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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.'"
Wow, video (on demand and more) via the phone lines. I actually had a "moment" of anticipation, thinking I could maybe finally dump the miserable (Comcast) quality and service of our cable company. Then, the quote: "'This offering is on par with those of its cable rivals. "...
Sigh.
Gee, that sounds like what Europe and Japan seem to offer people at a fraction of the cost, except crappier and more expensive. Way to go AT&T! I love when telecoms are looking out for the consumer's best interest.
/sarcasm off
ADSL modem + private network + set-top box.
Must have taken them months to independantly discover this combination.
How we know is more important than what we know.
At least not in Hong Kong, where the local phone company has been offering this service for years:
http://www.nowbroadbandtv.com/eng/
This definitely isn't the first ILEC to offer TV over IP: I know Telus up in Canada is offering it already.
Having used it quite a bit myself, it's very similar to digital cable (isn't that what it is?). There's also the added bonus of choosing very customizable channel packages and individual channels to subscribe to, which I think is a good change from the limited Tiers from cable companies.
How is TV an upgrade over anything?
American Icon, Survivor, etc!
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.
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?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The phone company where I work is a small outfit that only has about 6-8k customers, but we've had this for the last few years, to answer a few questions that have come up, 1.The tv bandwidth is seperate from the internet. 2.It's done through peer to peer streaming, I can run 3 tvs simultaneously over one phone line, but that's it unless you have a second line. 3. The quality of service is amazing, it never hiccups and they're going to start offering HD signal soon.
Our house signed up for U-Verse a few weeks ago. We've got about 350 channels. It's actually delivered by fiber to a node down the block, then a specialized DSL connection that's 6 Mb/s connection. The service is extremely location specific. Our next door neighbors can't get it, so we're right on the edge.
The TV is H.264 encoded and streamed over IP to the DVR box. You can record up to 4 standard definition channels, or a single HD channel, while watching another. The standard def television looks better than regular standard def. More like 480p. The 'Hi def' channels look similar to 720p but with noticeable compression, and the occasional dropped frame. If someone were really looking for full 1080i HD, highest possible quality, I'd have some reservations recommending it. But the SD looks good enough that we're pretty happy with it. A lot of what we watch is still only on the SD channels.
Since everything is streaming, it always buffers about 90 minutes worth of footage of whatever you're watching (a la tivo). It also has some neat features like being able to show thumbnail previews of channels while you're surfing around, along with a representation of how far into the show it is.
Overall, the DVR functions are quite primitive. Its can be difficult to make the recordings you want. There doesn't seem to be any way to make only recordings of new episodes of Stargate SG1 (This is slighly less of a problem since there's only like 4 episodes left in the series. This was the only show we record that had problems.
For TV + broadband for under $100, its well worth it for us.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
It's also being offered in some Texas communities, including Houston.
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
Hmm... video on demand, over a phone line, using "internet technology"... you're talking about bittorrent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
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.