Zapping with the mouse

One of the pleasures that the common human being and couch potato has is to sit in the armchair of his house, take the remote control of his television and walk through the channels that his cable or satellite service allows. The Internet redoubles its bet: to offer those who browse (perhaps not so comfortable in their armchair, it is true) an indefinite number of channels to observe, between which you can pass with a simple click of the mouse.

Video streaming (that is, the transmission of images with continuous flow through a network of computers) promises a more than interesting fight between the companies that have positioned themselves very strongly in the segment: Apple (with QuickTime), Microsoft (with Windows Media) and Real Networks (with Real System). Basically, these technologies have a common utility: to generate and play multimedia content (audio, video) on the Internet and other digital media.

Apple's product was born more than ten years ago as an initiative to incorporate audio and video into computers. In addition, it is one of the few "manzanita" developments that have been strongly pushed for the Intel platform.

Microsoft, for its part, includes Windows Media with the operating system package. The great massiveness that "windows" have in the world of computing, makes practically all computer users have this technology inside their equipment.

"We are committed to integration," says Martín Romero, a specialist in operating systems at Microsoft. One of the great advantages of our technology is that it integrates naturally with the entire Windows environment." While Romero can't pinpoint how many Windows Media users there are, he does say that "many users don't know they have this technology pre-installed, so they download from the internet anyway."

The surprise in this market is given by Real Networks, a company founded only in 1995, based in Seattle (United States), which has achieved an excellent positioning in a very short time. According to data provided by this organization, 90% of PC users in the United States have the RealPlayer player installed, and 85% of the websites that offer streaming content use RealSystem.

The first background fight is given by the development of the standard. The three companies do their homework, but separately. This generates some conflicts, as described by Santiago Cuenya, Apple's sales manager for the Southern Cone: "The independent work of three organizations in technology, slows down other content generation companies, because until they have a generic and accepted standard, they must multiply their efforts and think about the number of users in different environments."

It is estimated that MPEG (Motion Pictures Expert Group) will establish the only universal standard for video streaming . This organization has already shown MPEG-4, the new standard, which still lacks licensing details and which could be the starting point that all technologies on the market support as the first step towards a generalization.

Apple has already adopted this standard. "QuickTime had certain proprietary extensions, such as the mov, and adopted some encoders for the sole fact that it was the best thing on the market at the time, but today it aspires to become the best MPEG-4 player in the industry," says Cuenya.

However, the road to a single standard is not just around the street. Héctor Goldín, president of Maxim Software (an Argentine consultancy specializing in digital video), affirms that "there are no signs that there will be a concentration of formats, but that there is a very clear struggle between the three leading companies."

In this context, each one puts the best of itself to win the race. Apple is betting on a commercial history linked to creative professionals and the age of its technology that, as mentioned, has been in the market for ten years. Real Networks takes advantage of the situation of having hit first, seeing streaming as a business in itself before its two competitors. Microsoft's strategy, finally, is to capture the mass audience of its operating system. "We offer a high-quality product, incorporated with Windows and that is completely free, unlike our competitors who charge for the most complex components," Romero says.

Three companies are fighting to become leaders in the world of streaming. The race is even: each company manages its numbers and there is no very defined market share . Anyway, concrete values could not be achieved because the three companies include their products in all kinds of media: operating systems, digital cameras, audio CDs, DVDs, games, among many others.

However, there are some numbers. According to data provided by Apple, between downloads, distribution with video and photographic cameras and other delivery mechanisms, there are already more than 250 million copies of QuickTime on the market. The company also assures that its player has 80 million users who downloaded it from the web, which represents more than the 75 million that come out of the sum of RealPlayer and RealOne, the two products of Real Networks.

"If you check the video streaming requested in HotBot, for example, the number of images for QuickTime is greater than the sum of content for Microsoft and Real," says Santiago Cuenya. Windows Media there will be as many as operating systems of "the window" of the market.

Beyond these numbers, the question that remains is where exactly the business is here. Most related products are free and those sold are too professional to grab a large market. In principle, it can be said that both Real Networks and Apple have several components related to streaming that are for sale and that can represent a small business in itself, but the projects go much further.

In the short term, the business would be given by strategic alliances. For example, Real Networks closed agreements for companies such as Nec, Hitachi, Philips or TiVO to include their players in the devices they manufacture: handheld computers, mobile phones, video recorders, MP3 music players or DVD players, among many other alternatives. Apple, for its part, placed its QuickTime in 150 models of digital video recorders and built an agreement with Sun Microsystems and Ericsson to generate a solution for the development and distribution of multimedia content that can be dumped to any type of device. Microsoft bets on its long-standing partners to accompany it in this move as well.

Thinking a little more long-term, Goldín explains that "the basic business would aim to have television channels through the web, which would give in an interactive TV: I watch a program with a commercial and I can buy right there what that advertising offers me." This would imply a profound cultural and paradigm shift that, according to Goldín, is not yet resolved. "It is true that the formats are compressing better and that the bandwidth is getting bigger, but today the quality is still bad and I know very few people who enjoy a television broadcast through the web, except for very specific cases such as a conference given in another country."

The scent of digital television is floating in the air. Streaming, on the one hand, and DTV, on the other, are the first two steps taken by two media such as the internet and television on the road to integration. "The question is whether we will have a TV with a computer inside or a computer with a TV inside," concludes Goldín.