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Video On Demand Almost Here For San Franciscans
BeatlesForum.com writes: "Looks like San Francisco-area folks could be in for a taste of video when you want it, according to this article from Reuters. The article mentions that we will be able to start and stop the on-demand stream whenever we want. Kinda sounds like TiVo now, except you still have to fit around the broadcast schedule. Interesting statistic quoted from the article, though: it is expected that 5.5 million homes will have VOD by the end of the year. Imagine being able to pull up 2001: A Space Odyssey at 2:38 a.m.."
The way the article makes it sound, you could even pull it up at 2:39!
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
And it's all brought to you by AT&.... oh wait... Comcast.
Really cool stuff. I've played with the motorola DCT that does this for 30 days now. and it is really cool.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
VOD causes ad avoidance, which forces advertisers to find new and untested ways to reach consumers.
As in the Depression days the advertising industry gets bolder and more raucous during times of privation.
We need to keep people's consumer spending up at least at somewhat respectable levels. In fact I believe that the fact we are immersed in advertising media is what makes our consumer confidence more resilient than it would be otherwise.
We should not destabilize vital parts of the economy like airlines or advertising. It's truly a matter of national security.
Goat sex free since 2001
On Long Island we have this. It is called I/O (Interactive Optimum), and it is provided by Cablevision.
blog & fiction: jd87
Porn on demand.
I've had digital cable for about 2 years or so here in Hawai'i - And we've had video on demand at least that long. In the beginning the selection was small and quality would sometimes degrade during 'prime time.' But for the last year or so quality has been perfect, and selection has steadily increased (To about 200 movies, usually 5-10 new movies every 2 weeks or so).
- James
Last time they tried this, the major roadblock was that no one could figure out how to build a server fast enough to stream multiple, unique video streams. Even assuming you're using conventional televisions and the stream size is limited to 500kB/s, you've maxed out Fibre Channel bus at 40 users under ideal conditions - and for each such group of 40 users, you need a complete copy of all the video material available, at perhaps a terabyte. There's just no way, using today's technology, to get more data on to the network - so the cable company will be stuck with tens of thousands of VoD servers, all reading information off their hard drives at the maximum rate for 24 hours a day.
I just can't see them making that kind of investment.
This is good and bad. I'd say that many of the things I would want to watch might not be available. This is a glorified pay-per-view, it would seem, with some added convienience.
Even if (as suggested by the article) it is based on a subscription model/flat rate model, what kind of money is worth paying for this? $20/mo? $50/mo? Anything more than that will put it out of reach. It must be cost effective enough to make use of a movie-rental and/or DVR uninteresting. I think part of the question is basically how much I'm willing to pay given the amount of TV I watch.
As someone who works with this type of technology day in and day out, I can tell you it is here, and it's here to stay. Just about all of the cable companies that my company services, have said that there digital box returns after VOD was rolled out went from aroun 50% to less than 10%. It's a good source of revenue for the cable providers. As far as streaming the movies, the way that we do it, is if there are say 5 people that order the same movie within say 60 secs of one another, then they will actually all be receiving the same stream, which of course takes less bandwidth, until one of them decides to pause, rew, ff, etc, and then they break out of that stream and will have a single stream of their own.
One of the really cool offshoots of VOD is SVOD (Subscription VOD) which is currently being deployed through a number of operators. SVOD is where you can watch past episodes of shows on premium networks, such as The Sopranos or Band of Brothers, which means you could finally get to see that episode that you may have missed.
Cheers
I guess it's easier to roll it out in a smaller big city. Insight Communications is our provider, and the service is pretty good. I've already watched a couple of movies on it. And yes, you CAN get p0rn on it as well. ;-)
Some means of scheduling when to record something would be nice too. I think that simply bttvgrab and cron would work, but it would be nice to have the ability to set up the recording from this program.
I'd also need an extra hard drive or two, as my current 45GB one is going to be full before long.
Something like this could offer all of the capabilities of video on demand.
While I'm on the subject, does anyone know of a program I could use to cut the commercials out of my video files? I've got one file with 4 episodes of Samurai Jack, commercials and all, that is rather unwieldly.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Time Warner Communications is preparing to roll out their VOD service pretty soon here in Brevard County, Florida. Average price is $3.99 a video, and will be available for multiple viewing for a single customer within 48 hours of purchasing the movie. The digital cable remote controller already has VOD featurs, such as a switch that allows us to control the VCR or VOD. There are buttons like those you'd expect in a VCR, such as Rewind, FF, Pause, etc. Yes, you can pause a VOD!
Mmm... LotR in DVD-quality through VOD...
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
Meanwhile over in Belgium:
;-) to stream the media into the tester's homes.
The national boradcasting company (VRT) is working together with the largest telecom operator (Belgacom) on a Video-On-Demand platform.
They are using 2Mbit SDSL connections (yes - that's 2 Mbit UP and 2 Mbit DOWN!
And the SDSL connections will also be available for home use too!
According to what I've heard, all tests are going very well, and it should get commercial in january or february.
True VoD would allow you to pick and choose what you see and when, so each stream going out will be completely different. Caching = useless. Where will they store this immense library? If they divide the library up among all servers, you'd need switching to connect servers and customers, and I can easily see bandwith problems. Is that an understatement? Good gosh there WILL be bandwidth limitations. Boggles my mind. I can only assume this is a less-than-complete VoD.
Infuriate left and right
Just continuing the 2001 theme here folks. Nothing to see, move along...
Infuriate left and right
Supposedly, we're getting VOD on Time Warner cable this spring. Some areas had it here about five years back, in the big experiment that Time-Warner ran. Movies on demand, news on demand, restaurant reviews on demand (all through streaming video). I worked in the control room for the local production arm, and it was a pain in the ass (we had a dedicated video compression rig based on a Sun workstation).
The server farm was a large room full of SGI hardware. They said it was the biggest data storage center in the southeast (lots of terabytes involved when you start serving movies). At least, until they gave up on the test and sold it all at auction...
Clearly this is possible, but what are the costs like?
Pretty rare that Australia is actually somewhat close to leading edge ;)
... err ... early adopter. They are using Liberate as the platform, and Pace STU's.
Optus are trialling a digital VOD system in Sydney. You can subscribe to the commerical trial, and pay to be their guinea pig
The movies are about 6 months old, which is 12 months better than standard pay TV.
Ok, I work for a major cable company on VOD, and I'd like to clear up some issues you guys are talking about...
1. Price. VOD is simalar to PPV. expect to see movies costing about $3.00 (more for porn) you have the movie for 24 hours, and can stop rewind, fast forward, and watch it as many times as you'de like in 24 hours.
2. Quality. Digital cable picture quality is really really good. bit rates run about 3.5-4.5 Mb/s. this is just about where the average bit rate of a DVD falls (although DVDs peak higher) Now, if you operator's plant is fucked, your picture quality will suffer... I've seen AT&T systems that macroblock constantly.
3. Advertizing. its like PPV. content providers get a cut everytime a movie is watched. (same with the operator) avertizing never even enters the picture.
4. Content. currently the plan is to roll out servers near the customer with commonly viewed content, and less requested content will sit in a main library. whjen obscure stuff is requested it streems to the systems near the consumers, and then played out. ive seen systems right now with 500 titles. HBO is about to provide their content soon. Sapranos any time you want.
5. Porn. porn far and away is the biggest money maker.
It is true that my dad's comcast digital tv isn't great and truely does his HDTV recieving a great injustice.. AND it forces additional ads on you..
But, I have adelphia and the quality is FAR superior to most analog signals. Of course, with high quality cabling the analog may be better.. but to find a place with such cabling is impossible.. considering how far it must run.
My digital-tv reciever connects to my computer via s-video and I have terrific results.
Where does it say anything about VOD in San Francisco? The article's byline says San Francisco, that's all. Also, you don't have to fit around the broadcast schedule. That's Pay Per View. The article makes the difference between PPV and VOD pretty clear.
There's one thing I've alway though about: If the program is going from source to storage and not being viewed why does the video feed have too be in real time? Why can't you say double the bandwidth going to your TiVo and halve the transmission time? Send a two hour movie in one hour. Or send it 4x in 1/4 of the time.
I've always thought it was waste to have all those fringe shopping and infomercial feeds and TV preachers tying up a whole satellite channel for so long.
How about it?
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
The Slashdot "generalised mentality of contributers" wants to see:
- Software be sold outright.
- Music listening rights sold outright - buy the CD, listen to any of the tracks on it in any form, anywhere, anytime and without extra fees.
- Pay per view for television and movies.
I think I missed something here. Yes being able to call up your favorite movie at any time is a good thing, but why is it that this doesn't scream out as moving to a suscription based service instead of an ownership based service?Two possibilities are that 1) in America most people pay a subscription to television anyway (in Australia free to air TV has the stronghold atm) and 2) we already pay each time we go to the movies. The second reason is not entirely valid as when you go to the movies you go for the whole experience (wide screen, surround sound, comfy seats and a dark place to take your significant other).
What I would think would be more exciting is seeing the cost of DVDs drop to a price which makes it feasible to have a massive collection of DVDs which you can then play on demand.
Are movies and television that different to music?
VOD is possible because of broadband. Analog cable tv channels are about 6MHz wide (including audio) across the available spectrum (currently 25MHz to 1GHz). They have been standardized (FCC) at certain frequencies, i.e. channel 2 is always 55.25MHz and certain frequencies are not used such as the FM frequencies (88-108MHz). Digital Cable modulates that same 6MHz to get a data rate of 28MB/s to 38MB/s depending on the modulation type (QAM64 and QAM256 respectively) that gives you about 10 to 15 digital video channels (respectively). Cable Modems typically use 1 or 2 6MHz blocks (channels) over the entire plant.
That's roughly a total of 54GB/s of bandwidth available on FLAT a 1GHz plant.
VOD is sometimes done in a distributed fashion. With QAM Modulators and Content servers located at a hub site, each serving a small number of nodes (a node typically has 100-1500 boxes in it). A group of channels will be reserved for distributed use only.
Lets say that were're in a city with 150,000 VOD capable boxes. Lets say that this plant has 15 hubs and 10 nodes per hub If you had 4 Channels per node allocated to do VOD at each hub, you would have the capability to serve 144MB/s per 1000 boxes in addition to the normal video lineup. That's an additional 21GB/s on the plant overall using up only 4 channels on the spectrum!!! Of course it is assumed that not all boxes will be ordering VOD at the same time. The revenue for the cable companies is potentially enourmous (you can do the math for $5 per buy).
I work in cable tv and I have seen many headends installing the necessary equipment to pull this off.
Blockbuster beware...
Jake
Mmm... LotR in DVD-quality through VOD...
Even better...LotR in DVD-quality through a DVD... Mmmm
"And like that
"Imagine being able to pull up 2001: A Space Odyssey at 2:38 a.m.."
Wow, you Californians are high-tech!!!
Ever heard of Kazaa, Lopster, or freakin' BLOCKBUSTER?
Bowie J. Poag
Our digital provider in Columbus, Ohio offers on demand digital cable which includes over 300 movies (usually newer ones), and they are getting good about adding them as they come out.
But what I really like is the ability to stream individual shows. I can watch whatever episode of Dragon Ball Z or Star Trek I want for a fee, that is.
What I would really like would be an unlimited package. I would easily pay $100 a month for unlimited on demand of a large database of movies/TV shows.
However, as others have pointed out this service is not new. It started when cable companies switched over to MPEG2 using UBR switches a few years ago. With 1000 slots each with a DVD-quality MPEG2 channel and three or four NTSC quality channels each, it just made sense to offer it on demand. I do notice that in busier sections of the city with more users of the on-demand service frames are actually dropped and MPEG artifacting can happen every 15 minutes or so. I've only seen it freeze once, with a "Service Busy" screen popping up. This is pretty amazing considering all the decoding is being done on the set-top or sometimes in the local UBR (which in some setups can do several streams per second). In fact, the digital set-top CPE even have an integrated webTV for browsing web sites, although I'm not sure if they use the same up/down frequencies as a regular cable modem, nor am I sure if on demand TV shares the cable modem spectrum (probably not). The main point is when's the last time you could actually watch a realtime video stream on your PC over the Internet at NTSC+ resolution? What these companies have done is build a fast, private network from the ground up free from abuse and the bandwidth waste the Internet see's today. It's the same as streaming DVD over your gigabit ethernet, only it's city-wide.
As for a revolution in TV viewing -- I don't think so. I still often prefer to watch scheduled programming because, well, I just like knowing other people are watching what I'm seeing at the same time and it creates a sort of audience or community feeling. Sure, I do use the TV on demand feature sometimes but because of the cost (around $3.50 a pop) I sometimes find myself waiting until the show is actually aired. Don't know how the TV distributor is paid per-the-view, that would be interesting also.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
This is a whole new infrastructure to support sub-NTSC quality video. Will this slow the transition to HDTV? Or will you be able to order movies as a 1080p 24fps 16:9 stream? If you could do that, getting a HDTV monitor would be worth it.
I work in the ITV industry and I have to say that this will not happen overnight. Most digital cable plants out there broadcast over a 27 Mbit pipe. This pipe is not wide enough to accomodate more than a couple of channels of really low quality VOD (they lower the quality of the mpeg compression to accomodate the bandwidth).
In order for most cable plants to offer true high quality video on demand with more selections than this, they have to upgrade everything from the equipment in the cable plant to the wire running into your home. Given the speed at which Cable Companies change the technology that they use, I give this five to ten years before we actually see it.
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.
Comcast cable in Arlington/Alexandria VA (right across the river from Washington D.C. for the geographically challenged) already has VOD. Errr, to be more correct, is getting it as we speak. Random digital cable customers are getting 'invitation cards' in the mail, offering them the chance to test the service. It looks very neat, and I just ordered digital cable specifically so I can hopefully test it (I needed to get my cable modem turned back on anyway). Reminds me of those commercials by the electronics company (I forget who) that use the old Beatles lyrics: You got to admit it's getting better, getting better all the time
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
Quick.. take out a bunch of subscriptions and get all the DVDs you want.. if you're lucky they fold during your free 2 week trial period - free movies!
Kind of like the reverse of what happened when Cyberrebates folded - tons or people got screwed because they ordered all this overpriced product with 100% rebates, but the company died while they were waiting for their rebate. They had a Palm m100 as I remember, for something like $1200 with a $1200 rebate.
When I had my DSL line put in 2+ years ago, they ran a "max cap" test - how much data could it shuffle? (Maximum Capacity?)
It hit just shy of 10 Mbps - Somewheres around 9, as I recall.
Of course, they made sure to cap it back down to 1.5 Mbps, since that's the plan that I bought, but it got me thinking...
In compressed format, you can easily get VHS quality video over that size pipe. Actually, you can get much BETTER than VHS quality over that size pipe, you can get VHS quality (no problem!) at 1.5 Mbit...
So, why doesn't the bandwidth provider remove that cap within their internal networks, and construct their own local streaming content cache? They'd have to strike a deal with RIAA, (and perhaps that is the problem?) but once done, they could store the movies and the like on their local network, mitigation almost all of the nasty bandwidth issues.
Since the DSL line isn't shared, you'd only have to worry about the really major bandwidth between the DSL server modems and the content server. Additionally, you can have smaller, local content caches that handle 90% of hits, and a single cluster of major content servers that provide all of the movies/shows available, all within the service provider's network. (which means less expense)
Charge a couple bucks per movie view or flat rate $30-$40/month and you see it quickly amounts to a major, PROFITABLE business model.
Why hasn't this been done before?
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
As for the remote control thing, it'd be fun to do with bluetooth and a bluetooth enabled PDA. You could even hack the PDA so that your PVR could dynamically adjust the displayed keypad. You could pull this off with IR too (IR transmitter/recievers are pretty easy to find for the PC) but it wouldn't be as much fun.
I've kicked around the idea of building a PVR, but I'm not into TV enough to actually do so.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So what if they are getting it in SF?
Not all computer users live there. We've had VOD for a year.
HBO on Demand! Says they have the first two seasons of Sopranos on there... don't! Watched 9 episodes and then I noticed #10 was missing. Then they all were gone within 2 days.
DIY, FO0D & HDTV have services too.
Get your Unix fortune now!
(P.S. I don't actually care about VOD, let alone (shudder) interactive TV - DSL is enough for me, but I'm not the tv fan that some here are.)
sulli
RTFJ.
This service (I'm the Software Architect), have launched the worlds largest Video on Demand over IP.
We have been doing this for two year now, I keep submitted links, each time we have a development, but slashdot have never seen fit to publish.
Some links:
"Kingston Interactive TV
Financial Times
Kingston Communications
Video Server Case Study
BBC joing broadband television platform
This case study reveals more details about the platform.
I have tyhe best VOD solution in my livingroom...
True VOD does not even require you to visit the Video Store in the first place or worse take it back on a cold rainy night.