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Comment by cherrycherry98 | Hacker News Reader

I would like to see a standardized streaming protocol be developed. That way there can be a market for the client side (different apps that organize content you've subscribed to) and for the server side (like web servers are commodities). It would eliminate content providers having to roll their own streaming back ends and front end apps for so many platforms.

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> I would like to see a standardized streaming protocol be developed.

Like... HLS?

> It would eliminate content providers having to roll their own streaming back ends and front end apps for so many platforms.

Oh you mean metadata. Forget it. We built a live streaming service specializing in classical works (opera, ballet...), and even within that tiny particular niche, nobody can agree what "standardized" metadata should look like.

Yeah more than HLS. It would need to handle authentication and authorization such as is the user subscribed and what content is available them that they may have purchased a la carte. It would need listing of available content for search and indexing by the client. Presumably the major forms of content are standalone (ie movies), series which are a collection of content broken up into seasons, and potentially live streams. Finally it needs a way to purchase new content.

The industry is standardized enough to agree on distribution formats (VHS, DVD, etc) and to have awards for different established categories and video rental companies used to be able to organize their collections well enough. I want studios to handle distribution, that is operating a streaming farm for their content, and get out of owning the storefront. I want a digital Blockbuster type experience with everyone's content commingled. No having to go to the Disney store, and the HBO store, and the Paramount store and oh last month this content was on Netflix and now I can't find it because it's on Amazon this month.

In the system we built, some content was live, some was VOD, some was covered by subscription, some could be purchased individually, some was free (sponsored by a patron org that needed attribution), some was available all year round and some only for a very limited period.

On top of that we supported purchases/subscriptions on every major mobile/TV platform and then some - all shared, so when you paid on AppleTV, you could watch it on the web, etc. This included working around platform-specific brain damage, e.g. on Amazon FireTV you can only offer VOD content purchases through Amazon's own catalogue. This also included interoperating with local vendors running the most oddball systems you'd ever witness.

Because of this complexity (which "only" reflected real-world streaming rights deals), we needed a hero UX designer and tight collaboration between frontend, backend, video, and design teams. Forget devops, we have VideoOps.

If you think you can draft a standard that covers each and every possible case, I will happily rate it - the measurement unit is blood sweat and tears. If it gets a 10/10, I will personally rewrite every part of our system to comply - no joking.

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