High Resolution Channel 9 Videos

Hey All,

I usually download Channel 9 videos to my pocket pc to watch whenever i get the time.  However I was a little behind on video downloading so i downloaded the videos and started watching them on my pc.  For my surprise, a few of these videos where in a 640x480 resolution.  These are huge files, but it's worth the wait because you can watch the video on your computer monitor, or even tv at full screen  and it looks great.

So i was thinking, maybe Channel 9 could have a separate rss feed with enclosures to 640x480 versions of the channel 9 videos.  This way those of us who want the high resolution videos and download these huge files, can subscribe to that feed.  And leave another feed with the 320x240 version of the videos. 

What do you think?

Macaruchi wrote:

Hey All,

I usually download Channel 9 videos to my pocket pc to watch whenever i get the time.  However I was a little behind on video downloading so i downloaded the videos and started watching them on my pc.  For my surprise, a few of these videos where in a 640x480 resolution.  These are huge files, but it's worth the wait because you can watch the video on your computer monitor, or even tv at full screen  and it looks great.

So i was thinking, maybe Channel 9 could have a separate rss feed with enclosures to 640x480 versions of the channel 9 videos.  This way those of us who want the high resolution videos and download these huge files, can subscribe to that feed.  And leave another feed with the 320x240 version of the videos. 

What do you think?

I like the idea, but I'm not gonna be able to do high-res versions of every video. They simply are too big and difficult to deal with (and the bandwidth bill is getting a bit out of hand, even for Microsoft. The Sparkle video alone was, what, a gigabyte?)

But we need to think about this, that's for sure. I like the higher res videos too and we haven't even started using HDTV yet.

If you need hosting, I can provide hosting for the videos and site if you wish.

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Dual Intel Xeon 3.4 GHz Procs
4 GB memory
5 TB storage on a RAID 5 with 2 hot spares.
Windows Media Services
Dual OC-148 Dedicated

Elwoh, it's not the hosting or the machines I'm worried about. Serving out video files isn't that hard. It's the bandwidth. The Sparkle video alone was a gig. Think about that one for a minute. Now, if you have unlimited bandwidth and guaranteed uptime forever let me know!

There's 40 000 people on at the moment, let's say 500 are those are pulling down one of the high quality videos.  Even on that setup it would be too much for a 1Gb/s network card if we assume people on average have a 2mb/s connection.

Let's not even talk about what you'd be doing to the datacenters' pipes.

Yep, straight up unlimited bandwidth and it's online all the time.

I thought a Microsoft p2p application was in the work, any chance you might use that?

scobleizer wrote:

Now, if you have unlimited bandwidth and guaranteed uptime forever let me know!

Scoble... I think these guys and girls here can help you out. Best of all, they work for Microsoft... so it should be free.. no? I still don't understand why Channel 9 isn't hosted by Microsoft.