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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."
I like how Microsoft, like Apple, is moving beyond just PCs.
Will the general public latch on to this? In the past, to my knowledge, they have not been jumping to joy to buy new equipment to use a service that ultimatly has less costs overall. Main Point : Comsumers are lazy. They dont want to have to do anything to get what they want. They want good TV, and they want it now.
While simultaneously allowing Microsoft to spy on your TV viewing habits, not to mention which shows you tape. Oh sorry, I thought I was reading the WMV license terms. But you get the idea. Let Microsoft in your living room and you never know what you are agreeing to.
Oh well, just a little baseless paranoia for a Friday night.
besides my TV viewing being at the mercy of DOS attacks and trackable (you think http cookies have been abused, just wait) and limited since I can currently buy more satellite receivers if I want more simultanious HD streams?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
"to be transmitted in the language of the Internet"
Finally we'll be able to get the news in 1337 - and I never throught I'd live see the day.
For years, both the cable companies and the telephone companies, when confronted about the fact that they respectively tend to hold local monopolies in many areas, have defended this by saying "we're not a monopoly; I mean, we have a [cable/telephone] monopoly, of course, but it isn't a monopoly because we have to compete with [telephone/cable].
But then something interesting started happening, and we see the beginnings of the final stages of it with this Verizon/Microsoft partnership. Now the Cable companies are all trying to do exactly what the telephone [now dsl] companies do, and the telephone [now dsl] companies are all trying to do exactly what the Cable companies do, and they're both getting good enough at it that anything having to do with satellite dishes will be entirely marginalized pretty quickly.
I can't help but think it won't be too long before your area's one telephone company does, in fact, compete with your area's one cable company, and your area's one cable company does compete with your area's one telephone company, but neither of them compete with anyone else in any fashion. When this happens I don't think it will be too long before collusion between the cable and dsl companies becomes an absolute standard. Why not? Duopolies are good for business, and what's good for business, at the expense of consumers or no, is apparently good for America.
I wonder how one would pee tv streams...I bet HD would hurt
http://instagram.com/thephotographer
*sigh*
...
Baseless attacks and disinformation regarding anti-trust law in this country helps no-one.
It is not a crime to hold a monopoly position in the market. It is a crime to do certain things with that monopoly position. Such things are called anti-trust violations. When you violate them are are not convicted of being a monopoly, you're convicted of anti-trust violations.
Nowhere does anti-trust law say that once you have a monopoly in one area that you can't enter business into a new area. Anti-trust law does say that you can't use your monopoly in one area to obtain a monopoly in another area (ie: refuse to sell windows to that company unless they agree to use Microsoft's IPTV stuff, or make sure windows won't connect to their internet service unless they agree to use Microsoft's IPTV stuff).
But hey, don't let the reality of things get in the way of your rants
Regular TV just wasn't doing it for me... I mean, actually having to move *from* my computer *to* the couch? How am I supposed to manage that? I also have always hated how big my TV is and how comfortable my couch is. I would much rather watch a small screen that a) has bottom and top black boxes or b) has a horrible resolution and sit on my computer chair!
"You have changed the channel. Your TV must reboot for this change to take effect...."
"Hi! It looks like you are watching Fear Factor. Would you like me to help you lower your IQ furthur?"
"TV update has detected 14 new updates, 5 of them critical. Install now?"
"You have changed your PVR, stereo, and snackbowl. You must re-register your TV before you continue."
"J00 5uk3r! PW3N3D!"
"Program JSPRINGER.EXE has causes an exception in GOODTASTE.DLL..."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Who needs them ! What we need is high speed fiber to the home thats AFFORDABLE ,$20-30 a month that uses all it's bandwidth to INTERNET 2 or something similar. Having 3 regular Digital channels and one HDTV channel is stupid. I don't want to see QVC in HD. Who will decide on what we see ? Same problems as always without Alacarte. Same stupid Kiddy shows, Sports shows, News shows, reruns. Fuck em all. I am sick of Corporate rule.
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.
it's really going to suck when my tv signal freezes up for no reason like my windows box does.... I don't know that I really want microsoft taking over anymore of the world than it has already...
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)