of content.
Banister's vision for online entertainment is a bold and sophisticated one, borrowing from a diverse array of sources to communicate his ideas. In June, he raised eyebrows when he described the Internet to an industry conference as "mutable, nonlinear, interactive, multitasking, community and communications oriented, infinitely deep and mysterious - a bit like the female of our species."
Banister says he was taking a "transcendental view" and not attempting to "genderize" the Web. "This medium requires a capture-nurture approach," he says, "as opposed to the take-what-I-give-you" male mindset more common in television.
Entertaindom is part of a second wave of online entertainment, which includes competitors like Digital Entertainment Network, Silicon Alley's Pseudo Networks and the Comedy Network. The first wave ended with a wave of spectacular failures, when companies like AOL (dossier) and Microsoft (MSFT) decided that entertainment content was far too expensive to produce given the small audiences it attracted.
Online entertainment fizzled, says Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess, because content creators "were using a bunch of old tools designed for print. They put up all this big, honking multimedia and it slowed everything down."
Customers got frustrated and surfed elsewhere. "I continue to be somewhat dubious about the Internet as an entertainment platform," cautions Jupiter analyst Patrick Keane. "In mid-1999 people view their PCs as utility appliances."
Keane and others believe that entertainment on the Web will have a better chance to succeed when a higher percentage of American households have broadband connections to the Web. But broadband is rolling out more slowly than many had expected. Jupiter estimates 20 percent of households will have broadband access by 2002.
Banister agrees that consumers will need the broadband experience for online entertainment to take hold.
"Consumers are going to need at least television-quality video to buy into the online entertainment space," he concedes. Nonetheless, Banister's insists that "broadband isn't about pipe; it's about experience." Rather than wait for cable modems, DSL and satellite infrastructure to roll out, he says, Entertaindom will employ a combination of technologies to deliver the broadband experience to consumers today.
While the Entertaindom team is building or acquiring content for broadband households, they will also make use of "pseudo-broadband technologies" like Macromedia's Flash. "There's a miracle occurring on the Web every six months," Banister says. "What was broadband a year ago is something I can now deliver over a much smaller pipe."
Video is the tricky part. Banister worries that even current broadband systems can't deliver the kind of video experience consumers want. The problem is what Banister calls the "Super Bowl effect." Downloads tend to slow up in neighborhoods in which a high percentage of people are streaming video at the same time - just as water pressure supposedly drops during half-time as sports fans run to the bathroom en masse. As a result, "broadband-pipe companies are absolving themselves of responsibility for what is broadband programming," he says. "A lot of them think broadband is just fast Web. They're shying away from video, when they should be running whole hog into that space."
Banister sees an interim solution in something called WebDVD, what he describes as "broadband in your hand." The "fat elements" of video-based Web programming - six to eight week's worth - are baked onto DVD disks and shipped to registered viewers. The disks are the "tickets" that enable consumers to unlock a site and view a seamless video experience in an online environment.
Many people consider the prospects for this kind of klugey solution as dim at best. "You have to realize your audience is still going to be small," says Jupiter's Keane. "You can't ask people to jump through too many hoops. Consumers aren't generally that technologically savvy - especially mainstream consumers who will be the be-all and end-all for a lot of these entertainment sites."
Gary Arlen of Bethesda Md.-based Arlen Communications likes the richness of the DVD experience but worries that the strategy is "at the
