2021年8月2日
By Dom罗宾逊特约编辑
博客

一年来，流媒体的绿色化

这很有趣, 写了20年的书, 反思有时从中得到的收获!

一年前我写了一篇 article 题为“流媒体的绿化”.“我有。, 第一次, 决定调查我们工业部门面临的环境和可持续发展问题. 以我作为主席的身份内容交付峰会, I also brought the topic to top of discussions in all three of the conferences over the past months, 有良好的接待和积极的参与. 这是第一次在CDN上, 电信, 或流媒体会议，我听说过这个话题, 他对人们表现出的兴趣印象深刻.

这是业内人士喜欢讨论的话题, 我们整个社区都有一种强烈的共同利益感. 正如我发现自己越来越多地说的那样，只有我们都赢了，我们才能在这个问题上赢.

Over the past year I've noticed numerous large actors in the industry begin to introduce formal statements on sustainability in their financial statements. 与两年前相比，这是一个重大变化, when sustainability was really limited to the CFOs domain as a bottom-line cost in infrastructure provisioning.

Now companies not only want to ensure they are efficient from a pure power consumption point of view, 但他们越来越希望能够关注股东, 消费者, and (not least) family members in the eye and articulate responsible decision making around the sources of that power, 废弃基础设施的回收和处置, and where the traditional balance in optimization for price and performance has to now accommodate power and sustainability as a key consideration.

这仅仅是大公司正在培养社会责任感的一个迹象吗?

不可否认的是,是的.

While there is often a portrayal of large industry actors disowning "problems that were not theirs,“现代流媒体产业是, 总的来说, 合理地意识到，中国已成为最大的能源消费国之一, 不管一家典型的公司关注的是“股东价值最大化”,“公司里活跃的人, and the company’s customers are all forcing a focus on environmental impact regardless of the company’s own strategic direction.

公司实体可能目光短浅地关注其产品/服务功能, 收入和利润率. But those who enable it to operate are collectively adopting a narrative that focuses on corporate social responsibility. 在某些方面，公司无法阻止这种态度的转变. 这实际上是一个渐进的文化革命.

这是一个很好的例子!

没有什么比能够向广大观众提供精彩的流媒体更好的了, and to be able to do so while reducing the sense of guilt that we are burning a hole in the planet.

When you combine all the internet infrastructure that enables streaming—and we acknowledge that this is shared by many applications of many kinds— the application of streaming creates one of the largest demands for compute and network capacity of all uses of the internet.

而比特币目前是功耗批评的热门目标, 流媒体让比特币挖矿相形见绌. 而在附近几百万 gpu是去年为加密货币挖矿而购买的 数十亿 cpu和gpu分布在互联网上的笔记本电脑中, 智能手机, 智能电视, 生产设施, 云, 和cdn——它们都在编码, 交付, 解码视频.

对于外行来说，流媒体比加密挖矿更熟悉. 加密货币挖矿听起来很糟糕, 总是在“其他”国家突出(吸引发自内心的仇外心理), 坦率地说，这对任何外行人来说都没有任何意义. 然而，流媒体确实是有意义的. 它已经成为许多人的一种生活方式，尤其是在过去的一年里.

It is for this reason that the loudest criticisms concerning power consumption in an IT context have recently been pointed to coin miners (Elon Musk's statements about bitcoin being a recent case in point). Who really feels a loss when a bitcoin mine is crushed: "surely it was some form of fraud anyway, no?"

但如果把矛头指向Netflix、迪士尼、BBC或Hulu，消费者就会突然安静下来. “嗯，是的，它需要能量，但是我们就像看电视 ..."

...然而, it appears, to me at least, that our industry's power consumption dwarfs that of coin mining.

So there is some way to go before we fully feel the heat of the rest of the world forcing our streaming industry to be fully accountable for all the energy we use, 然而,, 考虑到问题的规模, we really need to get our ducks in a row and make sure we review how we do things to ensure we have a good answer when the flood of questions are turned in our direction.

It is for this reason that I asked my software company id3as to support me in setting up a members association called 流媒体绿化 to “提高人们对流媒体行业对环境影响的认识, to spread best 'green' practices and to provide a collective voice for the industry when addressing sustainability challenges with wider stakeholders and external observers."

在过去的几个月里，我与蒂姆·西格林进行了多次讨论, 我以前的伙伴和流媒体的特约编辑, to scope our collective industry challenges around sustainability and identify ways we feel we can catalyse the right discussions and action plans.

这导致了流媒体绿色化的正式化, 并任命一名全职执行董事, 亚当Curwin, 谁有管理会计/首席财务官的经验，谁对这个主题特别感兴趣, 他曾在伦敦的绿色能源部门任职 EDF能源.

当我们开业的时候，我们有几个月的时间是激动人心的.

On September 9 we are holding a free/open Zoom meeting to introduce 流媒体绿化 to the community. 将会有:

有请我，蒂姆和亚当为大家做一个欢迎和演讲，
A keynote from Dan Schein of Bristol University to help us understand some of the challenges developing lexicon, 测量, 以及我们需要的术语，因为我们找到了一个共同的行业声音.
来自Akamai和Intel的案例研究
And possibly more case studies from YOU (we are inviting anyone who might help us understand the range of sustainability issues we may face as an industry to get in touch and express an interest to speak for a few minutes at the event)

在那之后，我们将向会员敞开大门, 9月底前加入的国家将被视为创始成员国.

In October we will be holding our first closed-door members meeting where we will put a few key organisational processes in place and set to work on a collective statement of intent, with the first iteration of that being presented at a public launch (in the UK Parliament) at the end of the year.

如果你感兴趣的话, 使用或围绕流媒体工作, 并且有一些输入，好的想法或实践经验, please join us at these events and help us to network with others in your organisation who are focused on sustainability.

免费的

合资格订户

现在就订阅最新一期过去的问题

帮助他人流媒体

Those of us in the industry sometimes lose sight of the fact that 数十亿 of people around the world have never used the internet, 更少使用Zoom或观看4K版的《百家乐软件》. 这里有一种方法可以帮助那些没有良好网络连接的人观看流媒体视频.

2022年3月27日

最环保的编解码器:LCEVC

毫无疑问，LCEVC是一种更高效的编解码器. But is it really going to make much of a difference in energy savings compared to other sustainability solutions?

2022年2月15日

可持续性、流媒体和数据归因挑战

“可持续性”可能是流媒体行业最重要的流行语, 但目前大多数定义“绿色”或“净零”流的努力都没有达到目标.

2022年2月8日

使流变得绿色:广播和视频流的可持续性步骤

可持续发展正在改变商业格局, 广播和流媒体行业也不例外. While business and technology factors used to be the main considerations when choosing a technology partner, 现在，可持续性已经成为组织不能忽视的第三大支柱.

2022年1月7日

为更好的流媒体收集“垃圾”

有垃圾? The Help Me Stream 研究 Foundation can take your tech castoffs and use them to research better streaming practices, repurposing it into efficient and inexpensive solutions that can run on intermittent power—dovetailing with the efforts of another new organization, 流媒体绿化.

2021年9月7日