wwwvideo

As you might know, I work for a Amsterdam based company Brevidius. We are working on a project called ZiZone TV on behalf of @Home. Upto last tuesday, when an official press release was published, we had to keep the project between the company's walls. Now we can finally talk and write about it :)

ZiZone.tv (sorry - it's Dutch ;)) is Video4All-powered (produced by Brevidius) site at which video can be put online very easily. After that, people can vote for the content - I know, it looks like another Google Video or YouTube, but it is not. The difference is that the highest rated content will actually be shown on TV. The TV channel will run blocks of 20 minutes with the best of entries for a competition for example. Thus, almost real-time, ZiZone users can influence the programming by voting online. The blocks will be announced by - you guess it - the users.

Video can be uploaded and managed by users themselves. They can create their own Vlog, enter a competition with prizes or join Video-discussions within a category. They are handed tools to create their own TV programme, by selecting the site's content comnined with their own presentation - Vodcasting! People might just become famus for their good video, their presentation style or their high-quality Vodcasts.

The ultimate idea is to create Video commuinities which produce good content which is interesting to watch on TV.

I found this at my former graduation colleague Hay Kranen's blog .. Look at the following film .. It was shot entirely with a still camera; Canon 20D .. What a jewel!


"Between you and me"

Video through the internet is coming. Not just funny clips or webcam flicks - No. Streaming high-quality broadband nonstop video. PC will become TV and vise versa. The consumers own fast PC's to go with their fast broadband internet connections. Developers are creating applications to gather, create, organise and re-distribute video. The ISP's .. Well .. The ISP's might not be ready.

Usually, in the Netherlands you are allowed to generate internet traffic as long as it stays within the 'fair use' policy; Downloading a movie or two / three a month? That should be ok .. Non-stop leeching? That's not ok. Your ISP will send you a kind mail reminding you that your broadband-bandwith use is a tad too broad ..

One can imagine what happens when people start watching TV via the internet: excessive amounts of data traffic : $$$ .. Not only that, because leeching a lot by a few is not really a technical problem .. Leeching a lot by a lot might just go wrong at the point where all consumer's lines come together .. The solution to this might be easy - install new hardware but this will have to be payed for .. And I'm afraid that's going to be the consumer in the end ..

Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter says there is nothing to be afraid of in this interesting article on this issue at Technologyreview .. Maybe he thought too much on a global scale .. I feel pretty sure about the greatly expanding usage of video through the net in the Netherlands .. The public TV channels already deliver yesterday's programs to your PC over here .. Be it in a reasonably low quality but that is probably because not every user has high speed internet .. Yet it won't take long until we all have fiber to the home ..