Slashdot Mirror
Undisclosed Markets to Participate in IPTV Trial
prostoalex writes "Associated Press has the story that three communications corporations are doing test trials of IP-based television in undisclosed markets. From the article: "SBC Communications, the dominant local phone company from the Midwest to California, is deploying a full-blown IPTV system that it plans to launch by year-end in at least a few undisclosed markets. Verizon Communications plans to offer some interactive IP-based features on top of a conventional digital cable service... BellSouth has expressed doubt about whether a cable rollout makes financial sense, the company sees enough potential to trial IPTV technology in undisclosed markets." Currently about 1 mln Europeans get their television via phone line."
TELUS has been trialing IP based TV in Edmonton. It will launch soon in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.
You're probably right. Chances are, we're all going to be seeing HDTV in MPEG-4 part 10 -- also known as H.264 or AVC. It'll be in Blu-Ray, HD DVD, DirecTV, and QuickTime 7... not to mention a whole slew of other applications. I wouldn't be surprised to see cable companies using it... plus the telecos.
It's an amazing codec since it actually allows stellar HD at surprisingly low bitrates.
You're also right that Mircosoft has an uphill battle to fight considering nobody really wants to give them control over what will be the future of video. Microsoft's only playing card seems to be licensing. If they can undercut MPEGLA, companies will chose it over AVC.
But for simplicity's sake... I hope Microsoft loses. They have just as much a right as any other organization at submitting a standard... but what's better about WMV? If the current incarnation is any indication, it'll be Windows-centric and will leave everyone outside of the platform left virtually stranded. In the grand scheme of things, Microsoft will use it as leverage for future Windows purchases... great for them.. but what about everyone else?
> First, why do you need IP for TV ? over ADSL, it's a lot better to send it in raw ATM
What everyone expects from TV over DSL is interactivity. People want video-on-demand, they want to pause or record live, they want to provision their account, etc. At the same time, broadcasters and telcos are looking for new revenue streams. Without IPTV, the features mentioned above would only work if you add a hard-drive to each set-top box (STB). However, for deployments to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the cost per STB is too high.
The two-way communication between the set-top box and the server is what IPTV brings. And for that, HTTP and RTSP are example of protocols to use. (HTTP for sophisticated client/server transactions, and RTSP for fine control over the real-time streaming). I don't know how the sophisticated features would work without the IP, HTTP, RTSP, and RTP layers.
Aliant / NBTel engineered this technology with a company they spun-off called iMagicTV. I would almost bet if anyone in Canada is getting tv over DSL, the technology came from iMagicTV in Saint John.
... we had those feature long before anyone else as we were pretty much a testbed because of the advanced architecture here at that time.
I think as soon as Aliant was formed, they scrapped all the DSL-cable-tv and gave people Bell ExpressVu because *shock* Bell owns Aliant now. NBTel used to truely be a telephone pioneer. They were pretty deep in bed with Nortel which is why I always chuckled when I saw tv ads for US carriers advertising *69