WimLive – live streaming that makes economic sense

With WimLive the WimTV platform makes available another service to WimTV users: the ability to offer live streaming services with a simple way to get paid for the service, possibly in combination with other parties.

Off line monetization of events has never been a problem. Also on line monetization of large scale events is not a problem. However, on line monetization of medium-to-small scale live events is an uphill battle because:
1. Setting up and maintain a live streaming service may entail significant costs
2. The cost of collecting payments may easily offset the revenues
3. If more parties are involved it may be difficult to establish trusts between parties.

WimLive has solved these problems. Let’s follow a simple yet quite realistic walkthrough by looking at the picture below.

As you can see, everyone can stream own live events independently, deciding whether to transmit to his audience for free or in pay-per-view mode. In addiction, the system also offers the possibility of make live streaming in cooperation with other entities, dividing the proceeds among all participants. In particular:


1. An Event Organiser holding rights to an event makes an agreement with an Event Reseller to promote and distribute events to end users and agree on revenue sharing (this step is not needed if there is no Event Reseller)
2. The event takes places and a cameraman shoots the scene and sends the digital stream to WimTV
3. An end user clicks on the event, pays and watches the event
4. The payment is split between WimTV and Event Organiser
5. Payments are split also with the Event Reseller in case promotion and distribution is done by a third party.

WimLive is a Unified solution for on demand and live video where
- An arbitrary number of parties may claim rights to event
- Revenues are accredited to each party as soon as payments are effected
- WimTV plays the role of trusted third party
- WimLive entails very low administrative costs
- Can be easily integrated with other application platforms (Moodle…)

Who are the typical WimLive users?
1. Hotel chains
2. Organisers of cultural, musical and sport events
3. Companies offering training courses
4. Small to medium size film makers
5. Local TVs
6. And many more...

To run a WimLive event you need to 
1. Register on WimTV as a WebTV
2. Sending an email to sales@wimlabs.com to get a URL
3. Input a few data (date, time, duration, price to watch the event etc.)
4. And go!

Video on the web

Traditional Television is a consolidated business that exists since lots of years (¾ of a century). It is a complex environment, but it can be roughly divided in two blocks. The upstream block, made up of content producers, syndicators, distributors, and the downstream block: TV channels who distribute content to end users. The two blocks are well connected, and content produced by the upstream is licensed piece-by-piece to the downstream part of the environment.

In commercial TV, advertisers and ad agencies help feeding the chain that brings content from producers to end users by footing their bill.

Similarly, “video on the web” can be summarised as follows: an upstream block, typically made up of individual videomakers, provides content to the downstream block, who serves end users.

Unlike traditional TV, here there is a lot more content, more and more people watching it, but it looks like just a few players are making business to an extent that is largely unknown. A new web TV appears online, with 500 videos. End users start watching it, but after some time they want new content, and the web TV itself is not able to renew its catalogue so quickly. Some videos are self-produced, but not enough... How to find the right content providers for its audience? The up and downstream block are weakly connected, content producers are many but it is difficult to establish a relationship with them.

On top of that, web TVs that have a little audience are not appealing for advertisers, and for web TVs it is not easy to find other sources of revenue.

wim.tv is creating an alternative environment. In wim.tv there are content producers, syndicators, web TVs, advertisers, ad agencies and end users: both the upstream and downstream blocks exist.

Creators can upload their videos and license them to syndicators and web TVs, at their own conditions. Web TVs can easily find videos for their catalogues from creators and syndicators, thus reducing the cost of settling business relationships with content producers.

Advertisers can create their own video ad campaigns, define a target and find the right web TVs to reach it.

Every time a certain video ad is served by a web tv to an end user, the corresponding advertiser pays an amount, and remunerates all those who took part to the presentation of the ad to the end user (web tv, video creator, and intermediaries).

Riccardo Chiariglione

A roadmap to converging video services

Despite the rosy pictures we are often shown of encroachment of new media in the TV turf and the support of statistical evidence suggesting that more people spend more time with non-TV video, TV is as healthy as ever. In a recent Nielsen report Americans are said to have watched more TV in 2010 than ever before: total viewing of broadcast networks and basic cable channels is up ~1 percent, i.e. ~34 hours per person per week.

“Conservative” extensions of TV to the web like Hulu, Netflix or Apple TV are reported to fare rather well. On the other hand “innovative” attempts at integrating the television and “web video” experiences, like Google TV, receive mixed reports and see their deployment delayed.

The issue is further complicated by the underground battle around the enabling technologies to be adopted for streaming video to the end user via the internet. In the “analogue TV” age Consumer Electronics (CE) has thrived by adhering to established standards. In the now consolidated “digital TV” age CE has kept on thriving based on established standards. Should the “TV on the web” age be dominated by a handful of behemoths brandishing their technologies as a weapon to preserve and extend their walled gardens?

Judging from the number of initiatives addressing the need for standards in this space, one would say that the relevant industries do think that proprietary technologies should not be the only game in town. Unfortunately most initiatives have issued or are in the process of issuing specifications that appear to be driven by the desire of industries to protect their existing businesses by adding new features while keeping out potential new competitors. Whether this is what consumers are interested in is another story that may very well not be in their priority list.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/ WG 11 (MPEG) has been working for the last few years – and keeps on doing so – to develop the key technologies that will enable, as done for digital TV, the creation of a level play field on which the third generation of CE can flourish. Some of these technologies target:

• New video and audio compression for more rewarding user experiences while keeping down the bitrate
• Media composition and presentation
• More attractive ways for the user to interact with services
• More effective ways to deliver content to end users when network is unreliable
• Multichannel distribution of content
• New ways to do business with content

This collection of basic technologies is very important for a smooth transition from “digital TV” to “TV on the web” based on standards. To make this happen, however, industry needs comprehensive specifications that integrate the technologies so that they can be seamlessly integrated in products and deployed to provide interoperable services.

In 2008 the Digital Media Project (DMP), an industry association based in Geneva, is in the process of launching a new project on “Digital media platform for the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century” (P21-2). The goal of this project is to integrate all technologies that are required to provide a solution that is attractive for consumers, profitable for content creators, secure for service providers and rewarding for device manufacturers.

A precursor of P21-2 is wim.tv, a service on the web that lets different types of entrepreneurs do business with video and advertisement content. wim.tv is enabled by CEDEO’s Platform for Digital Asset Trading (PDAT), designed to offer users all services required to do business with video content on the web effectively and profitably, e.g.

• Describe content
• Negotiate terms
• Request/generate/process events
• Issue licences
• Associate content/ads
• Stream video securely
• Interact with content
• Pay/cash

PDAT is an early implementation of the emerging MPEG-M standard (ISO/IEC 23006 Multimedia Service Platform Technologies). Its modular architecture allows for the easy replacement and introduction of existing and new modules to extend the range of services offered to its users.

Currently PDAT supports the following browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, running on Android, Linux, Mac OS (10.5 onward) and Windows (XP onward). The wim.tv player is a PDAT plugin.
Wim.tv is an ideal platform for the convergence of television services. It is based on international standards, has a growing community and its player is easily portable in such environments as Web, IP and mobile TV.

Initiatives such as wim.tv can provide the video ecosystem the means to move to the next level because of the existence of standard API to access services.

Leonardo Chiariglione