Moderated by Walter H of CCBill and Cave Creek Hosting, the panel included David Reisfeld of Level 3 Communications, Tim Ash of Site Tuners, Peter Goldstein from VideoBox.com and David Robinson of Evotum.
Robinson said that Evotum’s technology is designed to give web users an experience more like that of watching television, delivering full-screen, high quality video that is cross-platform compatible and that does not rely on the user having specific plug-ins or codecs installed.
“We’re agnostic across all platforms and formats,” Robinson said.
Goldstein spoke about VideoBox’s proprietary technology that allows users to select only the portions of scenes that they want to watch, and allowing them to stream or download clips accordingly.
Goldstein said that according to the data tracking that VideoBox has done, there is a clear trend among costumers towards using the highest quality file that their own technical resources will permit them to consume.
“As end users’ available bandwidth and the power of their machines continue to increase, users download the highest level that their pipe can fit, and that their machine can handle,” Goldstein said.
Reisfeld spoke about Level 3’s content delivery network (CDN) and the advantages of using CDNs generally, describing CDNs as a form of “outsourced infrastructure to serve content.”
“Instead of building out your own infrastructure, you outsource that delivery to the CDN,” Reisfeld said, drawing an analogy between CDNs and the services provided by Federal Express, which delivers packages through a variety of hubs throughout the world.
Some of the advantages of employing a CDN include the CDN’s ability to “mitigate network congestion,” and to “address the ‘last mile’ challenge.”
Ash, who specializes in optimizing landing pages to make most effective use of the traffic that a site receives, stressed the importance of analyzing user behavior and testing the efficacy of your site’s landing pages, tours and other crucial site components.
“None of you understand your users,” Ash said, adding that if one tests their assumptions extensively, they will learn that many of their preconceived notions are wrong.
“I’ve done lots of testing, and a lot of the time, I’m wrong,” Ash said.
At the end of the day, Goldstein said, the most important pending development is one that sounds incredibly simple, but has yet to manifest itself.
“We think it’s crucial that [it becomes] possible for you to easily download content from the web and play it on your TV,” Goldstein said, adding that while he’s sure that such a solution is bound to be crafted, it’s not yet clear which of the players in the market will be the first to develop it.
