Television, the American cable network.

FilmOn is due to demonstrate the technology to BT next month and industry sources say that the company believes that HDi could be “very interesting”. Mr David and Mr Crosby also plan to offer set-top boxes enabling viewers to watch internet content on their televisions.

“The way we watch film is changing,” Mr David, a producer, director and actor, said. “People used to dress up to go out to the cinema. Then it was a trip to the video store. Now you're at home with your plasma TV and an internet connection.

“We're trained to watch what's on the box, but audiences are not fools and it doesn't take long at all to change. The YouTube generation is a good example. You can seek what you want to watch when you want. We're the next step. It's a natural evolution to qualitative distribution.”

From today, providing that a couple of legal wrinkles were ironed out over the weekend, FilmOn will be streaming channels in both directions across the Atlantic. “Why shouldn't you be able to watch any channel anywhere in the world?” Mr David asked. “Imagine you're a futures trader: you hear corn is shaky or there's a storm in Iowa that might affect it. You can watch real-time TV and weather forecasts from Iowa across the internet.”

So-called virtual cable television, as Mr David dubs the service, can be watched on a computer, television or mobile phone. Unlike cable TV companies that require “last mile” build-out of the fibre-optic network to people's homes, FilmOn's service runs over existing copper or wireless networks. Mr David has struck deals with internet service providers around the world, including Amazon Web Services, creating a network of computer processors to power the service. HDi also uses a compression technology created by Mr Crosby, which squeezes the content, allowing data to be sent faster.

FilmOn has 7,000 films and documentaries, 70 per cent of them free. Premier film titles cost about £3.99 to stream or “rent” for 24 hours and £5 to download. It also has a section of user-generated content, akin to YouTube.

So far the company is debt-free, as Mr David has been footing the bill. He estimates that he has spent $20 million (£13.4 million) creating FilmOn since he launched it three years ago. He plans to float the company soon and is optimistic there will be interest.

“People are mindful of their portfolios,” he said, “but this company has no debt, and cheap video-on-demand is recession-resistant.”

Source: The Times Online