Is YouTube doomed?

[Karel Bata]

According a recent report by analysts at the financial-services company Credit Suisse, Google will lose $470 million on the video-sharing site this year alone. Do You Think Bandwidth Grows on Trees?

 

Already they've limited uploads to 10 minutes. Expect to see more of the same... :(

 

 

Then again, maybe they'll get a bailout...? :D

[Guest]

Who ever sold YOUTube to Google will go down in history for making a very shrewd business deal :lol: Along with the guys that sold Chrysler to Mercedes.

 

It just goes to prove that content delivery must generate some form of sustainable income to be viable.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

This always reminds me of the South Park episode where the kids meet the elves that steal people's underwear in the washer. They keep telling everyone it's part of their master plan to get rich: STEP ONE: STEAL UNDERWEAR. STEP THREE: PROFITS!

 

The kids ask what Step Two is. "We don't know what Step Two is, all we know is Step Three is PROFITS!"

 

That's the dot.com industry in a nutshell.

[Marc Alucard]

Who ever sold YOUTube to Google will go down in history for making a very shrewd business deal :lol: Along with the guys that sold Chrysler to Mercedes.

 

It just goes to prove that content delivery must generate some form of sustainable income to be viable.

 

R,

 

Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner got $5.9 billion for Broadcast.com in Yahoo stock when they did their deal. Yahoo payed $1.65 billion for You Tube.

[Marc Alucard]

This always reminds me of the South Park episode where the kids meet the elves that steal people's underwear in the washer. They keep telling everyone it's part of their master plan to get rich: STEP ONE: STEAL UNDERWEAR. STEP THREE: PROFITS!

 

The kids ask what Step Two is. "We don't know what Step Two is, all we know is Step Three is PROFITS!"

 

That's the dot.com industry in a nutshell.

 

 

Underpants Gnomes. They offend easily.

[Chad Stockfleth]

It's a shame it can't turn a profit because it may be the single most awesome thing since the internet was invented.

[Marc Alucard]

Too bad it would be tough to get paying subscribers for You Tube. It is yet another dot.com that is a financial black hole. The bigger they get, the quicker the losses pile up.

 

The depth and scope of content on You Tube always blows me away. That took a mountain of bandwidth and hardware/software to upload, serve, and store.

[Guest]

Man I hope it doesn't fold, where else can we get access to, Miss South Carolina Answers A Question, or all the great George Bush one-liners cut together as a single video.

 

I'm surprised they can't sell more ads on YouTUBE. Why can't they do what CNN does and run a :30 commercial in front of every video?

 

R,

[Tom Lowe]

They will be able to make youtube profitable soon enough. I doubt that these reported losses are legit. Youtube can simply plaster ads on their pages and on their vids; that's a business model. It's how Google got rich in the first place - advertising.

 

The real question is, will youtube be able to jump into the content delivery business that Netflix seems to have gotten a big headstart on. For nearly a decade we have known that instant HD delivered to home entertainment is the way of the future. But even now, it's unclear how that market will shake out.

 

If fiber optic to the door becomes the norm for broadband, instantaneous 1080p and even 4K will become the norm. The question is, who is going to provide that content? ISPs? Cable companies? Netflix? Microsoft? Youtube? Right now, it's mainly pirates and bit torrents supplying 1080p to homes.

[Brian Drysdale]

You need an ecoomy generating wealth in order to sustain advertising. In a recession advertising budgets tend to be reduced and You Tube could suffer that same as any other broadcaster, unless their audience has some unique features. There has to be a financial stream to sustain the content, I expect the porn industry will show the way, just has they have in the past on the internet.

 

In the end, Amazon is just a mail order business.

 

In the domestic environment 4k is a bit of a waste, the current HD 1080p image on say Blu Ray meets the resolution needs of the human eye whilst sitting on the sofa. Improving the quality of the films and programmes themselves would be something to be considered first.

[Karel Bata]

"The question is, who is going to provide that content?" I think the question there is: who will pay for that infrastructure?

 

Assuming that 'advertisers' will pay for services like YT always was a dubious assumption. There's only so much advertising revenue to go 'round (as TV channels have found out) and they prefer sites that have more targeted audiences, particularly those that are proven to actually spend money rather than expect to get their entertainment for free. Even more so in a recession.

 

I always thought that YT must have known what they were doing. It didn't make a lot of sense, but I thought I must be missing something important, perhaps some little secret (ever had that feeling about world events?) but it turns out that in fact it's all exactly what it looks like - a bit of a sad mess.

 

What surprises me is that they've not tried to secure their future, not created any reason for users to have 'brand loyalty', other than simple familiarity. YT is like a billboard in the street, and with about as much interactivity. You look up, it's there. And anyone else (Apple, Microsoft..) can muscle in. Nothing to stop them - other than common sense! Look at the success of Spotify - a free online music service that is set to overtake iTunes. What's to stop people migrating? It's the equivalent of channel-hopping. You have to give people a compelling reason to stick around, or you'll lose them. Or take the YT aesthetic. What aesthetic? It has all the appeal of a page from eBay. Anywhere else on the net is more attractive. My point is that they've cultivated this boot sale image, where everything is for free (mostly junk), any idiot is welcome to ply their wares, and now find they can't attract sufficient corporate advertising. Well - big surprise!

 

That said, it has been a revolution, and all credit to the Google guys for being prepared to sink so much of their cash into such a dodgy venture. They've deservedly written a page for themselves in the history books.

[Walter Graff]

One never knows the fate of these services. Problem with youtube is it started as a free service sans advertisements. Many times as David alluded to in his Southpark reference, internet folks often don't think things through. And youtube customers have made it clear that they don't want ads so the company is left with a problem, how do you sell advertizing when no one wants to see it. Right now youtibe is selling ads against only 3% of it's video. It has more room obviously but it is a slow process to slip in ads and have folks accept them.

[Tom Lowe]

In the domestic environment 4k is a bit of a waste, the current HD 1080p image on say Blu Ray meets the resolution needs of the human eye whilst sitting on the sofa.

 

No offense, but we have heard this argument many times before, and it's always wrong. People always want more resolution, and sound and image fidelity. 4K is actually a perfect sweet spot, because the huge amount of entertainment shot over the last century on 35mm scans to roughly 4K in many cases. Going beyond 4K, though, will not happen for a long time, because of precisely that same issue.

[Brian Drysdale]

No offense, but we have heard this argument many times before, and it's always wrong. People always want more resolution, and sound and image fidelity. 4K is actually a perfect sweet spot, because the huge amount of entertainment shot over the last century on 35mm scans to roughly 4K in many cases. Going beyond 4K, though, will not happen for a long time, because of precisely that same issue.

 

To be worthwhile the main feature in the room would need to be a very large screen, so that a viewer can actually resolve all 4k information on the screen. In the domestic environment that would be like having IMAX, which may be OK for the enthusiast, but perhaps rather limiting given variety of uses people make of average living room.

 

Hi Fi is a niche market and I suspect that 4K would rather similar, considering it's being only just now being introduced for higher end digital cinemas. 2K is the common scan used on most 35mm productions and given the amount of bandwidth this takes up and associated problems, having 4 times the data doesn't really make much sense, especially when the human eye can't resolve the extra detail at normal viewing distances. 1080p Blu Ray doesn't do any favours for the older leading lady as it stands.

 

Some people may wish to have a personal 70mm type home cinema system, but the market will be much smaller than 1080 systems. Given the mass uptake in ipods I suspect the larger market isn't for high fidelity.

[Tom Lowe]

Brian, wanna make a long-term bet on this?

 

Anytime you bet against the advancement of technology and the lust of AV aficionados for more resolution and fidelity, you are on the wrong side of that bet.

 

Watch and see what happens. Rumors out of NAB are that Sony is launching a 4K monitor.

 

Not only will 4K+ cameras fuel this quest for 4K resolution, gamers are also driving the resolution arms race.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Tom Lowe

[Brian Drysdale]

Brian, wanna make a long-term bet on this?

 

Anytime you bet against the advancement of technology and the lust of AV aficionados for more resolution and fidelity, you are on the wrong side of that bet.

 

Watch and see what happens. Rumors out of NAB are that Sony is launching a 4K monitor.

 

Not only will 4K+ cameras fuel this quest for 4K resolution, gamers are also driving the resolution arms race.

 

I expect Sony will be bring out a 4k monitor, that makes sense, but that's a long way from 4k being sent by broadband.

 

I know the lust of for fidelity, but as you say it's aficionados and I say this owning two large floor standing Tannoy loudspeakers, but most people only use speakers approx 1/16 the size. I seem to recall 35mm still cameras are more common than 2 1/4 square stills cameras.

 

Gamers do push things, although pushing around 4 times the data could involve other trade offs in their game play, plus an increase in the cost of their games with all that extra detailing.

[John Sprung]

Some people may wish to have a personal 70mm type home cinema system, ....

 

I knew a guy who had a pair of AA-2 Norelco's in a booth he built onto his garage. He ran 70mm changeover for his friends. For larger groups, he had a Simplex and a platter system in the attic, and projected on the wall of the apartment building across the back alley. Last I heard, he owns a theater in Chicago now.

 

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't see the need for 4K in the home, not when 2K can fill a 50' movie theater screen and look decent. Even if I converted an entire wall of my house to a screen, 1080P is probably going to be adequate to fill that. 35mm print projection is 2K more or less, and how many people need better than 35mm print projection quality for a home screen?

 

4K monitors are not for entertainment purposes, they are for looking at 4K footage in a production or post environment when you need a pixel to pixel representation.

 

Sure, resolution increases over time, but on the other hand, we had standard def video for how many decades? We're just now getting 720P, 1080i, and 1080P into homes, I'd say that we're going to have a period where that's the deliverable content size for awhile.

 

4K presentations into movie theaters, that's more likely than 4K movies at home.

 

I can see 2K/1080P at home, and 4K in theaters as being a reasonable standard for the coming decade.

 

"4K" has become such a popular phrase to throw around, but considering that even RED ONE photography can't achieve 4K resolution, nor most 35mm photography, nor any HD photography... then there isn't even a lot of true 4K content out there anyway. It's overkill for home viewing. People use the term "4K" and say they need it despite the fact that they've seen very little 4K content.

 

4K for origination makes sense because we need oversampling. 5K or 6K would be even better. But for delivery, 4K for big theater screens, 2K for medium theater screens, and 1080P at home looks great and resolves pretty much any detail that is on the original usually. Saying we need to see movies in 4K at home is like saying that anything less than a 70mm projector in your house is unacceptable, sort of billionaire talk.

[Tom Lowe]

David, keep in mind that many young people, for example, don't watch movies on traditional TVs or HDTVs. They are planted in front of their computers watching 1080p downloads or Blurays. Same thing with gaming. Their face is like 2 feet away from the screen. So a 40-inch 4K monitor, for example, would definitely increase viewing pleasure for movies or gaming. It's just the natural, obvious progression of technology.

 

Gamers spend $5,000 - $10,000 on new PC rigs. It's like the center of their life. Believe me, they will pay for 4K. Same thing with AV aficionados. Keep in mind that only a short time ago, "big screens" and "flat screens" were a very niche market for audio-visualphiles. Now they are in most homes. Only a short time ago Bluray was very niche and very expensive. IMO, Bluray would be getting adopted even faster right now if we'd not suffered through that useless HD DVD vs Bluray war which left Sony nearly bankrupt, causing them to have to charge huge, punishing Bluray "licensing" fees.

 

I am absolutely convinced that 4K (or quad HD?) will be the new display Gold Standard.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Tom Lowe

[John Sprung]

There are a lot of people who will choose a mid-range price/performance point. For them, 1080p will be a really nice TV. There are others who'll buy whatever has the biggest number, whether they can actually use it or not, even whether it's real or not. That's why there are 7.5 liter V-8 car engines, 6.5 horsepower shop vacs, monster cable, etc. There's a business model that works very well selling big numbers at a high but not impossible price point.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[David Mullen ASC]

David, keep in mind that many young people, for example, don't watch movies on traditional TVs or HDTVs. They are planted in front of their computers watching 1080p downloads or Blurays. Same thing with gaming. Their face is like 2 feet away from the screen. So a 40-inch 4K monitor, for example, would definitely increase viewing pleasure for movies or gaming.

 

But if the movie content isn't 4K, then what's the point of viewing it in 4K? Even movies posted in 4K D.I.'s probably don't measure out to 4K in line resolution. RED footage isn't even 4K.

 

So you're really talking about the gaming industry, not viewing movies at home -- and I don't have an opinion on that. Maybe someone else knows enough about the gaming industry to tell us if there are plans on creating 4K games.

 

But as for movie viewing, 4K viewing at home is unnecessary, a waste of bandwidth and data. Sure, you can have a 4K screen and put your nose against it, but that doesn't mean the original photography will hold up to that level of scrutiny.

 

I love watching 1080P movies at home -- I can see the film grain, I can see every pimple and pore... what more is there to show in terms of detail? What's missing?

 

I think you are wanting a level of data, bandwidth, and information that has little practical value to the home viewing experience, which is also why I think it is unlikely to become commonplace in households -- if an ASC cinematographer like me doesn't see the need for 4K at the home, then how are you going to convince the mass public that they need it?

 

I think you are suffering from "pixelitis" -- the need for greater and greater pixel resolutions. The "bigger is always better" syndrome.

 

For giant screen projection, that has a real-world practical value due to the degree of enlargement. For home viewing, well, didn't your mother ever teach you not to sit too close to the TV set? ;)

 

I can't speak for gamers though.

 

I've seen some 4K Dalsa footage (again, more like 3K in measurable resolution) on their 4K monitors, and projected in 2K -- sure it looks sharp, but it would look sharp on a 2K monitor. The reason for 4K monitors is for post reasons, not for home viewing.

 

Look, we're getting into the predicting the future game here and I certainly can be wrong. But from my vantage point as a cinematographer, I don't see any practical value in jumping from 1080P/2K to 4K for home viewing, and I don't believe most people, including people like me, can see a difference between 2K and 4K on a monitor unless they put their noses to the monitor... so I have a hard time seeing the general consumer population demanding it either. Based on that, my guess for the future is that 1080P/2K will be the standard for home video deliverable content for several more years to come.

 

The real question for me is whether 4K will become a finishing standard for cinema masters for theatrical presentation, and whether 4K data will be delivered to these 4K projectors. That's possible, but I predict a greater likelihood of a mix of 2K and 4K going to theaters for a decade at least.

 

It's my nature, Tom -- if pressed to make predictions, I make what I consider safe ones based on current and past trends. HDTV was invented back in the 1970's and it's only now in 2009 that some people are watching it. And we had large format movie production in the 1950's and 60's and it declined in the 1970's. So change is not always rapid and it doesn't always go "up" in quality.

[John Sprung]

... I don't believe most people, including people like me, can see a difference between 2K and 4K on a monitor unless they put their noses to the monitor... .

 

Certainly true for monitors. Where 4K starts to make sense is in front projection. Maybe some day we'll have mass produced 4K DLP chips. Map the data one to one onto DLP chips, and you can see everything it contains.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Brian Drysdale]

I knew a guy who had a pair of AA-2 Norelco's in a booth he built onto his garage. He ran 70mm changeover for his friends. For larger groups, he had a Simplex and a platter system in the attic, and projected on the wall of the apartment building across the back alley. Last I heard, he owns a theater in Chicago now.

 

Sounds like a fun arrangement, with a sense of community.

 

The larger resolutions only really work if you're close to a large screen. There are HD games that, although they look sharp, don't really look like they've got HD levels of detailing. 3D would make more sense from the gaming viewpoint than even higher resolution.

 

There are always people who will pay for the faster this or that, with the bigger engine etc. Some of which does make sense, whilst other parts of the idea are nonsense. A car with a big engine might be great in a straight line, but unless it can handle the corners it'll be slower overall in most situations than the car with a smaller engine that can.

[Tom Lowe]

I think that games like "Crysis" already support close to 4K resolution. People are playing at 2560x1600 on the Dell 30" panel right now, I believe. So the question is, what comes after 2560x1600? 4K or quad HD seem to make sense.

 

As to David's point regarding whether 35mm-acquired movies, for example, will hold up at 4K resolution. I guess it depends on the condition of the negative or source material. But even if some films won't really hold up at 4K, people will still buy the 4K screens for the newer stuff that will. TNT's HD channel, for example, plays scans of older movies that barely hold up at 720p. But they still play them, and they look marginally better than DVD. But there is pretty much no argument that any of this legacy stuff will hold up beyond 4K. That's why I think 4K is the sweet spot where display is headed.

 

I have already been shooting 5.6K RAW timelapse footage on the 5D2 that is absolutely jaw-dropping at 4K. Down-resing it to 1080p seems like copying a Bluray onto VHS. It's a huge step down. Once people begin to acquire ultra-pristine footage at greater-than-4K res (say, 5K or 6K) they are going to be dying to deliver that content at 4K.

[Walter Graff]

I think you are suffering from "pixelitis" -- the need for greater and greater pixel resolutions. The "bigger is always better" syndrome.

 

 

Thanks David for some sanity in this post. Like the guy who just wrote a book on the Columbine murders, it turns out that most everything you and I were told and believe about the killings is myth from these guys being members of some trench coat organization to that it was outcasts who killed jocks. But the myths perpetuate on the internet very easily and it is hard ot change peoples perception.People talk about "gamers" and blue-ray, and all the other ad hoc suppositions here with such 'knowledge' as to be scary. Please supply a reference for some of the statements here. It would be hard to do. There is only one fact, it took 60 years for TV to change. No one complained in those sixty years. The only reason it changed was because teh group that sells Tv sets wanted to sell more sets. (look up the history of the ATSC and read David Brinkley’s books on why HDTV came to be). And for the change to happen as it finally did, it took so much work just to change the infrastructure to twice the resolution as to be a feat as big as building the pyramids. Of course a lot of money had to be given to members of congress and TV broadcasters who were reluctant had to be forced to change. But the real point is that without infrastructure, there is no higher resolution than what we have. You could have a 4k monitor but it will not bring 4k infrastructure. All monitors and projectors of this type are not for consumers but for pro applications. As far as I can see no one has plans for any better infrastructure. Hell, we can't even get stations to properly switch to digital now. As for the internet, the US is ranked 54 in terms of infrastructure and speed so don't think that they are going to build this super highway of fiber anytime soon. No one has any plans. It cost money and you can't charge people more for internet service. Right now the companies that supply internet service barely make a buck. Verizon has reported that it was spending $18 billion through 2010 to deploy the FiOS services and even that isn't fast as you would need for any great resolution. Then again, flat screen TV sales have not plateaued as expected so getting folks to buy even more is a pipe dream. Verizon has 1.9 million out of 9.2 million homes that have access to the service as of now so it's tiny. In contrast, AT&T is hoping to have 1 million subscribers to its rival IPTV offering, U-verse, by the end of the year. So much for having the pipeline. So much for having the source for the pipeline. So much for people craving more resolution. My reference to the term “people” is the masses. And all the research and polling shows they don’t care as much as some on this board do. Blue rays are a measly 8 million now. Not selling fast as of last quarter. This is a cinematography site so it makes sense that folks here would use the term "everyone" when in reality every is a niche of people that do little to change the way we watch TV.

 

QUOTE (David Mullen ASC @ Apr 20 2009, 11:09 AM) ... I don't believe most people, including people like me, can see a difference between 2K and 4K on a monitor unless they put their noses to the monitor... .

 

No you, nor anyone else can as you know. Due to the physical limitations of the human eye, no one can see the difference unless they are at extremely close ranges, which are not conventional for viewing a TV. Right now you can not see the difference between a 46 inch HD set at 10 feet next to a SD TV playing the same footage in SD at 7.5 feet. Mathematics of how the eye sees says that. Of course at 4 feet you would appreciate the difference, and the reason for HD from the consumer perspective was to offer higher resolution at closer ranges for more immersion and so you didn’t see the refresh lines of 525.

 

If anyone would like to understand the limitations of the eye and how it translates to why TV is what it is in HD land and why it will not be more, read this:

 

http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/12836