New P2P TV projects

Its looking like the Main-stream capitalists are getting in on the act, this is BETA testing:

http://www.theveniceproject.com/

A good looking half way house open sources but for mainstream content:

http://www.zudeo.com

Problem with the backbone of the internet and the shortsighted nature of the corporate Tec development:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061219-8449.html

The alt-development by www.participatoryculture.org is looking good but is somewhat stalled from bugs and feature creep:

http://videobomb.com/

Is the democratic sieving of internet video – it is a good idea and functions – but the needs to be versions that concentrate on different subjects otherwise the soft porn and comedy will dominate and hid more in-depth content. Currently I don’t think it is open sources so people can’t use the code base to do there own version.

http://www.getdemocracy.com/broadcast/

This is the broadcast app – agen it is good and well thought out, but is too buggy to use and the is no date for the next upgrade/bug fix. As it stands it is useless for publishing any thing but a test channel.

http://www.getdemocracy.com

Is the player app, the last two version have been too buggy to use, the current one is more functional but doesn’t seam to function with the companion broadcast mashion app. Its basic functionality is good but seams to be suffering form feature creep.

https://channelguide.participatoryculture.org/

Problems with soft porn and lack of substances to most channels, the idea of RSS feeds being traditional TV channels isn’t really working as the just isn’t anufe content to fill a secdual on any one channel – so the need to be a playlist generator which takes all the different channels and creates with a templated traditional TV look and feel.

Co-operative subtitling

dotSUB is a set of unique browser tools for subtitling film from one language into any other language. You should check it out looks intresting.

Were we are - offlineTV

The project is well under way - Broadcast application (BM) and the user application (DP) are written all we need now is the play list generator to achieve a TV like look and feel for the jumble of video that is internet TV.

Scripting the play list

* Key words

- Categories

* Connections

- Playlist timing/placement

We need to implement a meta-data box in BM application and a default collection of key words for each channel. This will allow the placing the video items in to categories – then ordering these categories in the playlist order with inserts and achieve video updates.

The needs to be an option to make the channel “insert RSS feed” invisible/visible as the small video snippets will just clutter/confuse the video programming listings.

It will work with words and numbers

* for each video, keyword with number 1-10

* for each channel, keyword with number 1-10

Play list engine

This will be an add-on to the Democracy Player application. The channel will have key words, in playlist order, then the will be some “fuzzy logic” to match the downloaded video’s to this channel template. And “hard logic” to add the inserts & updates to playlist.

A channel template – a sample news program

*intro logo – segment

- news shorts (animated photos/VO 20-30 sec each)

* main segments

-video shorts 1-5 min

- with any updates

* comedy/fluffy dog story

- video/flash

* sports?

*weather/climate change story.

You can choose

The idea is that we don’t hardcode pre-define what people add to there channel – though in the default install this is done quite tightly. They can then add any RSS feed to the mix and as long as it has appropriate meta data it will fit into our channel mix.

RSS channels

*offlinetv

* environment

*labor news

*direct action

*positive alternatives

- tree hugger TV

* region/city

- news from the Balkans

* music

* technology

- rocket bome

Budget

We already have a basic office funded and good internet connectively. We need a years funding to pay for 3 part time jobs

* outreach/training (12,000)

* office/training (12,000)

*programming/training (12,000)

- office expenses (500)

- server expenses (500)

- equipment (3x cameras, 3xlaptops 6000)

- travel (5000)

- subsistence (5000)

- local production budgets (12x500=6000)

Total 59,000 for one year. We apply for foundation funds to support the project for the first 3 years then really on viewer donations/subscriptions/sponsorship and possibly ethical advertising to make the project self sustaining in the long term. We use cross subsidies from the mainstream revenue to support the alt-media production.