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Full-Screen Video Over 28.8k: The Claims Continue
gwernol writes "Over at Screen Daily they are claiming that an Australian company has demonstrated a high quality, full-screen video-on-demand service that is delivered over a 28.8k modem. They claim this will 'eliminate the need for broadband.' If this is true, then they'll change the world. Of course, the basic technology has been around for a while, see this article from 1998 or this one from earlier this year. I remain extremely sceptical. If this is real, why won't they allow proper independent testing? But it is interesting that they're getting funding. Could this be the last great Internet scam?"
Several readers also pointed out this brief report at imdb.com as well. We've mentioned this before, but the news here is the reportedly successful demo. It would be a lot easier to swallow if he'd let people test it independently, but video-over-28.8 sure is tantalizing.
Pshah!
With all the great things I have with broadband (at the same cost of 28.8 service), plus, if you can compress a stream for 28.8, imagine what you can do with broadband!
This won't eliminate broadband. It'll strengthen it!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Funny, I find a broadband connection incredibly useful, and yet i never watch video over the net...
The real advantages of a broadband conneciton is that you are always connected; you are accessible to others via mail and messaging at all times (just imagine that you had to explicitly connect your telephone to use it, then disconnect it again afterwards). The speed, while very nice, is actually not as important.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
With the advent of wireless technology, speed is not the only issue at hand. Energy is going to be a major factor to consider. While we may be able to compress video into oblivion, the processing power required to perform the compression/decompression may be too high for handheld wireless deviced with limited battery power. Broadband availability for desktop computers is rapidly becoming a non-issue.
People are going to want to send and receive video emails from their handhelds. We need a technology that will be able to strike a balance between energy required to transmit the signal (bandwidth) and the energy required to compress and decompress the signal (signal processing).
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
I don't even think it would be that hard to fake.
These 'secret' proprietary processes always seem to generate a lot of hyp, investment/funding, whatever and never seem to generate the proposed technology. A good example's a Calgary company that hyped its 'new' large-scale flat screen (non morticed screens) technology. It ended up that the founder had fraudulently demonstrated 'their' tech to shareholders using a compeditor's equiptment.
I can't help but think of 'The Spanish Prisoner.'
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
The problem isn't just the bandwidth. The problem with the idea of video-on-demand is that, unlike broadcast, your costs scale with your audience. The technological problem of fitting high-quality signal over a tiny pipeline is a great one to solve, but video-on-demand's real problem is that the cost scales.
It's like choosing an O(exp) algorithm when you know an O(1) algorithm is available.
See, if I start broadcasting a signal, the more people that tune in, the more I can charge for pay-per-view or advertising. But the neat thing is that my cost is fixed; no matter how many people tune into that signal, it costs me the same amount to spray EM waves all over the place.
But with VoD, every new viewer means new bandwidth. Meaning that my costs go up with each new customer. And since the cost of additional bandwidth is not a linear equation, at some point there's diminishing returns, regardless of how small the stream is. My profit margins wither and die if there's enough demand for my video stream.
The only real solution for this from a business perspective is...get this...distributed file sharing, such as Napster or Gnutella. With tools like these, I'm able to avoid the added demands on my server by making the folks who want the service into servers themselves.
So the real technical problem to solve with VoD is not to make the streams smaller, although that certainly doesn't hurt, but to make money off of folks' file transfers. Obviously a direct tax on each transfer is going to cause problems, but an advertising-based model, where each transferred file has an advertisement attached with it, could work wonderfully.
Too bad for the RIAA and MPAA that they're too busy suing file-sharing users and pushing unsuccessful VoD goose-chases to figure this out, eh?
This is a cool technology if it's real. I wouldn't be surprised if it is real. But it won't make the internet into the great media-delivery tool the media corporations want it to be.
Ok,
Lets assume a video frame size of 320x240x16bit. We can scale this up fairly well, however, its no where near TV quality.
Each frame takes 153,600 bytes per frame uncompressed. Now lets say you can get 80% compression on each frame. That would bring us down to 30,720 bytes per frame.
A typical 28.8K modem is going to see 2800 bytes a second (on a good day, more like 2400 bytes in the real world). Note: This is a 28.8K modem and not a 56K modem.
Based on these numbers, it would take about 10.9 seconds per frame (30,720 / 2800 = 10.9).
Obviously there are tricks that one can do such as deltas between frames rather than actual frames, etc...
However, in order to get 24FPS (3,686,400 bytes)in real time, they would have to get a compression rate of 99.93% (for the 24 frames).
It just doesn't add up. I think they are full of it and this product will never go beyond vaporware.
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Well, assuming that this *isn't* a complete and utter fabrication... like most software 'demos' I've seen... this has serious implications for the movie industry.
It's still fairly difficult for users to encode, post and/or download entire DVD movies. Most computer users wouldn't have a clue of where to being.
If this codec does what it proclaims to do, however, can you see this company *not* licensing encoders one way or the other? Real's Mpeg2-based compressor was pretty revolutionary at the time, yet they still offered a 'free' version.
DivX, which is free, but questionable, is even more revolutionary in terms of quality and filesize.
Both these codecs have drawn people into the whole movie/video trading scene.
If this codec *does* allow for compression of videos to make them the same size as the average MP3, (and think about that comparison... For this to work, they'll have to reliable encode video at a lower rate than MP3 audo), the movie trading scene will take off in a way that will make Valenti's asshole shrivel up.
Of course, this company can try to keep the codec and/or encryption secret. To that I have this to say... Jon Johansen and DeCSS
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My first guess it that these aussies have impressed clueless execs with ordinary tech.
My second guess is that maybe someone finally got around to applying foveation in a way that works really well.
Perhaps these aussies are hooking up test audiences to eye-tracking devices, and recording their average gaze during a film so that they can get even higher compression by throwing out what's outside most peoples field of view?
*shrug*
Power to the Peaceful