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A couple things to consider, as someone who works in the industry, and lives in New Jersey.

NJ has the highest population density (1189/sq mile). It is surrounded by two major cities (New York and Philadelphia).

AT&T is not based here, but they used to be, before SBC bought and renamed themselves. That company is now based in Dallas. There are still a lot of AT&Ters around the state in large facilities. This doesn't really matter though, considering AT&T probably provides local access to less than 1% of the NJ population.

Verizon is based here. Their actual headquarters is located in New York City, but all of the executives sit in Basking Ridge, NJ. This is important, because almost all of the Verizon employees at a director level and above are now in New Jersey. Different from AT&T, they are the local telco in almost every town.

Comcast is based in Philly. Lots of Comcast employees live in New Jersey. Comcast is a major cable franchise in NJ (as it is in most places).

The state of NJ, a few years ago, granted Verizon a state wide video franchise. This is a big deal. It means that Verizon can offer FiOS everywhere in the state without negotiating with the 566 different municipalities in the state. (566 municipalities for 8.8 Million people - NJ is a a good example of local government gone awry. Compare to 351 for 6.6M in MA, or 482 for 37M in California)

As the result of the above, FiOS is available in most towns, offering 20-50Mbps internet. Comcast Xfinity offers their highest tier service wherever there is FiOS, so nearly everyone in the state can get fast internet if they're willing to pay $30-$60/month. Notice to governments: reducing the amount of regulation (state wide franchise) can create more competition which can yield better results for citizens.

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Comcast needs to be broken up into three separate companies:

1. cable infrastructure
2. content provider
3. ISP service

All the cable companies need to be broken up into those three separate and independent companies. Otherwise this type of garbage will continue to happen to the detriment of the cable subscribers.

Rather, Verizon is rolling out FiOS, because it has no other option. VDSL technology over old twisted-pair phone line has peaked, it has no choice but to roll out FiOS if it wants to keep up with cable.

Your comparison (and the articles) is therefore very foolish. The real question I have is why Comcast is not rolling out DOCSIS 3 - wait, actually I don't have that question, because they are already.

Man I hate misinformed articles and postings... I am not even an American and I know about this.

...but at an average of 6 hours of viewing a day...

Apparently you are off by about 50%. But Four hours a day is still a lot.

In the US only old people watch TV anyway.;-)

I doubt if there's a single county in the Verizon empire in which more than a thousand homes have FIOS as an option.

Negotiations are definitely happening. I don't think it even matters who's negotiating what, the important thing is that it's slowing down the process, and keeping the competition out. If you want to compare, look at Australia. They tend to have more competition with cable companies overlapping their areas of service. They have excellent service from what I hear, with some pretty dramatic improvements in the last 10 years. I'm also glad you brought up public-owned cable service. So long as companies are allowed to compete against city-owned cable, I say the more the merrier.

Really? I think I would have noticed it, if you actually did say it.

Here it is:

But anyway, presumably the same ability for telcos to compete with cable companies would also mean non-telcos (cable companies?) to compete with telco monopolies. So, either way, monopolies get busted.

Next you said...

No, the telcos just have monopolies on phone service instead. Same difference!

Since I was talking about television service monopolies, it's not exactly the "same difference". Also, there are at least three local telephone service operators where I live, in fact we just switched to get a lower price. And there are numerous long distance carriers. The cable television market is a lot more monopolistic than telephone, and the government interferes a lot more with television than they do phones. It's video franchising laws that are keeping the fiber out. That's why I don't get 30Mbps.

The reason I know that Verizon wants my business is three-fold. For one thing, they've set up a VHO in my state, within range of my town, and are negotiating franchises throughout the state. Secondly, Verizon is reporting that they've expanded their FiOS service extensively since intitial roll-out. It only makes sense that they'll continue. They're clearly going after marketshare. And third, Verizon is a business. Businesses want to make money. They will make money by providing me with service. It's simple business logic.

It's obvious that you haven't been following Cable/FiOS news at all, or you'd know that your claims that they would throttle service are unfounded. In fact, they recently announced that they are upping their speeds in a few places that already get their service. I don't remember exactly, but I believe it's the NY/CT area that will be getting faster speeds. I also read recently that they are going to start switching to GPON from BPON, which would add bandwidth capability to their network. The fastest cable speed I've heard of was from Cablevision, running 15Mbps. 30Mbps sorta blows that out of the water, don't you think?

Your anecdote is rather interesting. But you're in a better situation than what I have. I have 6Mbps on a good day with Comcast, but it's usually 3-4. If I was to get DSL, it'd be about 1.5Mbps tops. But honestly, I don't believe DSL can be considered a competitor. It tried to raise speeds to challenge Comcast, but Comcast raised their speed, and then DSL simply became the cheaper-but-slower alternative. I'd like to see Cablevision or Time Warner Cable and Verizon enter my area and provide actual competition.

Among other things, the RIAA colludes with/bribes/whatever radio stations in order to prevent them from playing music not endorsed by the RIAA.

You're not going to make me sound like I'm defending the RIAA/MPAA, are you? I'm not. What I'd rather have is the government going after actual problems than ones that are make-believe/issue-of-the-month. I'd rather see people writing letters to their representatives in government to repeal the DMCA or investigate RIAA illegal behaviors than to tell them to take a hard stand on some "net neutrality" concept.

First of all, I was clear that in cases of telco monopolies, cable operators could bust those up as well. But again, I don't know of any telcos that have regional monopolies on television services. And it's cable franchising laws that are keeping many new television services (along with high-speed fiber internet) from expanding as quickly as it could. Verizon FiOS is the perfect example of this. There is one town in my state that can get their service. It has nothing to do with the expense of laying fiber, Verizon would love to pay the money to bring it to my area, because people are itching to drop Comcast, and Verizon would make their money back pretty fast. But it takes six months to a year, or even more if they have to literally sue a municipality for unreasonable demands, to negotiate a franchise everywhere. That is what's holding up the "better than DSL". As for the RIAA and MPAA, I'd say the problem is more a matter of government not understanding technology (sound familiar?) rather than the law being dead. You want the same people passing the DMCA to start telling ISPs how to deal with data packets? You expect more government regulation to turn out for the best? Now who's being naive...

DCAS also has another meaning in this field: (downloadable conditional access system)

http://www.cedmagazine.com/article/CA6303853.html

720p has less than half the pixels per frame than 1080i (921,600 vs. 2,073,600).

http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/9808/9808d.htm

I find the color noticeably more saturated and the picture much sharper on 1080i. But I also know my wife can't tell the difference and doesn't really care. I'm pretty sure the cable industry hopes that most people are like my wife.

The US has a spread out population. Canada doesn't.

Yadda yadda, every time this comes up, it's always posted by someone who fails to grasp that IT IS NO BETTER IN MAJOR CITIES. "Population Density" arguments ring so hollow when you realize that if you live in some of the most densly packed parts of the US, you're STILL paying too much for crappy service. FIOS is our best bet at catching up at both quality and price rates, yet it's planned for sometime in the future in *some* of New York. (I also like that price jump there at the high end. Over 4 times the cost at about twice the bandwidth of the midsize package.)

OK - they regulate telephones, but not telephony. Of course we're all familiar with all kinds of equipment connected to the "Public Switched Telephone Network", that must meet FCC specs. Again, the FCC is regulating devices which could interfere with the public telephone network's ability to transmit signals (eg. by frying it). The FCC has other regulations for equipment attached to the public cable network, too. 47 CFR 68 says nothing about content, which is what we're talking about, and what the FCC is trying to regulate.

I got the 18.8 from here http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/9808/9808d.htm and have seen figures in the 18.8-19.4 range thrown around quite a bit. Scientific Atlanta says 19.25, another CED article says it varies a bit depending on content and SD is 2-3Mbps and the ATSC standard caps the HDTV MPEG-2 stream at 19.39 Mbps. OK, I found a FAQ at the FCC that places the max at 19.3 Mbps. Seems low to me too but if they have the time and the right (expensive) equipment that would allow better compression. Still not good enough IMHO.

Also I should note that when we went to 2k operators started to complain that the image was grainy. It turns out that's because they were actually able to see the grain of the film. That can be cleaned up a bit of course, but I think for 4k to really be viable it's going to have to be all digital.

Odd, That slashdot article and other things that I have seen places the resolution of 35mm film at about 4000 lines, but I suspect different films have different grain size.

Related amusing annectdote: When my wife came home after I got done hooking up our HDTV (to our super-crappy AT&T cable) her innitial reaction was "That looks like shit! We paid $1000 for that?!" I had to explain to her that our signal had always looked like shit, it's just that now we had a TV that was good enough that we could tell.

Tell me about it, SD is very disappointing. At least the local comcast cable delivers quite a few HD signals.

I got the 18.8 from here http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/9808/9808d.htm and have seen figures in the 18.8-19.4 range thrown around quite a bit. Scientific Atlanta says 19.25, another CED article says it varies a bit depending on content and SD is 2-3Mbps and the ATSC standard caps the HDTV MPEG-2 stream at 19.39 Mbps. OK, I found a FAQ at the FCC that places the max at 19.3 Mbps. Seems low to me too but if they have the time and the right (expensive) equipment that would allow better compression. Still not good enough IMHO.

Also I should note that when we went to 2k operators started to complain that the image was grainy. It turns out that's because they were actually able to see the grain of the film. That can be cleaned up a bit of course, but I think for 4k to really be viable it's going to have to be all digital.

Odd, That slashdot article and other things that I have seen places the resolution of 35mm film at about 4000 lines, but I suspect different films have different grain size.

Related amusing annectdote: When my wife came home after I got done hooking up our HDTV (to our super-crappy AT&T cable) her innitial reaction was "That looks like shit! We paid $1000 for that?!" I had to explain to her that our signal had always looked like shit, it's just that now we had a TV that was good enough that we could tell.

Tell me about it, SD is very disappointing. At least the local comcast cable delivers quite a few HD signals.

My quit Google search produced many second hand sources, but I also witnessed numbers of this sort myself when working for an ISP.

Sincere?
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/1003/10a.htm
Hey, this looks good. Look, they got screens of their interface ... HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! That's Metroid Prime!?!
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/1003/images/a2 _lg.jpg
Either they're idiots, or that's some blatant bullshit right there. And blatant BS is what I'm betting on.

Sincere?
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/1003/10a.htm
Hey, this looks good. Look, they got screens of their interface ... HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! That's Metroid Prime!?!
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/1003/images/a2 _lg.jpg
Either they're idiots, or that's some blatant bullshit right there. And blatant BS is what I'm betting on.

Except for the fact that it is first person and the door is a hexagon, this doesn't look at all like Metroid Prime.

ah, but you don't need your local company to provide dsl (well, you might depending on your area) all you need is their wires.. but check with other ISP's in the area. For instance, in quite a bit of NY state, Logical Net provides DSL service, and they simply use verizon's (or your local bell's) wiring (for a meager fee) and boom, you have lovely DSL, without even talking to your all powerful bellco Then, there's Roadrunner, and other cable modems, as you all know, but if you can't get ANY other high speed, there's always sattelite. (and if you can't get that, you should probally move somewhere that has power.

<Soapbox>

Any way about it, I have vonage, and it's a Wonderful thing.. it's cheaper than any other phone company.. (oops, did I say that?) umm.. base station land line telecommunications service, (IP or otherwise) you can hook up regular phones, answering machines, fax machines, anything with a phone jack! (non-vonage sponsored faq, and cheap plug for referrals) Not to mention you can keep your regular phone number, equipment, etc.. (FYI, if you use a refferal, you get an extra month free, instead of going directly to vonage :) Where else can you get a true to life 800 number for a couple extra bux a month?

</Soapbox>

ok.. I'm done now..

(yeah, I know, you already knew most of that anwyays...)

here's a link to a project in Utah that wants to bring fiber to 170,000 households and more than 20,000 businesses.

Yep, my bad, it's not compressed, DPCM is it's compressed variant and it's not on CDs. Regardless, I found yet another reference predating the patent that basically proves it's subject to prior art here:

"With compression being top of mind for many operators in 1989, General Instrument broke through the digital barrier and compressed digital video into 6 MHz of spectrum. This breakthrough raised the industry's hopes of one day seeing digital pictures, while increasing channel capacity to hundreds of channels."

TiVo's lack of support for standard-definition digital cable is no big deal, but HDTV is another matter.

Digital SDTV is a maximum of 720x480 (or 704x486 (704=22x32) or something else close) which is similar to VGA's 640x480 but the pixels are narrower than they are tall. PAL digital SDTV is 720x540 with almost-square pixels.

This maximum is the same as DVD and also known as CCIR-601. However, digital cable might have lower resolution to save bandwidth. TCTI/AT&T/NuevoComcast uses 352x486 on most channels on the HITS satellite and it's likely the content is softened (low-pass filtered) a bit before real-time-encoding.

Therefore, re-digitizing and re-encoding the standard-def analog stream coming out of your digital cable set-top box is only moderately horrible. Motion artifacts will be a bigger issue than resolution because TiVo encodes in real time so can't go back & choose keyframes more wisely later. It also costs 1/100th of the encoders used by HITS and DirectTV do.

Real-time-encoding of SDTV by a sub-$500 box is a reasonable thing in 2003. HDTV is another matter and the digital cable boxes I know of (Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 2000HD) only have analog video outputs (YCrCb component for HD). Pinnacle Systems makes a system where the HD option alone is $1000. HD on PCs now is where SD was 10 years ago- intra-frame (Motion-JPEG/DV-style) or no compression, using oodles of disk space (even with today's 180GB drives). Uncompressed HD @ 1920x1080x30x12bpp (4:2:0) is 90 megabytes per second. That means burning through a 180GB hard drive in about 1/2 hour.

As the poster suggests, you want to get the MPEG-2 stream & just slap it on a disk instead of trying to recompress. For Over-the-Air HDTV broadcasts, this should be no problem. For cable systems that keep OTA in 8VSB...

(something boxes were required to do a few years ago even if the provider doesn't support it- they have to pass through 8VSB with enough bandwidth/low enough noise that a receiver can still demodulate&decode it)

an 8VSB-in-only HDTV PVR would work. Many systems are demodulating 8VSB and re-modulating at QAM64. If they also apply their conditional access (CA), it gets really sticky.

The fact that there aren't digital-cable-ready TVs like there were(are) cable-ready TVs is something the industry, their Cable Labs group and the FCC have been working on for years. The biggest obstacle is Scientific-Atlanta and General Instrument (now Motorola)'s incompatible systems in the US. It's possible to run both on a single network under an agreement called Harmony, but they still see CA as the crown jewels.

POD (point-of-deployment CA, rented from the cable company) was supposed to solve that by putting all the proprietary stuff in a PCMCIA-like card & making the boxes or TV's or VCRs or PVRs use standard interfaces.

Google terms: PowerKEY (SA's system), DigiCipher (Motorola's), Conditional Access.

Other sources: Multichannel News and Communications Engineering and Design (CED) Magazine

They want to insert their own "secure" hole into your network. They're unofficially calling it "CAT," for "Cable Address Translator."

From here

The sad fact is there will still be competing broadcast standards which make the NTSC/PAL/SECAM fight seem silly.

Actually, the American DTV technical standards are pretty well settled in at this point. The only half-way outstanding question is which copy-protection scheme will be used for the box-to-box connection (cable to TV, etc), and at this point 5C seems to have it sewn up. Thomson and Zenith seem to have lost their battle to keep home video recorders a viable product.

A six-month-old overview of the standards situation can be found online at Communications Engineering & Design magazine.

Many questions remain, however, in the non-technical areas. A huge battle lies ahead in determining who's going to make all the money from the "extra" bandwidth that the stations have. The stations would like to sell it themselves, but the networks have other plans.

In that vein, CBS had been the big champion of using the extra bandwidth for HDTV, since they had only the one program stream. With the recent sale to Viacom, they might well change their tune to preferring non-HDTV multicasting of all of Viacom's programming.

The other battle is between the broadcasters and the cable operators. The cable operators see DTV as added competition and don't see how DTV makes them any money, so they're not enthusiastic about it.