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TV Airwaves To Deliver Internet?
roscoetoon directs our attention to a proposal from an odd assortment of tech companies — Google, Microsoft, H-P, Intel, and others — to reuse TV wavelengths to deliver first-mile connectivity. The Washington Post article is subtitled "Cable, Phone Companies Watch Warily." As well they might. One of the big content companies that the incumbent duopolists propose to soak by dismantling network neutrality, in company with some powerful allies, is striking back at the heart of their business.
And there's not much to be found, but tv technology website has a little more info in this article.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
But choking on the unwieldy sentence in that write-up made up for it.
Id like to see more independent TV stations. Of course once there is enough bandwidth everyone can have their own TV station...
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
If net nutrality is dismantled, Microsoft has some problems. This is more likley a CYA deal.
Microsoft has live and everything comming from there. PLus they have service packs and the such. Most people are satisfied with them on providing updates and service packs from the web. But if net nutrality goes out the door, they will be in a situation were they will have to pay for this too or suffer an angry mob of customers wanting to kow why they patch to fix the whole left in windows that jst caused the last virus infection they had to pay someone else to get rid of is taking as long as it would on dial up.
It just makes sence for them to make sure there is a way around it.
That might alleviate the forecast bandwidth shortage that is due to occur when TV over the internet is rolled out in force!
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Satellite bandwidth with only the lag of the distance to a local TV transmitter. Now that would be interesting. Even more so if they could get a two-way connection going over the air...
Rewind back to 1988 - I'm at a community radio station (mostly washed the dishes and played with whatever gear was lying around) and a bright electrical engineering graduate student there worked out how to easily and on a low budget get a fair bit of bandwidth out via the FM signal without disrupting the radio broadcast. The problem then as now is how do you know what data to send? You can't easily get the request packets if your bandwidth the other way is low even if dial-up has improved a lot. That is the main reason you didn't see this in 1988 or proir, and the main reason why people like the engineer mentioned above moved on to two way microwave links.
If over the air comes in like regular TV in my area, the internet will be fast and sexy with a Spanish accent.
The article is *extremely* light on details, but if they're talking about one way signals like current radio then you'd only be able to cache the internet on a set top box, for instance... say if it rebroadcast a set of sites every 24 hours in a continuous loop. Otherwise it would have to act similar to wifi... but those would be some high power transmitters in both directions it seems - to get the distance you would need for this to work as a conventional wifi sort of link.
I'm not an engineer or anything, just basing the power off the amount/size tower they need to cover an area. One possibility could be to use regular radio towers to broadcast on their end, and small directional dishes to send user requests?
Why would the cable/phone companies be worried about television signals?
Last i checked, TCP was a 2 way communication for every message. Every packet is sent and gets an acknowledgment or some message if not received (like only go 13 out of 15 packets). Also, last i checked, my computer doesn't currently have the equipment to transmit television signal over a mile. So, how are those packets going to be sent back? Cable? Phone line? Unless google finds a way to deliver the internet via a non tcp/ip format or puts a 1.21 gigawatt antenna in every home, the whole error checking feature of tcp/ip is going to keep a bit of fat for the phone/cable companies.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I recall a demo circa 1985 or 1986 at a Usenix of a scheme to send a continuous Usenet feed in the blanking interval of a TV signal. It certainly worked in pilot projects but I guess the broadcasters couldn't figure a way to make it worthwhile (ie profitable).
Of course the required bandwith for "a continuous Usenet feed" was orders of magnitude lower in those days.
-- Alastair
Yeah right Sherlock. They've been very successful in the game console market and may actually beat out
Please reread my comment. I said financial failure. Maybe the xbox360 will beat out the PS3, but MS's games division hasn't made any money yet.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
1999 called. They want their Geocast back... The idea of delivering internet via airwaves is so NOT new. It never got off the ground then, and it won't now. If you want wireless internet, get a $50 router or a $60/month Verizon aircard.
Done.
HELL NO!!!!
This opens the door for the FCC to regulate content on the Internet.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Woah, waoh, woah, woah.... Woah... I thought this area of bandwidth was supposed to be reserved for emergency services, when the analog TV's are shut off in 2009?
It's just an infinite loop. It's not like they'll emulate the full experience of the internet by introducing blue screens to the telev--oh wait...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
You guys are so closed mined, they're gunna to send the all the interwebs over the airwaves-tubes. Easy. Brilliant I rekon
http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/pr_80222.h tml
Oh right, there was:
RFC 2728: The Transmission of IP Over the Vertical Blanking Interval of a Television Signal
Of course, back in 1999 we all knew what Zork and null modems were. Oh brave new Slashdot.
Still WTF is a Zimbabwean poet doing coining Geeky Computer terms? Fuck off buster! I don't try making clever terminology about poetry.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Right now each station has 2 channels (one analog and one digital) I believe the idea is to free up spectrum when the analog broadcast is shut off. I am not 100% sure though. It also appears to me that frequency has less to do with channel with DTV.
For example a line from antennaweb.org (my notes in parens)
* yellow - uhf WPSG-DT 57.1(channel) CW PHILADELPHIA PA 263° 2.7 32 (frequency)
Though I guess the station would need something in the proper frequency slot to tell the TV where to look.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
This is the reason WindowsCE is a success, it places a road block in the way of anyone wanting to assault the desktop by expanding from PDA to Laptop etc.
Nobody is going to write 30 million lines of code over night to compete with Windows, they have to find a niche like Cell phones, PDA's, and game consoles and try to leverage it. Xbox and WindowsCE are about taking the fight to them, if competition means the markets has lower or no profit margins, that could also be a good thing.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
A few years ago when we were looking at ways to bring broadband to a rural school in Vermont, I trecked up to the highest point we could reasonably put an antenna. What I saw was trees -- hundreds of trees. Maybe thousands of trees. It was pretty clearly going to take us several intermediate relays to get to a place where we could connect to existing broadband. And each intermediate was going to need power and access and probably a tower to get above the trees. Scratch that idea.
I think that using TV frequencies for broadband wireless may be a workable idea in the plains and Great Basin. I've managed to raise a cell phone signal in some pretty unlikely places out in the west. But I don't think it is going to work very well in areas East of the Mississippi since most of the potential users are going to be in valleys and surrounded by trees. And no, cell phones didn't work at the school although there was a spot out at the end of the driveway and a couple of hundred yards down the road where one could raise a couple of bars if you held the phone just right.
(Thanks to a peculiarity in the local regulatory structure, we were finally able to get a T1 at reasonable rates.)
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Screwing over the customers. At first blush this looks to be helping the customers. Definitely a departure.
This is the very reason why Analogue TV is being cut and the change over to Digital to free up badly needed spectrum for such rich services.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
look at what your suggesting pretend somebody else wrote it and see how paranoid it seems? After all we have cable modems ethernet and dialup to report on windows users already.
All this is, is just another method of data transmission. Satellite (SKY) has been broadcasting data down to customers for years. A digital terrestial broadcast is no different, there isn't really that much difference between packets of video data, and data.
I believe upstream is provided by a phoneline. Interestingly and perhaps worthy of paranoia is what stops someone from recieving the packets meant for you? since it is a broadcast after all possibly millions will recieve data meant for you just most won't be able to decrypt it.
Bit torrent could become extremely fast if its possible to harvest all the blocks on the signal potentially you could be recieving up to the whole swarms packets. I wonder if its possible to listen only or would it be the digital equivilent of a paper shredder lots of meaningless bits.
It is possible to take in a raw mpeg-ts stream and record more than one channel at the same time.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
For example:
"Brian: Thank God you've come, Reg.
Reg: Well, I think I should point out first, Brian, in all fairness, we are not, in fact, the rescue committee. However, I have been asked to read the following prepare statement on behalf of the movement. "We the People's Front of Judea, brackets, officials, end brackets, do hereby convey our sincere fraternal and sisterly greetings to you, Brian, on this, the occasion of your martyrdom. "
Brian: What?
Reg: "Your death will stand as a landmark in the continuing struggle to liberate the parent land from the hands of the Roman imperialist aggressors, excluding those concerned with drainage, medicine, roads, housing, education, viniculture and any other Romans contributing to the welfare of Jews of both sexes and hermaphrodites. Signed, on behalf of the P. F. J. , etc. " And I'd just like to add, on a personal note, my own admiration, for what you're doing for us, Brian, on what must be, after all, for you a very difficult time. "
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