Is digital video the next wave for the Web? Lycos appears to think so, as the site has just started providing free digital-video hosting and production. This could begin a trend that other major Internet portal sites will follow. Meanwhile, from Hollywood, to Web-hosting businesses, to broadband providers, Web-based digital video is becoming a force to reckon with.
Will Other Portals Follow?
Lycos (Web site) users can currently post up to 10MB of video to be hosted at the site. It's even possible to edit the digital video with Lycos' Web-based production application. Beyond that, the videos can be embedded at other sites or within e-mails and can be linked to video stored at Lycos' site. Lycos is the first major portal site to add such robust video services, although Apple's iTools site (Web site) offers some similar services.
A big part of what Lycos is betting on is that home users will be interested in Web-based digital video, and will increasingly have broadband connections. Market researchers tend to agree with the broadband part of that equation. Forrester Research analysts predict that 28 million US homes will have broadband connections by 2003.
Many startups and established technology companies want a piece of the online digital-video pie. Intel's Internet Media Services division operates a network designed for streaming audio and video and has struck several deals in the video space, including a recent one with Virage. Virage's (Web site) video applications platform delivers powers such as the ability to search videos.
Hollywood Dreams
One hard-hitting piece of evidence showing how video and film on the Web are making waves came when two amateur film-makers recently posted a three-minute movie called 405 on a Web site called iFilm (Web site). They had originally created the movie just for friends. The short film contains eye-popping home-brewed special effects, including a commercial jet landing precariously on top of a Jeep on Los Angeles' 405 freeway, then skidding down the freeway atop the moving Jeep.
The entire three-minute 405 movie was created using a plain desktop PC with a US$2,500 graphics program called LightWave 3D. Beyond this simple equipment, which the two filmmakers already owned, the cost of producing 405 came to under US$400 for trivial expenses such as parking and gas. Kevin Wendle, CEO of iFilm has estimated that about a million people watched 405, and that the audience was generated entirely by word of mouth.
Film industry analysts said the special effects in 405 would have cost millions of dollars for Hollywood filmmakers to replicate. Meanwhile, several sites, including iFilm and Scour.com (Web site) are housing amateur films that anybody can watch. Immediately after the 405 hubbub, the filmmakers behind the short movie -- Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt -- were signed to a Hollywood film contract by Creative Artists Agency, which also handles Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. "In order to discover emerging talent, we've made it a priority to install a structure to monitor and review content on the Web," says Dan Adler, head of new media at CAA.
