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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. a momentary blip of anticipation by yagu · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  2. Catching up with the rest of the world by KalElOfJorEl · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  3. Re:Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I happen to work on the IPTV project at Microsoft, which provides the software for AT&T u-verse

    1) The TV shares the VDSL bandwidth. This can potentially cause an impact on browsing speeds if you're streaming all 4 channels at once. I don't have the numbers with me currently, but SD channels stream at approx 1Mbit, while HD stream at around 5Mbit. VDSL connection is anywhere up to 24Mbit, although as this is based on line length, most customers could only expect 15 or so.

    2)Yes, real time for all 4 channels.

    3) Multicast for all live TV streams. Unicast for video on demand. Essentially the same way cable does distribution, except over IP. This is exactly the kind of thing that multicast was designed for. The actual number of multicast streams AT&T are streaming now is over 600 (each channel is actually 2 streams - 1 for the content, and 1 for the little picture-in-picture stream for the channel guide).

    4) As live TV is multicast, this question is redundant. However, for video on demand, the content will come from servers physically close to the customer's location. Multicast sources are mostly centralized.

    5) Yes.