My take on Mark Cuban's 'Great Internet Video Lie'

Mark Cuban has published an aggressive blog post about video over the internet.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-internet-video-lie/

His argument is that video over the net is not viable because the current state of technology cannot support that massive numbers of simultaneous viewers the cable or satellite.

While that statement is true, it does not paint the whole picture. If you look at the content delivered by cable, most of it pre-recorded. It does not matter when you watch programs on The History Channel.

A background download of The History Channel makes perfect sense in that context. Add a little smarts to it, like always keep three episodes downloaded and you negate the CDN bandwidth issue.

Look at the Tivo model. People became very accustomed to the time shift. In that model, the device had to wait for another broadcast to record. In a pure download environment, the new episode is replaced when it is most convenient.