Slashdot Mirror
SBC and Microsoft to Provide HDTV Over IP
Chroniton writes "SBC Communications (The #1 DSL provider in the US) is announcing new plans for broadband deployment, including internet, HDTV, and VOIP service: "With today's announcement, SBC will significantly accelerate its previously planned deployment pace and now plans to reach 18 million homes by year-end 2007. Through Project Lightspeed, the company will deploy 38,800 miles of fiber - double the amount used to build out the company's DSL network - at a cost of $4 billion to $6 billion."
This comes in response to an FCC ruling which shields IP-based networks from traditional telecom regulation. Speeds are expected to reach 15-25 Mbps, enough for HDTV: "To take advantage of this new network, SBC companies and Microsoft have begun testing an IP-based switched television service based on the Microsoft TV IPTV platform. This infrastructure would enable features such as standard and high-definition programming, customizable channel lineups, video on demand, digital video recording, multimedia interactive program guides and event notifications. IP-based television services will also allow TVs to interact with other devices in the home, including computers and PDAs." More details available here and here"
...how much will something like this cost to the consumer?
I wonder how the broadcast flag, Microsoft, HD-TV, and DRM are going to play out.
Korea alread has internet based hdtv, I'm glad America is catching up.
Time proves over and over again that things can get worse, and they do... I can't wait for the first stale DRM'ed virus stuck in their systems...
I saw him on CSPAN once. Evil. Why do we allow father-son relationships in public offices? It doesn't rub right with me.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
So this is how they're getting around the godforsaken regulatory hell that is telecommunincations in the USA. Clever. And by partnering like this, Microsoft begins its battle to take over the digital TV distribution industry.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Maybe they should string a fiber or two to their own servers.
No, they don't want to regulate IP content the standard way. They want to suppress and regulate it in entirely new, more draconian, more invasive ways.
*sigh*
For me HDTV isn't too exciting. Higher resolution. Ok. I never noticed my TV's resolution was not adequate. Don't we have too much TV anyway? With the added possibility to record (Tivo) 40 hours / week of shows that I don't have time to listen to... TV is a productivity and social interaction sink.
Hurray for the 'turn all TVs off' device!
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
They plan on offering HDTV over fiber that they are currently deploying.
Is there some sort of regulatory problem in America that restricts users to such low (25Mbps) DSL speeds?
Since IP based networks are exempt from regulation, does it follow that SBC made this announcement because of that? Sadly, if this is true, it's not really commonplace. In any case, 15-25mbps is more than enough for anyone, unless you want to run your own Web host. :)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Well, Powell is a bad example, as is Bush Jr., but would it really be fair to say that just because you are someones son you really aren't able to do your job?
He was first appointed to a job at the FCC under Clinton. He was promoted during this administration because he knew the job.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
1. Yay! Now SBC will have another reason to call me at home 5 times a week and ask me if I'd like fries with my telephone service.
2. Yay! Is Microsoft in control of fucking everything now?
think about how exciting this would be if you replace the word Microsoft in that article with any number of other companies..Sony, Apple, Viacom.
While no corporation is altrusitic, I wouldn't immediately jump to the "how are they going to screw me on this one" conclusion.
Sad state of affairs.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
the obligatory "Damn BSOD on my TV" joke
Because major political parties always engage in cronyism?
The same happens here in Australia. Union boss' son gets a plum senate job, etc etc.
Already happening, here and here.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I feel so safe that these two companies are providing service, I know them very well and trust them with my software, now I just wish Google was involved so then they would also know what I'm watching.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
How often are we going to have to reboot and patch the TV? What about security vulnerabilities and viruses?
What is the expected reliability of the system?
Hell, if it gets the other guys to up their services to match SBC, particularly in a bandwidth increase, then it sounds fine to me. DSL at 256k is too slow for too much cash. A little competition could be good here, even though I'm not sold on the HDTV aspect of it yet.
- i fart in your general direction -
I dont mean the the TV acting as a router (although in the situation above that would make sense)
I mean IP on your CELL / Mobile phone and TV images streamed to that
jack it in to watch on a normal screen... simple
in order to make money from this you need custom channels
not like they cell/mobile phone networks are doing now e.g. Orange just putting a digital TV reciver in the phone you need to stream custom content
regards
John Jones
I think that a decent phone, with some basic web/email/chat features, as well as the cell and wifi connectivity would be worth about $150 (with contract discounts) and $60-70/month (with free long distance all the time, unlimited VoIP service, 500 or so 'anytime' cell minutes, and voicemail, call waiting, etc) to me.
Is there any sign of this in the near future!?
Broadcast is dying, I think this year is the tipping point (at least it is for me). With the exception of live events like Sports and News why would you need simultaneous broadcast over the air? Storage is large and cheap and getting more so. Download your favorite programs and watch them at leisure on a portable player.
I had thought this was at least 10 years away, but inevitable. Perhaps it is now only 4 or 5 years away.
Letter To Iran
SBC and MS? I'm sure with those players it will be no time before the inevitable waves of screaming about that evil Michael Powell and the FCC playing into corporate hands, stifling our ability to freely communicate with one another, and just generally doing lots of mean things to us geeks...
Now, if they replaced MS in the article with, say, EFF or the Mozilla Dev Team, I would get excited. ;-)
They're not really going to deploy this over broadband, are they?
if SBC has a properly-installed multicast architecture, then it's possibly feasible, but do you have any idea the amount of bandwidth that's going to require?
Either they're running fibre to the door, and have datacenters full of the new clustering Cisco routers, or they're going to run into some hardware limits REAL fast.
I didn't even have time to hit the "post" button before my prediction came true...
Given the problems involved in doing VoIP, the mind boggles as HDTVoIP with its far bigger hunger for hbandwidth.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In many ways HDTV will fix some of the major problems that currently plague TV. One of the big problems is that with a standard TV you can't see the blemishes and wrinkles that are present on any normal person's face.
I've watched HDTV newscasts at the store. It becomes very clear that the newscasters are human. They still have a lot of makeup, but their skin has that texture that *says* they have a lot of makeup.
On a similar note, reality programming on HDTV is quite raw. You can see how someone's anorexia has her virtually falling apart. Widescreen reduces the extent to which "the camera adds ten pounds." Someone like Ron Popeil comes across as an intolerable vampire of a man.
Another problem with current televisions is that you can't display very much text. The CNN crawlers significantly distort news to fit an antire item into 100 characters. This has always been a problem with headlines, but its gotten worse with crawlers because a) editors don't have as much time to check them and b) the actual story does not follow to flesh things out. Crawlers with even twice as many words will twist the meaning less.
So the question isn't whether you'll be sitting there watching TV and marvelling at how much more real it is. The question is what the effect of TV that's less removed from reality will be. For many people, TV is the only window on the world.
Won't this bog down the internet?
Mod parent down -1 trying to get modded up as a bush basher.
Powell became Chairman of the FCC before Bush came into office.
Idiot.
As much as I wonder how this is going to play out in terms of cost and DRM issues, I'm glad to see at least a few introductory steps taking us in the direction.
I really look forward to getting rid of the old standard twisted-pair copper wire infrastructure that we're currently using and moving towards a "one connection for everything" system. Assuming we don't run into issues with monopoly-dictated pricing and/or start revisiting the old problems with massive telecoms, I'd love to get all my services through a single cable and a single provider, not to mention a kickass Internet connection.
How much federal regulation will eventually need to come into play to prevent history from repeating itself as with the telecoms? Should something as huge and important as the nation's information infrastructure be regulated directly by the government as the railroads were for a time?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
A friend of mine worked at a TV station that I am not permitted to reveal (but is right in MS's backyard somewhere). They had a multimillion dollar pilot project to use Microsoft software to deliver digital signals between the studio and the transmitter (and cable distro point) with dedicated, unlimited bandwidth digital circuits. Microsoft threw millions of dollars of research money into the project, it was to be their showpiece, to demonstrate how MS could provide end-to-end digital infrastructure for TV stations.
It was an utter failure. Despite the use of supposedly uncompressed video, everyone started complaining the picture was fuzzy and the audio didn't sync perfectly. The station abandoned the project after millions of dollars of their own investment, MS lost even more money.
And this was plain old NTSC video, not even HDTV. If MS couldn't get this project to work with the entire company behind it, what in the HELL makes people think they could succeed at HDTV?
SBC is still stonewalling on allowing Naked DSL. And our gov't lets them get away with it. Why?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
that we, as a community, stop using the offensive term "Microsoft". I propose we refer to it as a "tech company" or a "developing company".
I totally would have read this article if it hadn't been for that vulgar langague. It sounds both promising and interesting.
I am ashamed for you and the way you were raised.
Bad News: All this bandwidth will be wasted on fancy TV and Trusted Computing (TM) instead of your favorite Bit Torrent seed.
I'll wait for whatever cable does to compete with this, and then use that instead.
Open Source Sushi
"think about how exciting this would be if you replace the word Microsoft in that article with any number of other companies..Sony, Apple, Viacom."
Why people think Sony is any better than Microsoft in terms of greed and desire for control is really beyond me.
"Derp de derp."
It would be fair to say that you should have some appropriate prior experience to qualify you for the office which, from what I understand of Michael Powell, he sorely lacks.
I've seen Powell speak a number of times and he always manages to say something that makes me cringe. He's the head of a pointless organization that nobody likes and he knows it.
How much would it cost to serve video at those speeds? How many clients could connect to a server without losing quality? Would it be possible for independent media to afford the equipment for this service?
Simon's Rock College
I think they already deployed it and the HDTV streams are taking up all the bandwidth on their network... err maybe slashdot just blew up their DNS servers... who knows, I can't get to any site on SBC's domain, (and yes the rest of the internet is working for me)
Speaking of this, I might as well mention that verizon has far more ambitious plans.
They are in the process of wiring several states with Fiber lines to the home to provide phone, internet, and in the future, television (most likely provided by some form of DirecTV due to verizon's recent dealings with DirecTV).
I believe service is already live in a few cities with reported speeds of 50mbps down/15mbps up. All for about $60/month.
This regulation should speed up deployment in a few states such as NJ, which have the networks in place but cannot be turned on due to the regulatory hell that is NJ telecom.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The people of japan are crammed together like NYC. and the money to deploy comes more from public funds than private.
What I find insane is the amount of hand-waiving (again) in this article by people who are declaring "the end of competition" and "stifling of deployment" even as the companies involved are declaring their intent to roll out BECAUSE of these freedoms from regulation these coal mine canaries are yapping about.
With regulation: nothing happens because it costs a fortune to deploy this stuff and no one wants to invest Billions of dollars and then have to hand over that infrastructure to the competition.
Without regulation: rollouts happen, people have infrastructure in their communities we didn't have before and the market is able to begin shaping new innovation.
But this new freedom in the market is bad because... well because it's good for corporations and that's ALWAYS a bad thing for "the little guy." Never mind this shit is outrageously expensive to deploy which pretty much has kept "the little guy" on the bench from the get-go.
I'm sure glad these "watchdogs" aren't running the FCC. You want to see nothing happen, put a bunch of socialists in charge of industry...
I must admit that the thought of paying for a single data [DSL] line and getting my phone [VoIP], tv, and internet over a single connection seems damn cool.
However, there is no way in hell I'm going to buy into HDTV via IP if I'm forced to use MS Media Center or the like. I don't have to use Windows to get to the internet. I sure wouldn't put up with having to buy XXX brand television to watch TV now, and I certainly wouldn't by XXX brand phone to place a land line call. Why should HDTVoIP be any different.
Wow. This is too perfect. Two of the juggernauts of mainstream entertainment have decided to create a new television market, then dominate it before any competition arrives. It's the perfect scheme for them and me. It works like this:
1)The Joneses buy the SBC-MS box/service.
2)The neighbors catch on with a wave of advertising boasting reasonable rates that, unbeknownst to the consumer, are void inside one year.
3)The consumer realizes with growing fear that SBC is fond of the $200 cancellation-of-service charge.
4)The consumer's telvision becomes infected with a crafty virus disguised as a Simpsons episode.
5)The TVs of the world die.
6)I enjoy the ensuing silence with a quiet moment of Zen.
7)Microsoft claims that the virus is a feature, designed to limit the watching of television done by a household.
Everyone wins.
and therefore suck?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
"SBC will significantly accelerate its previously planned deployment pace"
So they'll actually install something next year? In Michigan, you have to live inside one of their COs to get DSL. I've been trying for YEARS. SBC is a joke. I can't believe they are the "leading DSL provider".
Badly.
sulli
RTFJ.
Could someone please write a Netcraft dying troll for the late Britney Spears, please?
Thank you.
This is Fiber to the house people. You are suppsed to be nerds. Wake up!!
And they announced it back in 2003 "We plan to hit about one million lines by the end of 2003".
And they announced it back in 2002.
Stay tuned for another announcement in 2005.
This time they're paying back the Bush adminstration for the FCC deal that permits them to keep third-party ISPs from using their lines. The telcos have been lobbying for this for years, so that consumers don't have a choice of ISPs. It's an election year move, not a new development.
SBC has talked up a few fibre-to-the home trials, but even the small scale trials never seem to happen.
The cable companies could use this technology TODAY in the head-end-to-neighborhood parts of their networks.
This would make "video on demand" of every movie released in the last few years a reality, with minimal changes at the customer end.
Heck, it doesn't have to be "IP-based" for this to work either, any mechanism that sends just the bits required from the neighborhood switch to my tv and from my remote control back to the neighborhood switch is good enough.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm afraid this totally rocks. This is why Microsoft is so rich... they keep doing things that totally rock. Wow. It greives me to say it ... but wow.
It doesn't matter if Linux can do HDTV over a network and do it better (as if it could). It doesn't matter because Microsoft will be there first for the most people. They'll be there the most. They'll have all the deals locked in from server to client. They'll totally shut out HDTV over IP competition before it gets born. If you read Cringely at all then you know that at least one if not a few Linux hackers have done this type of thing in the small.
But it doesn't matter now. Microsoft is a true kung-foo master. Unless the world changes radically and it becomes illegal to force people to use whatever EULA you want or to force out competition from your market place by using innovative and strategic business deals... Microsoft is unstoppable. It's like a dinosaur. What could stop the dinosaurs?
[signature]
Point taken. I guess I was thinking of the entertainment division (content). Also, while Sony makes many lame choices (ATRAC), the don't seem to be motivated by their compulsion to run _everything_. It could be argued that ATRAC is a "solution" to an interal political stuggle with the music division.
having said that, good point.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
there is now way I am going to buy if I have put anything microsoft in my house. this is a joke - they are just coming up with ways to get our money - I have been thinking about getting rid of cable cause there is nothing on and just go back to local over the air stations. I got dsl through sbc and I have had no problems so I can't complain about that - but I wish they would cut the we don't support anything but microsoft and mac support tactics - this is microsoft's next big cash cow - when they loose the desktop they are going to lock people in with this crap. I don't understand why sbc had to work with microsoft - they could of done this on their own - but now they are going to lock people in to crap.
Whilst developing all these new television technologies, perhaps someone will eventually consider that the majority of television programs are terrible regardless of their high quality sound and pictures etc.
Whether the program is interactive or on demand, or how it's delievered, doesn't matter to me so much as what I'm actually watching. and I'm getting less and less impressed every year.
I find myself watching less and less television, and using the Internet more and more. As for the phone, most people I know use it mainly to talk about television. I'm getting close to the point where I almost solely use email.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
My predictions:
SBC & MS -> HDTV/IP ?
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Read their press release. Microsoft isn't mentioned in there anywhere! Editors need to RTFA just like the rest of us.
Also, I don't see how a company bringing Fiber within 500 feet of your house is a bad thing? With the FCC's ruling, anyone is free to fork out the dough to bring fiber right to your door and doesn't have to share the line with anyone. SBC is one of the only ones going out there and doing this. And remember that if you don't like it, you aren't being forced to buy it! This isn't like the phone service and 9-11 fees that the government forces you to pay for.
FYI: I work for SBC so I take a bit of offense being lumped in with a Monopoly that WASN'T broken up
Companies like Minerva and Pace have TV over IP stuff that works and is deployed today. Microsoft is going to have to offer something either cheaper or better if they want to take over the TV over IP market.
My TV was hit with a virus. Now all I get is the Oprah Channel.
I think you can attribute that to the geographic size of the two countries as much as anything else.
The USA is HUGE. Many states are larger than most countries. It is thus incredibly expensive+slow to roll out anything land-based like fibre.
The regulatory maze doesn't help either, but the primary factor is the geography.
Offhand, I can't think of two companies that I dislike more than Microsoft or SBC.
Here's an example of SBC's customer service. I moved recently and was forced to go back to SBC for local phone service (I had Comcast Digital Phone in my old place and was pretty happy with it.) I just got my first bill from the Southern Boys Club: $322.69 for installation, and all the guy did was come in for ten minutes to make sure all the jacks worked. And at that, he got the two lines backwards. Then, to top it all off, I signed up for this "ALL DISTANCE(R)" plan, that is supposed to give me unlimited local and long distance anywhere in the U.S., and instead I got billed $34.27 for long distance. None of those numbers include the regular monthly service charges, either.
Sorry for the rant. This just really, really pisses me off.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
None of this... "in 12 months we're going to..." blah blah blah.
I live in San Mateo, CA, which is SBC territory, and about 20 miles both from Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
Three years ago, RCN retooled my entire neighborhood, resulting in a cable modem service at my house of 5Mbit+ internet service. The performance is beyond anything I could have imagined even 5 years ago. I chatted up my local RCN rep recently, and he revealed a sales chart for the neighborhood showing house by house how RCN has stolen over 40% of the lines from SBC in three years.
One year ago, Comcast refurbed its service in my neighborhood, and now offers 3Mbit service for roughly the same price as RCN. Comcast also has what appears to be a pretty decent HDTV offering along with their cable service.
After living in this neighborhood for over 5 years, SBC CAN'T EVEN OFFER 128k DSL SERVICE!
Good luck to these morons...I see dumb people running the show.
I reallly enjoy pitiful slow speeds and phone pole monkeys trying to work on my "broadband" and television.
Can I get a mental patient to work on my car while we are at it?
Well lets not forget Fred Wang.
On the other hand, they do pull stunts like saying in the New Zealand media that any copying of programs or music is wrong and should be prevented... all while promoting their VCRs, stereos, mp3 players etc.
:)
Damn hypocrites won't get a dime out of me for the rest of my life. I hate Sony more than I hate Microsoft
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/2 245223
We hear you... what hdtv will be over current broadband tech is a hurry up and wait show. Add in the increase in gaming and other uses then there goes the network neighborhood unless there is a radical change in infrastucture and usage the internet as we know it will cease to exist. There will be no room left for the real internet and Uncle Bill's problem with free software and iso files will be fixed, by MSNBC digital broadcasting etc. A strange way to put the net and open source out of business.
Britney Spears confirms; Netcraft is dying.
I was BEGGING SBC to get DSL to my house since 1999. I live (literally) in the middle of San Francisco, and they refused to hook me up. "Too far".
Finally, about 2 years ago they got our neighbourhood wired up with DSL, but the fastest I can get is 384. (I live in a weird little neighbourhood just west of Twin Peaks. I have to drive just to get a cup of coffee.)
And now they say they're going to be putting HD over IP? If my previous experience is any indication, I'll be getting MP4 from them at a reduced framerate around 2012...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
15-25 Mbps is enough for one HDTV stream to one location.. I would hope that a jump in technology like this would at least support something equal to current technology (many people have 2 or three cable or satellite receivers today).
Hopefully they are using multicast.. it would almost have to be, otherwise the network and server resources for streaming a huge number of HDTV streams would be immense.
Obviously, there is a possibility for a bunch of restrictions to be placed on what would otherwise be an incredibly powerful concept. But, they could also make really powerful changes that could change the competitive landscape.
If they look at it as a general communications platform, with additional services sold on top of it (Internet, VOIP, TV, PPV, etc.), ala-carte pricing might be more feasible. I would be very happy if I could just pay for HBO-HD, EPSN-HD, Comedy Central, and my locals. And, that would be a big blow to their cable/satellite competitors.
I agree with you and the OP that Powell is an asshat. However, I was just commenting that a blanket no nepotism rule would be unfair to reasonablely qualified people, as you say, who happen to have fathers in important places.
Any idea what year he was appointed?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Based on past history, It will most likely be next to free until all other providers are gone. Then it will be anywhere from 4x to 100x, what you would normally pay.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Two of my least favorite companies, Microsoft and SBC.
I've worked hard to get both of them out of my life; HDTV over IP won't be enough for me to let them back in again.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Imagine if you and everyone on your neighborhood junction box could watch up to 500* different channels, out of a library limited only by what there was a market demand for and what the rights-holders would let out.
Forget "what's playing" - potentially, it's Blockbuster** plus every TV network worldwide. Want Al Jezeera? Fine. Want the North Korean Government TV? Fine. Want every NFS football game at the same time? If you've got that many TVs, fine. Want every NFL football game ever recorded? Fine, if the NFL is willing to sell, er, rent it to you.
*with coax, you share bandwidth with your neighbors. The "500 channels" varies by neighborhood, it may be 5000 where you live for all I know. Once you get to the neighborhood junction box or the coax/fiber interface, this number pretty much disappears. You have fiber to the curb? Want to watch 1000 shows all at once? If you've got 1000 TVs, fine.
**Blockbuster is a registered trademark of somebody or other. My lawyer made me say this.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Thank you.
May Allah shower his blessings on you.
You wrote: I've always wondered how Republicans could possibly justify their insanse political views. The only reasonable conclusion is that they are mentally ill, you know retarded like.
e (take the word of your choice) most Americans. And of course Big Media is controlled and managed by Big Money.
No, not true. I used to be a Republican. Voted for Reagan in 84, Bush Sr in 88. But over the last few years, I became a Leftist. I now see that the Democratic party is quite conservative, at least compared to most parties in other Western nations.
What Republicans are is ignorant and brainwashed. We are all brainwashed to a certain degree. Or you could substiture the word "socialized" if you prefer. One thing that leads to Republicanism is that these people were first introduced to Leftist ideas via operatives of the Right. The reach of the Right is FAR more powerful and pervasive than that of the Left. They have FAR more money. Indeed, the Right is the machine of Big Money.
And the Right characterizes the ideas of the Left not as Rightwingers, or even as partisan actors, but instead the operatives of the Right portray themselves as neutral. And most Republicans accept these operatives as neutral.
Once you internalize the Right's characterization of the Left, they likely will never really get a clear understanding of the Left's thesis.
THe Rightwing propaganda machine is decades old. It really goes back to around just after the turn of the century, but they REALLY got going about 30 years ago. What happened then was the atomization of much of America, and the disappearance of old channels of political information. Many Americans became politically isolated.
The TV and radio became by far the most powerful avenues of political thought dissemination. This gave the opening that Big Money needed to brainwash/propagandize/socialize/convince/persuad
As a result, we have a huge chunk of American that is politically ignorant.
Well, there is more to this story, including religion, educational-cultural class warfare, and other aspects, and filters, and social vs economic liberalism, etc., but time's winged chariot draws nigh, or whatever....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Lets hope that this gets pushed out to some businesses as well.
I mean - holy crap, we still design entire networks around the mighty "T1" (1536k, gee whiz!) and they cost a friggin fortune ($400 and up per month).
Is SBC (Satanic Bastard Corporation) ever gonna fucking invest some cash into the business infrastructure?
Personally I'm hoping that WiMAX really catches on as a replacement last mile option....
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
customizable channel lineups
No way, not in a million years. What most people fail to realize is that when a provider carries a channel, they are required (forced?) to carry a whole bunch of other channels with it. Remember the Echostar vs. Viacom fiasco? It's either all or none with Vialcom and their ilk.
Echostar used to offer the custom channel thing, but then broadcasters like Viacom step in and say "If you want Spongebob, then you will carry these other 10 channels of ours, or you get nothing." That's just how it works.
this is my sig
- SBC's stock price will rise as people believe they're doing this big moneymaker, HDTV, wow.
- After the top 10% of SBC management makes at least $20 million each from the stock spike ($100 mil for top 1%), their attention will turn to the next bait. The marketing will continue. Woo hoo.
- Meanwhile, SBC will run into a combination of legal or financial trouble: anti-trust, bad accounting, misleading investors, and/or new legislation from Orrin Hatch.
- Microsoft will deliver software as good as it always is. This will slow the deployment and provide bad publicity as the paying beta testers whine about outages, lack of programming, and cost.
- SBC is a phone company:
-
end-user cost will start at twice the initial marketing estimates
-
the billing model will charge extra for every little thing (10 cents per skipped commercial? $1/hour over 3 hours use per day, outside primetime hours excluding sporting events in overtime?)
-
the project will take 2 years extra due to new legislation or evil competitors.
-
they have expertise in aggressively mass-marketing a low-margin service and maintaining communication infrastructure, not selling a sparkly cool new combination of technology
-
Everybody driving the project will act surprised when there's not enough bandwidth to deliver all the HDTV.
-
Competitive projects will develop standards, and work better, and run on Linux boxes, and provide a better UI designed by a hungry teenager in Banaglore, and will be used by < 1% of the HDTV market since there is no marketing budget.
-
SBC will pull the plug when the project turns into a cost center that no longer spikes the stock price up.
-
HDTV over IP will ever-after sound like a bad idea, since people will remember how this project went.
Of course there's a chance the project will succeed if somebody at the top of SBC is a total freak for HDTV and is a good enough salesman to persuade SBC's board.When will it be available?
Where is it (or will it be) available?
How much will it cost to consumers?
I think it was 97 he was appointed a assistant. Once Bush and Co got in to office he was moved up.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
I can't wait for my television to Blue Screen.
Oh, what public service anouncement?
What exploits....yikes.
I'm not just bashing Microsoft here, but seriously, if they released something like this with a Linux-based systems, it would still have serious exploitation potential. Are people going to be able to crack it to get all channels? Oder PPV for free?
I wonder how this all plays into their partnership with Dish Networks (Echo Star). Could we see a Dish Network receiver that supports SBC DSL based HDTV and VoD?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
If we had decent regulators, this would be a piece of cake. The regulators simply require a certain level of service in an area, or the monopoly is bid out to a new company. Last mile wireline communication is a natural monopoly. The problem we're having now is that data service is becoming an unregulated monopoly. When there was only voice service, there were legal standards for voice quality, availability, etc, that the government required of phone companies in exchange for their mopoly position. Technology has changed, and it makes sense to either require the phone company to roll out high speed service or bid the rights of way out to a company that will.
I thought that during the internet/telecom/optics bubble, there were a huge amount of fiber optic capacity laid by the likes of Global Crossing. What happened to all that fiber and more importantly, the tunnels that they sit in and the lasers, repeaters, etc? Why does SBC need to spend several billion dollars laying new fiber when dark fiber abound?
Yep - this is 2004, and I can not even get DSL.
I can get that pathetic cable broadband though - upload is about as fast as modem speed. Whoooopieeeee!!!
my area. What a bunch of dumbfucks. If Comcast lowers their price to 20 bucks/month for a year, then I'm gonna get broadband. Until then I'll suffer.
But with vcr's you are allowed to record something off TV so you may watch it at your convenience, and MP3's are legal to copy CD's that you OWN onto your computer or portable MP3 player (and in Canada MP3 trading is still legal.)
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Whether or not Bush has the ability to be a president is not the point. The unfair part of the entire situation is that hundreds of thousands of men and women, could be millions, who are equally or more qualified don't even have a chance. Most of the time, a person cannot get to an important position because he doesn't know what it takes to get there. But a former president knows. He knows the right people, the right and minimum credentials, the right money source, and the right tricks to get someone into the white house. Ordinary people don't have a chance no matter how smart they are. How do you know you can't be the president. With the most talented people writing scripts for you, analyze details for you, tell you what to say and how to say it, I bet you can be an OK president as well. But do you have a remote shot at all?
Please let them spend gigabucks and then don't buy.
Why the hell are people convinced that we should be imitating other countries?
Yes, Japan has better broadband connections, and much higher incidents of suicide... Why didn't you suggest that the USA needs to try and imitate the latter?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
They must do what they are good at.
;-)
Innovations, heck no!!
Software ? Time to say good bye.
They need the help of bootleggers to get ideas
What are you blathering about? SBC *has* no competitors in the DSL sphere. And in the larger "broadband" market, cable is kicking the living crap out of them. This is more about playing catch-up for SBC than about innovation.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
So I guess "the government" doesn't have TV sets, and those GMEVs were all registered as Skylarks?
Do you really believe SBC (for example) won't allow its customers to access "the internet" via these cables? I suppose providing "internet access" on packet carrying fiber isn't something they're anticipating... after all, who the heck would want that?
If you have access to "the internet" then you have, by default, access to services outside the provider.
Without SBC FTTH: cable, dsl, dialup, wireless
With SBC FTTH: cable, dsl, dialup, wireless, fiber
Yup... sure looks like a monopoly.
'nuff said.
And getting stuck in dependency hell is a better option? Linux is not ready for prime time, sucker.
There is a reason nepotism is generally considered sub-optimal. Merit might well have had a role to play, but in systems more complicated than sports it takes pretty standout achivement to make that clear where the boss's son is involved. The only things outstanding about the two you've listed are the magnitude of their failures, which are all too often par for the course.
Let me walk through this and see what /. readers think.
HDTV addressability is:
1,080 scan lines x 1,920 pixels/line = 2,073,600 pixels
Assuming 24-bit color:
2,073,600 pixels/frame x 24 bits/pixel = 49,766,400 bits/frame
Next, we know the human eye needs about 30 frames/second:
49,766,400 bits/frame x 30 frames/second = 1,492,992,000 bits
The raw, uncompressed bandwidth is:
about 1493 Mbit/sec
Obviously, they will deliver this data compressed. Let's assume 40:1 MPEG-2 compression ratio:
1493 Mbps / 40 = 37.3 Mbps
I'm going to stop now because I think everyone gets my point. 37.3 Mbps required for JUST television. What happens when the TV is on, a VoIP call comes in, and your kids are playing Couterstrike: Source? End-of-year 2007 is too soon. I just don't believe that a consumer-oriented WAN of this magnitude could be implemented in just 3 years.
Thats one of the nice things of being the biggest kid on the planet, you can just slowly extend your reach into every other market around.
I wonder what this will mean for the 'fair use' rights of their customers..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why didn't you suggest that the USA needs to try and imitate the latter?
I will. You first.
I couldn't find the web site but YahooBB (Japanese BB company owned by Yahoo) already has phone and TV services over BB. Sorry that I couldn't find more information, maybe a fellow reader in Japan can give some links? :)
-- Leeeter than leet
1) Now all I need is a real HDTV, not just an "HDTV-ready" toob.
2) We can't even get SBC to keep our copper pair dry and working, so I won't hold my breath waiting to see them pulling fiber through my neighborhood. (We're not on top of a mountain, either; their wire-center is easily less than 5kft. away.)
Verizon's idea of "fiber" is Post's
"NutriGrain" Cereal. Verizon has not
seen 20 or 30 year old POTS copper
wire they don't like. Their Business
Wireless DSL is easily 4X faster than
what they can deliver to my home.
In spite of the DRM concerns (and the
alliance with the 800 pound gorilla),
I say congratulations to SBC!
He was appointed by Clinton, not Bush.
>Remember we are all going to be downloading movies onto our TIVO boxes courtesy of Netflix
:-)
Bingo. There is no doubt in my mind that Tivo/Netflix will be the first in this race. Quite simply, if Tivo and Netflix can't succeed here they will go out of business. I'm guessing that is a pretty good motivator
Oh yeah, who has stats on market penetration of tivo series 2 vs Windows Media Center? (both are platforms that could deliver VOD with minimal hacking) I'm guessing tivos lead by 10 to 1 or more.
slashsearch.org - slashdot search. powered by google.
Good to see you ignore history as well as biology in your retarded thesis of society.