AT&T To Offer TV Over Phone Lines

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.'"

Comments

Interesting

[Bryan Ischo]

The ATT site is somewhat short on details, but it does mention that it delivers TV programming "using Internet Protocol via a broadband connection".

This raises some questions:

1) Is the bandwidth dedicated to television progamming separate from your other broadband use? Or does watching TV take up most of your bandwidth? Given that they offer a DVR, which means that TV programming will be continuously streamed to the device (think 1/2 hour buffers or whatever), I would expect the only reasonable way for this to work is for AT&T to dedicate bandwidth above and beyond your normal broadband connection to TV programming. But that's just a guess ...

2) Is the 4 "tuner" DVR capable of recording 4 programs at once *in real time* over a single "U-verse" connection? Or does each show stream in at 1/4 real time and you just have to wait 4x longer for all shows to complete?

3) Are they using multicast IP or peer-to-peer streaming? I would expect the latter since multicasting 190+ channels would seem infeasable.

4) Given that it's likely peer-to-peer, does AT&T really think they have the server capacity to support tens of thousands of customers all streaming different programming at different times?

5) Are there QOS guarantees in place that would prevent my TV programming from ever "hiccuping" due to traffic congestion?

It looks like a very interesting offering *if* the aspects of the service that AT&T "conveniently" left out in their documentation live up to the hype - i.e., if you really can record 4 channels (or even 2) at once in real time without disturbing your other broadband use.

Okay, but...

[Penguinisto]

...I recall when DSL had been out for a few years, and I had inquired about getting a hookup to it. I remember being told by Qwest (after a LOT of pressing for details) that while I was close enough to a CO, the neighborhood trunk operated on what was called "integrated pair gain", which they (at the time) did not have the ability to do DSL over. I asked them for some sort of ETA on upgrading it, but was told that it wasn't profitable enough, and that "maybe in a few years...". I eventually went with Sprint Broadband Wireless, which was available (it required an antenna). After three months and roughly half the neighborhood doing the same (cable Internet wasn't available back then in that area either), Qwest suddenly announced that "hey! we can give you 128k DSL now!" - to which most of the neighborhood went "pfffth!" because we were all enjoying an average of 1.5Mb/sec up and down (with a bit of lag, but for most no big deal). It's interesting to note that most other areas in that part of Utah enjoyed 7Mb/sec or so d/l speeds.

So... question is, is this just some stopgap crapola that they can announce, but in reality will only be available to a few selected areas and that's it?

/P

And Your Viewing Habits Can Also Be Monitored

[NeverVotedBush]

By AT&T... and dutifully turned over to the Bush administration, and just like your phone logs -- without a warrant ever being presented.

the MS part is total crap

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite sad really.

The rest of the world is running nicely via standard MHP/GEM-IPTV based systems, and for years before that earlier subsets of those standards. But for the US the telco's got suckered into MS. Apparently the MS execs talked to the teclo execs and made them offers (server software for discounts, etc., etc.), and now the teclos are stuck with crap.

In Europe you have ISP's serving 100,000 - 500,000 users per server. In the US will the MS crap, the telco's have to use one server for every few hundered users. Really sad.

And of course the TV software is total crap. Oh well. Better luck next time telcos. Here's a wild idea, have some technical people help you with those big technology decisions.

Re:What an Innovation!

[gEvil (beta)]

ADSL modem + private network + set-top box.
Must have taken them months to independantly discover this combination.

No, they discovered this back in 95, but instead of moving forward with it, they killed it after the trial run. I was part of that trial run and I have to say, it was pretty nice.

Re:Catching up with the rest of the world

[iminplaya]

Of course, the thing -- and the only thing -- that these companies want is to make money.

Well, it turns out that's the way we have to play it. So if their only interest is to make money, then it is up to us, either through market forces or force of law to insure that a company will make more money when it looks out for the consumer's best interests, and that they will lose money if they don't.

To paraphrase one of the best quotes I've heard in quite a while: Don't try to appeal to their "better half". They might not have one. Always try to appeal to their self interest. -- spun

Or to put it a bit more crudely, ...assure them that either their signature or their brains will be on the contract. -- Michael Corleone

Re:a momentary blip of anticipation

[no1nose]

I remember those commercials very well. One of them said: "have you ever sent a fax from the beach? You will! and the company that will bring it to you: AT&T"

My 16 year old mind always wondered who would want to send a fax from the beach.

Re:a momentary blip of anticipation

[networkBoy]

You know, the real future will be genuine al-la-cart pricing. First company to do that wins. Buck a channel/month $10 min? I'd do that in a heartbeat. Even charge $2 for premium content. What I won't do is spend the $80/mo or whatever to get all the really geeky channels I want when I won't watch the other 90-95% of the channels I'm paying for.

-nB

I can DUMP COMCRAP?!

[Bruinwar]

After reading almost every post here, I thought it's time for my first Slashdot posting (after lurking for umm... quite some time).

The big beige boxes been springing up all around my area. One very large one was put in about a block away over a year ago. Late last year they ran fiber from it & put up another big beige box right to my condo complex. I was quite excited. Went so far as to bring beverages out to the workers. When?!...I would ask, WHEN!?

You see, I've been stuck with Comcrap, Wide Open West is too expensive, no dish allowed, & DSL was not available. When Comcrap took over Mediaone, service went from barely tolerable to worse. After a few years Comcrap worked out most problems but still has very slow uploads & bittorrent's are way slow. In the last year speeds slow to a crawl during prime time. They re-wired old high-rise apartment buildings nearby & added 1000s of customers. Complaint after complaint & no fix.

Now AT&T is offering this U-Verse thing. Yep, all the same stuff Comcraps been trying to get me to subscribe to for years. Nothing new here everyone says. What's the difference? Up front, what makes this huge for me, is cost. If I switch, I can get the 3 set-top boxes (with DVR), all that stuff that comes with it (like HDTV), all for slightly more than I pay now. Plus 6 down/1 up DSL that might even be somewhere near advertised speeds.

DUMP COMCRAP! Years of problems, more than I care to list but one more "I'm sorry sir, but you need to understand the nature of the Internet, we can't guarantee speeds" & I am going to pull the phone out of the wall.