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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."
It's sorely disappointing to continue to see this attitude. Many of us "bemoan" Microsoft because their software doesn't work, exactly what this analyst claims they're trying to avoid. Do you get fired if you choose Microsoft and it doesn't work? What's wrong with this picture?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
So we'll get the crappy content you get on TV; combined with the poor consistency in quality of service and poor customer support you get from an ISP; combined with the restrictive DRM, poor interoperability, and vendor lock-in you get from Microsoft software (they're providing the tech, look at the article).
It's the worst of all possible worlds. I sure can't wait until they find a way to make it mandatory.
This sounds like client server or multicast....but what we really need is something that can help launch p2p iptv or that can be morphed into p2p iptv.
The problem with this SBC proposal is that the content is still corporate-controlled.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Here in Canada, at least in Manitoba, they've had TV over the phone line for a little while now.
Here's their website.
I don't know first hand what people's experiences have been with it though.
But how much exatcly does it take to send a proper HDTV signal?
Anywhere from 4 to 37mbps. 4 mbps would assume the low end of a DTV (that's SD signal), encoded using the normal MPEG-2 DTV standard. 37mbps is the highest HD feed I know of; it's the bitrate found on the D-Theater D-VHS source tapes. More realistically, a proper HD (720p or 1080i) signal over the airwaves is between 20 and 27 mbps. So we are talking about a decent amount of bandwidth here.
Of course, it's more likely that they're encoding in an MPEG-4 or Windows Media 9 format, given that the use of a set-top box eliminates the need for maintaining the HD standard of MPEG-2 video plus Dolby Digital audio.
I work for the local Telco/ISP, and we rolled this out over 3 years ago.
Runing a Myrio system. Hardware is MainStreets or something like that.
It's ADSL to the house with a modem. From there, the customer can have up to 2 STB, and unlimited PCs with 3M down, 128k up bandwidth for internet.
Each STB requires 3M, so if they have low quality lines, they can only have one box.
The STB is a linux based PC booting from the NIC, with software loaded on a smart card type drive.
We even have a PPV video on demand system. You can choose the movie you want, and it's streamed from our servers to you. You can stop it, rewind, fast forward, etc. for up to 24 hours. Each movie is streamed out individually to each customer.
Exactly. I think that the cable companies are the ones that should be afraid right now. Fiber to the door will blow them away.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Was it intended as humor? I for one thought there were some questions to be asked about how TV over Internet would intersect with copyright, such as whether it would be space-shiftable to mobile devices, excerptable under fair use, etc.
Add that with the usual rather limited bitrate that IPTV uses, and perhaps licensing issues (seeing how VC1 has 12 companies that popped up saying they're violating their IP, and that VC1 is WM9 based). Add that microsft just singed up a deal with Macrovision (taking some possibilities away from you - and also passing you the licensing fees to pay). And from what I recall, WM Audio isn't such a great codec either. It's probably adequate for boring TV stuff, but still sucks to settle for "less".
The DVB standard is calling for iso mpeg-4 (the AVC kind, with AAC audio) for the next set top boxes. It's also going to be used (or at least the codecs can be used) on upcoming HD DVD solutions (both), and it's starting to get more popular amongst "encoders". But i guess they wouldn't want to use something that's not heavily DRM'ed.
I hope they settle for something else, but I bet microsoft will somwhoe make it attractive to them (and not for their customers) so they can sell thousands of boxes, and have them all forced to stay with them, no matter what's happens next, as changing the existing setup (both on broadcaster side and all customer's boxes) would be expensive and troublesome.
And I'm starting to get a bit worried about everything coming to my house by IP means. I already have a lot of things depending on it, and dozens of ports in use. I wonder where their box would fit on my network, and how it would connect/interact with my router/NAT/firewall, VoIP "adapter" and home lan in general. QoS could become an issue as well.
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