In the 90 's, many tech companies wanted to find the holy grail of Internet video-on-demand, but they failed. That is because Internet bandwidth is not controllable, user access bandwidth is too narrow, video compression technology immature, server performance is not high, resulting in unsatisfactory quality of video service, no content provider support, there is no market support. Things have improved a lot now. Community broadband, cable TV cable modem and telecommunications ADSL to the user access to the bandwidth greatly improved. Network switches, servers, storage systems, compression technology and software technology, the rapid development of the once troubled network VOD technical difficulties one by one to solve. Telecom companies around the world are trying to provide VOD via ADSL. Community broadband providers, but also with real estate developers to provide VOD for the community to attract buyers. However, there are few successful cases, mainly the investment is too high, no content vendor support, can not attract paid users, technology success but the market is not mature, operators need to change the business model and operating mode. In the Internet to provide VOD there are many programs, mainly with the government, radio and television, news information. These are basically free public services, and the user's requirements are not very high.
From the foreign market observation, VOD development of the most successful areas should be in the local area network for education and training. In foreign countries, the more advanced University Campus network and the military Training network have VOD. Education has recognized that video is an excellent educational tool, and VOD allows students to complete his courses on the Web at any time with his or her learning ability based on the speed at which he is accustomed to learning. The campus network VOD is not the commercial behavior, the government Education Department should have the policy to encourage to provide the VOD teaching in the campus network above 500 points. The school also can exchange VOD courseware with each other, add content, attract students to use VOD courseware to study. A senior professor can only teach thirty or forty students, but if he has recorded his first semester of class, he will be able to benefit thousands of students through the VOD courseware.
Another development area of VOD is, of course, entertainment and information. Five-star hotels and large KTV are gradually switching to network VOD to replace the low performance of the analog or manual on-demand system. Although these VOD system's concurrent stream demand is not high, they need the high quality video of the large bandwidth, and the pay VOD all requires the service to be stable, high availability and support multiple users to select a program at the same time. The client also needs to use the set-top box decoder to play on the TV. These services are commercial activities and the quality of service affects the investment decisions of the clients. Unfortunately, many customers in order to save investment, are forcing integrators to use ordinary servers to provide low quality video, and even no backup program, leading to poor service, customer complaints, affect the normal development of the VOD market.