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AT&T To Offer TV Over Phone Lines

Posted by Zonk on from the next-up-is-radio-via-peanut-butter dept.

ppadala writes "AT&T is upgrading their phone lines to offer video programmes over phone line. The service, called U-verse TV will be available in parts of Southern California communities initially. Channel lineups will be similar to traditional cable and dish offerings. AT&T is insisting that, 'This offering is on par with those of its cable rivals. But AT&T claims that it offers customers more for their money, including fast channel changing, video-on-demand, three set-top boxes, a digital video recorder, a picture-in-picture feature that allows viewers to surf channels without switching channels and an interactive program guide.'"

3 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing New Here by Pakup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At least not in Hong Kong, where the local phone company has been offering this service for years:

    http://www.nowbroadbandtv.com/eng/

  2. Re:Catching up with the rest of the world by McFadden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Helloooooo America! Welcome to 2004.

  3. Re:Three set-top boxes... by Doogie5526 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That's because it's a choice! We choose the convenience of watching it whenever/however we want for a bit of artifacting. Because it's our choice, we can use a higher bitrate or a better codec (that hasn't even been invented) if those options become available. Or better yet, a codec that takes advantage of whatever compression they used when transcoding it to the new format. That would only happen if their codec was open and standard.



    A good friend of mine has Tivo and the shitty proprietary cable signal he got combined with a proprietary Tivo compression looked horrible. I hated watching saved shows and would very much prefer to watch shows live because they only had half the amount of artifacts. You're acting like we asked for the streaming compression they put on the signal. In fact, I have heard many complaints (to which I agree) that the amount of compression they put on cable lines are unacceptable. It's just sad when over the air signal is crisper than the one provided by a dedicated cable for the same TV stations!



    You are also talking about are two completely different problems. I'm okay with AAC because it was

    • developed by a standards organization (so they own it, not a single entity).
    • it's not patented, so I don't need a license for encoding or playback.
    • it has low overhead for unencoding for playback.. something ogg lacks. This is very necessary for the long battery lives I also want.


    I also don't see how using a Myth-tv box is an OSS-only mindset. Sounds like we want the choice of OSS or something proprietary (like Tivo)--we just want the interfacing to be open enough that we have a choice.