Panelists at the Streaming Media East show say that MRSS for wireless will create new opportunities for streaming to portable devices.NEW YORK—In one of the final sessions from this week's Streaming Streaming Media East conference here, wireless and streaming experts discussed the shape and scope of multimedia for devices, and predicted a strong surge of streamed content.
"Technology is expanding the boundaries of how you use wireless," said John Muleta, former chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Wireless Bureau. "Wireless is catching up to streaming media."
In his position with the FCC, Muleta said he was charged with opening up available spectrum to wireless, in effect creating a third leg of competition for television and radio.
"We've made the infrastructure available to truly have wireless multimedia everywhere," he said.
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According to panelists, that new competition will come mainly from companies that adopt a combination of four new technologies.
WiMax, Qualcomm Inc.'s MediaFLO and DVB-H, championed by several companies, including Microsoft Corp., are giving mobile devices the capability to receive video and audio on-the-go. Meanwhile, RSS, which took off with Weblogs as a way to distribute Web content to users wherever they wanted to read it, has been expanded to include video, with Media RSS, or MRSS.
"Video content can now be sent the same way," said Kenyatta Cheese, systems administrator, A/V, with Eyebeam, an art and technology collective in New York. "It will enable people to view content how and when they want, and spread that content virally."
Peggy Miles, president of Intervox Communications and the panel moderator, said she expects MRSS, which is already available over the Internet, to be available for wireless devices later this year.
According to the panel, that's when streaming capabilities will play a key role. Most wireless devices don't have the storage capacity to download and store full video clips, so content providers will need the ability to stream multimedia to the handset.
"The only way to make this scalable is through direct streaming," said Cheese. "Caching media to the device is no longer the answer."
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The ability to stream won't guarantee success, however, and the panelists had differing opinions on who would ultimately win when media goes mobile. Troy Snyder, CEO of Nine Systems, a content management and delivery company in San Diego, said he sees a good future for content providers, as long as they understand the market.
"The successes we'll see are the content owners who recognize the differences between devices and are able to change that content to meet the viewing needs of those device users," Snyder said.
Muleta however, practically handed the victory over to the wireless providers. "Wireless has won the battle for customers," he said. "Whoever has those customer relationships will be the winner."
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