Service Quality Takes Front Row

Today, people accept jittery video from poor connections, inadequate bandwidth, and temperamental video players, but as more high-value content moves online, dragging ad revenues along with, advertisers will demand better quality. And so will you.

Brightcove, KickApps, Move Networks, and Maven Networks all get the clear picture. Individually, the companies, who provide video services to content owners, are working to develop standards that deliver high-quality internet TV with quality-of-service levels similar to those offered by the telecommunications industry for traditional broadcast networks.

But for now — as Lifegoggles demonstrated with its comparison of 44 different embeddable vidieo players a while back — ogling at internet television content leaves quality to the eyes of the beholder.

Nick Troiano, Maven senior vice president of sales and business development, says Maven has plans to set quality guideline similar to QoS standards. This week the company said it would add Keynote Systems’ streaming test and measurement application to its platform to let publishing companies test, track and monitor performance of streaming media. The technology will give content owners insight to troubleshoot problems to ensure they provide the same quality as broadcast television to consumers, a necessary requirement as traditional media companies build an industry that distributes professional content online.

The lack of quality of service is probably one of the major problems in the internet TV industry. There are so many different types of computer systems, and not everyone runs Flash 9, says David George, KickApps executive vice president of business development and client services. Just because people are developing the content based on standards that offer the best quality, it doesn’t mean people they have the functionality on their machines to support the service, so internet TV companies need to rely on the back-end infrastructure, servers and monitoring tools to provide the best support they can.

You and I, as the consumers, become the winner in the long run.