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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
See here.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
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 how can the telecom industry expect that their old, for the most part outdated copper wiring is capable of distributing this type of media?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.
Let the hilarity begin!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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
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 . . .
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. ^.^
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.
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.
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
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.
Well, if the telco delivers broadband internet, they get nothing except revenue from sales. Not enough money to worry about.
If the telephone company delivers television, however, that means ADVERTISING REVENUE!
Obviously that is hot stuff!
Thus, the telcos will jump through their assholes getting tv-over-wire to work and cash in on the advertising dollars before the competition does, and the system will go live in a great hurry (at great expense).
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.
I work for an independent telcom in southern Ohio, Horizon Telcom and we already offer cable TV services to our customers.
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
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.
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.
..."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.
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.
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.
They have. It's been rolled out by a subsidiary called Navigata under the name WebCall. Currently I haven't found anyone that will offer phone numbers with a Saskatchewan area code. Basically because the market is so small. Everyone wants to go after the big markets. SaskTel will begin roll out of a local (Saskatchewan) service in the near future.
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]
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.
No No, it is realy standard phone lines...
p .pdf
You connect a reciever (look like a satellite reciever but it is connected on you phone line)
then at the back of the reciever you have 3 connectors:
- a RJ45 10/100Mb/s connector for LAN
- a SCART connector for TV
- a phone connector (RJ11) for standard phone
And of course a connector for the phone line.
- a ADSL connector (also RJ11) to connect to the phone line.
See example page 12 on the following user guide (sorry only French, but picture is ok).
http://support.free.fr/maj/freebox_V3-V4_dg
Old version launched in 2000 if my memory is correct: http://mfilter.free.fr/fr/im/pop_freebox.jpg
New version twice smaller http://www.iliad.fr/im/FreeboxV3.jpg
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
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