Cover Story: Wishlist -- 5 Features We'd Like to See in the Next Generation of Streaming Media Players

Every so often, RealNetworks or Microsoft releases a new version of itsPlayer. Like dominoes, all the other vendors in the player space follow suit, attempting to match the leaders feature-for-feature. In addition to (presumably) better audio and video quality, the new playersalmost always tout features designed to improve usability and consumerconvenience: channels, guides, search boxes, etc. Too often, these featuresare more about increasing co-branding and co-marketing opportunities for thevendor and its partners than they are truly about convenience. Case inpoint: when's the last time you used the "snap.com search box" on RealPlayer-- or, more tellingly, when's the last time the search box took you to anymeaningful stream?

Here at streamingmedia.com, we've been thinking hard about player features,and have come up with a short list of features we'd like to see in the nextgeneration of streaming media players. The features we've listed are not currently available in any streaming media player, to our knowledge. Wethink they all make sense, both for the consumer of streaming media and theproducer of streaming media. And, what the heck, some of them even provideco-marketing and co-branding opportunities for the vendors. We're nothingif not generous.

Features are listed in no particular order.

1. User-Controllable Events Schedule

All the major players have "favorites" and/or "bookmarks" -- features theyborrowed from browsers. This works very well for 24/7 content (assumingit's not on Yahoo Broadcast, which takes outrageously deliberate steps todefeat user bookmarking) and for that rare breed of on-demand content thatthe user would actually wish to experience more than once. It doesn't workat all for live events and scheduled programming, two extremely importantparts of the streaming media content universe.

We want a player with a "Schedule" pane, which looks a lot like the calendarin Outlook. Users can double-click a date and choose events from avendor-selected list (there's your co-marketing opportunity, vendors).Content creators can also create links on their websites which add events tothe user's schedule ("Click here to be reminded when the game starts.")These events can either be one-offs or recurring series ("Click here to bereminded every Monday at 5pm to listen to Fat Pipe"). There has to be afull-fledged scripting language or something behind those links, so thatcontent creators can control every aspect of how the item appears in theschedule (users, of course, will be able to use the schedule pane interfaceto modify any aspect of the item). Perhaps this is a job for XML? Finally,there should be a "Share this event" button within the schedule pane,allowing users to send the scheduled event to the schedule pane of theirfriends' players (should those friends decide to execute the email).

Until this feature is added to the major players, live webcasting isoperating under a heavy burden of marketing expense. Not only do users haveto be aware that the program exists, they have to be so keyed up that theyactually remember to come by and tune in. A Schedule pane will ease thatmarketing burden considerably, because users can be enticed to schedule theevent the first time they hear about it -- then they don't have to thinkabout it again until the reminder pops up. Nice? Nice.

2. Ignore Video Signal Option

Some video content just doesn't have to be video: talking heads,documentaries, and talk shows spring to mind. Often, when we've got astream of that type running, we don't even watch the video. We answeremails, browse the web, do dishes, mop the floor. Why not let usersselectively choose not to receive the video portion of a stream, freeing upthe excess bandwidth that the unwatched video takes up? In a variablebitrate environment, this might even allow for higher quality audio when thevideo signal is turned off.

3. Defeat Embed

We love embedded media players, we really do. They make for such prettywebsites. They also make it difficult to multitask, though. If we'rewatching anime at sputnik7.com, and also trying to sort my email inbox, wehave to very, very carefully arrange the two windows on my screenpreparatory to actually watching the show. If we could pop the video out ofits web page, we could very easy set it to "Always On Top" and stick it inthe corner of our screen, no problem. Many sites (including sputnik7,actually) offer both embedded and standalone versions of their content.Many sites do not. This should be a right-click option on every embeddedvideo.

4. On The Fly Bitrate Throttling

Let's say we've got DSL at home (which we do). Let's say we're watching avariable bitrate stream, and, thanks to our "preferences" settings andavailable bandwidth, it's coming down at 300 kbps. Let's say we're tryingto download "Enter Sandman" via Napster in the background. The download bitrateis more important to us, let's say, than the streaming bitrate in this particular instance.Why not allow users to right-click and deliberately choose a lower bitrate on-the-fly?Again, many websites offer this functionality on their own, by offering separatelinks to different bitrates, but it would benice, in SureStream or MS VBR files, to be able to do it as an end-user,regardless of the website owner's foresight or lack thereof.

5. Buffer Complete Stream

We thought of this during the Streambox VCR controversy. Most users didn'twant to download and save streaming media files so that they couldredistribute them: they just wanted an opportunity to get a nice, clear,uninterrupted experience. Why not allow users to choose to buffer an entireon-demand stream, for one-time viewing? Makes perfect sense to us. Thiswould also allow low bitrate users to buffer high bitrate files, and get inon the broadband experience (albeit after a considerable wait).

None of the above features would be terribly difficult to implement in thecurrent players. It's not like we're asking for, um, VHS quality streams.What features would you like to see in the media players? Let us know, and we may use your ideas ina follow up article.