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HDTV Over IP
gravelpup writes " NASA Watch has this article about a NASA demo of streaming an HDTV feed over a 20Mbps network from D.C. to California. Suddenly, watching NASA TV at home over a dinky DSL connection doesn't seem so cool anymore." For some reason this just makes streaming high quality video over the net seem even further away to me.
The article was about HDTV over IP! How is this offtopic?????
More moderator crack I guess!
Mod this back up please!
When I read an the blurb on this article ant think to myself:
1. How did they bypass the encryption?
2. Boy Nasa's gonna get sued..
It will only get worse.
I am programmer from the days when 12k of ram was BIG! Yes, kilo!
Today, I still write small tight routines.
But most programmers today, throw more hardware at the problem to get better speed, instead of improving their style.
This idea of HDTV over IP is fine, but compress the single to the 5M it needs, instead of the wasting 4x that.
The computers are more than fast enought to do that. MIT proved that years ago. IE: HDTV in the same channel space normal TV.
Maybe IP isn't the appropriate media for high quality video transmission.
What's new besides the mutlicast aspect? Hasn't this already been done.
I'm not familiar with the HDTV format, but story made no mention of compression-decompression. Is HDTV already compressed? Or did they use the full 20Mps to send an uncompressed video stream?
Software Wars
Well, which is it?
My ISP (www.bonet.se) delivers 2.5 Mbps with DSL! They don't require any new or extra cables but just use the ordinary Swedish telephone wires!
Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean the point is invalid. Companies try to maximize profits, not just make "enough".
My girlfriends grandfather still has his 12' dish in the front yard, and still gets the nasa channel.
Not to mention he can watch dan rather pick his nose during commericials. now that's funny.
And get tv shows days earlier than there regular air time.
Long live the BOD
I can't help but think that a lot of undue emphasis is being placed on installing faster internet links. I can remember when RealVideo was shiny and new, and people complained that streaming video wasn't watchable even over a T1. Today this isn't the case, but this is because of the increased complexity of the encoding and not the speed of the link. Lots of current DSL and cable lines are more than fast enough to replace broadcast quality NTSC signals, but only using very recent compression schemes like Sorenson or OpenDivx. Next generation encoding methods will be commoditized and moved into the mainstream long before fiber in the home becomes a reality and will yeild much better video quality than current standards could even with a ten fold bandwidth advantage.
I've seen something like this before -- a 36 Mbit DV stream sent over the Internet2 (IP network instead of Firewire) from Ohio to Pennsylvania. It was just a test, to see if it could be made to work. Latency was in the 150ms range. (Basically it was two FreeBSD machines with Firewire and tuned 100Base-T cards on both ends.)
At the time, my reaction was "What a waste of bandwidth!" but extremely high quality video streams at relatively low latency are critical for remote instrumentation/manipulation applications. Like moving a robot arm in space, or allowing scientists from all over the place to use one piece of very expensive equipment instead of moving them all to the same location. We also considered using something like that in an on-campus video editing facility for moving footage around from machine to machine. I can see the use for it in some situations.
But for broadcasting? I don't see the point of using all that spectrum just for a video.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
When people say "HDTV," they can mean either the full-bandwidth uncompressed signal (on the order of 1.3 Gbps) or the broadcast-standard signal (MPEG-2 compressed to the order of 19.7 Mbit, or about 50-to-1, more or less).
Obviously this test didn't use uncompressed HDTV. Must have used MPEG-2.
When it comes to standard definition TV, the stuff you get over digital cable or DBS is typically between 4 and 6 Mbit. I think most people would consider 2 Mbit to be unacceptably noisy... but then again, I can ignore an awful lot of softness and artifacting from my TiVo, so maybe even 2 Mbit would be acceptable under the right circumstances.
Uncompressed standard-def TV, on the other hand, is carried over a 270 Mbit signal.
MPEG-2 compression seems to be totally acceptable up to 50-to-1, and marginally so up to about 100-to-1. DVCpro 25 (25 Mbit, or about 10-to-1) is widely considered to be crappy by broadcast standards, but looks a damn sight better than my TiVo on my home TV.
My rambling point (coffee, please) is that "HDTV" is a soft, fuzzy concept. Squeeze it down to 5 or 6 Mbit and it'll still be HDTV, with a thousand lines of resolution on-screen. But it might be so fuzzy or artifact-y that nobody would watch it.
...and you can have your PVR, and the NASA channel.
Look at this link: http://www.washington.edu/hdtv/nab/press.html. The University of Washington sent 4 HD streams down to Las Vegas. In LV, all the video switching, chroma key, and digital fx were added. The resulting stream was sent back to Seattle for broadcast. Each stream was in the 200Mbps range. Nice.
Hell no. Having a family member that worked in broadcasting for 20 years, I can tell you that the reason that no one's producing HDTV equipment is cost.
You think that the _consumer_ gear costs an arm and a leg? Just try upgrading the cameras, monitors, editing equipment, and mastering equipment. For each studio.
On the station side, you're going to need a new control room, bloody TRANSMITTER [horribly expensive pieces of equipment], and sometimes a tower to boot, addition to ugrading the news studios and remote trucks (mirowave and satellite links).
And all that for crappy programming that three people in the entire country own the equipment to see in the native resolution.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
without lag?
:)
i personally think theres some high round trip times, especially to some types of recievers
Need a Catering Connection
Rectum.
That's a press release, not an article. Please don't try to pass it off otherwise.
Just think, finally you would have the picture quality, sound and everything to make watching this the truly satisfying and rewarding experience it should have been! If only technology would have advanced sooner. *sigh*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Let's just stay away from using IP for Broadcast. Call it multicast or whatever you want to call it, but it isn't an ideal way to transmit a signal to a bunch of people and it just eats up bandwidth for people who are using the internet for two way communication.
It may be cool to get everything over IP but it doesn't make sense. Let's get video conferencing working on some sort of standard first.
I am using verizon DSL on the slowest plan, and I regularly get 2.5Mbps. The modem tops out at 7.1Mbps download though, the only reason I top out at 2.5Mbps is because of the next hop bandwidth. Think about it, RADSL goes over the same copper wires. The hardware at the two ends is the only difference, and the bandwidth they need to reserve for the next hop. My point is that with video on demand, the next hop is meaningless, if you store the video at the phone company.
Yes, it shares my voice line. But I still contend that at least half of the cost is coming from the next hop, whether it's voice or data. Direct point to point copper lines don't cost $20/month, no matter how you slice it. They probably cost the phone company about $5/month in recurring costs. I'd bet it's less than that, even.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
HDTV does not require throughput of 20Mbs...
Bandwidth is not the only factor... as processing power increases so too can the compression on the algorithms used to encode the data stream.
Online HDTV might not be that far off... we are really only a few innovations away such as the invention of cheap optical switches, and/or a breakthrough in processor technology.
I wouldn't be surprised to see practical HDTV within the next 3 to 5 years.
Do you think MS is trying to capture the streaming market for no reason do you ?
Ok... you don't know what you are talking about. I have seen side by side comparisons on Panasonic Plasma screens of HDTV being streamed raw and in the 20MB/s format. There is NO difference. Now, Microsoft has claimed to stream HD in their .wmv format at 4 MB/s. This certainly does not look good.
between 18.5 and 20 MB/s is optimal range for compressing HD and still maintaining quality.
F******* LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! --Ozzy Osbourne
Yes yes, this is all very cool, but there has to be consumer demand to fuel this. Considering how long it is taking HDTV to become the norm (if ever), and our propensity to easily eat up whatever bandwidth current technology delivers with inane shit, I would truely be surprised if TV starts coming across the 'net anytime soon (ie, 10 years). Somehow, the media providers would have to slip their foot inside the door to reserve bandwidth on a telco's network before it gets eaten up by consumers? I'm just thinking about the case where the consumers already have the link, and are used to having bandwidth X available .. it'd be a tough sell to start piggybacking HDTV on those connections, and tell your consumer base that their available bandwidth will now be X, to make way for multicast HDTV streams you may not even be interested in.
Actually, I'm more interested in 'friendly off the air' messages in explorer:
"I'm sorry, the TV show you are trying to watch is unavailable. Please hit 'reload', or try again later."
That'd be enough to drive me back to my remote 'n good 'ol cable.
"Old man yells at systemd"
First, I would still buy box sets. Second, many shows never had box sets, or they were made in too small a quantity. Twin Peaks comes to mind...
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I feel for you, I really do.
Not only do I see this as a problem with the downstream bandwidth I get from my ISP, I also see this as a problem for servers.
/.
What kind of server can send out 20MBps streams to thousands if not millions of users?
And we think the net is clogged now. Imagine a HDTV server is streaming something that gets posted as news to
Forget the bandwidth deal...WE AIN'T GOT IT.
But please give me a ThunderCastIP HDTV server to play with at the HDTV station I work at.
read einstein's theory of relativity some time
Just think about it, a T1 is 1.5 Mbps, my cable modem max's out at 2.9 Mbps (not that I ever see that.) These bandwidth hungry applications are still a long way away, at least until the next Internet revolution when we all have fiber to the home...
From where I sit, DivX and MPEG4 seem to be heading rapidly towards being industry standard. But, isn't DivX open? Or is that just international effort from countries who don't care that brings us OpenDivX?
Anyway, there was talk of an OGG video codec. In and interview, the creator of Vorbis said that video compression should be easier than audio, and also that he was planning on doing such a thing once vorbis was further along.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
Murdoch has shown a keen eye for avoiding wrong technologies. When the offical 'right' way to do DTH broadcast was D-Mac, he launched using PAL, and wiped the D-Mac off the table. Now when the 'right' way to do stuff if HDTV, he's sticking to MPEG2 PAL. It's the KISS principle in action. http://www.terramedia.co.uk/Themes/BSB.htm for an analysis of BSB v Sky
Fibre is not necessary, Interactive Digital TV can be delivered at 4.5Mbps over ADSL, for a fraction of the cost.
How can I be sure?
We are already doing this commercially. I work on a system, which delivers Interactive Digital Television using IP over ADSL. It includes 60 channels of broadcast TV, Video on Demand using the largest nCube Video Server installation in the world, Web and Email, TV-Commerce, a Local Link which includes links to local services such as Schools and Libraries & Pizza Deliver. Our News on Demand service has won innovation awards including from the Royal Television Society, (which was perversely sponsored by our arch Rival BT :-). We also have an Interactive Virtual Avatar.
Checkout this link for a detailed case study.
http://www.broadcastpapers.com/data/KingstonCase St udy01.htm
BTW I've submitted links to our story 3 times over the last two years, but /. Has never seen fit to publish it, now a much simpler US system gets the coverage, make me wonder.
Except if you live in Australia where Telstra and competitors will probably still be charging $0.20 per megabyte in 15 years time.
(Discovery Channel, Wings Channel, etc)
Oh, you mean USA Network? "We interrupt this episode of Wings for another episode of Wings" ;-)
If you really think this sort of thinking has any long term future then you've not learnt allot from all that has happened so far...
And when will we be able to watch "Geeks in Space" over an HDTV signals ?
--- Bouh !!! ---
'signal'
Good thing those 'programmers' of old were bright, otherwise they'd look silly when they troll. Erm, nevermind...
If you're gonna piss on DirecTV, at least have your facts right.
They've had NASA up at 119 for over a year.
What I would ideally want to do would be to have a Dish Network/PVR setup. Dish gets NASA-TV, DirecTV doesn't. Sure, watching a spacewalk in real time is about as much fun as watching a golf match, but with the PVR, one could FF through it...
They do run occaisional stuff that makes the usual techish channels (Discovery Channel, Wings Channel, etc) look...well, like the equivalent of "Friends".
It is fun to see the raw, lightly edited footage of stuff, rather than the heavily laid-over stuff on commercial channels.
If you're really into it, DishNetwork is the service to get if you like that kind of stuff (NASA-TV, Research Channel, UCTV, etc.)
And Dish Network cards can be hacked/emulated just like DirectTV can as well...
TV over IP is probably going to herald Video On Demand and you know what that means : pay as you go TV.
Maybe then though the bandwidth on the TV satellites can be utilised for IP traffic.
There are so many barriers to success though, that although it's a cool tech achievement widespread deployment will probably have to wait for a paradigm shift in the internet infrastructure. All those ISP's have got a lot of investment in their current hardware that the budgets probably project them for at least 5 years use.
My DSL provider (ntl:) is also a cable TV provider. The analogue TV & cable modem comes into my house on the same wire. 50 channels of TV & 1 x 512k data. I don't think that they are going to squeeze 20mbps of data through there too any time soon.
but let's look forward to fibre to the door and then we'll see things happen but probably not for quite a few years yet.
Our kids will probably get it but by then our eyes will be too dim to notice the difference between HDTV and analogue!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The University of Washington (UW, not WU) already did this about two years ago. And using studio quality HDTV to boot. There were two different types of streaming, one which was around 40Mbps and a higher quality one at 200+ Mbps. Check out http://www.washington.edu/hdtv/ for more info.
-BAll of this would be funny if people still had the disposable income they had two years ago. Now it just seems sad.
It's six times larger, the programs are six times better!! Hurray!!!1!
I want to do this over the 100BaseT LAN in my house.
:-)
[Permit me to go off on a tangent..] In fact, I want to allow all my content input/generation devices to broadcast on my LAN, where any other content presenters can pick them up.
I want to:
- play cd or tuner from my living room stereo and also hear it in my bedroom or basement
- when watching the game on tv, also feed the audio to the bathroom
- when surfing or gaming at my computer, monitor what someone else is watching on tv (or the other way around would be cool: mirror my game on my big screen tv (but that's a different problem))
- have an audio & video server which can play to any screen or speaker in the house
Is this possible? impractical? silly?
--
no sig, no plan, no clue
no sig, no plan, no clue
HDTV is about 120MB/s. They are transmitting it at 50:1 compression and people consider this to be acceptable. NTSC is 21MB/s which at 50:1 is 3.3Mb which is not that far away from a technology point of view and this is at MPEG-2 rates. MPEG-4 will give you quite a bit more efficency (slightly less than 1Mb).
2 00 1_05_16_china_telecom.html
2 00 1_02_27_kingston.html
2 00 1_04_24_itstv_chooses_nCUBE.html
Anyhow, while we are all thinking about it, there are a few people actually doing it.
http://www.ncube.com/pressroom/pressreleases/pr
http://www.ncube.com/pressroom/pressreleases/pr
http://www.ncube.com/pressroom/pressreleases/pr
no, I don't work for ncube, I just ran across their booth at NAB.
University of Washington folks have been working on this for a while, take a look at:
http://www.washington.edu/hdtv/
and the Research Channel:
http://www.researchchannel.com/hdtv/
And they havent risen the charge as telia have done. Go bonet go! =)
The HDTV standards weren't even finalized until '93. The FCC didn't adopt until these until '95 or '96. The first broadcast of Jay Leno in HDTV 1040i didn't happen until April of 1999.
Actually Sky's licence is only for upto 1001 homes, it's only a trial. Kingston Communications (www.kcom.com), have been doing this for two years, and our service (www.kitv.co.uk) includes Web & Email, Content (News/ Movies) on Demand, frankly KIT blows the Sky system out of the water, in terms of Capability.
Everytime there is an HDTV story posted I read people WHINE about how bad HDTV is. Just stop it. The reason HD (or DTV for that matter) have not taken off is the MPAA (or rather who they rerosent.) HD content is sparse. Why? Studio's don't want to produce it. And it's not a matter of technology. It's not a matter of costing huge ammounts of money for the studio to make an HD copy. In fact many prime time programs are filmed, then converted to video during editing. Usually drama's, sci-fi, made for TV movies, etc.
Studio's hate HDTV. Why? Because it ruins a very important Video market. They now count on the fact that VCR's make low quality, grainy copies of on-air content. This means they can make tons of bank on [insert fav show here] box sets. Once you deal with a digital format they are sunk. People can now make a high quality recording for personal use. Hence no reason to buy an over priced box set from the local retailer.
While people can contend the studios and networks are free to do as they please, I would counter that the networks are allowed to use OUR airwaves for next to nothing. With out over the air content no one would buy a box set show. Like it or not, Timeshifting is legal and is considered a RIGHT we have gained in exchange for allowing networks to use the airwaves.
HD prices could have dropped like DVD prices by now if the studios didn't stand in the way. The mear fact that hardware vendors keep having to go to the design stage to add new copy protect and transports to please the studios is just crazy.
HD is $$$ and in it's intfancy because of the DMCA and studio money. It's doesn't matter if you're a Dem. or Rep., because neither party took a stand and did any thing to protect the consumer.
The real problem isn't that NASA footage is soooooo boring, it's that after the fake moon landing, who can take any of them for real?
m i the only one who sees this as a good thing? the average user could have the video stream fed throughout their house (stream dvd's even) without using up an entire 100Bit network (in case you haven't noticed, 10/100 switches are cheap!)
But for the rest of us, there's VDSL, the DSL on steroids (up to 52mbps on copper). There have been some trials in US and Canada, I have seen the equipment and the thing is amazing. No new wiring, no disruption, digital TV, high-speed internet, plus internet telephony.
Here are some slides that talk about it.
The kind of bandwidth apps use today amazes me when I think that only a few years ago when I was at university, us irc users we're constantly moaned at for hogging all the bandwidth.
I wonder if we will ever reach a point where no (ab)use of available bandwidth will be criticised simply because it will hardly even be noticable?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
The only difference between the road analogy and real life is that for multicast, if you sent a truck out from your house (a data packet,) at every intersection, that truck would duplicate itself at every intersection. With regular IP, you would just send out all the trucks at once.
Of course, all of this is greatly simplified (as analogies tend to be ;o) but I think it gets the point across...
"You can't play Elite on the mainframe! Think how many processor cycles you've wasted! Look, this isn't an Altair we've got here, buddy, it has the storage capacity of 125 college textbooks...."
Brought to you by the friendly folks at FrobozzCo....
From whom are you buying your DSL, and where can I get some? Full T1 speeds are 1.5MBPS, and that's where most comsumer DSL tops out -- buisnesses can sometimes pay \$$Largenum for Multi-Mb/S RADSL lines, but you're still not going to get 20Mbps for under $300/mo or so.
Also, most of that cheap DSL shares your voice line -- any dedicated line is going to cost you for the second/third/tenth line.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
Just unplugging it will work too.
I thought that multicasting was one of the benefits of using IPv6, and it was not implementable in IPv4? Or is this some kind of hack before IPv6 becomes the standard?
So we're going to have HDTV video from NASA. But the important question is: what about the audio? The video I see on NASA TV (I get it on my cable system) looks pretty good, about what I'd expect from modern video equipment. But whenever they broadcast audio as well (an interview from the shuttle, for example), it sounds the same as audio from an Apollo mission. Why can't they use TV-quality audio when broadcasting TV-quality video from orbit?
They should make all the dials and buttons out of lead. Remote control too. No sense in doing just a half ass job of making people retarded.
There is no 'will' about it, TV over IP *has* already arrived in the UK. We (www.kitv.co.uk) carry a MPEG 2 encoded PAL signal using an IP transport over ADSL and our system is available to consumers TODAY.
Using MPEG 2, It's possible to carry a reasonable TV signal in ~2.5Mbps, and a pretty good one in ~4.5Mbps. The picture quality is superior to analogue broadcasts and comparable with cable/satellite systems. In practice picture quality *really depends* on how much you are prepared spend on your MPEG encoders, No 199 pound/dollar mpeg cards here. We use custom built broadcast spec PIXStream encoders which cost 60,000 pounds (~90,000dollars) apiece. It perhaps worth mentioning that PIXStream make probably the 'best of breed' MPEG encoders in the world and choosen because we know we are pushing the envelope.
The nature of the platform (Multicast IP) also means that an MPEG 4 upgrade is a straight forward exercise, and since MPEG 4 is nearly twice as efficient, we can improve picture resolution and save bandwidth.
This technology will make Cable Cable uses a ring based network topology, so the bandwidth is shared between connections. ADSL uses a star topology, so the contention is moved back from the MAN backbone to the head end. Our customers get between 4.5-8Mbps each depending on their line attenuation.
Cable and Satellite are obsolete. They just don't know it yet.
Hope it will give me a new reason to get 5.1 surround for my box, hehe
-Mr. Fusion
Rumor has it that NASA will try to liven up their broadcast segments with gay porn.
What a market.. if you could beat the cable providers to good VOD, you could take a lot of business from them. They don't deserve that business either - they've been working on digital cable for years, and it doesn't look any better than crappy NTSC, or give you video on demand. My box doesn't even have S-video or digital audio.
From all the news lately you would think that it was the Code Red I & II worm that were slowing down the Internet. But no, its those "rocket scientists" at NASA wanting to watch HDTV over IP sucking down all that precious bandwidth. Your tax dollars at work, letting geeks watch high definition pr0n from outer space. Jeeez!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
do people still watch nasa broadcasts anymore anyway? not that i don't love the american public space program, but i was just curious whether this was the best example of viewing television-style programming online considering nobody seems to watch it on their boob-tube.
great comedy company.
That's what, 3 DSL lines? $60 a month? As long as you put the TIVO (not literally) at the phone company what's stopping us from video on demand at $60/month? 95% of your DSL bandwidth limits happen after you get to the phone company, not before. Hell, I don't need HDTV quality. DVD quality is more like 6Mbps, or $20/month.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
HomeChoice also offer this type of service, after all this is what ADSL was designed for not the Internet. BT have been trialing ADSL for VOD technology for over ten years but there's a rule in their privatization regulation that forbids them carrying TV content, this actually expired January last, so expect a Phone/ADSL/TV package from BT to compete with the cable companies. With the BT chairman also being the chairman of the BBC, it helps.
Some good use of bandwidth!
BRAVO!
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
... that NTSC over IP isn't all that far off. HDTV has 5 times the information of NTSC, ergo, NTSC over IP should only take up about 5Mb/sec.
-Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
And since open standards is my favorite issue, I support these efforts a lot (though I haven't the knowlegde to participate).
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Streaming MPEG 2 is nowhere near as efficient as some of the MPEG 4 codecs available. Take a look at www.3ivx.com. I got a 12 to 1 compression ratio over an MPEG 2 file which I ripped from a DVD [which I own]. Basically there is almost no loss in visual quality and a 77 MB file dropped in size to around 6.8 MB. Worth a look if you ever wanted to exercise your right to fair use...
Man.. a lot. When will I get that fast connection? It would allow me to play some of this cool music at pretty high fidelity.
The World's Best Music!
The eventual answer was that "If you can buy it, it is obsolete."
Technology envy strikes again
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
British Sky Broadcasting (Rupert Murdoch's European satellite broadcaster) recently bought the licence to broadcast digital TV over ADSL in the UK. The service will begin in the next couple of years.
/not/ HDTV -- it's MPEG2 encoded PAL.
Note that this is
does HDTV = Hard drive television?
I mean, look at all the industry controls and FUD built into HDTV. The format is less than ideal, and all the hardware required to play it is exorbitant.
This makes getting open source video formats in place even more important so that, in the very near future, we don't have to make a decision like the one we're making right now between OGG and MP3. One format is techincally superior and open, while the other is the 'industry standard'.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
As far as I'm concerned tho, if *I* had a 20Mbs connection, watching TV would come far second. I'd want to engage in some serious virtual mudwrestling with Natalie Portman! =)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The linked "article" is a press release by 2netFX, the company that is selling the technology. Please make a note of this and consider the source. I can't tell you how much it irks me when people pass off press releases as news (plus, it means that the marketing drones have fooled the mighty /. nerdhorde).
I didn't mean HDTV broadcasts.. as you said, the standard was finalized many years ago. It took way too long from the moment the engineers said, "it's done" until there were actual HDTV broadcasts and sets available. HDTV's are still overpriced.
I work at the UC Berkeley Multimedia Research Center. One of the things we have going on here is the encoding and decoding of video streams for use over the Internet/Internet2 using IP Multicast.
The thing is, you can get really good NTSC signals going at 20Mbps. This is television you would watch and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference without having another TV next to it and pushing your nose up against the screen. I'm not surprised that NASA is able to get a decent HDTV feed at 20Mbps. (If you read the article, you'll see that the signal was "crystal-clear", and not a thousand lines of noise.)
The problem is you need hardware to get decent framerates. We use LML33 boards to encode and decode NTSC to MJPEG at 30fps. These boards are $400. To encode MPEG-2 at a reasonable frame rate, you need hardware is at least $2000, I believe. If you try to use software encoding/decoding then your mileage varies but I usually get less than 10fps using 1/4 NTSC or CIF in MJPEG.
The software is here: http://www.openmash.org/