Transcoding on demand, especially when it comes to mobile video, is going to play an important part in the growth of online video as the medium of choice.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Gerry Purdy, Vice President and Chief Analyst for Frost & Sullivan to discuss their analysis of the current and future transcoding market. 

Mobile Video

Having both just come back from the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, we had quite a bit to talk about, especially around mobile video. 

Earlier this week, YouTube suffered an outage which lasted for almost two hours, a serious amount of time for the second most popular website on the Net.

The whole Internet went crazy with rumours and theories, and the news spread like wildfire, popping up on Twitter almost immediately. After the Amazon S3 outage earlier this month, I’m sure everyone was wondering if YouTube was to blame or Google themselves had gone down.

What Happened?

We now know what happened; Pakistan attempted to block the video-sharing site due to what it considered to be offensive material about Islam.

In doing so, they hijacked some of the IP addresses directing traffic to YouTube, propagated the hijacking to other DNS servers, and essentially routed a good chunk of YouTube’s audience nowhere.

Quarterlife made its network television début last night, and unfortunately for NBC and show creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz it bombed in the ratings.

Quarterlife is the show about a bunch of twenty somethings, hence the title, being roughly a quarter of the way through their lives, which was made for the web.

The show initially aired on MySpace TV, making its debut in November to a swathe of positive reviews. It was then shown via its own website, and has now made its way to network television.

The last year has seen a bitter war raging between manufacturers, movie studios and retailers over what would become the high definition format of choice for the future of DVD.

But with Direct Downloads from the Internet growing at a massive rate over the same time period, is there actually a future for physical discs to be fought over in the first place?

Here, Gigi Sohn discusses how yet again Hollywood seems to be missing the bigger picture, and failing to grasp how new mediums are making the old guard obsolete.

YouTube experienced an outage lasting almost two hours last night after an attempt by the Pakistani government to block access to the site for its citizens.

Pakistan, a Muslim state, ordered the country’s ISPs to block access to the Google owned site due to content being available which it deems is offensive to Islam.

Access Blocked

According to The BBC, Pakistan Telecom, and the country’s main ISP PCCW, blocked access by hijacking YouTube web server address.

Anyone based in the country who then attempted to visit the video sharing site was redirected to an unknown alternative site. Unfortunately, the hijack didn’t stop there, and was leaked to the wider Internet.

The business of online television and video is growing at a incredibly fast rate, and as well as user created and free content, revenue based video models are also building up.

Whether it’s the YouTube AdSense revenue sharing scheme, or Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Maven Networks, it’s clear that companies are realising the importance of creating revenue from video.

The growth of the Internet as a viable place to watch television and videos is fully in evidence today, as another network has added classic shows to its web roster.

With News Corp. and NBC offering up such oldies as The A-Team, Kojak, Partridge Family, and S.W.A.T. (among many others) to their online audience at Hulu and other NBC sites, it only seems logical that other television networks would follow suit in offering former fan favorite shows for viewing via the internet.

CBS has now become the latest network to join the online old-school bandwagon, as the company’s CBS Interactive division has announced that some of their classic televisions shows from the past will now be available online.