Posted by Pascal Perrot. Publicized by the financial rollercoaster of Bitcoin, blockchain technology has become the tech buzzword of How will it affect video? At the end ofstories about Bitcoin were everywhere.
This is the sort of thing that tends to attract mainstream press interest and all of a sudden the subject of cryptocurrencies was everywhere. From the extreme amounts of energy used to mine them to their shadowy use in underworld transactions; from their magical ability to make people suddenly very rich to their equally powerful ability to make them exceedingly poor indeed; from lost hard drives worth millions of dollars to being a major plot point on US sitcom The Big Bang Theory; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and their counterparts became part of the global consciousness.
The answer is via blockchain. And while cryptocurrencies might perhaps ride out the wave of hype and go on to become a vital part of the digital future, they are only part of the story. The blockchain that underpins them is that rarest of technologies: What is getting people excited is the way that blockchain-based technologies have the potential to revolutionise many areas of digital commerce and beyond.
In many ways this makes it very similar to a peer-to-peer network such as the ones that power BitTorrent. Basically blockchain fuses two things together, a network and a database, but also has additional rules and some built-in security measures that mean it maintains its own integrity and its own history.
There are a number of key characteristics that make blockchain what it is: Put all this together and you have a powerful system for recording transactions and tracking assets through a business network at both low risk and low cost. And, of course, an asset can be anything, from a tangible thing such as a car, to an intangible object such as intellectual property or video content.
One of the counter-intuitive things about all this is that by removing the need for trust it creates trust.
Because every transaction builds on the previous one — each block contains a digital fingerprint called a hash, a timestamped batch of recent transactions, and the hash of the preceding block — any errors or deliberate tampering can be quickly detected, particularly as every participant has access to the whole ledger.
The concept as a whole is inherently self-policing and, when regulators are involved, they have easier access into the totality of the records than ever before. Under a traditional model, manufacturers, dealers, leasing companies, lessees, and finally scrap merchants all have to keep their own individual records of ownership transfer as a vehicle makes its way through the system. And while all feed their own data to an overseeing regulator who looks after the processes involved, the potential for error and even fraud is high, as are the costs.
A blockchain model sees all these parties become network participants that can see where any vehicle is at any time and, using smart contracts, transfer it between them. Transaction times are thus cut dramatically, as are costs. Looking to cut costs? Read about our Cloud TV services here. One of the factors driving the current investment hype in blockchain is the knowledge that we are very much only in the foothills of what is to come. The potential is enormous but as yet there are few clear roadmaps to the blockchain future and many of the use cases being sketched out are theoretical.
Nevertheless, they are exceedingly interesting. Broadcast as a whole has become a very process-driven industry over recent years as part of a consequence of the move towards IP technologies, and this is exactly the sort of transaction model that blockchain can transform. It sees it having a profound impact in providing new pricing options for content, in distributing royalties, in monetising C2C and P2P content sharing, and in its ability to end geoblocking. Micro-payment systems offer operators another route to the consumer and, if their pricing is pitched right, have a particular appeal to Millennials.
However, current billing systems mean that a large volume of transactions can raise the costs extremely quickly, effectively pricing low-cost content out of the system. However, a blockchain-based system makes even micro-cent payments cost-effective indeed, current crypto-currencies already allow fractional cent transactions. It thus opens up monetisation opportunities for a range of perhaps older content on the one hand, while also offering an ad-free alternative to content such as YouTube videos.
This also has potential in the fight against content piracy. To say there are challenges ahead for the media industry in the face of blockchain deployment is almost an understatement.
Blockchain has the potential to be extremely disruptive to many companies. For example, the above C2C scenario, while benefitting consumers and content owners alike, potentially seriously undermines the current business model of many pay-TV operators. As Deloitte puts it: Trust within the wider communities that may look to use blockchain is an issue as it is with any new technologies that involve financial transactions. Related to that is the fact that platforms and standards not to mention the companies involved are evolving extremely rapidly in the current climate, which both makes it difficult for businesses to pin down the technology and make informed choices, and presents a barrier to interoperability.
This last is important: Then there is the issue of usability in everyday environments, though it is not hard to see a blockchain-specific extension of Apple Wallet or similar making the smartphone the main conduit for transactions. The last point is that all this will take a lot of computing power to operate and a lot of storage for the resulting data history, especially if a large number of transactions are going to be handled by a network. A decade later, the one thing that we can be sure about, is that blockchain and blockchain video will change the industry as the decade progresses.
VO at a Glance. Each block of data is timestamped and refers to the data in the previous block of the chain. Updates occur across the ledgers in near realtime Consensus: All participants in the blockchain collectively authorize and approve transactions Digital: Any information that can be expressed in a digital format can be stored in a blockchain.
Blocks, and therefore transactions, cannot be deleted, edited or copied. The information recored is immutable Put all this together and you have a powerful system for recording transactions and tracking assets through a business network at both low risk and low cost.
Blockchain in the Video Industry One of the factors driving the current investment hype in blockchain is the knowledge that we are very much only in the foothills of what is to come. The Disruptive Future of Blockchain and Video To say there are challenges ahead for the media industry in the face of blockchain deployment is almost an understatement.
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