Streaming Media Will Supplement, Not Threaten Traditional Media, STV Communications Exec Says

Traditional media should not feel threatened by streaming media, the founder of a fast-growing provider of streaming media services said Tuesday.""Streaming media has often been called the future of home entertainment, but the truth is that it will supplement rather than replace television and radio,"" said Jan Brzeski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of STV Communications Inc.Streaming media, the delivery of audio and video over the Internet, will make possible the creation of thousands of additional video channels for niche programming, Brzeski said. The occasion for Brzeski's remarks was Streaming Media West '99, the largest Internet audio and video event ever held.Brzeski, whose company does encoding and hosting of streaming media, said the coming explosive growth of programming available over the Internet will increase consumers' choices far more than cable television did.""There will be a channel devoted to just about every subject that will interest viewers,"" the STV executive said. ""My passion is skiing, and I'd like to watch extreme skiing on TV,"" Brzeski said, ""but there's no channel for it. Mark my words, though, there will be a channel for it on the Internet.""To bring this huge wave of new content to consumers, a great deal of infrastructure must be built, Brzeski said. In building it, Brzeski asserted, the streaming media industry will be able to deal with a recently identified potential problem: traffic gridlock on the Internet.""Streaming media has been criticized because it tends to crowd out data and other types of traffic,"" Brzeski said. ""It's like a fire engine racing down the street with its sirens blaring and its red lights flashing. It doesn't obey traffic laws, and everyone else has to pull over and stop while it passes.""Most Internet traffic travels in ""packets"" that are separated by seconds or fractions of a second, causing no problem for the parties receiving them, Brzeski said.""But if streaming media music or video is to be enjoyed, it can't be broken up into packets. Constant interruptions of as little as one second would ruin the experience of listening to a song or watching a movie, and few people would bother to listen or watch.""The streaming media industry ""is going to build a network of `side roads' that will be able to deliver audio and video over the Internet without crowding other traffic off the main road,"" Brzeski said.He explained that this will be accomplished through central data centers and server ""farms"" like the ones STV is building right now.Another challenge the industry must deal with is pricing, Brzeski said. Companies selling streaming services today are pricing them on the basis of capacity and engineering considerations, not ondemand from customers, Brzeski said. ""I think it's possible to simplify the way we price these services, and I look forward to being part of a small revolution that will greatly broaden the market for streaming media,"" the STV founder said.Brzeski said the evolution of streaming media into a major entertainment medium will occur rapidly. ""We're creating a way for people who own a lot of valuable unused audio and video content to unlock it and make money from it,"" Brzeski said. ""It's already happening with audio, and it's starting to happen with video.""I don't think anybody has figured out just how this industry's going to look eventually. But I'm confident that those who take the lead in its development will one day be running victory laps and counting their money at the same time.""About STVSTV is the premier media convergence company, where traditional and streaming media unite in a one-stop-shop solution for delivering audio and video content online. The company creates original content for the Internet, offers Webcasting, production and post-production services, high-end encoding, signal acquisition, hosting, content management and digital rights management. In addition, STV retains exclusive online distribution rights to unique content libraries.STV's customers use its services to create, obtain, encode and deliver content from music videos, movies, advertising and live events to software, movie and game previews. Current customers and partners include Microsoft, Columbia Records, Capitol Records, Virgin Records, Atlantic Records, EMI, Sony Music, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Chesky Records, New Line Cinema, Columbia/TriStar, Warner Bros., VH1.com, RioPort, MediaBay, FamilyWonder.com, Intervu, Blue Note, Vault.com, Best Buy, Beyond.com, Buy.com, Yupi, B2Bstores.com, Thedaily.com and KBkids.com.