Bit Gravity is a flash-based service for hosting and streaming pre-recorded video over the Internet, as they call it, a “video delivery network”, available live and on demand. In simpler terms, it is a bit like a high definition YouTube and apparently unlike others you can pause, skip, rewind or restart Video on Demand or even live broadcasts. In that way, it’s like TiVo on broadcast television, but on the World Wide Web.
It is “streamed” in high quality, but can be custom configured by each individual viewer to suit their available bandwidth. End users, or viewers, have had good things to say and seem satisfied with the service overall. Apparently, they also appreciate how reliability compares; a few other such services have dealt with outages, while Bit Gravity has dedicated nodes on four continents to help prevent that.
It is designed to play smoothly, not to have cache misses or noise from some other video streaming sources (no buffering or freezing), as well as being scalable and fault tolerant. They offer a free and easy-to-configure flash player, although the end user does not need to download anything to watch videos. The player has an auto-detect feature to determine and set the best bandwidth usage for each user. The host can use low-cost, “out-of-the-box” equipment and bandwidth, keeping installation costs low. Specific costs are unfortunately hard to find, but one has to shop around for oneself anyway, and prices are never set in stone.
One downside is that BG doesn’t seem to have a built-in chat feature, unlike some competitors. So others have had to use things like IRC in tandem, or do without the chat room. For many that is not a problem, some have their own pages for interactions, others are not interactive at all.
From the Bit Gravity website, “Since its launch in 2008, broadcasters and web publishers have relied on BG Live to broadcast nightly news, political conventions, presidential speeches, and the inauguration of President Obama.”
Perry Lawrence has been in video production for over 20 years and has produced, filmed, and / or edited videos for companies such as Merck, Maxwell House, Nickelodeon, P&G, Ogilvy & Mather, IBM, and many others.