Jason Dunn
09-20-2006, 04:00 PM
There's a good way to do on-demand Internet video, and a bad way to do it. Sadly, the <a href="http://www.ufc.com">Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)</a> franchise has chosen the bad way. As a fairly recent fan of mixed martial arts, and of the UFC in particular, I was excited when heard about their on-demand video service. The UFC, like all sports, is made up of champions and challengers. To fully appreciate a fight you're watching, you need to know where both fighters have come from, and the way you do that is to watch matches. Purchasing UFC fight DVDs at $20+ a pop is an expensive way to accomplish that, and most fights aren't so memorable that you'd want to watch them over and over like you would with a movie. So for those reasons, and just because digital video delivery is a cool concept, I eagerly bought my first UFC on-demand fight.<br /><br /><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/dmt/2006/ufc-media-manager.gif" /><br /><br />The UFC website has a large selection of fights, and the price is $1.99 USD per fight. That's the first problem: some of the most explosive fights are over in the first few minutes, so unlike paying $1.99 USD for a 45 minute television show, the UFC pricing doesn't seem in line with the length of the video. I selected a fight that was a bit longer than normal, so I could get my $1.99 worth, and started the process. The technical implementation is solid enough – you install an ActiveX control (so it's Windows and Internet Explorer only) that downloads the video and the UFC Media Manager (pictured above). The UFC Media Manager installs itself into permanent residence in the system tray, returning on reboot unless you disable it – that seems rather peculiar to me, because who would need the component running all the time?<!> <br /><br />The download was quick (you have a choice between 700 KB/s and 1500 KB/s videos), and within a few minutes I was watching my first fight. The video quality is good, even on older fights, and when viewed full-screen on my 20" LCD monitor it was acceptable. The download is a Windows Media Video file with Microsoft DRM on it, but the controls for watching the fight are embedded in the UFC Media Manager itself. I enjoyed the fight, and it seemed like a cool way to grab specific UFC fights. It would have been cool to be able to get a version for a portable media device such as a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Portable Media Center.<br /><br />Then I discovered something that completely obliterated my enjoyment: it turns out the fight videos were <i>rented</i> not <i>purchased</i>. The 10-minute fight I thought I purchased deleted itself a little over a week after I bought it. I could forget about building up a library of great fights – the UFC thinks that people are going to pay $1.99 to watch a fight once or twice, and then have it deleted. It's bad enough that the fights can't be burned to DVD for viewing on a TV, but by making this a rental service it discourages fans of the UFC like myself from building up an investment in a digital collection of top UFC fights.<br /><br />I suppose I shouldn't be surprised – this is the same UFC that charges $36 USD for non-HD pay-per-view fights and doesn't offer a DVD of the event as part of that price – oh, and the fight video deletes itself from my PVR two weeks after it airs. UFC championship fights are the first and only pay-per-view products I've paid for, so perhaps I don't understand the economics of it all. To me, for $36 (the price of three movie tickets) I should get to watch the fight live in widescreen high-definition, and get sent a standard definition DVD of the event for later viewing. The UFC seems hell-bent on replicating the outdated boxing pay-per-view scenario, both offline and online, and I think that's unfortunate for such a fresh new sport that is groundbreaking in every other way. UFC on Demand will very likely be a failure in the marketplace, because if it can't win over UFC fans such as myself, who's going to pay for the fights?<br /><br /><i>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He dreams of taking someone out with a flying knee someday.</i>