Pandora's division of labor

A while ago Roku added Pandora to its selection of channels and a shorter while ago I got around to trying it out. I like it, though I don't listen to it all day long (I generally don't listen to anything all day long).

Pandora's main feature is its ability to find music "like" a particular song or artist you select. This is nice not only because it will turn up the familiar music you had in mind, but it will most likely also turn up unfamiliar music that you'll like. As I understand it, that's a major part of its business model. Record labels use Pandora to expose music that people otherwise wouldn't have heard, and Pandora takes a cut.

To that end, it will only allow you to skip so many songs in a given time (though there is at least one way to sneak around this). They pick out likely songs for you and they would like you to listen. You can, however, tell Pandora that you like or dislike a particular selection. Pandora will adapt its choices accordingly.

So how does it work? Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, which is a nicely balanced blend of

• Human beings listening to music and characterizing each piece on a few hundred scales of 1 to 10 (more precisely, 1 to 5 in increments of 0.5).
• Computers blithely crunching through these numbers to find pieces close to what you like but not close to things you don't like.

This approach is very much in the spirit of "dumb is smarter". Rather than try to write a computer program that will analyze music and use some finely-tuned algorithm to decide what sounds like what, have the software use one of the simplest approaches that could possibly work and leave it to humans to figure out what things sound like.

Even the human angle has been set up to favor perception over judgement. The human judge is not asked to decide whether a given song is electroclash or minimalist techno, but rather to rate to what degree it features attributes like "acoustic guitar pickin'", "aggressive drumming", a "driving shuffle beat", "dub influences", "use of dissonant harmonies", "use of sitar" and so forth. There are refinements, of course, such as using different lists of attributes within broad categories such as rock and pop, jazz or classical, but the attributes themselves are designed to be as objective as possible.

This combination of human input and a very un-human data crunching algorithm is a powerful pattern. Search engines are one example, Music Genome is another, and if there are two there are surely more. In fact, here's another: the "People who bought this also bought ... " feature on retail sites.

"Buying" internet movies

Maybe I'm missing something but ...

For a price near what you'd pay for a DVD, Amazon will give you the right to watch a given movie over the internet, subject to some fine print. Or you could just get the DVD for a similar price.

If I have a DVD, I can watch it pretty much anywhere -- on any TV with a DVD player attached, with a portable player, in a car with a player, on a laptop, at a hotel ... wherever. If I have the internet equivalent, I'm restricted to internet enabled devices, and within that, to whatever devices Amazon chooses to allow.

Frankly, I wouldn't know what devices those would be without looking. I know it'll work with my Roku box, and I've never really had cause to try anywhere else. I know Netflix will let me watch their movies on a laptop (at least if it's using IE/Windows), but I haven't been traveling much lately, so that's not really on my radar either.

The point being that, if I'm just watching a particular movie through a subscription service, or renting it short-term to watch it once, I don't care that watching the movie is tied to the box I ordered it on. I'm going to sit down, order the movie, pop some popcorn and watch it. On the other hand, if I'm "buying" it, that is, buying the right to watch it whenever I want, I'd also like the right to watch it wherever I want.

Internet video delivery is not there yet. I'm sure it will get there, and I'm sure it's good enough for some people right now. It's not there for me yet, late adopter that I am.

[What's a "DVD"?  Recently a friend wanted to watch a short clip on a DVD, and had a choice of ... a set-top box in the living room that happened to have a DVD attached.  When your main devices are a phone and a tablet, and there's an app on those for the major providers, it's not so hard to watch internet video everywhere, and a pain to watch a DVD anywhere.  Pretty much the opposite of what I describe above, only six or seven years ago.

I personally prefer not to buy internet movies.  The price tends to be three or four times the rental price, and I generally don't watch movies three or four times.  Maybe the movie won't be available three years from now when I feel like re-watching an old favorite, but maybe it'll be available cheaper on the original site or elsewhere.  I find this surprising, honestly, since I often tend toward a "get ALL the bits and keep them" mentality, but evidently not in this case.  --D.H. Jan 2016]

Amazon on Roku

A while ago, the Roku set-top box quietly upgraded itself, mostly re-arranging menus slightly, but also promising nifty new things to come. A few weeks ago, the other shoe dropped. Amazon is now offering a wide range of movies and TV shows -- much wider, or at least much more recent and popular, than Netflix's "watch instantly" service. As a general rule you can either rent a show for a 24-hour period or "buy" unlimited access (more or less) for about three times the rental cost. Rental costs are comparable to cable pay-per-view rental costs, but the selection is, again, much wider.

It's certainly an interesting development and probably a significant part of the Way of the Future, but there are still some kinks to work out. For example, it's best to check whether the program you can rent from Amazon is also available for free (meaning you've already paid for it) via your regular cable or satellite service or (I recall seeing at least one case) via Netflix on the same box.

Maybe someone could write a plug-in to sort all this out. Except I doubt that a security-conscious, DRM-friendly box like Roku's will be very friendly to plug-ins.

It will also be interesting to see how (or whether) Netflix responds to this. I'd mentioned a possible "premium instant" service before. Thinking it through, another option might be just to emulate the current DVD queue. For $X a month you get access to any N DVDs at one time.

Except, hmm ... that works for physical DVDs because it takes time to send in the old ones and get the new ones in the mail. With the box, you could just "send in" the movie you just finished and pull the next one off the queue. Lather, rinse, repeat and you have access to the whole catalog for the price of one. Maybe it would only let you "return" titles once a day, or whatever?

[Remarkably little has changed since then, except that on-demand from the cable company is much more likely to provide pay-per-view.  If you've "cut the cord", YMMV.  In particular, Netflix's subscription model hasn't changed.  Instead, they've focused on producing their own content, much as HBO did when it was at a similar stage. --D.H. 2015]

Revolution OS and thereabouts

OK, so I just watched Revolution OS (on the Roku/Netflix box, of course), which I'd been putting off out of concern it might be more propaganda than information. The opening minute or so did little to allay that, but it turned out to be a pretty good documentary, and as even-handed as you could expect from something that interviewed Open Source folks entirely. It did this by getting in touch with several of the principals, including rms, esr and Linus, and pretty much just letting them talk. This is often a good idea, especially when the principals involved are thoughtful, creative, articulate and intellectually curious.

What emerged was a clear picture of the history of Free Software/Open Source, how "Open Source" came to be the dominant name, and the essential differences between the two: Free Software advocates want all software to be free because it's a Good Thing. Open Source advocates want particular software to be open because it's a Useful Thing. It may not surprise the attentive reader that I tilt toward the latter.

There are ironies along the way, for example a small one in Netscape adopting Open Source not through grassroots activism by engineers -- though this did occur -- but because it was eventually imposed from the top down by management; a large one in that the entire Open Source movement, which is at best indifferent to rms' s central goal of making all software free, depends crucially on GNU code and even more crucially on the GPL [more precisely: on the GPL and licenses directly influenced by it]. Rms himself points this out in his acceptance of the Linus Torvalds award at the 1999 Linux world. Linus's daughters trot back and forth behind him on stage all the while.

If you're looking for a spirited debate over Open Source vs. not-open, you won't find it -- except for an early quote from Bill Gates (who did not directly participate), there are no dissenting voices. If you're looking for knock-down, drag-out Linux vs. Windows, as the marketing collateral implies, you won't find that either. And a good thing. Revolution OS is a much more a chance to put a human face on the names you see floating around and get an idea of what they were thinking. Considered from that point of view, it succeeds nicely.


But I didn't really set out to write a movie review here. I really just wanted to share something amusing I ran across while chasing a link from a link from a page I looked up out of curiosity after watching the movie. This is from Jamie Zawinski, who has done more Open Source development than most of us, I would wager. Zawinski says:

But now I've taken my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry. Now I'm in a more honest line of work: now I sell beer.

Specifically, I own the DNA Lounge nightclub in San Francisco. However, it takes quite a lot of software to keep the place running, because we do audio and video webcasts twenty-four hours a day, and because the club contains a number of anonymous internet kiosks. So all that code is also available.

This all sounds fine and noble, and I like the design decisions, but I have to wonder: Just how anonymous can an internet kiosk be in a nightclub full of webcams? Checking sports scores without having to establish an account anywhere? Sure. Plotting world domination? Maybe not so much.

By the way, this turns out to be post number 300. I made a production of 100 and 200, but from here on out I probably won't until some more significant milestone. Hmm ... 100π is about 314 ...

Is Netflix/Roku a web application?

Already sounds like one of those tail-chasing exercises where it all depends on your definitions, doesn't it? Or, put more kindly, a case where exploring the question is more valuable than any particular answer that might pop out. Let's try that angle [if you just want a review of the box, see here] ...

On the one hand, how could a set-top box be a web application? All you do is pick movies and watch them. There's no browser. You could say that picking a movie from the queue is like chasing a link but it seems more like a plain old menu. In particular, it feels a lot like picking a movie on demand with cable, except a little smoother and nicer. If the Netflix box is a web application you might as well say digital cable is, too.

On the other, the web is an essential part of the experience. You can't set up your queue without it. You can't even activate a box without going to the Netflix web site. The web interface isn't necessarily the most visible part of the picture, but it's definitely there.

In one of the earliest posts here, I tentatively defined the web as "all resources accessible on the net." I still like that definition -- it seems a little broad, but I'm not sure how to narrow it without cutting out too much -- and by that definition the box is definitely part of the web, and would (arguably) be even if the movies themselves didn't come in over a net connection.

If anything, the split between setting up the queue (webby) and watching (not so webby) bolsters the idea that the web is mostly about metadata -- relatively small bits of information about things, like in this case which movies are on your queue -- and not so much about large chunks of raw data like songs and movies.

Does this matter? From one point of view it's all pretty arbitrary, but questions like "is it the internet or not?" or "is it the web or not?" may matter quite a bit if you're down in the trenches fighting business and legal battles about who gets to charge whom how much for what. It will probably all shake out in the long term, but I can imagine it mattering at least for a while whether something is a "data service" or a "video service" or whatever.

I'm completely guessing here. I'm not a lawyer, and even less a businessperson.

Media convergence and divergence

Technically, it's game over.

There's no reason why a box like Roku's Netflix box [reviewed here] couldn't be used to deliver current TV shows, live events, premium cable content, whatever. And in fact, it looks like you can get just that kind of service from DSL providers (well, maybe you can -- it's not available where I am yet). Boxes like Apple TV are also in the mix; the streaming aspect is there, albeit downplayed.

There are some concerns about bandwidth on the backbone, but Cisco says it's manageable, and they're allowing for a sizable chunk of peer-to-peer traffic, which may (or may not) become less of an issue if people are happy with what they can get directly from the providers. If I can see a given movie anytime I want as part of a $10/month subscription, why would I hassle with copying it peer-to-peer? But maybe that's just me.

So somewhere around now, give or take a couple of years, is the point where in major markets it's technically reasonably easy to get all the media you want via the net, media meaning audio, video, phone (i.e., two-way point-to-point audio) and the web. At some point not too much later than that point -- again whether it's already happened or about to happen depends on your definitions -- it's all available in a mobile environment. Just take a more-or-less broadband mobile connection and use it instead of your wired connection. QED.

Technically, media convergence is here, and if technology were all that mattered we'd be about done. For better or worse, however, technology is only part of the show, and often not the part in charge. In this case, the real drivers are two divergent views of convergence: the consumer's view and the providers' view.

As a consumer, I want a complete mix-and-match free-for-all with the flexibility of the "pocket-thing" scenario. I can get my bits delivered any way I like and don't care which particular means is in effect at any given time. I can get whatever bits I like delivered without caring too much who's providing them, and in all cases I can easily pick how they're actually rendered useful to me.

If that's a bit too abstract (it seems a bit too abstract to me and I wrote it), here are some concrete examples of what that means:

• I could switch from, say, cable to DSL or WiMax or whatever tomorrow and, apart from performance, not notice the difference -- I could watch the same shows, keep the same phone number, listen to the same music, etc., etc.
• I get the same services when traveling as when at home, though again I may be dealing with a better or worse internet connection on the road. My services are tied to me, not to a particular location or device.
• If I want a particular bit of content -- a movie or a TV show, for example -- it doesn't matter whether I've got cable, DSL or something else, or where I am.
  

Providers, on the other hand, tend to take a different view. Convergence means you get all your media through them. They'd just as soon not have it be too easy to switch to a different provider tomorrow, and if you have to pay them again to access something on the road, so much the better. Hey, they're in business to make money and their interests are only partially aligned with yours.

My particular view is that the consumer will tend to win in the long run, but it will take a while and proceed in fits and starts. If what's provided gets too far out of line with what people want and what the technology can do, new players will step in and steal business from the existing ones. This tends to bring things back in line. The new players start to lose their competitive advantage, commoditization sets in, competition becomes harsher, weaker players are shaken out and competition wanes.

This lets the remaining players cash in and service once again get out of line with what people want and the technology will do. Which is where we came in ...

Interestingly, in the bullet points I gave above, video is the odd one out. Switching both land-line and mobile phone providers is fairly transparent. If you switch ISPs, your email accounts still work, and the web is the same, well, world-wide.

My guess is that this is at least partly because the technology for reasonable video over the net is only starting to become widely available, and that the Netflix/Roku box is an early participant in this particular cycle of innovation and shakeout. It's going to be an interesting time to be a studio or TV network, not to mention a cable or satellite TV company.

Netflix/Roku review

The Netflix set-top box I ordered came in this weekend. It's about the size of a small CD box set, all clean straight lines, black with a single white LED on the front. Ordering it, I'd had two concerns: technology and selection. Would the box be able to deliver a clear, steady picture, or would there be dropouts as it dealt with our local broadband connection? Can you have 10,000 titles to choose from but nothing to watch?

First, the technology works. Nicely. The hardest part of setting up the box was moving my honking big old-school TV so I could hook up the cable (and then negotiating the TV's menu to get it to show the right input). The second hardest part was putting in my WEP key in its full hexadecimal glory. This is really a problem with the router -- I've had to do that with everything I've hooked up. Roku makes even this about as easy as can be, especially considering that all you have to work with at that point is a screen and a remote with nine buttons.

Once it's connected, watching movies is easy. Netflix gives you an "Instant" queue, parallel to the regular one. You can flip through the contents of that queue on the screen. The titles show up as DVD cover images with a text caption. When you select a title, you see the description. If you pick something with multiple parts, like a TV series, you can easily select the episode you want, or the next episode if you've just finished one. Once you make a selection, the box spends a few seconds filling its buffers and you're off and running.

I'm not a "show every last sub-pixel" videophile, so your mileage may vary, but for my money the picture was just great: sharp and steady and at least as good as the regular cable feed. I kept waiting for some sort of glitch but so far it hasn't happened.

You can pause just like a DVD. Fast-forward/rewind is a bit different. You see a series of stills taken every so often either side of where you left off. You can scan through these just like you can scan through your queue. It would be nice to be able to scan through the contents of the buffer, so you could go back a second or two to replay that line you just missed, but for finding your place it seems to work well.

What about the selection? That's largely a matter of taste, of course. The current catalog tends heavily toward older releases and direct-to-DVD fare, lots of Night of the Obscurities II: The Relapse and such. Even so, with 10,000 titles to choose from, a high chaff/wheat ratio isn't necessarily a problem. That latest release you want almost certainly won't be there, but many older hits will be, along with back episodes of popular TV series and a smattering of interesting-but-not-blockbuster offerings.

Netflix makes no bones about the "Instant" selection being more limited. From their point of view it's a supplement to their DVD service, and that's still the main attraction. If you want that latest release, you'll have to put it in your regular queue and wait for the DVD to show up.

On the other hand, they say that they're working to expand the instant offerings. From the looks of it, they're doing this even as I write. The bottleneck seems mostly to be negotiating with the studios, who largely seem to be playing wait-and-see. My guess is that if the box turns out to be a hit -- which it might very well -- the studios will be more forthcoming, at least with older releases. Realistically, though, the box will continue to be the poor cousin for a while.

I could also imagine a "premium instant" service, where for more than the base $10/month you could get more choices, but that probably will have to wait until the studios are comfortable with the technology.

So should you get one? I'd say take a good look at the selections on Netflix and if it looks like you can find enough there to justify $100 for the box (and $10/month if you don't already belong to Netflix), go for it. Netflix says that this Roku box is "likely to be the lowest cost Netflix ready device for the foreseeable future". I hate that kind of sales pitch, but in this case it's probably true.

Netflix Roku box on order

I've gone ahead and ordered Netflix's set-top box, made by Roku. Due to high demand, it'll be a couple of weeks before it arrives, but I'll post a review when I've had a chance to play with it [as promised, the review is here].

Netflix, content and pipes

Previously, I pondered what cable companies would make of Netflix's new set-top box [reviewed here], which would seem to compete with existing on-demand video services, but also drive up demand for broadband internet. Hardly was the virtual ink dry before I ran across this item: Time Warner, under pressure from shareholders, is spinning off its cable business and is now, according to one analyst, "headed toward being a pure content company."

So, at a guess, and keeping in mind that besides not being a lawyer I'm also not a financial analyst, this might make everyone happy. Time-Warner gets to distribute its content however it likes, including via Netflix if that makes sense. Netflix sells boxes and rents movies, and the cable arm should do OK as long as it can sneak any money it loses in on-demand rentals into higher prices for its broadband service -- perhaps by making sure that the "regular" broadband service doesn't carry Netflix's movies quite as well as the "premium" version.

The new black box in town

Netflix has finally announced its long-rumored set-top box [reviewed here]. The box, made by Roku, is $99 and the service is $9 a month (it's included with any Netflix subscription except the $5 entry-level special). There are a couple of catches:

• Obviously, you'll need broadband. The service promises "near DVD-quality", that is, somewhere around a megabit. I don't know if they can send you HD if you've got the bandwidth for it but if you live in the States, you probably don't so the question is moot.
• The selection is limited. In particular, the studios are still leery of putting out their latest releases on the internet, so you won't get those. In all, about 10,000 titles are available, compared to the 100,000 they offer by mail.

Hmm ... anyone remember when movie theaters had one (count it, one) screen and there were three TV networks plus the odd UHF station playing Our Gang, The Munsters and Laurel and Hardy re-runs? Now 10,000 titles is "limited". Progress, I suppose.

"Broadband" in the states won't support live HD, but if the box had enough storage on board you could get HD sort-of-on-demand. Ask for your selection when you leave for work and it'll be there when you get home, probably, assuming no one else wants to do much with the internet connection during the day. Faster than waiting for a DVD in the mail, but interestingly, not a lot faster.

I would be surprised, though, if the box had anywhere enough storage on board for a full HD movie. My guess is it's enough to buffer a few minutes in case of net.hiccups, and Wikipedia's entry on Roku (the manufacturer) seems to support this.

Even at near-DVD resolution and a "limited" selection, I'm expecting the things to sell like hotcakes. For about the price of a premium movie channel package you get orders of magnitude more selection with comparable picture quality (if the quality isn't at least comparable, the whole thing will be dead on arrival). If they do sell, the projected video flood of the internet comes one sizable step closer.

In the case of households with cable, a chunk of video traffic that now goes over the provider's system and then down the cable to the TV will shift to going over the backbone to the cable provider and thence to the TV. In other words, the net shift is from the provider's system onto the backbone. The obvious solution is to put Netflix's servers at the upstream end of the cable (but see this post for a slightly different take).

Whether this happens depends on how the cable companies feel about their newfound "co-opetition". If you're in the bandwidth business, you love Netflix's box. If you're in the content business, maybe not so much.