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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

QuickTime Broadcaster Available 61

Posted by pudge from the my-own-little-tv-studio dept.
firegate writes "A lot of people have been thrilled since the release of Apple's Open Source Darwin Streaming Server. Unfortunately, to stream live video, you previously had to buy a product called Sorenson Broadcaster (Win/Mac). Apple has now released a tool called QuickTime Broadcaster which accomplishes the same task, except this product is free. From what I understand, this application is a scaled-down version of Sorenson's Broadcaster. Apple has only released a Mac OS X version of the program for now, so I guess that we PC guys will need to keep buying the Sorenson product for now. Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be."
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QuickTime Broadcaster Available More

QuickTime Broadcaster Available

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  • If they're giving it away for free (as in beer, presumably), how is it going to be profitable for Windows/Linux? They're already not making a profit on the MacOS X version. The whole point is that a profitable one already exists - the Sorenson Broadcaster. It's not free. The point of the story was that Apple's Quicktime Broadcaster is free.
  • They'll be selling more machines, and making more profits, if they don't port it to linux or windows.
    • Let me clarify that: If someone wanted to run this free utility, then they could buy a mac and then set it up to run the server. Giving away free code is not a profitable business model, so they're enticing broadcasters to switch by making it only available for Mac. If they made it for PC and GNU/Linux, then they would have no additional sales potential.
    • I think that you are missing the idea that propritary video just doesn't sell.

      First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft -- and maybe they'll actually be able to compete with RealNetworks. By not porting their server, they won't have a leg up, because Quicktime will only stream from one platform -- and that's a server platform that has yet to prove itself in any marketplace (yes, BSD has -- but the Mac server has decidedly not).

      The question that you need to address here before you talk about revenues, is this: What is Apple selling with Quicktime?

      Encoding software?
      Value-adds to their basic streaming media player?
      A server for streaming media?

      I believe that the former two are being sold, and the latter, given away. If they give away the application server and the basic player, it will potentially expand their marketplace for what they do sell (encoding software, and add-ons for the player). Mind you, the two pieces where they are able to make money on Quicktime have been ported to both Linux and Windows.

      Basically, what I'm getting at is that nobody is going to buy a Mac server just so they can stream QuickTime. Apple just does not have that kind of hold on the marketplace. Why would anyone do that when their existing infrastructure is already largely Windows or Unix (ie, non Apple-Unix) which can stream MS or Real media?

      The answer: they won't -- Apple can't force that market segment to buy its hardware to run its streaming software -- Quicktime just isn't that good...Apple knows this, and the market knows it. If Apple completely owned the marketplace for streaming video (ie Quicktime was the standard for streaming video) then Apple would succeed in forcing people to buy their hardware...but let's be realistic here. This is why its not only a smart idea for Apple to port to other platforms -- its significantly more profitable than trying to force people to buy their hardware.


      -Turkey
      • J-Turkey wrote:

        "I think that you are missing the idea that propritary video just doesn't sell.

        First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft"

        Uh - FYI Broadcaster *does* stream standard compliant video playable from any platform with free viewers. Ever heard of MPEG 4? From their website: [apple.com]

        MPEG-4: QuickTime Broadcaster delivers ISO-compliant audio and video. Any MPEG-4 compliant player can receive your broadcast event--making it the perfect way to reach large numbers of viewers for corporate meetings, online courses, keynote addresses, entertainment and other special events.

        There are alternatives for streaming MPEG 4, but his one is free - and Macintosh only.

        Quote: If they give away the application server and the basic player...

        They do.

        BTW - "Quicktime" isn't a file format, or straming format per se. Quicktime is media platform bundling and encompassing many codecs. What you're probably confusing this with is the older .mov file format which is only playable by the Quicktime Player AFAIK. The Quicktime players is actually able to compress and decompress many standards, and many prop. file formats such as flash. Quicktime is capable of streaming and playing both MPEG2 and MPEG 4.

        • First of all -- I don't appreciate your tone.

          Second, I need to correct myself. What I intended to say was:
          If they give away the application server and the basic player...
          What I meant, was ...If they give away the application server and the basic player...for other operating systems...

          I understand what mpeg4 is and how it works...thank you very much (this is where I didn't appreciate your tone, and BTW, what were you trying to prove by that, anyway?).

          Where I stand corrected -- I was not under the impression that it was based on the .mov standard. I assumed that Quicktime waas similar to AVI -- which is also not a format...however, a wrapper that can make use of many different codecs (including mpeg2/4).

          In any case, this is totally semantic, and I I don't really have time to argue semantic bullshit with you. It doesn't matter anyway. You can hardly prove that Apple has been successful trying to force people into buying their hardware to use their software. It just doesn't work. It never has for them...they did alright with the iMac for a while, but then they went right back to struggling to stay in business. Fact is, that Apple cannot continue to survive by making people buy their propritary hardware. Quicktime server is no exception -- Apple needs to swallow their pride.

          -Turkey
          • >...they did alright with the iMac for a while, but then they went right back to struggling to stay in business.

            By being one of only a handful of profitable computer companies?

            From Macnn:
            "Bloomberg quotes Steve Jobs as saying "Not losing a lot of money is, unfortunately, a shining achievement in today's PC market," noting that Apple and Dell are among the few that are profitable,"

            • You're totally right...its a tricky business to stay afloat in.

              As far as the company's profitibility -- technically, you're right -- but technically, you're also wrong (disclaimer: I don't know how investors and banks evaluate this stuff, I can only relay the data here). In at the end of the last fiscal quarter, while they reported a $44 million operating profit, they reported a loss of $1.151 billion from investments -- out of that, only $79 mil was from new investments. (See their quote [marketguide.com] on yahoo [yahoo.com]).

              One way or the other, (and FWIW, I guess) it doesn't translate directly to any real profit.


              -Turkey
              • Close, actually you're looking at a cash flow statement. This is an important financial statement, but not the best one to get profitability info from. Cash flow simply shows what the company spends its money on, and where it comes from. The $1.151 billion is cash out the door during the 6 month period, they actually invested about $1.24 billion in what I assume is the bond market. CFOs are pretty leery of investing non strategic cash in the stock market, you don't always know what the value will be when you need to use the cash. Their cash flow statement is pretty confusing, because their large cash balances roll over regularly. Imagine your bank statement, if you made $2,000/mo but had cash inflows of $102,000 and outflows of $100,000.
                Profitability is easiest to see on the income statment. Apple made almost $200 million [marketguide.com] from July of last year to March of this year. They announced profits of $32 million [yahoo.com] today for the second quarter. The only other computer company I know of that made money during this period was Dell. IBM and HP made money, but not on PCs, in fact I don't think HP made money on all of their computer products put together, printers is their game. In the new spirit of disclosure, all of these figures are on a GAAP basis, so they include things like ammortization of good will and equity investment losses. None include the effects of stock options though. There are very few tech companies that still made money in 2001 after including options. Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are the only three I can currently remember.

      • First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft

        Microsoft has a streamer server that only runs on their OS. Apple has a streaming server that only runs on their OS. Now by Apple porting their streaming server to MS's OS, they will have a leg up on MS, how?

        -Brent

        • Let me ask you this:
          Does Apple need to emulate Microsoft to succeed, or find out where they can beat Microsoft and exploit that oppritunity?

          You're right -- Micrsoft has a streamer that's Windows only. This doesn't justify Apple doing the same thing. By the logic you just used, does this mean that Apple should invest $100 million (or whatever MS invested in IE) to beat Netscape in a game that won't directly win them any money? No. Not only is that not smart (for Apple), but Apple can't afford that. Apple is not in the same position that Microsoft is in, and to use what Microsoft does as an example doesn't do the discussion any justice. Microsoft can afford to only support their system -- they own a vast majority of the desktop marketshare, and a big portion of the server market! Apple simply doesn't, and they don't (have any part of the server market) at all.

          There are three players in this market: Apple, MS, and RealMedia. Yes, Microsoft has players/servers that are only for their systems...and so does Apple...and there are mpeg4 streamers out there for other platforms that are free. But Real(Whatever they're called) has a client out for just about every major server OS. This gives Real a leg up on MS and Apple. Apple needs to beat out (or at least match) Real before taking on MS in this game.

          Like it or not, Apple needs every piece of revenue can get to survive. If they write/port some software and give it away so that some of their software can be sold -- that's what they need to do.

          I have a pretty strong feeling that in the end, only one of the three companies in question will own streaming media. Technically speaking, they've got the right idea for the software...better than asf, better than rm. But if they don't get their act together and do what they need to do to sell the software that they intend to (and need to) sell -- quicktime will be a thing of the past, and Apple may be too.


          -Turkey
          • There are three players in this market: Apple, MS, and RealMedia...But Real(Whatever they're called) has a client out for just about every major server OS. This gives Real a leg up on MS and Apple. Apple needs to beat out (or at least match) Real before taking on MS in this game.
            What I meant, was that Real has a server out for nearly every platform on the market...and they are generally supported by Real.


            -Turkey
        • Apple's Streaming Server does not just run on OS X! You can run Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com] (same features as QTSS) on Linux, Solaris and Windows 2000/NT.
      • Basically, what I'm getting at is that nobody is going to buy a Mac server just so they can stream QuickTime. Apple just does not have that kind of hold on the marketplace.

        You don't have too. Darwin Streaming Server is free and the source is available (hell, there are a couple derivative projects available at Freshmeat). Oh, you want to to encode for free also? MPEG-4 and RTSP are published formats, go find some software to do it or do it youself. Oh, you want a nice packaged solution with a pretty GUI that makes it very easy? Suck it up, buy a Mac and quit your bitching.

        Fact is, that Apple cannot continue to survive by making people buy their propritary hardware.

        WHAT proprietary hardware?! The firmware on all new Macs isn't called Closed-Proprietary-Steve's-Baby-Firmware, it's called OpenFirmware for a reason. PC-100 RAM. IDE. SCSI. Firewire. USB. All the subsystem code for the OS is opensource. There is nothing that is closed about Mac hardware.

        They also posted a $32 M dollar profit today. It's down from last quarter, but they seem to be doing better than most companies these days. I think their current business plan seems to be working just well for them.

        • It looks like you're a big Mac fan.

          Frankly, I don't really care as much as you seem to about the cannonical platform argument -- after I was an Amiga freak (and saw all that money wasted), I tried to be a little bit more objective about what systems I used. In any case, there's no need to take a such a defensive stance on this...I have nothing to prove here.

          Suck it up, buy a Mac and quit your bitching.
          Hey I'm not complaining -- I'm insisting that Apple needs to further support cross-platform development in order to succeed in the video-streaming software/hardware industry...which, I might add, is extremely competitive, and difficult to stay in.

          There is nothing that is closed about Mac hardware.
          Then how come only Apple makes Apple (or Apple-compatible) computers? Oh right, they're not closed per se...but since Macintosh (or compatible) computers are not available anywhere other than from Apple it is the same as being propritary. Especially considering the fact that if you don't use their hardware, you will never get support. (Sun is open too, but I still consider their hardware propritary -- you have to buy it from Sun).

          Look -- I'm not talking about buying a streaming server for myself. I'm talking about what corporate America is going to buy -- which is Apple's intended customer for the server-side of this. You've been telling me what I can do with this -- but what does Apple support? Corporate America will not buy software/OS'es that are not supported (this is why IBM, Dell, Oracle, and RedHat, etc have been busting their ass to get it properly supported). I'm afraid that I've assumed that everything in this this paragraph was implicit in the discussion.

          In any case, I'm interested in reading your response...


          --Turkey
  • I don't think there will be a version other than for the Mac. Between the iPod and the recent TV ads, I think Jobs has finally had it, and is going to seriously compete against Microsoft.

    The funny thing is, I feel like Sun is just kidding themselves when they say they compete directly with MS - sure, MS is a big competitor for them, but they only impact a small part of MS. Apple actually competes against a large portion of MS's offerings, and they have the established reputation (and the loyalty of current customers) to possibly do well.

    Will they kill MS? I don't think so - but they stand a chance with this agressive push of "we can do things that the PC can't or can't do as well" of reclaiming some market share.

    --
    Evan

    • I wish the best to them, my next system will either be a Mac or an Ultra 2, but their 5 year agreement to have Office for Mac runs out soon, so they better be hoping Star/Open office gets really good, really quick.

  • Apple doesn't care how profitable (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EnVisiCrypt ( 178985 ) <[groovetheorist] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:08PM (#3895368)
    Apple doesn't care how profitable something could be on Windows and Linux.

    They're not trying to have the enormous grasp of three platforms. They are perfectly content to maintain their loyal following, and hopefully steal mindshare and eventually market share from the other two. They don't give a good god damn about whether a windows user would like it, because frankly, they don't want to have software on Windows beyond what is absolutely necessary (read: quicktime).

    As a newly appointed Mac user, I couldn't be happier with that strategy.

    Besides, how could it be profitable if they give it away for free?

    • Besides, how could it be profitable if they give it away for free?


      Who says the software itself has to be profitable? Apple has this serious hang-up with free software--they want to control everything on their platform. There's no good reason for all this proprietary Sorensen nonsense. I predict that if Apple continues this way, they are going to continue to fail. Of course, the logical thing to do would be to embrace Open Source software all the way and stop doing their own thing. Apart from the Open Source community, they have no chance to make any progress against Microsoft. If they would just realize this, we'd all be better off. And I might actually buy some of their nice hardware..
      • Apple has this serious hang-up with free software--they want to control everything on their platform. There's no good reason for all this proprietary Sorensen nonsense.

        What does Sorensen have to do with Apple?

        --
        Evan "Microsoft wants to control everything. There's no good reason for all this DVD regioning nonsense".

        • Precisely. Sorensen is licensed by Apple from a different company. It is *this* company that keeps the algorithm proprietary.

          • Precisely. Sorensen is licensed by Apple from a different company. It is *this* company that keeps the algorithm proprietary.


            NO crap. But it's Apple who is the biggest distributor of Sorensen and the one that promotes it through getting content to be made for it. Basically, it's a lame way to get people over to their website (while downloading the latest QT player or movie trailer).
      • >> Apple has this serious hang-up with free software--they want to control everything on their platform.

        What on earth are you talking about? QuickTime is free, Darwin and Darwin Stream Server are open source projects, for Macs and PCs.

        Do you realize that Quicktime 6 is the only thing out there that allow you to play and broadcast MPEG-4 plus virtually any other types of video and audio contents. Please remember, you ungrateful idiot, that Apple and Apple alone has fought so hard on behalf of the end users to get us the MPEG-4 license deal. Neither MS nor Real has made any commitment to MPEG-4.

        >> Apart from the Open Source community, they have no chance to make any progress against Microsoft.

        Sorry, do you care to remind us what the Open Source community has achieved in this regard.
        • Last time I was playing with the Windows Media Encoder there was an option to encode ISO-compliant Mpeg-4 streams. As for open source, VideoLAN is pretty good, except for their live streaming (only supports some random hardware Mpeg-2 encoder, last I checked). I know there are Mpeg4 streaming tools.

        • What on earth are you talking about? QuickTime is free, Darwin and Darwin Stream Server are open source projects, for Macs and PCs.


          No, sir. QuickTime is NOT free, nor available for Linux or *BSD, nor Open Source, nor nag-free. What the heck are you talking about? And Darwin? A hacked derivative of an old 2.x version of BSD? And btw, do you have the sourcecode to OS X? Can you audit it? Didn't think so. Yes, Apple endorsing MPEG-4 is a move in the right direction.. well, except that software patents are evil. Ungrateful? Why should I care. I've been using 'unofficial' open source MPEG-4 codecs for 2 years now. Check out XViD and FFMPEG.

          Sorry, do you care to remind us what the Open Source community has achieved in this regard.

          Why don't you do some research first and remind yourself. Start with Xine, MPlayer, and VideoLAN. And if you're interested in the cutting edge, have a look at the MPEG4IP, which has been doing AAC (mpeg-4 audio), mp4 encoding/streaming, etc. long before Quicktime.
      • There's no good reason for all this proprietary Sorensen nonsense.

        Um... except that Sorensen is, far and away, the best low-bit-rate codec. Period. The MPEG-4 examples I've seen are okay-- pretty good, in fact-- but they still can't come close to what you can pull off with Sorensen. That's why the trailers on Apple's movie trailer site are all encoded with Sorensen: quality.
    • As a newly appointed Mac user, I couldn't be happier with that strategy
      Shouldn't that be: newly annointed Mac user?

      (I used to be one of the faithful, but fell from grace. I'm thinking of returning however, thanks to the iBook and OSX.)

  • Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be.

    It can't be very profitable if they give it away for free. They would have to charge for it like Sorenson already does, making the free Mac streaming solution cheaper. Which is exactly the way it is and exactly the way Apple likes it.

  • I doubt Sorenson would be happy if Apple started giving away a product that contained their licensed codec in such a way that it directly competed with the product that Sorenson itself sells.

    I think the PC folks are stuck buying, while Apple users will benefit from the windfall of the long established relationship between apple and their technology partners.

    They already paid for it - they bought a Mac.
  • I remember a while ago, hearing about the MPEG-4 licencing schemes. Wasn't it like two cents per minute of live broadcast video? Since Quicktime's MPEG-4 implementation is the ISO standard, they can't even claim that they aren't using the standard specified so that they don't have to pay licensing fees. I guess MPEG-4 is going the same way as MP3, that there is someone out there who you (technically) owe money too, but nobody really cares. Sometimes I really wonder where the money is made in codecs, and remind myself that they don't always, thank you vorbis.
    • There's been some news on the licensing front. Slashdot should post it in about a month or so. The first 50000 users are free, then beyond that there's a per user fee and its capped at 1 million dollars. There are some more details here [macnn.com].

      • Also, I think the following item is rather important:

        The fees are applicable to Web site operators that benefit commercially from use of the technology, through either paid advertisements, pay-per-view services or subscriptions.

        So if you aren't making profit from your MPEG-4 encoded video, then you don't have to pay licensing fees.
    • If MPEG-4 goes the way of MP3, it'll be hugely popular, widely used, and the foundation for a new industry!

      The final MPEG-4 licensing terms were announced. For content providers, you have to pay $0.02 per HOUR (not minute) or $0.25 per subscriber, after the first 50,000 subscribers. So if you have fewer than 50,000 people looking at your content, you don't owe anything.

      Apple has to pay a couple $1M for the encoders and decoders, but that's their problem.

  • Profitable... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dogzilla ( 83896 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:46PM (#3895717) Homepage
    I'm sure Apple realizes how profitable a Windows/Linux version would be....for PC manufactures and Microsoft.

    I don't understand why everyone feels that it's Apple's job to transfer its competitive advantages to every other operating system people want to use. If you really feel that QT Broadcaster is valuable and useful - why not consider buying a Mac? OSX is unix-based, the hardware is pretty good, the price delta is pretty small, and you can even run Linux on the hardware. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
    • Ah, another Mac faithful. Eventually, we will win them over ... 'tis only a matter of time. In the words of the Borg: Resistance is futile. ;)

  • 10 steps to live web streaming (Score:3, Informative)

    by bfrog ( 586355 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:59PM (#3895823)
    1) download and install Streaming Server and Broadcaster
    2) start Streaming Server
    3) start Broadcaster and point it at Streaming Server
    4) start Movie Player and enter the URL of your Streaming Server
    5) if video doesn't stream, plug in camera and repeat step 4
    6) save movie to iDisk, in the Movies directory
    7) log into homepage.mac.com
    8) create account
    9) create new movie page, select background, and select saved movie from iDisk
    10) there is no step 10.

    • Why do you need steps 6 through 10? I don't think there's any advantage to hosting the .sdp file on homepage.mac.com, as it's just a pointer to the stream coming out of your machine anyway, right...?

      ~jeff
      • It's not an .sdp file, it's a QuickTime movie file embedded in a pretty web page that takes seconds to create using homepage.mac.com. The movie contains an SDP reference to my streaming server, but otherwise behaves like any other QuickTime movie embedded in a web page --except it's playing live audio/video from my very own broadcaster.
  • Apple has now released a tool called QuickTime Broadcaster which accomplishes the same task, except this product is free
    Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be.
    I think they realize exactly how profitable a Windows or Linux version would be: BIL. It's free, so they don't earn back development costs any faster with wider distribution. In fact, they just lose more since there has to be a porting effort to each of the other operating systems. I'm assuming its downloadable, so they lose money on bandwidth costs.
  • Currently, my church is almost entirely a PC shop (although I have snuck a mac os X server in.) However, the availability of tools like iMovie is making it increasingly atractive to move to Mac. One thing we've long wanted to do was real time web casting of our service ... well, guess what - if we can get the software free for the mac, and the mac has built-in firewire, and everything works out of the box for the mac, we'll buy a mac to do it.

    And, unlike OS9, Mac OS X is really superior to Windows. Once Macs get in the door, they stand a real chance of taking over. So, where's the profit in giving away Windows software again?

  • FYI, the "LIVE.COM Streaming Media [sourceforge.net]" software (which includes test programs) will let you stream pre-encoded MPEG-1 or 2 video and/or audio from Windows or Linux (or other Unixes). The streaming is done using open standard RTP/RTCP/RTSP protocols, so you can view the streams using any compliant player (including QuickTime Player). You can also stream live video with this software, if you have a seperate (hardware or software) encoder.

    At present the software streams MPEG-1 or 2; MPEG-4 will be supported shortly.

  • MPEG4IP [sourceforge.net] includes an open source live MPEG-4 encoder for Linux.

  • selling the xserve (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tomdarch ( 225937 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @08:28PM (#3898599)
    They will certainly keep it Mac only (at least for a while) in order to sell xserves. An xserve with free streaming software will be competetive with a WinTel box plus expensive streaming software. Thus more xserve sales.

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