There is also a video of his 2007 Nobel Conference lecture titled "The World's Energy Problem and What We Can Do About It" available http://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2007/chu-lecture.php which as the title suggests, is very relevant to this discussion.
Actually, they happen to have a 10Gig link on that system but they can't get the code ( VLC? OS X? ) to be efficient enough to saturate the link before they run into another bottleneck. However they are doing their best to make it possible for everyone to watch this in HD. For me on a multicast enabled internet2 connection, the 20 MBit HD stream looks great!
There are many viable alternatives to standard television. So far the one I use the most often is Miro. It offers a wide variety of video in an easy to use interface. I really like the way it uses rss. That makes it really easy to tell when there are new shows to watch. Also if you want to, Miro can be used to grab "real" tv shows as well.
Another option is Joost. Lots of good stuff there but I find it much more difficult to find out when new episodes of my favorite shows are available so I tend to forget about it.
Finally I have been pleasantly surprised by hulu. Watching old episodes of my favorite shows from the 80's has been fun.
I know that many people don't like to watch TV on their computer but for me placing a 17" laptop on my lap and relaxing on the couch is better than watching our small 32" tv. For the times when others want to watch something as well, I have it setup so that I can easily connect my laptop to the tv and watch it that way. Today's HDTV is almost the same thing as a large computer monitor and usually can be used as such.
Gustavus Adolphus College has implemented a system that attempts to do exactly as you suggest. Basically they keep track of how much bandwidth each computer uses and as long as the pipe has some spare bandwidth, everyone gets what they want. However if it starts to max out, the users that have used the most in the past day will get a lower priority than everyone else.
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There is also a video of his 2007 Nobel Conference lecture titled "The World's Energy Problem and What We Can Do About It" available http://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2007/chu-lecture.php which as the title suggests, is very relevant to this discussion.
Actually, they happen to have a 10Gig link on that system but they can't get the code ( VLC? OS X? ) to be efficient enough to saturate the link before they run into another bottleneck. However they are doing their best to make it possible for everyone to watch this in HD. For me on a multicast enabled internet2 connection, the 20 MBit HD stream looks great!
There are many viable alternatives to standard television. So far the one I use the most often is Miro. It offers a wide variety of video in an easy to use interface. I really like the way it uses rss. That makes it really easy to tell when there are new shows to watch. Also if you want to, Miro can be used to grab "real" tv shows as well.
Another option is Joost. Lots of good stuff there but I find it much more difficult to find out when new episodes of my favorite shows are available so I tend to forget about it.
Finally I have been pleasantly surprised by hulu. Watching old episodes of my favorite shows from the 80's has been fun.
I know that many people don't like to watch TV on their computer but for me placing a 17" laptop on my lap and relaxing on the couch is better than watching our small 32" tv. For the times when others want to watch something as well, I have it setup so that I can easily connect my laptop to the tv and watch it that way. Today's HDTV is almost the same thing as a large computer monitor and usually can be used as such.
Gustavus Adolphus College has implemented a system that attempts to do exactly as you suggest. Basically they keep track of how much bandwidth each computer uses and as long as the pipe has some spare bandwidth, everyone gets what they want. However if it starts to max out, the users that have used the most in the past day will get a lower priority than everyone else.
They call it bandwidth fairness https://gustavus.edu/gts/Bandwidth_fairness