I don't think this is completely off-topic, but I wanted to throw
this out there and see if somebody could point me in the right
direction.
I've been trying to do some cost estimates for streaming video, just
to get an idea of what some clients need to come up with in terms of
funding. I was curious whether there were any white papers or
studies on the cost per user to support a streaming video website.
I'm trying to get a rough estimate of how much it would cost to buy
servers, license software, secure bandwidth, colocation, etc. In
this case, I'm trying to get an idea of what it might cost to run a
website with 5000 users receiving streaming video.
I was really curious about the per user charge because I remember the
reason the company I used to work for didn't want to continue
distributing CD-ROMs was the cost per disk. At the time, the
Internet was "Free", but those days are gone. Internet broadcasting
seems to be problematic from a cost POV because the more people you
have "tuning in", the more it costs you per user to support them, at
least at certain levels. If you have 500 people connected, you could
probably get by with two servers, one for simple html requests, the
other to serve video. But you reach a point where you have too many
people for a single server and your costs jump in order to set up
farms. With a CD-ROM based distribution, your cost per user goes
down as you have more people to a certain point (i.e, the cost of
postage would never drop, but cost per CD goes down as you increase
production, up to the point of diminishing returns).
With the slow rollout of broadband and the looming proposition that
users will be capped in the future, isn't CD-ROM distribution cheaper
and more reliable than web distribution? You can provide broadband
to anyone with a mailbox. I've always felt that CD-ROMs with the
ability to connect and do small data updates via the web are a much
better means of providing multimedia to users.
After the death of the CD-ROM (according to the press), everyone
scurried, but are there any resources out there comparing the costs
of both or each individually that you can compare against?
Thanks,
Matthew
--
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"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
-Joseph Campbell
Matthew Rigdon
email@hidden
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