[rere34lm]

The possibility to add IAB Ads support

I propose a multi-streaming playlist feature of XBMC, to be able to play commercial Ads during the video playing. The reason I ask is the commercial sponsorship will encourage more high quality content to be available to XBMC media platform from content providers. So far the XBMC's content discussion is still quite a gray area. You know what I mean ;-) When the content providers are able to monetize from the their content, As XBMC member we can watch these blockbusters for free! Everybody happy.

Support Digital Video Multiple Ad Playlist (VMAP) protocol maybe a standard way to add commercial play list to the content video, and the content providers can define the time slot and source of the advertisements.

There are other two standards may play with the VMAP,
Digital Video Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) and
Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST)

Looks like the XBMC video player need to implement sort of advanced playlist feature, when play the main video in the foreground, at some time buffering some ad video in the background gradually , when certain time slot arrived, just do a video switch between the main video and ad videos.

Any idea for this one? What's is the main issue to implement a multi-streaming from the XBMC Devs' point of view?

[Bstrdsmkr]

Content providers can monetize easily through Netflix and a hundred other avenues, but look how they treat those gifts.

They don't want to change. They want to sue.

[rere34lm]

Netflix is only available to the US, it is geo blocked. There are also a lot of video websites providing content, monetize from click Ads, but the viewing experience is poor. XBMC's IAB capable at least let get them into the big screen and still maintain the revenue.

[spiff]

the day this is added to xbmc, is the day i leave the project.

[Memphiz]

I go with spiff then for a couple of beers. Sometimes i really think "WTF are users thinking what open soruce means".

[jmarshall]

Depending on how the ads are displayed in the video, it may be doable directly in a plugin.

My guess is that this will be done in that fashion as soon as interesting content is available in said format.

I doubt that the video stream will be unencumbered however, so I doubt it'll happen.

[Ned Scott]

Actually Add-on:Hulu (wiki) by BlueCop does exactly this (but you can turn it off if you want).

[rere34lm]

Thanks guys make clear the stand point of this feature. just thought this feature may bring the web based video content to TV screen with some level of collaboration, Recent YouTube addon glitch could be avoid if there is some co-operation with XBMC. In these days, XBMC could became the alternative web frontier of the video streaming. And it will be the new age of the free to air TV with endless channels to watch. Watching TV is free nowadays, but TV station need financial supports to keep feeding TV program to the viewers, The TV Ads is a common practice to balance the situation. This could be same to the Internet TV. Don't expect to charge people to watch TV but somewhere in the line, someone have to be paid to feed the content.

With XBMC's IAB capable, I bet web content providers will compete for this space and time on the big screen. It still allow viewers to skip the Ads in some way, the final control is belong to the viewer, which is better than current TV experience. I don't expect this feature in XBMC anytime soon, but sooner or later, this will be one of the many ways people watching online contents.

If this playlist type is supported in the XBMC's core really reduced the complicity of the Addon development. Many addon developers are not really hardcore to implement it in the Addon level.

Please just consider the possibility of the implementation sometime in the future. Thanks XBMC Devs

[aptalca]

When the content providers are able to monetize from the their content, As XBMC member we can watch these blockbusters for free! Everybody happy.

I am afraid it is not that simple.

Look at Hulu. It has ads. But is it free on any device that is meant to be hooked up to a tv?
No.

Boxee can show web videos in its built-in browser with all the ads in there. What do the content providers do?
Block it.

Cable TV has ads. Is it free?
No. (Even though when it was new, it was advertised to have no ads because you paid for the service. That is no longer the case)

Unfortunately the content providers and the distributors are perfectly happy with the way things have been working over the last few decades. They have been making boatloads of money and they are afraid that if they change anything, they will lose their revenues. Therefore their main priority is to resist change at all costs.

TV advertising has horrible audience targeting rate (they only go after the majority). With online advertising coupled with behavior tracking, they can potentially have higher targeting rates and get more return with fewer ads but they are just being paranoid.

Saddest example: A local channel, NBC, that is available over the air for free had exclusive rights to the Olympics in the US. They had a lot of olympics content on their website available on-demand. What did they do? They required from everyone "cable tv" subscription for access. NBC is not a cable network. It doesn't make any sense, right? Well, the real reason was that NBC/Universal is now owned by Comcast, one of the largest cable providers. It was their sad attempt at trying to lower the cable tv drop rate. (Didn't stop me from accessing BBC's free online feeds using tor)

No matter what anyone does, currently the content providers want you to pay for cable tv.