Category Archives: Digital ET

The You Tube revolution

Video accounts for a 60% share of Internet traffic, and that number will soar. Two years ago the cost of streaming unlimited video over the Net daunted even giants–MSNBC capped coverage of the elections in 2004 at just around 200,000 viewers on election night. Now an hourlong TV drama costs a quarter to zap to a viewer over the Net, and it will cost less than a penny in a few years. Right now most of it is fleeting bits, but just wait. “We will work our way up from an old episode of Bonanza to the Super Bowl over time,” Crowe says.

 More at Forbes.com

Adobe’s Flash

When Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen picked up Flash developer Macromedia (nasdaq: MACR – news – people ) for $3.4 billion in stock last year, its latest version–Flash 8–was just launching. The update pledged much-higher-quality video than previous editions, thanks to a new movie-compression method from a small company called On2. What followed was a deluge of interest, pushing Flash ahead of video-streaming pioneers RealNetworks (nasdaq: RNWK – news – people ) and QuickTime-developer Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ).

Does it mean Flash has a head start in the growing online video market, which is estimated to be a US $1.7 billion by 2010.  Forbesonline has more on Adobe’s new acquisition–Flash.