From broadcast television to Internet audio/video: techniques and tools for VCR-style interactivity

One of the new applications evolving in the Internet is streaming audio/video. A major reason for the growing popularity of Web broadcasting is the compelling new services that can be ooered by streaming digital content. Internet-based services are being developed which offer the same look, feel, and functionality as traditional broadcast television. In addition, new, \value-added" services, like VCR-style interactivity and video hyperlinks are being developed. Interest in these Internet-based services has contributed to a push to develop similar services for the broadcast television market. We are poised both on the verge of seeing the development of new paradigms for interacting with audio/video, and on seeing the merging of broadcast television and Internet-based broadcasts. Before this process can be considered successful, a number of technical challenges, derived from the various ways in which content is physically delivered, must be solved. In this paper, we focus on the value-added service of VCR interac-tivity. VCR interactivity has long been a challenge for both broadcast television and streamed Internet audio/video. The challenge is how to provide individualized playout for content being streamed to a large group of users using one-to-many delivery. While some new companies are starting to ooer devices which provide this kind of service for broadcast television, there are still numerous technical challenges for the Internet-based version of a similar service. This paper has a threefold objective. First, we describe the types of services available in the traditional broadcast infrastructure and compare these to the types of services that are deployed or possible in Internet-based services. Second, we describe our attempts to implement some of the more challenging and novel service types. In particular, we examine client-based control of programs streamed over the Internet to tens, thousands or even millions of users. Finally, we discuss the impact of these services on the protocols and applications used to support Internet-based, multi-party conferencing.