Free Net TV Threatens Telecoms

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net's running an article about the threat free television on the internet poses to traditional telecoms and cable companies." From the article: "No one is expecting Internet television to cannibalize traditional TV models overnight. Despite advancements in streaming technology, video delivered on the Web can still be choppy, with frequent interruptions as data packets buffer and reload on the screen. In fact many viewers who watched the NCAA tournament aired by CBS on the Internet last month complained about the network being overloaded."

Comments

ObNitpick

[Rob T Firefly]

Walt Disney's bold move to let people download TV shows for free could spell trouble for cable and satellite providers

If I understand correctly (which has been known to happen occasionally) shows will just be offered as a stream, not readily downloadable. My guess is they'll also use an .swf wrapper like youtube/Google video/etc. to guard against easy ripping.

What the television providers should be doing

[babbling]

The guy presenting this lecture has the right idea.

In short, he thinks small icon advertisements (eg. "drink coke") should be put in the corner of a TV show, and then the TV show should be freely distributed on bittorrent. Everyone wins.

This would be solved by gigabit Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is headed toward being a third-world telecommunications country because the American public is being dumbed down about what is really high speed Internet. Megabit speeds are legacy technology, regardless of what the cable and DSL providers say. Other countries are going to gigabit technology -- to the home and at reasonably low cost (say $50 per month for Internet, telephone, and cable TV combined).

Take a look at the white paper at:

http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/ccip/ docs/Gigabit-WP.pdf

However, we must have net neutrality to do it, which means that bandwidth providers can't also be content/applications/services providers. Under such a gigabit Internet concept, you would separately negotiate for content, applications, and services. That blows away the business models of present cable providers and what the telcos are lobbying to get.

This is where we need to head, and the FCC and Congress need to stop listening to incumbent providers and start thinking about what is best for everyone.

Time delay vs isochronous delivery

[postbigbang]

It all boils down to isochronous delivery: broadcasters have us trained to think that entertainment is event driven, like "Survivor" or another scheduled event. In fact, few shows need be delivered this way.

The telcos that would prioritize their own isochronous/realtime delivery system only get an advantage there. We can still download movies, sports, or whatever for use at our convenience. This means that the NCAA Final Four is probably hot property for QoS throttling, where downloads of Star Wars movies or even Buster Keaton aren't affected by a time domain.

Bottom line: only event-driven, realtime entertainment that isn't available for time delay consumption matters. The on-air broadcasters already know this.... and the telcos are just trying to find a way to shave (or add) a piece from the deals we make. They'll likely win, because they're thoroughly bribed the congress for years into doing it 'their way' vis-a-vis their ability to get the FCC to play along, and for net-neutrality legislation to be handily squashed.

Composite Video Channels

[DJ_Perl]

The evening news should not go unquestioned. Think of all the mischievous, world-changing possibilities that open when TV and the net converge even closer. Video streams from two (or multiple) sources could be synchronized and composited together according to instructions on a control channel. The video sources could be DVD's, or video streams from the net. The compositing logic could be on an HDTV, or set-top box. You could watch TV with friends anywhere in cyberspace. You could syndicate and rebroadcast your own channel, intended to be merged and watched with "mainstream media". Think MST3K, Third Voice, or Wayne's World. Real-time critiques of old-style TV. Just you wait till Howard Stern starts ripping on the evening news. In low-bandwidth conditions, TV becomes like "pop-up video", as you IM with friends who are watching the same TV show, at the same time, on your TV set. Imagine special DVD players into which two DVD's are loaded simultaneously. One DVD can make a live mash-up of the other DVD. So you pop in "The Phantom Menace", and a "remixer" DVD that carries control data, and additional audio-video data to show you a special edit of George Lucas' film.