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TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005
prostoalex writes "Associated Press says that telecoms have always considered expanding into digital television since the broadband infrastructure is already in place. But now they are putting billions of dollars into actually building such systems. "If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.""
Big deal. I'm still waiting for fiber to the home. I could care less about television.
thisnukes4u.net
500 ways to get TV and still nothing to watch.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
hey maybe my TV can lag now too :D
My friend has FIOS, and they have indeed told him it will be avalible in his area next year. Although, that is television over fiber, but it's provided by the Telco (Verizon).
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Can't wait....
more commercials, WOO!
See here.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Are we somehow going to get TV before broadband in some areas, or is this just one more carrot to dangle in front of my face?
you bracegirdles
I thought it was common knowledge that most phone systems (especially in rural communities) are unable to support broadband data communication. Cable was supposed to solve this problem. Fiber-to-the-home is now replacing cable... how can the telecom industry expect that their old, for the most part outdated copper wiring is capable of distributing this type of media?
Until my grandmother is able to get DSL on her phone line (in the middle of no where), I just can't believe such a thing.
Doesn't competition usually lead to lower costs and faster inovation?
Let the hilarity begin!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Uh, aren't we all doing all we can to get AWAY from the telcos? I for one am, having just switched to Vonage (using my Comcast cable line) I just got rid of them. Having them provide my TV too? NO THANKS! I'll stick with those that get it right, like DirecTV with TiVo! Ross Carlson, Lead Developer Jinzora :: Free Your Media
http://www.jinzora.org
I'm sure they would use some sort of broadband connection to deliver this service. I guess with a cellphone the res wouldn't need to be set too high. I'm still skeptical of what it would actually look like, 15FPS of 240x240 video (guessing here) will suck no matter what the size of the display is.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
In the small island of Cyprus, in the Eastern Mediterranean sea, the local telecommunications company was offering TV services over the phone for more than a year.
s ion.php
Here is their website http://www.mivision.cyta.com.cy/english/what_mivi
Riiight.
In France that system exists for a couple of month now http://www.tps.fr/index.php?rid=17
In France, TV over DSL (or ADSL as it is known it France, where it was invented) has existed for almost a year now, and there are several competing offers. My DSL provider also provides a second VOIP telephone along with TV and very fast DSL service.
Never pet a burning dog.
Is it just me or is this a case of too little, too late?
My cable provider offers video/data/voice already and at 'decent' prices (barring additional 6% yearly increases). They already specialize in television, their data is currently faster than DSL and the voice is (so far) reliable and indistinguishable from traditional telco.
Still, offering all three can't hurt and hopefully the competition will drive down the costs of both providers . . .
We have satalite and cable, this brings us TV nicely and has it's own brands and structure. Why do we need any more crap on our phonelines?
I like muppets.
my area has it you get that and dsl
I have TV over adsl2+
15mbit down while I live country side, really.
Phone too.
All for $30.
I've TV since 1.5 years and phone since 2 this way.
Oh yeah, but I live in FRANCE not USA.
Our technologies. ^.^
We've already got this up here in Canada. SaskTel has a bit of a reputation for rolling out stuff before everyone else. They are small enough that new features and services aren't too hard for them to roll out.
Our local DSL provider is already doing this and has been for a while. Comes with up to 8 megabits per second connectivity as well.
I had TV over the phone line with MTT back in 2001 (they called it VibeVision). It was a great service but the phone company cancelled the service about a year later in order to push their parent companies sat tv service. It wasn't any different really than digital cable. You get a set top box, online guide, digital channels. I never experience outtages or poor quality signal (unlike the sat service I have now).
In HK, BroadbandTV services has been launched for over a year already. For a fee above your existing ADSL subscription, you get an extra decoder which connects to your phone line and decodes programmes to your TV.
You can also subscribe to broadbandtv as a separate package.
In my opinion, way to take advantage of the existing telephone infrastructure (just like ADSL).
Link -> Here! . Remember to click on the "English" !
...even more channels with nothing (worthwhile) on.
99.9% of TV blows. Blows big hairy chunks. So now we get yet another delivery system to bring this crap into our homes.
Wonderful.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
FWIW, the most famous ISP in France, www.free.fr, already provides TV over xDSL. For 30 EUR / month (about 40 USD), you can have a 15 Mbit/s Internet access via ADSL 2+, free TV service, and Phone service (VoIP).
It's just another way to provide everyone with an unlimited array advertisements!
Verizon is working frantically to lay the optic fiber door-to-door. They already offer superfast internet speeds 15Mbps/2Mbps for $49.95 in some markets. The service is called FIOS (http://www.verizon.net/fios) and I strongly believe that Verizon is working hard to get into Cable TV business. They already offer DIRECTV® deals with their unlimited Freedom long distance package.
It's all very well rolling out a several new delivery systems, but what's the point when in the end the bottleneck will be the content. We already see content duplicated across cable channels, news services just switching out the talking head on Reuters or Bloomberg content. I just hope these companies put some of their development money into producing some decent shows...
...that they're going to have the Internet over phone lines next year.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
This option is available in my town now. In my case, the phone company is actually a co-op, rather than the Qwest monopoly in most surrounding towns.
This has led us to be able to have fast DSL, and now television at prices much lower than the Cable (Mediacomm) can provide.
If the service is anywhere near as reliable as my DSL, which has never had a problem, I will cancel my cable and switch over as soon as possible.
Fiber to the home is also becoming available, but I don't think they really have any services lined up yet to use it.
Cable TV over the Phone Line.. not impressive.
Wake me up when they have Phone Lines over Cable T...errm..oh..
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
"Few topics(Digital TV) have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.
Wasn't there just an article stating that computers are now getting more use than TV nationwide. Is the topic so popular because the TV industry is desperately trying to save it'self?
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
The crappy autocratic do nothing customer service and utterly confusing billing system of the phone company combined with the shitty content of reality TV and their 10 million intellectual property lawyers.
What exactly does this bring to the table? Anything? Nothing?
You cannot hide.
just when a research report has come out explaining that kids of today spend more time on the internet than in front of TV, these companies want to spend billions on brainwashing by phone. ... do they know something we don't?? like maybe that they are buying up laws^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyin congress to pass laws making the internet a broadcast-only medium?
I find it pretty interesting that all these different mediums that used to have a well defined purpose are really able to be used for anything now... Voice Over IP, Broadband Over Powerline, Telephone Over Cable Line, etc. Even remember something where they could transmit data on handheld devices through human touch... It's like everythings converging into one big unified network. I'll leave the Matrix joke to your own imagination here... :-)
"It seems that when people become desperate they consult the gods, and when the gods become desperate they tell lies." -
ya.. we already have this here too.. its called MAX TV.. comes through with your DSL, it also allows you to browse internet on your TV.. im not really that impressed with it..
http://www.nrgvibe.com
The cable companies are going after the telco's market. Since the government has not squished the cable companies like little bugs for this, the telcos either develop a competitive product or they go out of business.
Frankly, the telcos have one massive advantage over the cablecos. They have more reliable gear. I just went through 4 days of screwups with my local cable company. If my phone service had been provided through them as well, I would have had no way to talk to their tech support while tryning to determine where the problem was.
Of course everyone has a cell phone (right), but I can already see the marketing strategy from the sons of Ma Bell. And it's going to pump more FUD than IBM ever dreamed of.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Seriously - why not "TV" over IP (cable, DSL)
I don't see anything worth watching as it is - I wouldn't pay for cable if it weren't for the kids, and the fact that my Cable ISP is -$10 that way.
Who would pay for another mode of crappy content delivery?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Telefónica, biggest phone operator and ex-state company, had been offering it for some months in Spain in some cities. They had a restriction to not do so for a couple of years, to allow cable operators to grow, otherwise they would have tried sooner. In the meanwhile they tested and got all ready to smash the other companies as soon as they could (competition here sucks, Telefónica had the plus of keeping all from systems when it was a state monopoly, becoming a de facto monopoly now). The service is named Imagenio.
You mean "all about pervasive advertising.."
We'll see a lot more advertising pushed along with the content as well.
This is already available in Warwick, NY. www.warwick.net
To me it seems like a last desperate attempt to remain alive because they forsee the cell phone market will be putting them out of business and they need a way to still make money off their outdated copper wires that nobody wants to use anymore. Hey at least they try to adapt rather then just give up. They deserve a little credit for that I think.
We've got Verizon on a massive move to put fiber in every home yet we've got companies throwing BILLIONS(?) at this "endeavor". Phone lines are on their way out soon to be replaced by fiber. Why on earth would they throw money at adding a feature to an outgoing technology while the one coming in already is capable of sending television broadcasts over it?
It seems like the merging of technologies is bringing about the possibility of competition, which is a good thing. With cable and phone companies both offering phone, tv, and broadband, plus the cell phone companies offering phonelines as well as wifi in many areas, it seems like consumers are now getting more choices for service providers, which will hopefully lead to lower prices or better service.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
All those examples of deployed service are based on Alcatel OMP. Alcatel pretty much owns this space with the exception of a bit of noise from the likes of Microsoft (who have yet to actually launch something that works)
NBTel/Aliant offered this service through its subsidary iMagicTV for years until Bell Canada made them shitcan it and push ExpressVu instead. Sasktel offers it too.
Typical US-centric view to think that something doesn't exist until a US company does it.
so when the power goes out, now so does the phone.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
As if it's not bad enough that people can't currently put their cellphones down for 10 seconds, now they're going to have TV on them too? The fact that there is demand for TV on cellphones is a sad commentary indeed. I'm admittedly a geek, I have diplomas and certs. in computers, I play Magic The Gathering, Star Wars RPG, AD&D, and a million other nerdy things. However, I watch virtually NO TV. It's funny how geeks on Slashdot, who would normally be thought of as shut-ins and so forth by the mainstream, are the ones that see problems with excessive television and it's increasing availability. Do you want to be sharing the roads with people who not only have a phone glued to their ear, but 500 channels of mind-f*cking TV distracting them as well?
Reality shows, personality whores, misinformation and advertisements.
BFWhoop.
Also breaking into the entertainment industry is unbelieveably hard without having a solid DRM solution... as much as most slashdot crowd may despise DRM the truth is that it's necessary if you want to convince Warner Bros execs to let you broadcast their crap.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
These telcos are highly efficient capitalist machines free trade, right? And capitalism is EVER so much more efficient than that nasty old government, which just all waste and inefficiency!
Right?
I mean, look at Verizon, and how competent and swift and efficient they are.
Now compare that with the IRS and the Social Security administration and the post office. Why, we all know that half of all mail never arrives, and that most retirees eventually starve to death because they never get their checks.
But, Verizon and its brethren, they are gleaming machines of competence....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Is it That time of year again? Already?! Damn damn damn... Pundits poppin' off about the future, looking back through a filter that'd make Nostradamus look blunt? Oh, ick ick ick. Flying cars, cancer/hiv cures, unlimited free energy, world peace, global war (ok, that's not so far-fetched this time), wearable computers, micromachine-based medicine, self-destructing dvd's being popular, disney releasing a hit...
I SO hate this aspect of each New Year. Unless it's Robin Williams saying, "In the future we'll travel at the speed of light. They will have to lose our luggage before hand."
Twisted pair (or worse) is so archaic, it's not funny. Why would anyone go to great lengths to squeeze television signals into the crummy bandwidth of a phone line? The telcos should have modernized the last mile years ago. They didn't, and now they'll pay for that mistake. Too bad for them.
Digital TV has been available in Winnipeg (please set your watches back 20 years) from the phone company for a couple years.
We can get high-speed internet and digital TV bundles from both the cable and the phone companies. With high-speed internet coming in a couple years from the cell-phone companies, I wouldn't be surprised to see three-way competition for digital TV before long.
What!? I thought all those social democracy commie countries like Sweden and France were nowhere near as good as good old free-market America with our unfettered capitalism freemarket approach when it came to delivering consumer goods and services!
What happened?
Hmmm?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
From then they did the trial right before SBC bought them. Too bad they discontinued it. It was way better than AT&T (now Comcast)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Old news here in the rual middle Tennessee area.
Our local Telco Ben Lomand Rual Telephone CoOp has already been doing this here for a while too.
It runs over standard copper twisted pair, and picture quality is MUCH better than cable.
hereis the website for their tv over phone line.
babelfish translation of the ensuing flame-a-thon.
TV on phone lines has been reality for over a year in France. Check out the offering of Free.fr: http://adsl.free.fr/
For 29 euros/month (about 40 dollars) they offer:
I'm two miles away from the central so I get around 5Mbps (that's based on actual mesurements), the closer you are the faster.
As I understand it, while you watch TV Free reallocates 3Mbps for the MPEG2 video stream (though that should be checked as I never really noticed a difference).
They also offer services like Caller Id for free, services which you have to pay for with the legacy monopoly phone company.
And for a one time payment of 27 euros (about 35 dollars), you can convert their FreeBox (the modem that handles it all) into a wireless 54Mbps router.
http://adsl.free.fr/admin/wifi.html
My Local Phone Companies have been offering the VoDSL TV for 4/5 years now... Nothing new here
They already have this in Canada, since we moved to Saskatchewan we've been getting our TV over our DSL along with internet and phone service.
Our TV/Internet/Phone service provider is Sasktel if you're wondering.
Not here. I had to bail from Verizon DSL about 6 months ago when I started to get frequent disconects. My neighborhood was built in the mid to late 70s and the copper is degrading. It will be a LONG TIMEtm before I could see anything like this. They can't even keep 768/128 up to my location. This would require digging up 100s of backyards and re-laying the cable. I just don't see it. Not before 2010.
No, really. I've read several studies (including a few posted here on venerable /. that also say that there are more and more people (starting with us Gen X'ers) who simply do not watch TV. At all. Have no interest at all, and could care less. Hell, the only TV I ever see is whatever's on at my local bar, and even then, thankfully, there's no sound. I think that the telephone companies are getting desperate. They're losing out to cell phones in a big way (again, no land line for me for about the past 5 years), and they're grasping at straws. Seeing how poorly DSL has been rolled out, I'd eat my own shorts if telephone companies actually pulled this off. But, even if they do, they're chasing a shrinking market.
I don't respond to AC's.
Oh....I know. Because the telephone companies are scared spitless. They have but one product, which is rapidly becoming obsolete. The cable/cell/internet companies are taking over the phone service, so the phone company has to try to take over the tv business.
Fools.
Yeah I work for these guys, but I'm also a user SCRTC
34.95/month for 2 streams of digital cable + 44.95/month for 768/384 DSL
Much better than that craptacular dish we had before, which went out every time the wind got above 20MPH or it rained.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Sasktel Max Interactive Services I have had 'Sasktel Max' for well over a year. My roomate, whose Dad worked for Sasktel, has had it for about 3 years.
It runs over DSL and you get internet and digital TV on one modem. If you elect to move up to the 5mbps down 768kpbs up Internet service (as I did) you have 2 DSL modems, 1 dedicated for Digital TV and one for Internet. Its interesting that it only requires about 3500kbps to deliver the digital cable.
The price? For 1.5mps down and 384 up with basic cable over DSL= 34.99 above basic monthly telephone fees. God Bless Canada's cheap Internet.
The sad/funny thing is that this service is available to every town larger than 10,000 people in this province of 1,000,000 people. This province is very rural and they are rolling it out to all the smaller communities as well. I find it interesting that Sasktel finds this profitable when so many Americans, in much denser population centres, have such a problem getting similar access.
don't we get to watch video on demand, see 22 channels and listen to music over broadband now...
http://www.sasktel.com/ Is the proper link.
As well Sasktel offers movies on demand via this service. I can pause, stop, rewind, and watch the show over and over again in a 24 hour period with every rental. Its actually pretty incredible I hope that other providers pickup similar functionality soon.
A small ISP/Telco in my old hometown does this already - provides phone/tv/broadband/dialup/etc all in one package. It's pretty cool - when your phone rings, caller-id pops up on your TV.
http://www.wctc.net is the company - I don't know for sure that they are truly providing the television signla over their own phone lines, but I think they are.
I'm sure they're going to charge me 20 for a local phone and then 50 to install it. If they could give me local channels and, say, 5 of the channels normal analog cable gets me for 20 total, I'd do it, but I'm not paying for a phone. (If I get one it'll be VoIP because all my calls are long distance.) And i'm not paying theh 40/month the cable company wants for analog which gets me over-the-air and 5 channels I want plus 30 I'll never watch.
I do security
just about every other tech advanced country has got it, or similar services. So the news is uninteresting or the US is as far behind as a 'free' market will allow.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Well, I for one will welcome our new TV-over-phone-line overlords when they come around.
I hate Comcast (the local cable monopoly here) They just keep taking aways channels and increasing their prices for their worthless cable TV. If it weren't for a few sci-fi shows I watch I would just disconnect. I am seriously looking at other options and getting TV over phone line would be great. I already get my DSL though the phone line using Earthlink and getting video through that to would be great.
Content still exists?
In a gramatically incorrect way, yes.
The television signal/data providers are content with their current revenue models, even if you are not content with the content or the service.
THe social Security administration uses less than 1% of its costs for administrative purposes. HMOs, however, take 14% or more.
As for the FDA, they are VERY capitalist oriented.
You wrote:
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that if the companies aren't competent they won't stand the test of time, unless they are considerably cheaper than alternatives.
Yeah, right. Like Verizon and SBC are so competent. All they do is pay off the govt and keep running, as incompetent as ever.
Our ideas and the truth ARE winning out over rightwing corporatist propaganda, slowly but surely. Just take a look at what is happening on this very thread. Americans are posting with the unspoken realization that the big telcos have been deliberately holding out on them, and are doing a crappy job of servicing them.
While over in so-called socialist countries like France, you can get a really fat pipe for $30 US. And they have jobs for IT people, too. Cuz they make sure their gov't doesn't sell them out, like our did with free trade and h1b and outsourcing, at least not to the degree we see here....
everything is comin' our wa-aa-yy
And the word is leaking out from internet blogs like this one....
But by the time it does, you rightwing WSJ-Rush-Limbaugh bots will have switched sides, and will be denying that you ever bought into lasseiz faire economics. Well, I was there at one time, too. And I switched. But I won't hide it.
Will you?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I work for an independent telcom in southern Ohio, Horizon Telcom and we already offer cable TV services to our customers.
This has been available from Kingston Communication for at least the last three years. More info here. Prices start at £6.80 per month.
However, I believe that this is only available to customers in Hull, UK because KC own all of the infrastructure there.
Our local Teleco http://www.nep.net/ was the first to do this on the east coast i believe. They have been providing the "DataVision" TV service, DSL, and POTS over the copper for some time now, I dont rembmer when they started it has been at least a couple of years now i think. They do a great job, especially when you consider they service a large very rural area.
I really hate television.
I hate sitting in front of a video screen like a drooling idiot hoping The Powers That Be can entertain me. It's almost as lame as sitting here reading messages posted to Slashdot.
Most people would say that TV is one of the least fun things they can think of doing.
Instead of opting for TV over DSL, I'm about ready to cancel cable TV. But I can never seem to make the phone call. : /
*sigh*
Sign up for DSL. Download BitTorrent. Go to www.tvtorrents.tv. Watch TV.
That didn't cost billions of dollars or take until 2005.
Multicast is the SOLUTION to delivering content efficiently over the Internet. The problem is, no one seems to know how to implement it properly (outside educational networks, it seems), and no one seems to WANT to implement it properly.
Just think, if multicast were available all across the net, ANYONE would broadcast a stream to millions of listeners without requiring ridiculous amounts of bandwidth. Each link carrying the stream would only have to carry it ONCE. Routers along the way send the stream out multiple interfaces, so the wasteful duplication of content is unnecessary.
Multicast, implemented properly across the Internet, would cause a revolution in streaming content delivery. But no one seems to want to implement it.
Bummer.
-Z
I've been getting TV over my DSL connection for a long time now... well, until suprnova went down at least.
sic transit gloria mundi
Socialist? C'mon, the right-wing has been 'leading' us for so long, the Socialist Party doesn't even know what a left-wing is anymore! It's becoming more and more like the US: one big far-right party, and a few medium-sized middle-right ones.
Well, we do still have Arlette Laguiller. She's like a mascot or something...
I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where we have a governtment endorsed monopoly for our local telephone service. This provider (MTS) is among the cheapest costing telephone service in North America, and yet they still had time to develop MTS TV, which is pushing (based on inside information from their techs) 14Mbps video signal down the twisted pair for their TV service which has been around for several years now. It can feed three TV's signal concurrently (more if the different TV's are tuned to the same channel), plus PPPoE at 3Mbit plus voice on the same line.
Here is their Website
Basicly, this technology is in no way new, and AP should get some sources first before making such claims.
Disclaimer, I do not work for, or endorse this company. I'm simply aware of it's products, and make reference to them solely for informational purposes. I personally use Shaw Cable, their main competitor.
I guess we can kiss goodbye the old days of having one line doing exactly one thing.
I can't wait for the kitchen plumbing to come through the cable. I heard they been laying some big pipes lately.
Really, is that the best they can do? The best minds in the world, and all they can think of is pushing TV at us from yet another direction?
It reminds me of grandpa Simpson's remark that nothing is new... except this isn't a waffle iron with a phone attached; it's a TV with a phone attached.
We already have TV, for god's sake. We have hundreds of channels! Thousands of programs! High definition! Standard definition! Dolby surround sound! Digital! Analog! Cable! Broadcast! Are we so deprived, so lacking in ways of wrapping our quivering lips around that glowing nipple, that we need to get the exact same thing from the same wall socket as the phone, too?
And here's the worst part: it's 99% *garbage* contaminated with *ads*, anyway.
Except soon, you can get it on your phone, too.
The only good thing about this story the faint buzz of nostalgia that I get being reminded of Larry Ellison's ill-fated attempt at video-by-phone back in the late 90s. Those were the days.
I've had TV over the phone line for a few years now. Homechoice offers TV on demand over ADSL, along with streaming broadcast channels. It's a brilliant system. Far in advance of anything else.
There goes my Karma. First time I don't use the Preview button, and look what happens. I'm tired, obviously.
Homechoice.
We have already had this service where I live for a year or two. Drives the cable company nuts, because now the phone company offers phone, internet, and (better) tv.
What happened?
Someone set up us the bomb!
It is both the cable companies and the telcos that are evil. Depending on where you live one might be worse, but both are pretty evil, they had a monopoly for too long, and never learned customer service or competition.
There is DirectTV and the like that is starting to push the Cable companies into line, and cell phones are doing the same to telcos. (Unfortunately the cell phones are mostly telcos too) However at this point both the cable companies and the telcos need to be taught a lession.
Here in Manitoba, Canada, we've had this for many many months now. The local (formerly government) telco monopoly rolled out their digital television over phone line service with great fanfare.
I must say I'm less than impressed. It's basically the identical channels/packages as cable and satellite, for the same cost - however, the quality is VERY poor. Posts in this thread talk about bandwidth issues over POTS, and that has to be it.
Know when you're watching digital satellite and the screen suddenly pixelates like mad, like a really nasty MPEG artifact? Especially noticable during storms? TV over the phone lines looks like this pretty much all the time. Now just imagine an action sequence, with lots of frame changes. It's downright unwatchable.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Mod me redundant, but my local teleco (Ben Loman Telephone Co-Op) has been rolling out tv-over-phone lines for a year now. My area should have it before the end of January.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Bell Canada is already offering this in MDUs (Multiple Dwelling Units), and has been for the better part of this year. So what's so new about this? Saskatel already has over 25,000 customers on a similar service. Telus is about ready to launch. I also believe it's already available in Aliant-serving regions. This isn't really news, at least not to us Canadians.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
..."no static" on the regular phone line. Some kind of high definitioin TV? Ha! Double Ha! If the best you can get is a scosh over 28.8, I doubt that 90% of the people or so in the US would be able to get clear reasonable definition TV, even if they have some sort of xDSL on the telcos marginal wire. Not on the copper that's out there now, it's cheap crap. The telcos are cheap except for a few limited markets. I've been using POTS since they didn't come with a freaking dial on the machine, and they have always talked big, delivered cheap, charged heavy,and always. They gradually add in new features,and heavily add in new fees, and the big breakup forced some good changes, but it's been kicking and screaming all the way, while promising the moon, the stars, a milkshake and a new pony.
10%, sure, places that have redundant and highly competetive broadband markets, ie, the top 100 or so major urban areas. The rest of the nation? Ain't seeing it,my opinion, we'll see better wireless networks and P2P ad hoc streaming/mesh networks/whatever from actual users before they actually build robust wired solutions,cable or fiber or whathaveyou, it's just vastly cheaper and easier to implement. Tv over that then? Sure, possible. Tv over bottom rung dsl and 40 year old copper that's still up all over by the thousands of miles? Huh? And most folks in that 90% of what I will term the "higher tech near blackout area" that actually care to have decent TV beyond whatever any OTA they might have already run a satellite dish to get it, it's installed and works and is cheap and for most purposes doesn't interfere with the already too expensive for what you get phone bill. I mean, they give away the hardware now by the multiple room setup it's that cheap. Let's see the wired telcos compete with that.
So, the wireless guys, I can see it *somewhat* happening IF they really add enough to their backends to handle it,for the massive increase in bandwith, because it'll make a few bit torrent trackers look like a dialup dynapic webhost, ie, "small". Good quality TV real time is whole nuther ball game from the web, and it's there already called "cable" and it's put where they are going to put it like a decade ago, it's not expanding all that much. Wired,from the entrenched telcos? Having to actually install decent wires or lit fiber of some flavor to every abode? Nope, market buzz speak to keep their stock share prices up. They can't do it on their stuff, only in limited places. Proof is in the pudding you can buy now, if they could they would be offering killer SDSL everywhere for cheap, and they ain't, are they? It's the Telco equivalent of flying cars articles in 1950s popular mechanics magazine. Watching Tv on the cellphone? Contrary to popular PR spokesweasel beliefs, the US isn't Japan and 7/8ths of the nation doesn't climb onto a commuter train every day for hours to go to work, we drive cars, meaning they won't be watching TV on their cellphones for x-hours a day to kill time, especially if it's pay by the minute or some noise like that.
Even though it never seems to pan out, the only wire that currently goes to 99.99999 of all houses and can carry more bandwidth (theoretically) than two thin little copper telephone wires are electrical power cables.
Fiber will never be pulled to rural America. Cable companies already refuse to pull cable to rural areas. Wireless is a problem in the mountains, and Satelight is high latency and bandwidth limited. Power is mandated by law to be pulled to your house no matter how far off into the sticks you live.
The question is when.....TV over those same lines is a no brainer
The fact that anyone actually believes effective broadband emulating broadcast TV is even possible over two tiny copper wires is astonishing. At what cost will the signal get there over just what distance? How in the world will they keep up with technology which has inherently more available bandwidth and is fundamentally better for broadcast?
Oh, so, you say, go fiber all the way. So, now you've got the bandwidth, at what must be a multi billion dollar cost and over many years. Sounds like a great short term strategy, paying practically for itself.
What is going to pay for the many thousands of network nodes needed to be upgraded? Doesn't matter if fiber or copper.
Oh, wait, actually, thinking that this is a truely competitive model, tempting satellite and cable customers is actually really funny. Anyone notice that Cox is taking their cable unit private again? Likely because they desperately want to make themselves profitable and spend insane amounts of money in the short term, away from the eyes of investors.
It does show that the bells just don't get it.
Do reinvent. Do not copy.
Or, this is all just a charade for wallstreet.
If there was something worth watching this might be good.
I have 180 Dish channels and some Canadian.
I have a feeling that my phone company will provide more of the same.
A small local telco, Hickorytech, provides the service to St. Peter and to parts of Mankato. Similar pricing and requirements as digital cable or satellite. Homes can have multiple boxes, but there is a limit of either 3 or 4. The available service areas were either new construction areas (where each new house had CAT5 wired to it) or a renavation by the TELCO took place. I've been fortunate to live in the area were I have CAT5 to the house. This has allowed my wife to have her home office (w/3 seperate phone lines) as well as our home number to be essentially wired into the house. Call up the TELCO and simply asked to have three new phone numbers turned on. Progress sometimes unexpected results!!!
I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
This has been available for about a year, and the telco is constantly expanding their area of service. Prices are pretty much on par with cable, but the packages are much more interesting.
The telco has broken channels down to ~3-5 channels per package. You can get basic, with a small fee for each additional package. So you could get Discovery, A&E and TLC in one package, and 3 music channels in another. They also have "packages of packages" - basic + 1/3/5/9 packages.
The current promotion is 30 days of full service and free installation. You can also bundle your TV with your DSL package.
I have gone and talked to the guys at the local ISP that have started this. It is approx 3Mb per channel over a 9Mb line. It is on demand so you can have 3 TVs with different channels all at the same time. It has unlimited scalability for new channels and gets you ultra-fast SDSL if you subscribe.
The Downside is you have a 10GB limit on traffic from stuff that is not from the ISP (i.e. everything not DTV)
Allendale Telephone and Data http://www.altelco.net/ has been doing this for about since June 2004. No HDTV, just digital ala DirecTv. picture quality is pretty good, they're still working out the bugs. Nothing like bleeding edge technology...
It's kind of obvious. The phone companies got usurped big time when cable's latent end-user infrastructure turned out to be perfect for today's needs. And of course the cell phone companies took over half the market by building infrastructure as well.
Time to lay wire? You bet.
I'd be willing to pay a few dollars a month, say, $10 or so, to be able to watch NTSC-quality video on a window in my computer, over the Internet.
Hell, it can be compressed to hell if need be...I'd pay the same $10 for a 512 kbit video DivX feed or something. 1 channel at a time, maybe 40 channels to pick from.
We need to start delivering more content over existing connections, not necessarely over existing physical media.
What are they going to do when they finally realize that television is already dead and buried, rendered inert and without value?
and there's nothing on...
Will they be selling the same chanells via POTS as you can get via coax or sattelite? Same price most likely. Once the POTS infrastructure is obsolete whos really gonna care?
Theres a lot of questions but worth "Billions", not really or if so I hope their boots are bullet proof. Unless they can send some type of magical signal that is unique to copper twisted pair its all 1's & 0's. May be they just want to confuse evreyone into getting it or the few people who don't have ability or permission to use sattelite, which most providers have.
One way it could work is allowing independant broadcasters to send individual signals to your house for ultra low cost / specialized content. Only watch 10 channels then work out a scheme (99c/channel) or something like that, or even letting overseas into the mix that would make it intresting!
Hope that is not too much wishfull thinking
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
The superwealthy in this country have a disproportionate share of the wealth. Why? They STOLE it. I say we tax their WEALTH and use that to pay for our social security.
I have no problem with capitalism, just so long as We The People get our fair cut of the juice. And right now, we aint we gettin' it.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I already have TV over my phone lines. It's called BitTorrent over DSL.
On a good torrent I can download at faster than realtime; it's 3mbit DSL, most TV content on the net is roughly 1.1mbit, or 350MB/42min episode. Some of the 350MB episodes are ripped from HDTV sources and are of extremely high quality. Not HDTV obviously, but pretty close to DVD quality, which I find impressive for something that just aired an hour before I download it.
But the best example is when I download said epsiodes onto a high powered server and then stream the AVI file from there. I need only about 1.5mbit from the server in order to get a stable connection on these AVI files.
I work for a large Canadian telecom, and in the staff lounge we have the "TV over the phoneline" thing. It's like watching a bad, partly corrupted DivX rip that was downloaded off kazaa or something. The picture constantly shows artifacts and the sound skips.
Overall, it's terrible. I'd like to say that you couldn't pay me to watch it, except that's exactly the case...
I'd rather sever all business relations with the telecom by subscribing to VoIP than the other way around.
How much drm you want to bet theyre going to cram into their idiot box service.
Theyre nuts if they think ill buy a media stream which i will be unable to fairly record, space shift, format shift, time shift, or compress for greater efficiency with expensive dvdrs.
But neither Verizon or SBC will be specific thus far about what they'll offer right out of the starting gate.
Hmmm... perhaps the reporter didn't go to the SBC homepage and click "Project Lightspeed". Lots of information there, including a nifty flash demo of what they are planning for IP television service.
My brother-in-law is getting a PHAT fiber pipe right to his house in January! He just happens to be a tech who is rolling out the same fiber for Verizon in NY State. They are making these guys work from 6am until 6pm every single day. Verizon is betting EVERYTHING they have on this because if they don't deliver in time, cable companies will be the only ones standing. VOIP will be here in-mass and Verizon will lose tons of money if they don't adapt. That's why they are coming up with alternative money making schemes, like video on demand (movies), internet, voip, videophone, etc. all over ONE fiber.
They are also working hard to prevent other companies from getting access to these fiber lines. Right now the law says Verizon has to give access to their copper (DSL) at cost and they don't want the same to happen to their fiber lines.
2005 appears to be a year early here.
For 5 years now I've had digital TV over vDSL from a major telco (uswest, now qwest), how is this news?
I'm certain its been covered on slashdot half a dozen times already.
Slashdot can/should come up with a better system to pay the bills, instead of posting payed off dupes..
The telco in the province of Saskatchewan has been offering TV-over-DSL for about a year now.
$50Canadian gets you 3Mbps, 2 IP addresses via DHCP and a basic TV package (25 TV channels and a bunch of music channels).
This is the same province that had DSL and cable internet way before most other places. For some reason, seems to be technically advanced.
if the new TV Bells offered the ability to pick specific channels instead of packages, they'd find themselves filling a niche market that would. After the first generation of members gets the kinks out, their subscribers should grow expenantually. No one wants to pay for packages.
:). If you ask me, its about time someone came around to challenge the cable cos.
If the Bells allowed us to pick our chans, the cable cos would have to fall in too. Competition is always good
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
Maybe I'm just unimaginitive, but the differenc between the 3 megabits I'm getting now and the 10-30 I could get isn't very interesting.
With a 20 Mbit downstream, would the upstream still be capped on the order of 0.25 Mbit like it is with most residential broadband Internet access?
I'm never that hungry.
But thanks for giving me an indelible image of a desperatley hungry French guy at 3am.
I work for an ISP in Alaska and we have had DTV over phone for almost a year now.
Only problem is you have to have VERY clean lines to get enough bandwidth for the stream. Maximum distance from our huts is about 11 kiloft for 2 TV setups.
One nice thing about it is that we have had to boost up our latency/bandwidth standards to keep this running strong. Tends to keep the ISP on its toes.
I don't know about everyone else, by my cable company charges customers through the roof for cable tv and internet. Glad to see some competition emergining, it will be better overall for the consumer in the long run.
Qwest offers TV-Over-DSL, and they have been doing so for *years*. This is not new AT ALL.
c es/index.html
http://www.qwest.com/residential/products/tvservi
Who the hell writes these articles? If you click on "TV Services" from Qwest's HOME PAGE, this is what you get. DOES ANYONE BOTHER TO DO THEIR RESEARCH ANYMORE?
Not asynchronous.
Sound familiar? Maybe not, but that's the first thing that pops into my head. Synaps...
Yeah, it's just a lot harder in real life...
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Actually, according to France Telecom, DSL was invented in BellCore Labs in 1987. :)
Telcos in France, Germany, Britain and Belgium have been quicker off the mark than the USA in developing and rolling out "triple-play" services over DSL though.
Here in Slovenia the #1 Internet provider started ADSL TV service a couple of years ago. Features included:
- 120+ channels (OK, many of them in diffrerent languages, but still a lot better than cable (around 60))
- Internet Radio
- (limited) ability to surf the web withous a PC - the system supports Fresco browser
- higher picture quality
- LOVER monthly fee than cable operators
The downsides were (at the time) only 1 TV per ADSL connection, occasional "video glitches" and separate remote controller for the Amino (set-top box).
I was working for this Internet provider at the time so I'm avare of some technical details... The provider was working closely with national Telecom, which raised the speed of your ADSL to 8 Mb/s downstream. Most channels use around 4 Mb/s stream, but some also do 5 Mb/s so if you had a 2 MB/s Internet link (which shared the same phone cable), you should be OK. Until now.
Now the Internet provider and telecom got greedy, subscribing too many people to ADSL TV without upgrading their hardware so a couple of weeks ago I started receiving massive (40-70%) packet loss while surfing - but only, if my TV was turned on. Telecom tried but couldn't fix it (changed my ADSL modem, etc...) and the only response from the Internet provider I got, stated: "We're afraid that you should consider DOWNGRADING your Internet connection speed in order to watch TV and surf at the same time!".
So it goes.
you guys are late. it's been more than a year that Free in france does it...
In fact, TV over phone lines has existed for more than one year in France, specially in Paris where it was first launched.
/. readers to seek and battle for the louses.
For all you guys who are fighting around who did invent (A)DSL, i'll remind you of this old Newton saying: "if I have seen further [than others] it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
To me these (A)DSL guys, although it's quite usefull these days, are more like hair-riders.
But it doesn't prevent proud
It seems showing off with "attitude" remains their motto...
Would the french surrender it if threatened? Not sure.
What i'm sure about is that we'd go to war if told that any unsignificant and powerless third-world nation had a "proven" plot to take ours from us.
"Take away our PlayStations
And we're a third-world nation"
A.D.
My parents get their TV from Manitoba Telecom Services through their phone line. Its been out for about a year.
I'm waiting for the cable companies to start offering serious phone service....
Linky (dutch site, sorry..):
http://www.dekabelkaneruit.nl/
Now from Verizon, not only will you hear the the ads but you will see them on your cellphone!
"Can you hear me now? GOOOD"
Somebody, stop this useless centralization of technology >:|
Whoo-hoo!!
;-)
Less than two weeks wait !!!
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
(et bientot TOUT slashdot sera en français ! Mwa ha ha ha !!! )
X over Y arrives in Z
where
X is one type of content
Y is a medium originally designed for another type of content
Z is a vague timespan
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
VDSL with TV (and 1Mbps symmetrical simultanious data) has been available from Qwest in AZ for at least 5 years here.
I've seen inside the cabinet that delivers it to my neighborhood (brother works for Qwest and unlocked it). Lots of fiber in there, but mostly dark due to a poor take rate for the product here. So, I dunno what the whole 'French had/invented it first' thing is about -- if it was "almost a year" ago that claim is BS.
ADSL in Alaska.
If you are lucky* enough to live in Hull (UK) then you've had this opertunity for years http://www.kcom.com/eastyorkshire/residential/inte ractivetv/
*debated
What happened?
:)
You thought wrong
TV over phone lines already exists here in France, I've got about 60 channels thanks to my Freebox!
Qwest has already offered a combination 1.5 DSL/TV/Telephone product for $99.95/mo in Denver and Phoenix for a while. It all goes on a 10MBps DSL line.
Swisscom started offering television over ADSL in response to the cable-internet company Cablecom starting VOIP.
Both want consumers to be able to quit their competitors "line" to the home.
I worked for a Telco a few years back experimenting with TV over DSL. It failed miserably. The last mile problem is the kicker.
DSL, even the best DSL, just doesn't have the bandwidth available to compete with cable in terms of content delivery. Our biggest problem turned out to be multiple channels - we had the bandwidth for one channel easily, but if the customer wanted to be able to have two STBs on different channels (the horror!!!) they were SOL. And this was only a normal TV stream - image HDTV. In order for a Telco to broadcast two HDTV channels they would have to support speeds on the order of 50 MBps over their DSL. No one but people within the first few hundred feet of the co-lo would be able to manage that with current technology. And what about three channels?
Sure - maybe the technology will improve, compression will improve, and it may one day be possible. But you've got to remember, that the laws of physics dictate that you simply can not cram as much information down a phone line as you can down a coaxial cable. When analog cable is scrapped eventually in favour of digital only content, the cable companies will have so much bandwidth available it will be ridiculous.
Unless the Telcos all roll out FTTH, they will be in for a bumpy ride.
Cable Telephony
TV over phone lines
Broadband Over Power Lines
Power Over Ethernet
Voice Over IP
Cable Broadband
Internet Radio
Wireless Internet
Satelite Radio
Satelite Internet
Where will it end? Teleconferencing by gas main? Pay per view movies over sewerage pipes? Use them as God intended. It's messing with nature I tell's ya!
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
My mom and dad just moved into a new house which has fibre to a box on the side of the house. They get their phone service, long distance, TV and DSL in a bundle. The picture isn't that great but it's almost as good as DirecTV/Dish and they plan to move to mpeg4 in the future (I talked to one of the techs). The set top box (Amino) is tiny and offers composite and component outputs. No s-video for some reason although the tech told me that had something to do with the manufacturer being a UK company (???). Ethernet from the wall plugs into the back of the box and a pigtail cable from there provides the video and audio connections. Some of the features are kind of neat, including on screen caller ID, a basic web browser (useless without the keyboard and the resolution sucks, but it's good for checking the weather). My parents don't bother, but you can also read and compose your email from the couch. The service also offers on demand PPV with basic DVR functionality. You get the movie for 24 hours and during that time you can play, rewind, pause, etc. What surprises me is this is a locally owned phone company in a very small town.
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
As well as normal TV, they also give you movies on demand and the ability to watch any TV program that was on in the past week (only on a select few channels, though). If you subscibe to the music channels they even let you set-up a playlist of the videos that you want. All this and they even throw in a 512kB broadband package and free phone calls with the service too.
Slick user interface and minimal (almost zero?) wait times make suprnova/TiVo's (to catch that program you missed) a thing of the past...
If you live in London, I'd definitely recommend you to get it.
I hope they mean "Running a fiber line to you house and running Digital Cable, Data, and VOIP".
I think the article title is somewhat missleading. One can think it's a new technology which will be 1st deployed in the US next year; but it's not a new technology.
:-( available here despite the fact it has been out for several years in US now). Thanks to the provider FREE (http://www.free.fr) this will be fixed next year.
:-)
A good title would have been:
TV Over Phone Lines first rolled out in France in late 2003 (and maybe other countries) finaly arrives to US in 2005.
NOTE: In France we have 3 ADSL/ADSL2+ providers offering TV over phone lines (with VoIP included: just connect a standard phone to the ADSL reciever (which is more than a basic modem)).
- ADSL bandwidths range from 1Mb/s to 8Mb/s downstream and 256Kb/s to 768Kb/s upstream.
- ADSL2+ bandwidths range from 1Mb/s to 25Mb/s downstream and 512Kb/s to 2Mb/s upstream.
=> Speed depends on provider and distrance to the connection point.
TV over ADSL is mainly downstream (multicast) traffic and consumes about 3Mb/s (meaning that if you have less than 3Mb/s, you cannot recieve TV over phone line).
HDTV is planned for 2005 for ADSL2+ (this will be the first HDTV programs in France as this cool technology is STILL NOT
Finaly: US is late on TV over phone lines, France is late on HDTV. One point for both sides, technology progresses and everybody is happy
We already have that available The local telco - MTS had this rolled out last year From what people say it is great and beats anything that the local cable comps. have 'way ahead of the curve, way ahead"
The telcos are still stuck in the old ways of thinking.
They could be providing all sorts of digital services right now, if they just restructured their systems so you'd have unlimited bandwidth to their local network, and bandwidth limitations only to the rest of the internet... That would make everyone happy. DSL providers could have caching proxies, and customers would love to use them, which makes things faster for users, and saves the ISP lots of money on internet bandwidth.
In addition, this would give the DSL providers an advantage in providing digital services, like TV. Imagine if you could watch 2 simultaneous video streams from your DSL provider, and not even slow down your internet connection.
If they want to provide fibre over the last-mile, that's fine, but even then, I'm sure the TV service they will provide will be no better than cable or satellite. You see, they don't realize that the multicast abilities of computer networks provide an effectively unlimited ammount of bandwidth, and hence, unlimited channels. Ala carte TV service would be trivial, and could offer billions of channels to select from. In fact, anyone could setup a server, and provide a new TV station for $1/month directly to the users.
Instead, competition has stagnated, corporations have grown, and the only competition is to be nominally better than the other 2 companies providing competiting services. So, they clone the other services as best they can, and make a profit, only because corporate policies have made it's impossible for smaller companies to compete at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A couple of ISPs here have gotten into this already: Free offers this with its own-brewed FreeBox based on a linux kernel (http://adsl.free.fr/tv/) and Wanadoo as well with its LIveBox (http://www.infos-du-net.com/en/news/3209-wanadoo- livebox.html).
Both meet quite a nice interest but I don't have figures here.
Nrodz./.
C'est vrai que les syndicats sont de plus en plus comparables à des partis politiques...
Slashdot en Français... Hm. L'effet Slashdot ne sera plus le même avec seulement une poignée de nerds, tu sais ^_^
Thank you for reading my off topic post.
Now I can put the phone line to use, since I've moved my phone service to cable.
Saskatchewan is one of the last places in North America to have a Crown owned Telephone system [the government runs it at arm's length].
MAX TV which is TV over DSL has been around for over a year, and most of the provinces schools and libraries are online. A government initiative called CommunityNet.ca [and soon to roll out CommunityNet II which is wireless internet] is part of the government's strategy to give highspeed access to 95% of the population which is just under 1 million people.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
until suprnova went down.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
I've already got TV over my phone line,.. ADSL + Bittorrent :)
I've had VDSL from Qwest for years now, which has had TV over the wire. The only reason I have it though is for the 1.5Mb/1.5Mb internet connection. I pay the minimum for the TV service as it's required (or was at the time I signed up) and I have a nice speedy network connection.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
1. The Physics Channel 2. The Mathematics Channel 3. The Philosophy Channel 4. The Cycling Channel 5. The Martial Arts Channel 6-280. Porn
Cable services were designed for the hard one and branching into the other two were relatively simple. They have the fat pipe to your house.
OTOH, telco's have a skinny pipe to your house. They expanded to data service, but TV is harder. Multiple TV's in the house? TV and data at the same time? It's a very challenging problem given the available bandwidth. The solutions will have limitations TV viewers aren't used to -- delays changing channels, limited number of TVs, over compression artifacts. But they really want it to work because no one wants to install a new pipe to your house.
www.mts.ca/mtstv
I used to work for Kingston Interactive Television which delivers real Interactive Digital Television and true Video on Demand within a wall garden of managed content and high speed Internet Access via IP on ADSL.
The technology works and has done for years, KIT was the first to commercially launch in 1999 and like others it had been running technology trials of Video over POTS for about 6 years previously.
There is little doubt that the platform blows the competing options out the water. DSL based DTV services cost about one tenth that of pure cable system since they doesn't require a fresh dig. They are also truly interactive instead of the faked-out client side interactions of satellite systems. It also offer a realatively pain-free experience of the internet for most ordinary consumers.
The problem is the incumbents who tend to have the content deals stitched up with the studios/distubutors.
Read more here : Kingston Case Study
TV over your POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) is nothing new. It is currently available here in Saskatchewan, Canada (SaskTel). It is a great system, works phenomenal, and has a channel line up every bit as good as the incumbent cable providers in this province. While SaskTel is not the first to offer TV over POTS, it is the largest such provider in the world, with Telus (BC/Alberta) and MTS (Manitoba) in hot pursuit. This new system has incumbent cable providers like Shaw and Access Communications running scared, and diversifying into other markets such as POTS of coax. All is good, compitition is good for the consumer and helps innovation.
The way the system works, is it piggy backs on DSL via multi-cast packets. This system works great, as SaskTel has a "DSL Cabinet" on every corner, sitting beside the SAC. The system is flawless for most customers, but some do have pixelation, but some customers get that on digital cable too. All in all, great system, great price, works great. Another option is using one cable pair for DSL internet (up to 7mb/s currently) and one for DIV (the television portion) by double barrel shotgunning the modems. So, its nothing new, has been available since 2002, and was in working development form in 2000. New for 2005? Nope, was already done... (Bell, NBTel, etc did it 5-6 years ago as well).
> TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone.
/dev/null?
How about TV to
Must-not-watch TV!
DSL installations include filters to block the high frenquency data carrier from the phone sets, and visa-versa (in the U.S. the home owner owns all internal wiring from the demarc - so the owner would plug in these filters on any connections used by phones - leaving 1 unfiltered for the DSL modem; I did this 'installation' myself in a matter of minutes and was up and running without a hitch. I did not have to rewire my home. The only issue with wiring I see would be if you live in a house that was built over 30 years ago - and not many folks that live in old houses have DSL, much less computers to begin with, so this is an exception rather than a rule).
Telcos are positioned for fibre to the demarc - so it is only a matter of time, particularly when you consider all the fibre RTs that are already in the nieghborhoods today (you don't think they ran all that fibre just to support DSL, do you? Telcos think 20 years ahead when they do any significant build-out, and over-engineer heavily to support anticipated higher capacities).
I hate to say it, but you are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt in a misguided effort to discredit other technologies than your own. Customers will go where the best product is - and that will be on fibre - whoever provides it.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Robert X Cringley posted this article earlier in the summer describing a system that offers high quality video on demand over narrowband connections. I'm a little sceptical about the codec he describes - I'll believe it when I see it - but interesting, nevertheless. Anyone have any first hand experience with this?
Shouldn't the show then be called "1440"?
First, to keep it on-topic:
I come from a different school of thought - I've run into the artifacting issue only once or twice, but I rarely watch TV anyway... MTS TV has seemed to be OK in select areas (Read: Winnipeg St. James) but YMMV.
(And now for the offtopic, and the reason I post without Karma bonus: effin Bisons. They really gotta change their marketing strategy. Manitoba to MTS: The "Great bison (buys on) cell phones" joke died SEVEN EFFING YEARS AGO. For those not in Manitoba, they've been using bisons in their ads ever since then. Kinda like the Verizon Guy, but trust me - it's much more annoying being deluged by those effin MTS ads.)
When did broadband get inserted?
Where exactly do you live that hardly anyone has a house older than 30yrs? Its quite common round here in Kansas City.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
Kansas City isn't exactly a high-growth area. Here in the Phoenix metro area, only houses near the city are older than 30 years. Most houses are probably under 15 years old. Las Vegas probably has a similar situation, since it's the fastest-growing metro area in the US.
You thought wrong :)
No, he's pointing out that we've been lied to.
You can check for availability of DSL via the telco in your area at this link:
SBC DSL AVAILABILITY
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
heh heh....I think that was the sound of a jet plance whooshing over the heads of most of these slashdotters....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This isn't even a "Coming soon to the US, but available elsewhere" story - it's already here and been here...
MTA (telco) started offering TV over DSL a year or so ago - I was one of the early ones to try it out (and see if it compared to my DishTV system). DSL was set to 8Mb d/l speed, there was a gateway on the phone line between the wall and DSL modem to filter out the TV signals, and each converter box had a dedicated 2.5Mb channel, so only 2 boxes allowed. Lots of fiber in the ground to support it, too.
For basic TV (similar to DishTV's $29.99 setup) I paid $120/mo. However, I started with $50/mo 512/128 DSL service, and the extra $$ upped the DSL speed to 4Mb/512 also , which I found nice as I spend more time in front of the PC than in front of the TV...
Quality? Very similar to good streaming video on your PC now. There's a rare skip or bit of artifacting (usually in large black fields on screen), but all in all not too bad. Unfortunately, it's competing with DishTV and cable up here... My DishTV account for $30/mo + DSL/phone for $50/mo = Digital TV at $120/mo. Not good. Cable TV is about the same - $20/mo phone + ($ 80/mo digital cable + 1Mb/256k cable modem) = $120 digital TV...
Shame the price/performance isn't up to snuff... If it was available here for the same $50/mo as DishTV+phone it's be a decent deal...
I'm in Winnipeg, Canada.
http://www.mts.ca/mtstv/index.html
In Manitoba, Canada, we too have television over DSL. This is from the main telephone provider, MTS. Quite frankly, the quality does look blocky compared to cable, and satellite even. However, the "all digital" line seems to get most people.
It is already here (In Canada). VDSL - the only problem is that it is only available for new buildings. The max distance from Fiber to end node over copper is 400 meters. It combines DSL + TV package.
now the BBC can force legislation so that we in the UK will have to have a fuckin tv licence just to have internet access.
Whether or not we receive tv over the phone line or not, it will count as possessing the necessary equipment, and so we will have to pay.
I for one would like to see the tv licence dropped, not give them new ways to tax us !
I already get digital tv over my phone line in Winnipeg. MTS TV is far superior to Shaw digital service here in Winnipeg.
I work for one of the smaller telco's up here (but with the largest rural area) and we are putting this out to market all ready. The quality so far (within about 1 mile of a HUT) is equal to digital cable. From what i've heard, they (the mother company) put about a year of testing into the lines and equipment to see if this was feasable and if we could support that kind of bandwidth. So far so good. I've been tempted to move (they don't have service in town, only in the rural areas) so i can get in on this service.
Wow, that was completely not relevant to the question I asked. way to go.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Kansas City is the 10th fastest growing among large metro areas (employment > than 750,000) with an annual employment growth rate of 2.8% in November 2000.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
Sorry; I answered another question I saw earlier here that may, or may not have been attributable to you.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain