As cool as Youtube, Dailymotion, and similar flash-based video sharing services are, the video quality they provide still leave much to be desired.

Sure, the “postage stamp” sized video of the 90’s have been
enlarged. But where is the full screen, high quality, no download IPTV
technology I have been promised all these years?

I’ll tell you where it is - at Vividas.com .

Vividas provides full screen high quality video over the Internet,
on demand. Although the technical attributes of Vividas aren’t that
mind blowing, their execution is superb.

The Vividas media player is java-based, and therefore doesn’t
require a web browser restart to be functional. It’s only ~250KB, and
can be easily downloaded in 10-30 seconds over any broadband
connection. Vividas uses On2’s VP 6 compression algorithm to encode videos, and Akamai’s
network to deliver them. The only real technological trick the Vividas
player utilizes is splitting the task of decompressing the video
between the home user’s CPU and Video card - a feature very few
competing online video services provide.

From the web users perspective, Vividas provides great quality video instantly without the need to install messy software.

From the content provider’s perspective, Vividas provides a few
interesting advantages. Because the video can only be streamed and not
directly downloaded to the computer, it is more difficult to pirate
Vividas content then it would be if your video was hosted on a website
like Youtube. Analytic recording is also more precise with
streaming-only media such as Vividas’, as every single view of the
video can be tracked.

Vividas’ technology has primarily been used for viral ad campaigns(Foster’s “Big Ad” being the most famous) and movie trailers(Transformersmovie.com). Most recently, they have begun delivering pay-per-view videos (thesecret.tv) over the Internet.

The big question I have about Vividas’ future is whether they can
defend their technology from copycats. Although Vividas has a number of
patents related to online video streaming, there are already
competitors like Narrowstep with very similar service offerings.

Either way, it is going to be an exciting year as consumers and
marketers alike begin to realize that youtube is only the beginning.