Internet Movie Delivery Doubtful?

As reported by the trade journal Video Business, at an investor conference sponsored by brokerage firm Sanford Bernstein & Co. in late April in New York City, Tom Wolzien, an analyst with the company, downplayed the significance of growing interest from e-commerce proponents and Webcaster startups such as Broadcast.com in transmitting movies over the Internet. Wolzien said that the Web is unlikely to become a significant platform for delivering movies to the home. ""The contention is , the Web will soon replace conventional pay-per-view because the Web is more efficient than cable at distribution,"" he said. ""Thatís not going to happen without a huge increase in bandwidth.""Currently, Webcasters acknowledge that video streaming in real time produces poor-quality images. In order to produce even VHS-quality video there will have to be much greater modem and phone line bandwidth capability. And although that is coming, Wolzien says its coming from using the high-capacity infrastructure of cable television systems to connect to the Internet and from high-speed cable modems in the home. Wolzien says that in that scenario thereís little incentive for cable operators to allocate additional capacity to Webcasters because video downloading would compete with the cable operatorís own program offerings.""Streaming video takes the same bit rate as cable video to rouce the equivalent image quality,"" Wolzien said. ""It will be up to the cable operators to decide who gets the bandwidth to handle it.""