Stage6: The Beginning of the End for Streaming Video
So DivX Corporation’s Stage6 has croaked. The service’s ‘goodbye, cruel word’ note says it was a victim of its own success, but that it proved ‘it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet’. What it really showed is how deliriously inefficient streaming video is, whether it’s high def or otherwise.
It cost at least $1m a month to run Stage6 with its 17.4 million unique users a month, whereas (at an informed guess) The Pirate Bay costs about $50,000 a month all-in for its 92.5 million. That’s $57,000 per million users for Stage6; $540 per million for The Pirate Bay (not including people using its tracker without visiting the site, which adds a lot of Mininova’s traffic as well, not to mention the other big indexes.) So at the very least, The Pirate Bay is a hundred and five times more efficient than Stage6 was.
But inefficiency is not the only reason the service is no more, while the vilified Pirate Bay, Mininova et al. are still with us. Stage6 was also a lot more illegal than a BitTorrent tracker — whether it pretended to be complying with the DMCA or not. Surprisingly under reported after the abrupt demise of the service was the 6th Feb US court ruling against DivX’s attempt to establish its protection under the DMCA’s safe harbour provisions ahead of a legal battle with Universal Music Group. My reading of the company’s consequent, speedy exit from the stage (and correct me if you think I’m wrong) is that Stage6 didn’t have the cash or confidence to test its luck any further. (How much this affects DivX as a whole remains to be seen. But only six days after the court decision, Jerome Vashisht Rota, the inventor of DivX and a major shareholder in DivX corporation, was openly dumping stock.)
It’s not hard to read the tea leaves. While GooTube (famously being sued by Viacom on pretty much the same grounds) probably won’t lose sleep, smaller players eating their lunches off of pirate content will be paying very close attention. VCs burning money on pushing streaming media to the masses will at least want to imagine some returns on their investment rather than the further expense of executives in the dock.
So why is the exit of Stage6 a step in the right direction? Because for all the hyperbole in the mainstream (and sometimes online) media about the YouTube or Google Video or Stage6 ‘revolution‘, the relationship to media they offer us is far too traditional. Come to this place. Be served your media (and suck down your advertising along with it). Go away again. Yes, we can upload material, but I’m not the only one who feels that this wasn’t the primary function of Stage6, even if it did distribute about 50,000 copies of STEAL THIS FILM II before its demise. No need to share, no need to understand the technology, no need to think. It’s what they called ‘lean back’ media: millions of people slouching thoughtlessly in front of an marketing-emitting portal.
The promise of P2P is a thorough breakdown of the kind of power that congeals in a portal like Stage6. A user-owned, user-operated infrastructure that doesn’t require massive investment, doesn’t by default allow oligarchs to make more money from us. A disruptive, mutable infrastructure that brings media to us in the context we choose, forcing a massive re-think about what, why and how we create — as individuals, as businesses, as a society.
It is lazy for us to rely at all on portals like Stage6, but worse than lazy, it’s dangerous. It suggests we don’t value the potential autonomy P2P offers us. Our old media masters profited from control of content: are we really so happy to swap them for new ones who profit from control of our eyeballs? However lazy we are, I think that most of us are able to see that that this isn’t a model that we want to encourage. The demise of Stage6 and the portals that will follow gives us cause to think about strengthening our infrastructures: and that can’t be a bad thing.
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Adverts are the easiest way “free” content can be profitable. So long as they are not annoying I see no harm in adverts.
hmm…BT based streaming
I liked stage6. Used to watch television shows on it. It was more efficient for me. I could watch the show in less time then it would take to download. As for profit weren’t they loosing money?
So whats all this about BBC’s iPlayer?
i don’t see the harm in the adds personally when watching a movie on a portal like stage6 i am usually watching the Movie not the adds to the average Joe the adds don’t even exist whoever wrote this article is thinking of it the wrong way yes its inefficient for them but not for the consumer most of the time you could make the video full screen and still good quality so there was no adds at all
What is he trying to say?i??iii?!
Use FireFox with Adblock Plus and NoScript and you’ll be asking yourself “what ads?”. Most people like so called “lean back” media because it doesn’t require them to think. That’s why Television is so popular. I’m proud to say that I don’t have a TV and I don’t go to sites like YouTube. I had never even heard of Stage6…
I too liked Stage6, because when it worked, it worked very good :) J.J King you do make some interesting points to muse over, however i dont think convience for the sake of some advertising is that bad a thing. I never got a pop up from stage 6, ever - compare it to Tudoo, which is slow as hell, split into 50 parts for a 30min show.. yuck!
P2P streaming will only work with increased bandwitdhs and many seeds and the absence of isp throttling. Though the ideology behind it is commendable its just not globably viable as yet due to the factors i just stated (imo).
[quote comment="307119"]So whats all this about BBC’s iPlayer?[/quote]
Its a right royal pain in thee arse is what it is! Nice idea, but DRM infected and the application by defualt is always running, i found the settings and interface unfriendly too :(
stage 6 was awesome, i shall miss it
As the comment above, I’m not really getting your point here Jamie.
You first two paragraphs is about why Stage6 shut down, then about how other players are getting sued, and lastly you talk about how streaming sucks?
wow no comments have even referred to the content of the actual article. TF readers seem to be getting dumber.
I wholehearthy agree with the entire article!
Most of those written down facts/thoughts were the one I’ve had prior to Stage6 shutting down.
I realized how really ineffective but convenient stream video is.
Streaming video would be nice if it were fixed right.
Google video have some videos you can download as an mp4. However 9/10 times
the audio comes out of sync. Too bad because the videos do look nice.
I have been trying to re-sync the videos with no luck.
Looking at the techcrunch link you provided (but chose to only use the 1$ million a month figure from), it appears stage6’s demise was not due to inefficiency or illegality. According to that article, it was the result of the DivX board being a bunch of boneheaded idiots right as they were about to secure $27 million worth of funding.
I quote: “There’s lots of speculation around why DivX is shutting the site down, ranging from piracy issues to the spiraling CDN costs of streaming all that HD content. But what really happened, according to multiple sources, is that a ridiculous battle of egos at the DivX board level caused most of the team to simply quit. DivX, essentially, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”
You could at least give that a mention instead of simply asserting piracy and inneficiency were to blame, and that there is no future for these kinds of sites.
As for your larger point about P2P and lean-back media: I tentatively agree. There are so many factors at play that it’s hard for me to look at the picture and focus only on P2P, and I can’t say much without digressing into wider perspectives and speculation.
I agree with this article, what a great perspective. For those above who don’t understand, this article is about the demise of stage6 and why we shouldn’t be moving toward big corporate owned web portals for our media. He’s saying the best thing about P2P is the fact it’s not controlled by corporations and that’s what makes it so great. Leave the power in the hands of the people instead of getting duped back into the corporations hands.
[quote comment="307119"]So whats all this about BBC’s iPlayer?[/quote]
BBC iPlayer is funded by us, the UK licence fee payer. Its basically a nice little tool to catch up on episodes of tv programs you’ve missed. Had been testing it for a while under the guise of a diffrent name before they launched it.
Sad to see Stage6 shutdown. To be fair I had watched quite a few tv episodes through it as like another person said it was alot quicker/easier/convienant to watch a stream rather than having to wait for it to download first (in a torrent case at least)
[quote comment="307115"]Adverts are the easiest way “free” content can be profitable. So long as they are not annoying I see no harm in adverts.[/quote]
Haven’t used Stage6, so the following is just a philosophical perspective.
I am a student, boarding at school, and don’t have a TV for various reasons. I read, I download TV or buy it on DVDs, I borrow movies from friends, I go for walks.
But I do have access to a TV in the common area; sometimes I’ll watch it when eating, often as not, I’ll skip it. I often go for 1-3 weeks without seeing any television.
And when I do see it, I am always blown away; how did I ever put up with this crap? How did ANYONE put up with this crap? The ONLY plausible reason I can intelligently accept, is that we didn’t know any better.
TV is adware. And it is NOT subtle about it; in fact, it is disgustingly un-subtle about it.
For instance, I watched the end of the Colbert Report; it was followed by about 3 minutes of ads.
Then I watched the South Park intro theme; which was followed by 3 minutes of ads.
Then I watched 5 minutes of South Park, followed by 3 minutes of ads.
Then I watched 6 minutes of South park, followed by 2 minutes of ads.
The advertising dosage I was receiving was absolutely insane!
Usually I watch South Park streaming, or I download a season on Friday and watch them on Saturday; they are pretty funny, and turns out there are some pretty sharp points and morals buried under the toilet humor.
Under the conditions of only watching a couple of hours TV every couple of weeks, I would gladly sit down at the dining room table, have put down a quarter/2 quarters/a dollar, and said to the guy in the suit “make the advertisements disappear”; but that’s impossible.
What is needed to break media from its mafIAA abusers has already been done, its just under legal fire.
What is needed to legalize it, for now and for the future, is finish breaking the mold*;
a) have any media on demand anytime, anywhere, from any source, etc
b) have a method of legally paying for it, where 100% of the money goes directly to the content creator and not the distributor, and where instead of only “THE BIG FOUR” content producers, we have access to EVERY content producer.
Give us content, to anything we want, from anyone we want, whenever we want it. We will fund it with our patronage [I will gladly pay $1-2 dollars to fund a good media creation, assuming I get unlimited access to it forever after].
The distribution is free, the content creators can be anyone, and the content funders should be US, ie WE THE PEOPLE [sorry; and I'm not even american:)]. The last part of this puzzle is distribution, and its ALREADY FREE!!!
*That’s right big guys, shake in your booties; the creation-technology, distribution-technology, and consumption-technology is already in the hands of the people. You keep on trying to suppress our final technology, patron-technology [e-cash]; it will come with or without you, and better without. As the last part of the technology-puzzle, it will finally succeed in cutting you entirely out of the loop.
Thank goodness this nightmare is ending!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I had no idea the torrent portals cost so much to run. I would seriously consider support through ads if only there was a way I could do it. At least we could click through. They never ask for money either except to help with legal costs. How do they do it? Knowing this I would even support paying for torrents. Perhaps this could be done on a voluntary basis.
It would have to be a very small amount per torrent though, as it quickly adds up.
I suggest detailed help for all those like myself who don’t use credit cards. Otherwise you can’t expect the support from many.
So long as the money never supported the music or movie industry in any way shape or fashion, including royalties. I’d need to see a sworn oath to that effect.
I don’t know what the hell you’re all talking about -stage 6! All I know is I download flash video from youtube. Small video file size though there’s very few movies or serials and they’re all broken up into 10 min segments. Where do we get real quality movie xvid video? Don’t see much on torrents either except fakes. Call me dumb but I don’t know anything about hashing and how would I be expected to when I haven’t seen any explanation anywhere? People don’t just KNOW these things.
[quote comment="307116"]hmm…BT based streaming[/quote]
It’s called Vuze.
@17. You’re lucky. If we want to watch anything popular, we get 3-5 mins of program, followed by 5-10 mins of moronic ads. The only thing that keeps me sane is the remote and mute button.
The cricket is amongst the worst ever of all time, as after every over there is a half min break where we get tortured by an endless barrage of bloody-minded ads. There’s only 2 or 3 shown continually which are hand selected to inflict the most harmful psychological brainwashing.
I am so switched out that I only remember one, which is the insidious TAC, the insurer that doesn’t care, because they steal from everyone and its compulsory and then waste their money on hateful spiteful ads purporting to show the consequences of speeding (1k over) and drink driving (just a little over), or not wearing a seat belt. Nowhere have I ever seen scenes of road accidents where the victims WERE said to be wearing seat belts, and were killed BECAUSE of it, which in fact happens regularly.
btw..
It is pretty useless to compare the costs of running a tracker compared to a media distribution site… While the tracker replies a few bytes for the announcing, the stage6 servers had to push gigabits of videos.. If TPB had seed boxes to aid a smooth video streaming over bittorrent, the cost of running it would quickly increase as well..
Now im not saying stage6 was good… I’m just saying, live video streaming over bittorrent is not feasible. We would end up with maybe a 1000 watchable clips which have a lot of seeds, and everything else would be buffering at 4KB/s…
I miss Stage6, that was my only source for good docus. BT is fine, but you don’t find many docus and older stuff (Stage6 also had a lot old movies).
Good point. Never enjoyed corporate stuff because of restricted content.
Long live freedom of p2p. I want to watch gore and porn? Youtube, you can’t help me!
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