While Web video is growing on a daily basis, much of this content is devoid of any monetization, meaning content producers and video sites alike aren’t making any revenue for their efforts. Is this a situation likely to change any time soon?

Over the last few months here on Web TV Wire, we’ve looked at the seemingly never-ending debate as to whether online video can be a profitable business by way of monetization in some depth.

Google and YouTube

Most of this has been regarding YouTube, and Google’s attempts at making some of the $1.65 billion it invested in the video sharing site back by use of advertising.

Google has considered the use of pre-roll and post-roll advertising on videos, but that’s only possible on videos that have been checked for copyright violations - about 4% of the total video content uploaded to YouTube.

We then asked if pre-vetting all videos would help Google’s monetization cause, but argued that bringing this measure in would do more harm than good in terms of user satisfaction and viewer numbers.

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Does the use of off-site DVRs, which work like a TiVo, infringe the copyrights of content providers such as American TV networks? A federal appeals court thinks not.

Here, Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge discusses the case, the positive decision, and how the result is a victory for digital technologies and common sense.

Victory for Home Recording in Cablevision Remote DVR Case

On August 4, a federal appeals court ruled that Cablevision’s remote DVRs - which worked like off-site TiVos - didn’t infringe copyright. The decision, which overturns an earlier district court opinion, stated that there was no significant legal difference between the remote DVRs and a VCR. An all-too-brief summary of the history and findings follows.

The original case arose out of Cablevision’s creation and marketing of the “RS-DVR,” a service that, like a TiVo, let cable subscribers select different TV shows to be recorded digitally onto a hard drive. Unlike a TiVo, however, the hard drives of the RS-DVR are stored on Cablevision property. 

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Through which online medium did you plan to watch the Olympics through? If you’re in the US or Europe then your options are limited. But in some countries, YouTube will be a possibility.

With just days to go until the Beijing 2008 Olympics kicks off in China, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) has announced a deal with Google meaning coverage of the games will appear on YouTube.

There is a channel dedicated to the Games, on which there will be about three hours of footage uploaded by the IOC on a daily basis. The only problem is: you probably won’t be able to watch it.

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Mobile video is growing ever more popular, particularly with the emergence of smartphones such as the Apple iPhone. But Delivering content to mobile phones is still a problem, particularly in the field of live streaming.

RipCode has already grown into a leader and innovator in the On-Demand Transcoding market built around the strength of its flagship product, the RipCode Video Transcoding Appliance. 

Real-Time Stream Transcoding

But today, it has announced a new step in the evolution of RipCode.  In addition to offering on-demand transcoding of stored content, it is  introducing RipCode’s Real-Time Stream Transcoding solution, focused on the transcoding and delivery of live mobile streaming of broadcast content. 

With this addition, RipCode has created a powerful dual-application transcoding platform enabling its customers to reach more markets with a single transcoding appliance.

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Web video content has evolved over the past couple of years and is now of much higher quality than ever before. Forget videos of dogs chasing frisbees, the future is high-quality, professionally produced Web content.

The Web is now chock-a-block with video of all sorts. From the virals on YouTube, the television content on sites such as Joost and Hulu, to embedded video commenting.

Original Content

But by far the most exciting element of the current surge in online video is originally produced content. I actually think this is where the money is, with producers able to generate revenue directly or indirectly from their Web productions.

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The amount of video available on the Web is increasing massively every month, but if metered broadband becomes the norm, don’t expect to be able to watch much of it.

Last Friday saw the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) uphold a complaint against Comcast for blocking BitTorrent traffic. The ISP was ordered to stop P2P throttling, and many other telecommunications companies praised the decision.

First Warning

However, any hope that this would mean metered broadband services would go the way of the dodo are unfounded, and in fact, we’ve now had our first example of a TV company warning customers with metered broadband from accessing its content.

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NBC is planning on streaming 2,200 hours of coverage from the Olympic Games live over the Web, but what sort of effort is required to make this a reality?

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games start on August 8th, and for the first time ever, the full games will be available to watch on the Web via NBCOlympics.com.

One Giant Experiment

We’ve already heard about the plans to televise the Games online, with 2,200 hours of live footage to be made available via the official website, although some severe restrictions mean many Internet users won’t be made welcome.

We’ve also spoken about how the online video coverage of the Olympics is going to be used as a kind of testing ground to research how people are watching the Games, and whether offering the coverage for free is a viable business model.

But we didn’t look at how the footage was actually going to be delivered to homes all around the world live and streaming across the Net. Which with so much coverage being planned, is a tall order.

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