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."

Comments

Microsoft TV

[IO ERROR]

The three Bells are using technology from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), a coup for the software maker after a decade of frustrated attempts to extend its software's dominance from the personal computer to cable television.

Many bemoan that dominance in the PC world, but the choice of Microsoft might mean greater ease in the effort to meld TV with the Internet.

"If you're going to be implementing some new capability that requires software, they're the go-to company," regardless of whether they have the best technology, said Leigh. "Who's going to fire you if you choose Microsoft? If you choose Digital Data Wack, and it doesn't work, then you're going to get fired."

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?

Re:Microsoft TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you get fired if you choose Microsoft and it doesn't work?

No. Because it's Microsoft. If you choose Microsoft and it doesn't work, you get to pass on the blame; but nobody in the corporate world blames Microsoft, since Microsoft is seen as unavoidable, almost a force of nature. If you choose Microsoft and it doesn't work, then nobody does anything about this your customers just have to put up with using a product that doesn't work.

In other words: No, because if you choose Microsoft and it doesn't work, you get to move the goalposts of what constitutes "working" to whatever crappy point you're at. It's like that old joke, how many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? They don't change it, they just define darkness as the new standard.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

tv over phone in canada

[werdnapk]

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.

Re:Bandwidth?

[UserChrisCanter4]

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.

What took them so long?

[destiny71]

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.