Verizon and Microsoft Partner for IPTV

benore writes "According to the AP, Verizon joins other baby bells SBC and Bellsouth in choosing Microsoft to provide TV content over high speed internet. IPTV, whose technology will deliver TV content in much the same way as VOIP delivers phone service, relys heavily on fiber optic speeds. According to SBC, Microsoft's IPTV technology will allow a home to receive 3 standard TV signals, 1 HD channel, and high-speed Internet access all at the same time."

Comments

I was the IPTV demo at CES

[Utopia]

The demo I saw allowed allowed selection of different camera angles based on personal preferences in a baseball game.

It looked awesome. I was also suprised at the quality of the streams and the speed at which channels could be changed. Since there is no TV tuner it had multiple Picture-in-picture capabilities.

I can't wait for Verizon to install fiber in my area.
I will be subscribe to this from day one.

The article doesn't say, but...

[jd]

This is probably done via multicast. No sane company would attempt to distribute feeds of this kind using unicast/point-to-point technology. Oh, right, this is Microsoft, isn't it. Hmmm.

Even so, that's probably the way they'll go. They have to, if they are to reach the number of consumers they'd need to be profitable. This is where there's a problem, though. ISPs don't provide multicast to the home. Microsoft would have to force a radical shift in attitudes amongst ISPs, if this plan is to have a hope of working.

Multicasting would solve one of the other concerns mentioned by Slashdot users - privacy. Because routers only know the next link in the chain, it would be impossible for Microsoft to determine who was listening to the multicast transmission.

However, this creates a problem for the cable companies. Anyone can set up a multicast feed. It's easy. This means that anyone can set themselves up as a TV station, virtually unregulated by the FCC (which has next to no authority on Internet matters), with none of the licensing issues "real" broadcasters have to endure.

Although Joe Average is unlikely to offer serious competition any time soon, start-up channels which start entirely on the Internet would have significantly lower overheads and therefore have more money to produce quality output. Those start-ups may very well be dangerous to existing TV stations.

TV-over-IP, because it would be unregulated, completely bypasses all ownership rules. This means that newspapers and radio stations that are looking to muscle into TV would have an advantage as they could get into IPTV without restriction, whereas TV companies are limited in what they can do in other media.

Multicasting is already supported across the Internet backbone, which means overseas operators could transmit to US homes. As it stands, several European sports channels are already relayed over the Multicast backbone. Those channels stand to reach a lot of extra homes, if this is the method Microsoft adopts, which would likely be very interesting news to their sponsors.

Of course, if the F/OSS community could pressure Internet Providers to switch multicasting on now, it would preempt Microsoft's strategy, which in turn means that our favorite monopolist would not gain total control over the entire televised media industry.