• NewTeeVee, Friday, August 10, 2007 10:45 AM

The world of streaming and downloadable media is an area Big Media has to figure out if it wants to maintain its dominant position in the media business. NBC Universal recently announced an innovative step forward in partnering with Israeli company Hiro Media, which embeds dynamic ads into media files, for its comedy service DotComedy. Hiro's technology allows ad-supported NBC files to be distributed across file-sharing networks pervaded by illegal trading. A technology like Hiro's is one answer to the massive headache caused by piracy to traditional media companies--especially if they upload files containing ad-supported content by the thousands.

Five weeks after the NBC-DotComedy announcement, a test was done to see if the ad-supported DotComedy files could be found on media file search sites like Torrentz, eDonkey, eMule, Mininova, and The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, searches for "Dot Comedy," "Comedy To Go" and individual episode titles didn't turn up any results.

In short, the files aren't being distributed across the network. Also, the downloads themselves are direct links to the NBC site, which means the media giant isn't leveraging the power of the network to save distribution costs. Why is NBC is keeping its little experiment so low-key? It doesn't want to be associated with P2P file-sharing networks.

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