It wasn't all that long ago that everyone thought video streaming technology was brand new, and big streaming video events got national news headlines for “crashing the Internet.” Now, no one thinks twice about watching US Open golf live on their PCs over the Internet, and can easily download software to do it.

In 1999, after a Victoria's Secret fashion show clogged up the Internet, almost everyone learned what video streaming was. All companies that did video streaming exploded in value. Akamai, for example, rose from $26 per share to $145 the day they “went public.” The current owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, made his first billion selling Broadcast.com, a streaming company, to Yahoo!

A company called Microcast pioneered ad-supported video streaming but never quite made it out of the starting blocks. Although they suffered a typical dot-com fate, they were the first company to stream any part of a golf tournament live on the Internet.

Microcast negotiated directly with the PGA and set up their own booth with commentators at the 17^th hole at TPC Sawgrass, the one with the infamous island green. Fans were able to watch golf live from the 17^th hole for the first two days of that tournament in 2000. Never before had unedited live coverage of the first two days of a tournament from anywhere on the course been available. It was fascinating to see how many of the extreme A-List golfers splashed into the pond on those first days. By the third day, of course, the remaining competitors had it all “dialed in” and made putting the ball on the green look effortless during the national network coverage.

Since the first two days of any tournament are Thursday and Friday, everyone who watched connected from their workplace. Internet connections were much more expensive back then, and offices usually only had what we call a T-1. Only 3 high-quality (high bandwidth) video streams fit in that “pipe” to the Internet. Those that connected thoroughly enjoyed watching golf live, and had crowds of coworkers in their offices.

Now that the Internet has many times the capacity, almost everyone can watch golf live on their PC if they want to. All you really need is a high-speed Internet connection and a decent, not-too-old PC. The challenge until now had been finding the live video stream source. Fortunately, there is a software download available for a nominal fee that enables you to find and legally watch thousands of TV channels from around the world on your PC any time of day or night. It seems the broadcasters enjoy the bigger audience, since they can sell ads against higher viewership numbers, a win-win scenario. That software is called DTV4PC.

There is a big difference in streaming something live vs. “on-demand” as in the YouTube model. The software is optimized to receive the video stream and manage the "buffering" process in your PC for the highest quality video. The DTV4PC download will enable you to watch US Open golf live this year wherever you are.

Still don't believe me?

You're probably asking: what's the big deal about video streaming live? I mean, everyone watches YouTube videos... right?

To explain the difference, you have to look at how traffic moves from one computer to another on the Internet. Video files are simply data files with certain attributes that tell the user's or viewer's PC how to process the file. In other words, data included in the file describes the encoding method, file type, duration, and other file properties. This allows the viewer's PC to select a video player to launch to view the file.

YouTube and all other "on-demand" video clips are files with beginnings and endings. They have a finite size, and file management programs download them from the host server to the viewer PC as fast as possible. Video players can launch and start playing the video while the file is still downloading, but they usually play better when you start watching after it's downloaded.

When you stream something "live" you don't have the luxury of being able to download the whole video event before you start to play it in the video player. So, your PC has to buffer enough of the video stream to have something to play if there is any inconsistency in the delivery of traffic. That is, if there is any congestion, any pause, anything happening on the Internet between the streaming server broadcasting the video and your PC. Obviously, there is always something happening, whether it's your neighbors working from home and downloading huge spreadsheets, or another neighbor playing an on-line video game, or someone else downloading YouTube clips or a whole PC Operating System.

Let's back up a second and take a look at what it takes to get video onto the Internet. In the simplest case, your newer camera saves exactly the right kind of file that you can save onto your PC and upload it to YouTube. These recent camera capabilities certainly have contributed to the explosion in YouTube's popularity. Not too long ago, you had to play a video tape from a video camera into an "encoder." That would have been a PC with the right software or a dedicated computer built for the purpose of taking analog video and converting it into the selected video file format.

For a live broadcast, let's first look at a traditional TV broadcast technology, then explore streaming it.

In the example of a traditional broadcast of a live golf tournament, cameras are deployed all over the golf course. They are wired to booths where video signals are mixed
by the producers, and output as the broadcast "feed." Typically, the feed is uplinked to a satellite (via a radio signal), which re-broadcasts it down towards earth in its coverage area. Your cable TV company receives it at their "head ends," the buildings you see with all the huge satellite dishes on top, and puts signals on all the cables spanning neighborhoods. Your cable box selects the frequency associated with the channel you entered on the remote, processes it, and sends it to your TV. This is somewhat simplified for the purposes of this post, but I wanted to convey the general idea....

For satellite TV, the broadcast feed is received by the satellite TV broadcaster the same as the cable company. However, they encrypt it and re-send it to another satellite in a digital format. That satellite rebroadcasts to its service area where it is received by smaller dishes mounted on people's houses. The actual satellite TV box decrypts or unscrambles the signal and sends it to your TV.

In either case, the company sending the signal to your TV receives radio-wave broadcast signals on the large dishes, processes them, and rebroadcasts them. They have dedicated, function-specific computers in your house processing the signal and sending it to your TV --the "set-top boxes."  Your PC is always busy doing something else as well as showing video.

For video streaming, much like traditional broadcast, the constant video source has to be digitized and be made ready for someone to start downloading or viewing. However, streaming servers don't put anything on an outgoing network connection unless the remote PC first negotiates a connection with the server.

Your PC has to first "find" the server.... If you have all the time in the world, you can search around the Internet for the names of the television networks that might be carrying a program you want to watch, then navigate their site, and you might be able to connect to a live stream, if you can find it on their website. Then, you have to use the stock video player software that you have on your PC. Browsing channels is more or less out of the question in this model.

Or, you could buy a package like DTV4PC. In their user interface, they provide all the channels available, much like your cable TV guide.

Let's get back to streaming...

The servers are encoding the incoming video signal at a constant rate. Let's use the example of 300Kbps (a common "high quality" bit rate for video). Originally, that meant they could only output the video at 300Kbps. When the server starts sending the video stream to your PC, your PC begins buffering it before it starts playing it. In the background, your PC has to keep accepting the data, storing it temporarily, then send it to the video player program. Video data arrived at your PC at an average of 300kbps. That is exactly how fast the content was being created. This is very different from a YouTube download, where the discreet file is moved as fast as possible to your hard drive. Download speeds can average several megabits per second for file downloads.

"Back in the day," way back in 2000, there was a company named Burst.com that first decoupled the incoming video stream rate from the player. It was a revolutionary change. This type of process is what now enables your YouTube video to start playing before it is all fully received, and allows a file encoded and played at 300kbps to be downloaded at 3mbps in
the background.

For live streams, optimized servers can encode incoming video, buffer a larger amount of video data, and then transmit at higher rates to your PC, which then buffers a larger amount before playing it.

Tweaking streaming servers, optimizing the player, getting the video streams, and developing the user interface require talented programmers and a good deal of expensive hardware.

Another thing to note is the limitation of an Internet connection. The fastest interface speed commonly deployed is 10Gbps. On long-haul networks, these are OC-192 interfaces. "Only" 33,333 300Kbps video streams can be transmitted simultaneously on a 10Gbps network connection. Networks are unlikely to purchase this high a rate of connectivity if there is only 4 days of demand for it, such as if they are streaming the US Open live. Streaming networks deploy servers throughout the Internet for the purpose of spreading the load around. So they are far better equipped to handle huge demand for specific, extremely popular events

Let's face it: Your cable bill would probably exceed $250 per month to get all the UK soccer, er, football, "Australian (no)rules" football, the Hyderabad, India cricket league, and Japanese baseball league channels. That is, if your cable company were able to get them. Also, With DTV4PC you can probably find everything you may ever want to watch for one modest price. Yes, the sales page employs lots of tested marketing verbiage that puts a lot of people on the defensive, but most people would not have read the little technical detail I've laid out thus far.

So if you want to watch the US Open golf tournament live, it's a great option... especially if you live outside the US.

Yes, I have worked for a company that operated in the streaming video space with talented programmers who tweaked servers and streaming software to get more out of each system than the manufacturers could. "Everyone" saw the potential of video streaming to get the "no-see TV" anytime you wanted, but it took some figuring out for the industry to arrive at a workable business model.