It's not a MIPS, it's a PowerPC with standard SoC busses (PLB+OPB), caches, a Chinese language character generator, and a typical collection of peripheral IP blocks, which are licensable from a variety of semiconductor firms.
The reason for the mandate is simple. The most important reason is not because of consumer demand, or because digital is going to offer consumers more choices, or because it allows hollywood to protect their content more effectively.
The most important reason is that when the analog space is vacated, this will allow the FCC to auction the spectrum for billions of dollars. When have you ever seen the governement walking away from billions of "free money"?
It's almost comical to see the FCC and the CEA to dance around this issue. Think about it: only 10 to 20% of all Americans get their TV via OTA antennas. Why is this mandate only focused on digital OTA? If the FCC were honest about their motives, they would be focusing thier attention on Cable Set-Top-Boxen.
I've been waiting for/. to offer this subscription feature for awhile. I've always ignored ads, and I never click on them. Since I value the site's existence, I'm happy to be able to contribute to keep things going.
I pay to subscribe for the same reasons I pay for my distribution, even though I don't have to. I believe in the inherent value of the product, and have a desire to see it continue.
Assuming they run just one SD channel @ 4 Mbits/sec, they will be left with about 15 Mbits/sec remaining. At 256K per user, even with multiplexing giving them about 10x more capacity, they will run out of capacity between 500 to 1000 users, depending on how many concurrent downloads there are at a given moment. Since there is no way to provision more bandwidth from their spectrum allocation. Plus, it looks like they are giving away the receivers / routers for free on their web page.
Since they are billing it as a free service, how much value do they expect to derive from delivering fat files to a 1K user base? Not surprisingly, I'm pretty skeptical about their "plan".
To me, this looks like MS has pretty much decided on merging MSN with another major content / access player at some point down the road.
The idea being that if MS were to give up MSN as a content entitiy and merged it with, say, AOLTW, they could probably negotiate a very sweet deal and get to focus exclusively on what makes them powerful - proprietary achitectures and platforms.
Pretty frightening - all your platforms are belong to MS, all your content are belong to AOLTW!
Sure, there will always be the tech savvy folk who will go to lengths to remove a short ad spot from the beginning of a MP3 song. However, think about this: there are a great number of AOL and like minded users who are just savvy enough to download MP3s and play them back. These are the same folks who drive home listening to their car radio which hey, guess what - puts those same ads in front of the songs they hear. They probably won't go through the trouble of removing an advertisement from an MP3 for two reasons:
1. It's simpler to just to cope with listening to the ad then figure out where to find and install a plug in for their player
2. A great deal of those "casual" Internet users (ala AOL, etc) feel that downloading free MP3's weighs heavily on their conscience. Some would pay for the songs if they were reasonably priced and available (which is something the labels are being silly about today). Simply listening to an ad kills two birds with one stone. They get readily available high quality music, and no guilt to accompany it.
This seems to me like a not bad way for the labels to make some dough off MP3's without having to deal with messy DRM solutions that create a useability nightmare for the consumer. As an added bonus to the label, they get to bypass digital music distributors and retailers who take a piece of their pie. Nothing wrong with using Napster and Gnutella to your advantage.
Of course, I'll always keep my MP3 listening experience ad-free and "pure". I'd be the first in line to grab a hold of whatever hack becomes available. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't like ads, and I have no desire to turn my MP3 listening experience into a FM radio-like experience.
What these "big companies" fail to understand is that the code is out there. Shutting down the blade homepage will just pour fuel on the fire, the source will be mirrored and passed around the Internet. It can't be stopped any more than the MPAA can stop DeCSS source from being distributed. I think what this is all leading to is a vast network of anonymous developers sharing open source code through an untraceable Gnutella / Freenet like system. As large corporate entities try to stifle the Internet and it's power, the more it will fight back.
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It's not a MIPS, it's a PowerPC with standard SoC busses (PLB+OPB), caches, a Chinese language character generator, and a typical collection of peripheral IP blocks, which are licensable from a variety of semiconductor firms.
-=|[betagoat]|=-
The reason for the mandate is simple. The most important reason is not because of consumer demand, or because digital is going to offer consumers more choices, or because it allows hollywood to protect their content more effectively.
The most important reason is that when the analog space is vacated, this will allow the FCC to auction the spectrum for billions of dollars. When have you ever seen the governement walking away from billions of "free money"?
It's almost comical to see the FCC and the CEA to dance around this issue. Think about it: only 10 to 20% of all Americans get their TV via OTA antennas. Why is this mandate only focused on digital OTA? If the FCC were honest about their motives, they would be focusing thier attention on Cable Set-Top-Boxen.
I've been waiting for /. to offer this subscription feature for awhile. I've always ignored ads, and I never click on them. Since I value the site's existence, I'm happy to be able to contribute to keep things going.
I pay to subscribe for the same reasons I pay for my distribution, even though I don't have to. I believe in the inherent value of the product, and have a desire to see it continue.
Assuming they run just one SD channel @ 4 Mbits/sec, they will be left with about 15 Mbits/sec remaining. At 256K per user, even with multiplexing giving them about 10x more capacity, they will run out of capacity between 500 to 1000 users, depending on how many concurrent downloads there are at a given moment. Since there is no way to provision more bandwidth from their spectrum allocation. Plus, it looks like they are giving away the receivers / routers for free on their web page.
Since they are billing it as a free service, how much value do they expect to derive from delivering fat files to a 1K user base? Not surprisingly, I'm pretty skeptical about their "plan".
To me, this looks like MS has pretty much decided on merging MSN with another major content / access player at some point down the road. The idea being that if MS were to give up MSN as a content entitiy and merged it with, say, AOLTW, they could probably negotiate a very sweet deal and get to focus exclusively on what makes them powerful - proprietary achitectures and platforms. Pretty frightening - all your platforms are belong to MS, all your content are belong to AOLTW!
Sure, there will always be the tech savvy folk who will go to lengths to remove a short ad spot from the beginning of a MP3 song. However, think about this: there are a great number of AOL and like minded users who are just savvy enough to download MP3s and play them back. These are the same folks who drive home listening to their car radio which hey, guess what - puts those same ads in front of the songs they hear. They probably won't go through the trouble of removing an advertisement from an MP3 for two reasons:
1. It's simpler to just to cope with listening to the ad then figure out where to find and install a plug in for their player
2. A great deal of those "casual" Internet users (ala AOL, etc) feel that downloading free MP3's weighs heavily on their conscience. Some would pay for the songs if they were reasonably priced and available (which is something the labels are being silly about today). Simply listening to an ad kills two birds with one stone. They get readily available high quality music, and no guilt to accompany it.
This seems to me like a not bad way for the labels to make some dough off MP3's without having to deal with messy DRM solutions that create a useability nightmare for the consumer.
As an added bonus to the label, they get to bypass digital music distributors and retailers who take a piece of their pie. Nothing wrong with using Napster and Gnutella to your advantage.
Of course, I'll always keep my MP3 listening experience ad-free and "pure". I'd be the first in line to grab a hold of whatever hack becomes available. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't like ads, and I have no desire to turn my MP3 listening experience into a FM radio-like experience.
What these "big companies" fail to understand is that the code is out there. Shutting down the blade homepage will just pour fuel on the fire, the source will be mirrored and passed around the Internet. It can't be stopped any more than the MPAA can stop DeCSS source from being distributed. I think what this is all leading to is a vast network of anonymous developers sharing open source code through an untraceable Gnutella / Freenet like system. As large corporate entities try to stifle the Internet and it's power, the more it will fight back.