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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?
This is why Verizon is rolling out fiber to the home (http://www.verizon.net/fios/). They're afraid of the cable companies with their one stop shop for phone, TV, and internet, and the telcos need to do the same to avoid extinction.
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.
TELUS has been trialing IP based TV in Edmonton. It will launch soon in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.
Wake me onces TV companies begin to distribute shows (either paid or free w/ commercials) over something like BitTorrent. If they release an "offical" video file onto the web and then attack anyone who distributes a version without commercials, then there won't be that big of a problem with P2P sites since everyone who watches the show will also see the commercials. The only people who would object would be cable TV providers since they no longer have a purpose. This would also get around any FCC problems.
To make sure people watch the commercials, you can use a custom player/P2P app that disable fast forwarding during commercials the first time it is downloaded or some other method to make sure they watch X seconds commercials for every Y minutes of the show.
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Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS
Wired article as proof
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.
Champaign Telephone http://www.ctcn.net/tv.htm/ has been doing this for a while now. The way it was explained to me, each TV channel is an ATM network. Changing channels on the remote issues commands to drop the current network, and join the new one. Yes, there is a lag when changing channels, but not huge. If you hit the "channel up" button 25 times, it doesn't join then drop 25 channels in a row, it goes directly to the final one selected.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
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.
I work for a small publicly-owned ISP serving an island in Southeast Alaska and we're currently selecting vendors for our own IPTV offering. Many, many small telcos all over the country are in the same initial stages of IPTV projects -- either evaluating or getting ready to make the leap.
Most of the hardware we've been looking at uses MPEG2 encoding but in the near future the standard is likely to be either MPEG4 or some form of WMV. Microsoft has been aggressively pushing its video codecs and they seem to be gaining traction in the marketplace. However, they're not gaining as much acceptance as they otherwise might in the video world because at this point their reputation precedes them.
To a small player like us their previous behavior in other markets is more than a little alarming. A Comcast- or SBC-sized provider presumably might have some amount of leverage with Microsoft but what kind of consideration can you expect when you're a tiny little speck on the map in a place few people even know exists? Choosing a proprietary Microsoft standard over a reasonably open industry standard could leave you at Microsoft's mercy and, well, they're not known for mercy, are they?