On Apr.20, Google issued the first quarter financial report, which showed the net profit increased a lot than last year. Some assayers predicted the purchasing of the video web -- YouTube has made great contribution to some extent.
Last October, Google purchased the YouTube as the cost of 16.5 billion dollars stock. At that time, many people didn't think it a good deal. Though YouTube highly hold the slogan of "broadcastyouself" and widely be considered as the representative of new-media technology, many people still suspended the operation mode of this website, including how to get profit, how to treat copyright problems and so on.
Last month, the American Entertainment magnate Viacom lodged a complaint to YouTube and asked for 1 billion dollars for compensation because YouTube broadcasted some videos before it got any permission.
This case was very representative. New-media means cross-media, cross-net and cross-terminal. But how to truly realize the substantial overstepping of new-media technology and how to establish the new pattern are the important questions facing us?
Operation Forms
Ni Hong, director of Network and New-media Technology Center said new-media didn't refer to the Internet any more. Internet wasn't as new as we thought. Now, there are three main business forms in China: IPTV, HDTV and Mobile Phone TV.
The CATV Network played an important role in New-media technology for its broad coverage and large clients. Now, there are 126 million CATV users in China, which exceeded the scale in Europe.
IPTV is a kind of business attracting countless eyeballs of telecommunication operators. Interaction is one of the characteristics of IPTV. The user of this business is not just the receivers as before. He can freely choose the program he likes.
"The outstanding feature of IPTV is Video on Demand. Another one is time-shifted TV. For example, when I was watching football match, a guest visited. In this case, I could stop the program and went on watching after he left, or even had a review. In fact, this function can be realized in computer now, but at this point we use the TV as the terminal." Ni Hong said.
Besides IPTV and CATV, Director Ni also mentioned another New-technology: Mobile Phone TV. This form of business will give full play to its remarkable skill in the near Olympic Games.
Transmission Methods
New-media technology put forward a higher command to the wideband. Director Ni told the reporter: "In the user's point of view, wideband has its superiority. But the existing server still has possible bottleneck. For example, there is no problem if we call or send message as usual. But on the New Year's eve, it would become very crowded when everyone sends message nearly at the same time." So in the new age, P2P technology can deal with the problems. P2P technology combines all the users into a net, sharing the wideband and processing the information together. In the work pattern of P2P technology, every terminal is considered both as a client and a server. Let us take downloading for example. Every user only needs to download a part and exchange for other parts; at last every user will get the whole document.
Now some software and hardware has integrated P2P technology, for example some media players and set top boxes. When you order programs on computer or TV, in fact it still adopts P2P technology when it transmits the document.
Another advantage for P2P technology is that it added no more cost. An American Communication Company called Centerspan adopted P2P technology to send a large mount of data. The cost didn't go up, on the contrary, it lowered by 1/9.
Director Ni predicted: "It is the developing tendency to transmit video and documents by P2P. It is forecast that P2P will play a more and more important role in the future new-media technology."
Industry Patterns
Director Ni said: "In the nowadays society, it is an un-reverse trend to have the Telecom, Internet and Broadcasting combined together."
With the draw near of the combination, it is predicted that Broadcasting and Telecom will have a fiercer competition. Generally speaking, Telecom and Broadcasting are competitors. But in fact, they have more space to cooperate. To the users, the application is more important. "They won't mind which net he use but he will be crazy for watching TV through the cell phone." said Director Ni.
Although the cooperation among the three nets will not accomplish in an action, the tendency is inevitable.
At last, Director Ni said: "Many institutes in our country have already achieved great research progress and many of our technology can rank as the best in the world. But most of these research results are still at the beginning stage and didn't really transfer into products. So how to promote production transformation is very important for the development of new-media Industry."