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The integration between desktop and web has been accelerated. For example, Joost and Democracy Player offer online-based content services. They are just media player, but people started to think service. In fact, Itune was successful model for this area although there has been very long competition to become content delivery platform between Real Player and Window Media Player.
What’s different Itune and Windows Media Player? The player platform is not a necessary and sufficient condition but just requirement. Now users want to watch all of media files in online, desktop and other person via peer-to-peer. Integrations of them is essential under broadband.
In Korea, there is an unique examples named Gom Player and Afreeca. Gom Player is a free multimedia player with popular video and audio codecs built-in. GOM Player supports file formats such as AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF. You can download english version too.
In July, GOM Player had 8.4 million users compared with 5.4 million of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. Users most commonly use the player to watch illegal Divx movies and pornography under broadband environment. In Korea, the fiber internet service providers such as KT and LG Powercomm offers the speed of 1.5MB per second with $30 per month. It takes 6 minutes to download 700MB movie file if a peer uses similar bandwidth.
So GOM TV became the most popular streaming service based on the most attractive feature in GOM Player. It offers users various video contents ranging from popular television dramas, to major motion pictures and adult videos. In Korea, online publishing of TV programs and movie has been developed since 2000.
As there were so many web casting companies in that time. Naturally screening copyright of movie moved to theater, VHS, DVD and internet. It means that can be relatively easy to get online copyright of video contents compared with US or Euroupe. GOM TV service mixes both ad supported and pay-per-view content. Prices range from $0.4 and up, with most movies available for $2.
Afreeca also very unique media service that share video peer-to-peer streaming with other users. It can allow user’s personal bandwidth and computers for them. Many users give an opportunity for others to watch together when he/she does. There are many channels to watch such as continual TV drama seasons, online game league as like StarCraft and WarCraft from game cable TV. It is the P2P player platform of sharing media interests in each others. Users are willing to share their bandwidth and PC resources to others.
Recently, Daum launched Pot Player to mix merits of Gom Player and Afreeca. It allows personal broadcasting feature as well player functions. Daum has own popular streaming platform named Daum TVPot based on user-generated video. So they want to extend their the power of contents delivery based on new player platform.
