Will vidcasting be the death of streaming?

I'm thinking more about the impact that vidcasting (aka, video podcasting) is going to have on existing content delivery strategies now that some mainstream sources are using it creatively. Specifically, I'm pondering the effect its going to have on streaming technology. I'm realistically envisioning my own company's use of streaming being phased out for the most part by higher-quality, feature-rich, notification-based vidcasts, except for times when we need to do live streaming.

There's also PSPcasting - delivering high-res video to Sony's Playstation Portable. Same concept, different device. Tragically, although it does go beyond the iPod family in being an Internet appliance, an RSS-based subscription model hasn't been worked out just yet, with a couple of hacks implemented loosely.

Podcasts, either of the audio or video variety, remain pre-produced exhibits and unable to be broadcast live and requiring time to properly set up. And with Video iPods and the legion of knockoffs they'll give rise to at the moment not being Internet-aware devices, we can't send streaming content to them. We're still relegated to physically transferring files between a PC/notebook and a storage device. So there remains a strong market for timeliness over quality.

Time-shifting and place-shifting is catching on rapidly, but mobility's already made its mark as the big consumer convinience with the masses. It's easier to explain that you can take a newscast or radio show with you to the gym or in the car rather than trying to explain podcasting to someone with the "it's like Tivo for radio..." analogy.

So we'll likely continue to expand on our broadband plans, incorporating vidcasting for iTunes users and RSS enthusiasts, weening the daily downloaders to that more feature-rich platform; and also use streaming on the desktop to cover live and breaking events, and wirelessly for Java-enabled phones.