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Full-Screen Video Over 28.8k: The Claims Continue

Posted by timothy on from the well-maybe-a-monkey's-cousin-at-least dept.

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.

13 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Eliminate Broadband? by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

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    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
  2. End of Broadband? by JanneM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:End of Broadband? by garcia · · Score: 4, Funny

      umm, how is this any different than having a 24/7 dialup connection (or at least close). PPP on demand would do just about the same thing as well.

      Broadband is great b/c I don't have to wait 5 mins while my porn comes up, I don't have to wait 15 hours for my whatever.tar.gz to download, and I certainly don't have to worry about my roommate stealing all the bandwith downloading MP3s.

      Even if 28.8kbps can support full motion video you can't do much else while it is downloading.

  3. It's Not Only About Speed... by omnirealm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. easily done by LocalYokel · · Score: 4, Funny
    Lossy compression can do wonderful things. =)
    http://lzip.sourceforge.net/

    I hope this isn't another Pixelon...

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    --
    E2 IN2 IE?

  5. What's that? by pogofish · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes sir, full screen video over a 28k connection.


    So what am I seeing? It looks rather blank.


    Well sir, that's a white cow in a snow field. It just scared out some snow hares.


    Over 28k you say? Where do I sign?

    --

    A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
  6. Smoke and Mirrors by topham · · Score: 5, Insightful
    A 28.8Kbps modem delivery good video and sound? Uh-huh. It's the Holy Grail. The last guy I heard demoing it ended up being on a wanted list for fraud. For all we know the machine had a 802.11b wireless card and was receiving multiple transmissions of the datastream. (Assuming any level of auditing was actualy done to verify that any data was over the 28.8 connection.)


    I don't even think it would be that hard to fake.

    1. Re:Smoke and Mirrors by Nick+Number · · Score: 4, Funny

      For all we know the machine had a 802.11b wireless card and was receiving multiple transmissions of the datastream. (Assuming any level of auditing was actualy done to verify that any data was over the 28.8 connection.)

      Perhaps a GPS beacon as well.

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      Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
  7. The last? It was one of the first and best by rjamestaylor · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Remember Pixelon?

    The above is all that in necessary to say on this subject, but due to the postercomment compression filter, I have to add this meaningless paragraph.

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    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello
  8. Re:If you believe that... by istartedi · · Score: 4, Troll

    "Yes, and I am able to compress all of Slashdot down to 10 bytes."

    FIRST POST
    0123456789

    Well, what do you know, he's right!

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  9. Lets do the math... by ArcadeNut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:Lets do the math... by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 4, Informative

      80% (factor of five) compression is unreasonably
      inefficient. Even without frame-to-frame similarities, wavelet image compression schemes can achieve 50x compression with no visible degradation (I know, I did experiments last year as part of a spacecraft proposal effort). That's a factor of 10 from your figures -- 1.9 seconds per frame. Using the similarities between frames, it's not unreasonable to think that another factor-of-10 applies (MPEG achieves factor-of-100
      compression where JPEG only gets factor-of-10), bringing the frame count up to 10/second.

  10. University backstep by DHartung · · Score: 5, Informative

    The new article as well as the earlier one both say that the technology is "backed by a report from Monash University" {in Melbourne}, but back in April, Monash vigorously disputed claims of their support. They conducted an independent review but the compression algorithm was black-boxed. The company may be misrepresenting the purpose and parameters of the review, from the university's point of view.

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