• Blog Maverick, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 11:30 AM

Mark Cuban hits upon a major problem facing online video providers today. Say you want to stream a video to reach 10,000 users and you don't want to upload your video to YouTube to do it. Your only option, he says, is to use a content delivery network like Akamai or Limelight. If your video is to be streamed live and you are expecting exactly 10,000 viewers, then you have to hire one of these companies that offer scaled streaming.

The problem, he says, is that even 10,000 people are considered a large number these days. "There are only a few CDNs that can offer any level of scale for delivering video to an audience that is large by internet standards, but very small by cable or satellite standards," Cuban says, adding: "There is not a single CDN that can deliver 2 or more video streams concurrently to more than 1million simultaneous viewers. Not one. Anywhere."

On the other hand, he says, "there are at least 8 large cable and satellite video distributors that can deliver 100 or more video streams, concurrently, to a million or more simultaneous viewers." The Great Internet Video Lie, Cuban says, is that "if you have a desire to deliver a large number of streams, and you want to compete with another Internet video provider to offer a large number of streams, you are not in a very good position. You are at the mercy of 3 or 4 CDNs, the ultimate Internet video gatekeepers."

Read the whole story at Blog Maverick »