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Online TV May Be IPTV's First Step
An anonymous reader writes "According to the San Diego Union Tribune Time Warner Cable is letting its customers in San Diego watch live television over their hi-speed internet PCs via 'Online TV'. Time Warner's Broadband TV service (no cost above the min system requirement of cable and hi-speed modem) offers the identical '80 channels that are available with its standard cable TV service.' According to Judy Walsh, Time Warner's San Diego division president, 'It's basically like having another outlet for watching TV. It's TV on your PC. It's that simple.' Is this really the first step towards full-fledged IPTV or is this a service for dad's who can't wrestle the remote control from their kids?"
No matter which pipe delivers it, TV is still the intellectual
equivalent of raw sewage.
if it goes national- instant, precise ratings.
always mosh clockwise
..from the many stations of streaming pr0n I already get? I mean, thats all we really want isnt it?
s this really the first step towards full-fledged IPTV?
No - the first step will be the licensure of the thousands of obvious patents that have already been filed.
More
Maybe I lack imagination, but I'm not sure that I understand the purpose of IPTV. Television can be viewed on a computer using a simple video card, and any time shifting and program recording can easily be handled by the myriad PVRs available.
Can someone enlighten me why IPTV matters? Is it the possibility of creating your own content, and delivering it What's the deal?
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
To watch television on a computer connected to Time Warner's Road Runner Internet service, customers download and install a media player made for Time Warner by RealPlayer onto their computers. Umm... no thanks.
Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) is the 'killer combination': support for video in addition to IP and voice bandwidth, all via one super-fast fiber.
this means the end of all hopes that mere mortals will get to use a multicast enabled internet. Can't have that competition on the cable networks.
I don't think this can ever really take off unless cable companies change their business model to accomodate a la carte selections. As the article intimates, more refined selections of channels would be easier. I just don't really see that happening here.
My ISP has/had (I don't know, or care, any more) a service like this for a while. Whil not as robust as this, it had ~8 channels. News, Comedy, TechTV/G4, TSN, Much Music and some other stuff. In this situation though, the buffer was always underunning. The picture quality was sub par for even regular streaming video. On top of all this, it was incompatible with anything but Internet Explorer. You could look at he source if you were clever though to get the stream addresses but as a regular consumer service, you shouldn't have to. My experience with Internet TV has been poor so I may be biased, this new service may be great but I'll believe it when I see it.
I've been waiting for something like this to start happening. I don't have a television, don't want a television, don't intend to get one. But I like to watch sports.
This year, my roommates and I have a subscription with mlbtv.com. For around $70 we get all non-local/national broadcast streamed via either real or windows media. Setup two laptops, forward the appropriate ports and traffic types through the router, and !voila! two baseball games.
(for those who care, mlb.com checks your IP address to find out where you are, so using a proxy server gets you access to local games)
If BASEBALL, the most old-fashioned, stodgy sport out there, can stream all games online, there's absolutely no good reason besides stupidity that the NFL, NBA, and other sports don't take advantage of this.
Just like there's no reason *not* to stream television over the internet. Forget being nice to your customers. How about the extra commercial revenue they'll get from having people online and watching tv at the same time.
Cable Companies! Stop being stupid and stream your broadcast signals my way.
Goddamnit I wanted to be modded funny, not you :(
Joke theiving bandit...
But, I already own a TV. A nice big one. And that's bad enough. :-)
;-)
Why would I watch TV on my computer, considering that I usually go from the TV to use my computer for non-TV related things like programming, reading, et al?
Are we supposed to be watching TV all the time or something? Is it really that important?
Well, duh. It's a full-fledged IPTV service for dads who can't wrestle the remote control from their kids, of course.
More seriously, why would we pay for another big display when every member of the family already has a computer? Instead of a separate TV set you can add this money to the cash you have put aside for your monitor and buy a huge display that will help your eyes in your daily work.
(this comes from someone who hasn't watched TV in several years. Heck, I even downloaded that overhyped Retaliation of Excrements (or some such) two hours after it was released, but didn't get to watch it (or any other movie) yet...)
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I want my IPTV!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
No I think it means Saint Diego.
Whales Vagina!
Saint Diego!
Agree to disagree...
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
Welcome an easier way of recording and distributing TV shows. Will they stand for this?
The easy part was getting the brain out, but the hard part was getting the brain out.
One of the keys to the IPTV technology is that instead of sending all the channels to a customer all the time, as is the case with traditional cable, only the channel selected by the customer is transmitted, saving on bandwidth.
That's the part that makes me wonder why this has taken so long to implement.
BUT HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE? 75 channels that go to everyone takes the same bandwidth as 75 independent streams, right? Got more than 75 subscribers on a loop then the bandwidth demands INCREASE, right. The obvious unspoken piece is that raw analog bandwidth and compressed digital bandwidth are like comparing Space Shuttles and Yugos.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Is it safe to assume the commercials will be the same? Strip them out *then!* you have product!
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the article:
Sounds like you can't use this from just anyplace on the Internet -- you have to be a Road Runner subscriber using it from home. Still, pretty nifty.
For instance... Is this a DRM'd copy that's being pushed, does it tie us to a Windows Media player, or can an OSX or Linux user also just point their browser at the correct IP, and watch this also.
For that matter, how do they limit this to the test rollout group? Is there a login, or do they restrict by IP, or what? What keeps my TV-lovin' ass from watching this up here in the boonies? (aka Michigan)
The biggest question it raises, as far as someone like m'self goes, who cannot get this, is how this will impact the entertainment industry's current attack on bit torrent TV-oritented sites. If I can't get this (free w/cable subscription) service, why can't I download the content off a torrent site?
I mean... I'm already paying an outrageously expensive cable bill each month, in addition to my cable-internet bill, so why shouldn't I be able to watch such things on my PC? The obvious reason is that the big media companies want to control who sees what, and when they do, just like the RIAA and MPAA have been trying to do for years.
But money-wise, I don't see much of a problem here. I'm paying the same fee's that these guys are, I have the option of recording a show for later viewing, or for personal backup (either via my VCR, or my PVR), so why shouldn't I be able to view what I want to watch, when I want to watch it?
The fact that of the matter is, that while I think this is a huge step forward, as far as big corporate thinking goes, I think this removes just about every arguement that they have against TV-rips torrent-style.
True, they could come back with "most torrent content has had the commercials removed, and that's how we make our money", but that's no longer viable... I just saw a study this week reporting that like 80+% of all PVR users forward over commercials alrady, and who's to say if you're sittingin' front of your PC through the commercials anyway, much less sitting in front of yout TV during this period...
I wonder if they have incentive to lower broadband prices if they see people switching to anything on the net that competes with core cable tv lineup ?
They're streaming live TV to you and they don't charge for it? They must have discovered some source of free bandwidth!
Hmm, or maybe they just have the advertisers sponsor it, just like normal TV. But even then, others could do the same. Maybe free movies on demand is not that far off...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Take, Strong Bad, for example. I would easily pay like $5/year to watch this creativity a couple times per month.
Woah.. slow down.. you big spender you. You patron of the arts you...You.. well you get my point.
What happens if 30 million others feel the same way? Instant negation of Big Business, that is what.
Nah, I'd say 'slashdot effect' and big bandwidth bills.
Will never take off until ISPs address quality control issues with their services. Up until now, the biggest factor preventing services like this from happening has been prevelance of broadband. Now, with wireless and satelite technologies, combined with the expansion of networks via traditional means, most people have or have access to some form of broadband now. And, most people are switching.
What has not been addressed, however, is how poor many of these ISPs' networks are. For cable TV, if your connection is kind of shoddy, you still *get* tv, the image quality just degrades a tad. But, for broadband services, if you experience loss or latency, you pretty much lose the stream or it degrades so badly that it becomes unviewable.
While there is no denying that services like TV online are going to happen(they are). They will not be successful(or at the very least not be wide spread) until the ISP networks are held to some sort of quality standard.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
because that not what the net is about.
It will fail because nobody can make enough profit from it unless they improve content (kick out the advertisers) while making it time shift and media shift.
The average home has three TVs, two of which are used as door-stops because there's nothing worth watching whenever you'd want to watch it.
The remaining set is drowning in ads. Who want's to watch ads?
Wouldn't you rather watch a show? One shown in its entirety, however short or long that might be?
But the economics of broadcasting are such that you don't matter and the show doesn't matter. What matters is a race to deliber as many eyeballs for fewer capital and content costs.
I'd rather buy a show, and get the whole show and nothing but the show, iTunes like, and be able to watch what I want, when I want.
Let the current advertisers put up web sites.
When I go there, its because I want their stuff. I'll google to find them.
When I want entertainment, I want entertainment, not somebody interrupting an action sequence with an ad for a hemmorhoid ointment.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Can't it be both? Sounds like a question of technology vs. application...
The article stated that this was in response to what people were asking for. I know I'm one person so therefore my opinion alone can not be used as a statistic. Well it can be, but shouldn't. Is this really what people want though? I have plenty of TV's and capture cards and what not to watch TV through out my house. I want better on-demand. I've tried the Adelphia on-demand services and was not impressed. I'm currently trying akimbo and am enjoying it but it needs more backing from the larger networks. I want to watch what I want to watch whenever I want to watch it.
Dear Time Warner Cable Customer: Thank you for your interest in Time Warner Cable's Broadband TV product trial. Please confirm that you are using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. If so, we regret to inform you, however, that you live outside the service area in which the trial is taking place. We sincerely appreciate your interest and hope you will continue to embrace Time Warner Cable products and services as they are developed. Thank you again - we appreciate your business and value you as a customer!
I bet they'll just find some pretext for releasing just a 'sample' that suits the press (and public) response they want to particular shows.
Even if it was accurate anyway, wouldn't tech-minded people's preferences skew the stats?
service for kids who can't wrestle the remote control from their Dads :)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
RealPlayer
What's your point? How's it supposed to be delivered to you? What magical piece of software will allow them to deal with security, advertising, etc.?
I don't respond to AC's.
I wonder if this service will only allow one to watch IPTV from my home where the Timewarner cable modem resides or if I can actually watch it from work, as long as I am a customer and pay for the service. Would be great to watch it from work.
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
I've been waiting for this. I'm kind of on a limited budget, and DSL is a lot cheaper than cable, all expenses included (barebone phone line as opposed to basic cable). Still though, sometimes you just want to sit down and be entertained by tv shows.
If they can offer this at a reasonable price, I'm all in for it.
-gjr
Instead of transmitting a single file as chunks of data that may be requested from multiple sources a la bittorrent, imagine a sliding window of time in which chunks are valid. Peers advertise available chunks and the remaining window in which they are valid, and download chunks from other peers. The broadcast seeder streams the content to N hosts, which then repeat to N hosts, etc..
Broadcasts wouldn't truly be live, as there would be a delay proportional to the height of the routing tree.
Is something like this already in development? Or does IPv6 multicast handle this kind of scenario natively somehow?
What about multiple streams? Will they allow that?
I am dreaming of a Tivo-like device that can archive LOTS of different "channels" (ie: streams) at the same time. Given enough storage, I could Tivo EVERY channel and every show for a period of about 2 weeks. And storage is only getting cheaper so this is technically possible.
In the non-IP world, I'd have to have a tuner for each channel. In the IP-world, the channel becomes a stream. And we all know that PC's can handle many many streams at once.
Been waiting since cable TV was invented to get professional team sports OFF of OTA television entirely. please please please please puhhhh-leeze! Can't wait, and ya'all sports fans enjoy it when/if it happens. The next step would be to get professional team sports completely out of the "local news" lineup. It has been ludicrous to have 1/3 of the "news" be sports scores. You have a 1/2 hour local news show. Sub5tract commercials. Now look at it, very few minutes left for *actual* news, yet they waste 1/3 of it with "scores from duh big game" and "exciting scenes from duh big game".
Please put that stuff on internet pay per view or whatever where it belongs, along with the shopping channel and knitting for dollars, etc, the niche markets.
Ooohhh... but I've been watching Starz Movie Channel live as part of my Starz Ticket Movies on Demand package for many a months.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
If they offer 'The Apostrophe Channel' I suggest the submitter and his dads watch it.
word.
Fix it then I want it.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I once saw the results of study comparing test scores between kids who watched 12+ hours of television a week and those who spent 12+ hours a week on computers [The two were mutually exclusive in the study). The results: Those who spent their time watching TV saw decreases in their test scores, whereas those who spent their time on computers saw an increase in their test scores! With this push for IPTV, it seems like Big Business is trying to dumb us down! We already know that government and Big Business are sleeping together. I sense a conspiracy!!!
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Maybe second or third. In all likelihood people will be using IPTV for various other things. One of which maybe watching TV on your pc. But I see IPTV gathering momentum in terms of security business and other usage. For example, in a gas station nowdays video surveillance is done on old vhs cassettes which are prone to bad quality. If streaming video along with IPTV is used, a security guard in one central location can monitor and call necessary folks for help if a situation arises. The streaming video can also be recorded and stored in digital format without loss of quality over time.
I was a bit suprised to hear that IPTV was intended for PC viewing...... So this seems like a way for Microsoft to gain a foothold in the home enterainment market with it''s Windows Media player PC devices. Till now Microsoft has a direct inroad into home enertainment. Now IPTV becomes the default choice for those who choose to use it. Microsoft has talked about X-box becoming the home entertainment device. With their DRM technology this gives MS the ability to control and charge for what content is delivered. I believe Microsoft will use it's money to seed the market. On the otherhand IPTV creates more competition for Cable and Satellite..... This raises some interesting questions: 1. Will IPTV be able to be viewed in other formats such as HDTV. 2.Will there be a device to convert IPTV signals to other formats. 3.Can IPTV be be viewed with Realplayer.....??
current bandwidth usage could be reduced drastically by implementing all the features suggested in the MPEG4 spec.
It's interesting, how hardware innovation is going much faster than software.
BUT HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE? 75 channels that go to everyone takes the same bandwidth as 75 independent streams, right? Got more than 75 subscribers on a loop then the bandwidth demands INCREASE, right.
They control the hardware, they control the routers, they control the network. It's multicast, baby!
Essentially, they send a multicast feed of all 75 channels to a bunch of router/head end units. Each one of these is servicing some small area, like all the people on your segment of the cable. When you connect to get a channel, the router thing which is getting all of them just starts feeding that one to you. So it needs less bandwidth at the point between you and that router, but the same bandwidth between the router and them feeding all the channels. Think of it like a branching tree. They send the data to the routers, which throws it away if it doesn't need it or passes it along to each customer if they are watching it.
Obviously, that's a somewhat simplified explanation. Point being that it never has to go above 75 channels on the line. Not all traffic over the internet has to be from one system to one and only one other; not when you control every level of the network itself like the cable company does.
The obvious unspoken piece is that raw analog bandwidth and compressed digital bandwidth are like comparing Space Shuttles and Yugos.
True in a sense. They'd get a reduction in size just by transmitting everything digitally instead of "analogly" to begin with. Analog is a bandwidth hog most of the time. This is also why several cable companies have said that they will stop supporting non-digital cable "real soon now", thus pissing off a lot of subscribers who haven't switched. The cable company wants to dump analog in favor of full digital, because they can fit 5-10 digital channels in the space taken by 1 analog channel. More channels = more abilities to sell those extra channels. Those 80 analog channels are sitting right on the space that 400-800 extra digital ones could be stuck into.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
Why would anyone really want this? I love technology and it's high on the geek factor, but why would you want to introduce watching TV to all the foibles of the Internet infrastructure (dropped packets, latency, just plain slow sometimes) when something works very well. I can't remember the last time my cable TV went out but can easily remember a dozen times my cable Internet mysteriously stopped working for a min or ten.
I like the idea of IPTV, but not in the way that it is being used in this article. I'd really like the concepts of networks and channels to pretty much go away, leaving only studios and ISPs.
As it stands now, studios have to beg and plead networks to carry their programming, and a lot of times, they have to compromise their artistic creativity to pander to the networks' need to sell advertising to sponsors and meet stupid FCC anti-obscenity standards. Consumers have to pick through hundreds of hours of worthless drivel to find a very few priceless gems.
With IPTV, we could completely cut out the middlemen. We watch and pay for exactly what we want to watch and pay for, tv studios get to make exactly what they want to make, and everyone's happy. Well, everyone except the former network executives, who are used to telling us what we're supposed to like to watch and screwing creative people for the sake of petty power.
You must be a little light on literacy.
Why would I want to "watch TV" on my computer?
In my living room, I have a very nice 32 inch TV and some comfortable chairs. Why would I want to watch TV sitting at a computer desk?
This is another "pet rock". Just another way to separate money from morons.
I've watched TV and surfed the net (same time)on my machine for years thanks to an ATI AIW card. IPTV gives the little guy a shot at becoming a "TV" broadcaster and the End user the ablility to choose other "networks" or "stations" outside of the typical packages you receive from cable/satelite companies.
Problem: It is nothing more the streaming media, which we've had for a while now. So someone codes an application (a "TV" tuner so to speak) and now we have IPTV?
-Why take life seriously?? You're not gonna get out alive anway! - Red Skelton
A lot of cable companies are doing VOD over their digital services nowadays. Dunno if it's over IP (I kinda doubt it), but it works passably well. I have VOD on my digital box at home and it's quite nice. Only thing I dislike is that the fast forward and rewind and such all has a delay in operation, presumably since it's going to the other side and telling the server to stop streaming or to FF/RW and such. If I paid the extra for the DVR they offer, it does save it to the hard drive and that sort of thing is then instantaneous. Although I imagine it auto deletes the content after a while (I have not tried it fully).
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
That's the only good thing about this.
Why would I want to watch TV commercials on my computer, when I already download commercial-free TV and said 'no thanks' to my local cable monopoly? 99% of television sucks ass and the providers know it -- that's why you can't pick and choose which channels you want, you're stuck buying packages of 5-15 channels just to get the one or two you'll actually watch.
Now we'll just have DVD-jon crack the customized realplayer. No seriously, though the internet do not have the bandwidth right now, I would love to see Time Warners online TV becoming global. I believe Time Warner brings far more interesting channels than my local eurotrash provider. And I would be able to see series as they are aired, and not have to wait for the "UPS-next year" delivery to local TV-stations.
High Definition TeleVision(HDTV) requires somewhere in the range of 9megabits per second(Mbps) per channel. My cable system presently offers ~15 HD which translates to roughly 135Mpbs and this does not count any on-demand usage. My cable system has a neighborhood aggregate bandwidth of ~30Mbps with individual homes getting ~2Mbps.
How is Time Warner planning on stuffing >135Mbps into a 30Mbps pipe? Obviously they can't do this so, what is the future of IPTV?
for NBC's Must See T (buffering)...
I agree, I haven't had a more poorly designed piece of software on my computer. They have so much junk that you have to install alongside it, that it slows computers to a crawl. I even have a licensed version of the stuff, but it refuses to allow me to install it. All I can say is that ACME will work on this Road Runner.
"Take, Strong Bad, for example. I would easily pay like $5/year to watch this creativity a couple times per month. What happens if 30 million others feel the same way? Instant negation of Big Business, that is what."
Internet Radio killed the Sirius Star.
Does IPTV offer closed captioning? If not, it will alienate a small, but significant, segment of the market.
It also may bring up some thorny legal issues. All US televisions past a certain size are required to be able to decode the closed captioning signal. Should Congress (or, more likely, a federal judge) decide that computers count as televisions due to IPTV, it may make life interesting for digital streaming of AV content.
From a user perspective, how is this better than bittorrent + tv sites?
I don't watch North American TV. But if I did, it'd be with video podcasts.
Why won't Real Player do the world a service and fold already? They're so last decade... and even then their player was crap.
stop that, Jason.
Nothing to watch on your PC, too. Hoo, boy!
I spend more time with my PC than ever because there is nothing on TV worth watching! Apparently cable and broadcasters just don't get "the picture".
Now, let me phrase it for the thinking impaired TV industry:
THE PROBLEM WITH TV IS NOT WHERE, OR WHAT DEFINITION, OR HOW BIG THE PICTURE, THE PROBLEM IS THE UTTER CRUD THAT YOU TRY TO PASS OFF AS PROGRAMMING!
ignores that once you've seen an ad, you can be reminded of that ad and the product in a tenth of a second to half a second.
Its pattern recognition and humans are endowed with a pattern recognition engine at the back of their skull that works at amazing speed. They aren't even conscious that its hapening which is why it takes up to half a second for them to register awareness of it.
All you need are a couple of key frames, not even audio, and don't need to watch the whole thing over and over and again.
Ads bore the crap out of us and become ineffective after that half a second when we're forced, by the broadcaters, to watch them repeatedly.
The whole advertising cycle is based on this boredom. If you could make an ad which wouldn't engage the conscious borable portion, you'd never have to shoot the ad again. You'd be able to set the few key frames, fire and forget.
That is the concept behind several recognizable pieces of media. The guy standing in front of the tank in Tienmin square can bring back the entire incident and everything that followed (fuzzily.)
The short video clip of 9/11 when the second airliner crashed into the tower brings back everything that incident caused and everything that followed (fuzzily.)
I bet you saw these examples with your mind's eyes as you read that WITHOUT needing to see it (over and over again.)
If the advertisers would exploit that,I bet that their sales would stay level while annoying us far less.
But broadcasters are paid by the second in 15 second increments. If ALL their clients ads worked according to the half-second rule, they'd lose their shirts.
Or they would try to fill the air time with lots of revenue producing ads and run into the limits of our cognitive capacity to remember things. (Do you remember what ad you saw at 11:07 PM last night? Nobody does. Nobody CAN.)
The first time full length and the rest of the time a half-second tweak is the way to go.
But how does a broadcaster know that its not your first time? They can't. Ergo, your shows get shorter and shorter while the broadcasters get richer and richer filling in the schedule with their customer's content.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I know it was touted during the 90's as the holy grail of broadband, but why would last-mile fiber matter that much? Copper, cable, and wireless have proven to have substantial bandwidth capability, and don't require the expense and challenge of all new infrastructure. So what exactly would glass fiber to my house give me, other than higher utility taxes?
I don't understand all the "why would I need this?" comments. I think the interesting point is not that this is "better" than current technology but that it presents some interesting possibilities. Sure, you may not want to watch TV sitting at your desk in front of your computer when you have a big screen in the living room. But, connect your cable modem to a wireless access point and all of a sudden you have wireless TV. Sort of like broadcast TV but with the selection of cable channels. And I don't buy any "waste of bandwidth" arguments either, since bandwith is constantly improving. Of course, TV by its very content is a waste of bandwidth :-), but that's not the point.
If you literally KNEW what people were watching
Do you want them to know what you're watching? Then go ahead.
I like the anonymity of tuning in whatever frequency I want of the spectrum that comes over the coax. For all the corp. execs know, I'm watching Home Shopping Network 24/7. If they don't know what I watch, then they don't know where to put the adds. That means fewer adds on the channels I DO watch.
Weve had this in Saskatchewan for a couple of years now, but over dsl, I also think they have it in Manitoba. I dont see why when something happen for the first time in the states, it makes it somehow newer than it happening somewhere else years bofore.
Chances are any disscution on Slashdot will degrade into a flamewar about ID/Christianity within 14 posts.
Heh. I also stole your comment for a reply to the comment above yours. Sorry.
I would like for creative producers who do something because they want to (like all technology geeks, I'm a big believer in 'push' rather than 'pull') not to have to water it down pandering to what the broadcasters (or even the theatre chains) will allow.
The censorship after the Fatty Arbucle (I think that's who it was) incident was started by a small grocery chain and they cowed the studios like the Taliban (and for the same purpose.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Comcast is in trial stages with this right now. It's already pretty damned cool!
look out for it
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
Linux users need not apply..
Same as the "free TV" option on CNN and MSNBC sites.
When is it "free" when you are required to use an non-free and expensive operating system to view it?
RealPlayer have really cleaned up their act recently.
The Linux client (which they have had for a long long time, unlike some other bandwagon jumpers) works very well and now integrates properly with the desktop environment.
They support non-Linux UNIX-like platforms.
The OS X and Windows clients both work well and don't seem to include any crap.
I haven't had any spam to the e-mail address I signed up with (and you didn't have to register to use it either).
"Buffering" seems to be a thing of the past on fast connections.
The only problem they ever have is that they seem to think that you want to associate RealPlayer with every action on your system... but no worse than iTunes or WMP.
What format would you rather have them use? Dirac might be nice... but these are suits not geeks. WMV? When there is only a client for Windows and an inferior Mac version, with NO official Windows support? Where the only client could get sued out of the water at any time and doesnt handle DRM?
Real video is about the best we are going to get, and their improved behaviour as a company makes them well worthy of another chance. If and when Microsoft open sources half their stuff, makes the other half work on Linux and behaves as well as Real has done in the past few years... then I'll take another look at WMV as a good way to get my video.
Beep beep.
Actually, I couldn't.
But your attitude has got to get spread.
You're seeing what media is heading to: aggregation of meta information, (features about content,) instead of the content itself, which is disseminated asynchronously over the net, reconstituted, and presented when you want to see it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've been subscribed to XTV (link) for a few months now. It's a pretty great service!
They provide 50 Channels of IPTV porn 24 hours a day, plus several other features such as Pay-Per-View and other interactive features.
I think the only down side to this technology will be video quality and BANDWIDTH.
Aside from that, kudos to Time Warner!
blarg.
First off, say what you want about American TV... but this is really cool.
I've seen products from Adelphia, Comcast, FrontierVision, and Time Warner in action... *nobody* comes close to the user-friendliness and speed of a TW Passport box. Extrapolating (erroneously?) from that, I'm going to assume that this service is going to be just as spiffy as their other magical stuff like Video OnDemand and whatnot.
This article finally confirms something I had a feeling about but never bothered to verify -- TW is actually using their (inflated?) services fees to develop better services for their customers.
Frankly, the only flaw I see in this test is that they're using Real instead of h.264, but hell... at least they aren't using WMV. I dislike RealNetworks, mostly for political reasons, but at least their codec is pretty solid.
Anyway, use this service on a laptop w/ WiFi and goodbye cumbersome CRT! How cool is that?
of also being a monitor?
They you can sit in your living room with your friends and watch what evenr you want.
(I have a cousin with a 65" TV and it get used for that purpose.)
We'll work on getting time and media shifting and save getting rid of the interruptions (with demonstrations) for hemmorhoid creams for later.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I mean, my TV's way bigger than my laptop monitor.
...
Why would I ever want to watch TV on my laptop?
Next thing you know, you'll be wanting to put radios and tape players and DVDs and all that in cars
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Back in the '90s we had multi-cast IP addresses.
In the future, I see multi-level caches and narrowcasting.
Content providers, from dorm-room-webcasters to Big Name MegaCorps, will be able to broadcast to anyone who asks, and they will be able to demand money and/or locked-down-computers if they want to.
How will this be done?
Smaller providers who only have a few customers at a time will do what they do today - get enough bandwidth to serve everyone and hope there isn't congestion between his ISP and the customer.
Larger content providers will contract out with ISPs to relay the content to their providers over high-quality-of-service "channels." They may also contract out storage rights, to provide "video on demand" functionality.
If a cable company has fiber-to-the-neighborhood, it can realistically serve up 500 or so dedicated-bandwidth "channels" at a time. If the neighborhood is watching more than 500 different shows at a time, it's time to give them another piece of fiber.
Personally, I look forward to the day when the only thing standing between me and any video that's available for public consumption is the rights-holder's willingness to let me watch. In particular, geographic barriers will collapse.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Sling_Media_Slingbox/4505- 6739_7-31423815-2.html?tag=top
it digitizes the programming from your cable or satellite box and streams it--in real time--to a remote PC. The receiving computer needs to be a Windows XP PC with access to a broadband Internet connection and be running Sling's SlingPlayer viewing software. you can stream your PVR, DVD and any channels you get, not just a select few.
my sig is an honor student
and then I started to realize that it was better to use the facilities in the bathroom instead.
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fixed
to sell ads.
Which is the point of TV.
Same thing. Different method.
Kind of like spam, but you can turn it off.
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Why are we talking about Iowa Public Television in the headline, then jumping to Time Warner and San Diego in the body?
DITTO
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
Saves them money, makes them money.
One of the keys to the IPTV technology is that instead of sending all the channels to a customer all the time, as is the case with traditional cable, only the channel selected by the customer is transmitted, saving on bandwidth.
OK, so the company is saving money is respect that they can reach more customers on a given pipe due to lower congestion.
The million dollar question though, is whether the internetTV usage counts towards (monthly, etc) bandwidth limits? One of the big drawbacks to a hi-def video stream online is not the cost of the service itself, but that you must pay for the bandwidth associated with recieving the service (see cell phone carriers, who bills for a ringtone, the download time, and the browsing time.
No magnimousity here, they've finally realized there's a profit to be made for providing a "convenience" to users.
Well sure, I don't exactly like them knowing exactly. But when they cancel shows that I like, like Family Guy (the first time) and Enterprise (when it was starting to get good) and various other shows due to "low ratings" I want to know for sure if this is the case or just a lame stastical model that Nielson came up with.
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
www.samuraifiles.com - Get Some Videos Here
Does anyone knows what software they are using for streaming? What hardware and OS?
Until I can buy shows a la carte and view them on my schedule I won't be signing up. This is really no different than regular cable TV.
If memory serves, the powers that be quashed somebody trying to sell to send customers TV signals over the internet sourced from free over the air transmissions, precisely as cable is legally allowed to do, because the "content is altered" (degraded quality, I guess, because of compression/encoding).
This even though I am certain that I can see degradation from my local cable converting signals to mpeg over digital cable, and even though many people have chronically bad connections over the cable, degrading quality.
Now hopefully the fact that cable providers are compressing TV over IP themselves will allow competitors (anyone willing to invest in the serving bandwidth!) to show to the court, if they have to go to court, to get all this anti-free-market craziness to stop!
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
"Between these two, it's a Brave New World for two business sectors which were facing market saturation and declining revenues."
Funny how geeks see the world as a binary decision..
Here's number three. Don't buy it. Don't have anything to do with it. Unfortunately number three involves telling yourself NO repeatedly, and that requires a spine. I'll let the concluding consequences tell you if we get one in the mean time.
This is nothing new. My cabin has had TV pushed over DSL to set-top boxes for two years now. They have fiber within about 1 or 2 miles or so of every one of their customers and use high speed DSL (not ADSL) to push out VoIP, data, and a form of IPTV.
What does Iowa Public Television have to do with Slashdot?
To a certain degree I agree with you. But only to a degree. Rather than try to convince you of anything. I recommend you go to a well stocked video store. One that carries everything from old B&W as well as silent movies to the latest. From early TV B&W to the latest. From documentries to musical performances. From exercise to Do-It-Yourself. True TV (even cable or satellite) will never carry that wide a selection. But that's a technological (and resource) limitation. But then a well-stocked video store likewise is a rare thing.*
*Even Amazon doesn't carry everything.