The Future of TV (believe it or not)

[edDV]

In other words, IPTV is not going to happen for most single family home people through their normal ISP. It will be a separate service from the cable or telco provider.

Exceptions exist for large condo or high rise apartment communities that may support an independent local service. It scales to the local server.

[rumplestiltskin]

Remember that the proper way to do this is to deliver one channel; the user just picks the one he wants.

Brute force is not the only way to do this. We have an institutional bias towards broadcasting but the reality is that we watch only one channel at a time; so why deliver more than that?

[JohnnyMalaria]

There's still a significant segment of the population who cannot get broadband internet access. Until it becomes universally available, IPTV will remain out-of-reach.

[edDV]

Remember that the proper way to do this is to deliver one channel; the user just picks the one he wants.

Brute force is not the only way to do this. We have an institutional bias towards broadcasting but the reality is that we watch only one channel at a time; so why deliver more than that?

That is the way IPTV works but you need a stream for each TV and recorder. A typical home may need 3-5 feeds.

[yoda313]

golden convergence" (a very old term, BTW) was predicted quite a number of years ago and, if you've been paying attention, this is Apple's business model

Microsoft is doing the same thing with the XBOX 360. It started with the xbox 1 with the XBOX LIVE service. Now that the 360 can interact with a Windows Media Center pc and is going to have a larger hard drive they are really driving to have a hands on in the living room. Also - they have high def content available for download already and from what I understand itunes only has standard def videos for download.

I think one thing that will turn people off from iptv is if you have to pay twice for tv - that is once for decent speed broadband AND then for the tv service. Now I don't know how the pricing for iptv is supposed to work but it would be more than just one cable or satellite bill.

the way I look at it is lets say you have an average family that may still be only on dial up or -gasp- NO INTERNET at all. BUT they have cable or satellite - or EVEN JUST PLAIN OLD ANTENNA TV! Some people won't want to pile on the bills.

One beauty of hdtv if your close to the transmitter is that with just a powered antenna you can get all your local channels in beautiful hdtv quality. I can do that on my hdtv capture card.


Now one variation that can work and is already out there is the TIVO - Amazon agreement that just came out. You can download the unbox videos to your tivo. Now that kind of arrangement I can see working out really well. TIVO is an established settop device and people know amazon. You can put the two together and say ok - I can download movies and watch them on my tv through my tivo - I like that people can say.

It will take small steps like that before any kind of iptv becomes mainstream. Now don't forget tivo isn't in every home but it has a following (I'm one of em now ).

I just think until you have faster and cheaper broadband that everyone will have access to iptv will not take off. Also you'd need a simple easy to use TIVO-like device to make it user friendly. You will not get people to invest in hptv setups, not the massess any way - it has to look like a vcr or a dvd player before they will even consider moving it next to the tv.

[rumplestiltskin]

I think the technological problem of "the last mile" will be solved by Wi-Max.

The hurdles are the opponents of 'Net Neutrality and the cable companies that that want to maintain their monopolies in our localities. The moment you stop the current providers from sucking on the public teat is the moment we will begin to get more choice. Prices will drop.

Frankly, Internet access should be a public utility like garbage collection, sewer, water, gas, and electricity. (Now that will start another discussion, I guess!)

Another thank you to all who are participating in this thread.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I think the technological problem of "the last mile" will be solved by Wi-Max.

The problem with "the last mile" is that, for many people, it is considerably longer than a mile!

Wi-Max seems to be geared as a faster alternative to cable and DSL. When I asked my local ISP about Wi-Max, the feedback was that it wasn't suitable for our geography.

I'd prefer to see broadband over powerline (BPL). The physical connections already exist, though there are greater hurdles in the US than, say, Europe.

Actually, I'd prefer to see cable. Time Warner recently extended their reach to within about 800 feet of our house - but they said they need to do a survey to see if it would be profitable to extend to our house or not....

[rumplestiltskin]

I think the technological problem of "the last mile" will be solved by Wi-Max.

The problem with "the last mile" is that, for many people, it is considerably longer than a mile!

Wi-Max seems to be geared as a faster alternative to cable and DSL. When I asked my local ISP about Wi-Max, the feedback was that it wasn't suitable for our geography.

I'd prefer to see broadband over powerline (BPL). The physical connections already exist, though there are greater hurdles in the US than, say, Europe.

Actually, I'd prefer to see cable. Time Warner recently extended their reach to within about 800 feet of our house - but they said they need to do a survey to see if it would be profitable to extend to our house or not....

Wi-Max is way faster than anything else (but this is a moving target and there will always be something faster eventually). It has a range of about 20km (IIRC). Where I live (El Paso), about a dozen Wi-Max transceivers would cover the entire city in an overlapping (overkill, perhaps) mode. How do you then get Internet in your house? The solution is a Wi-Max transceiver in your home that takes the place of a cable/dsl modem. Wi-Max will be on Intel motherboards in a year or so.

BPL has at least one major problem: It disrupts radio communications for Ham radio. While there aren't many Ham operators left, it remains the last line of communications when everything else has gone to hell in a handbasket. Virtually every major hospital in the country has a Ham operator on call. If they can resolve the BPL interference with Ham radio (or demonstrate that another equally capable band is free from interference), then BPL makes sense. Of course, then you're really putting all your eggs in one basket, eh?

[JohnnyMalaria]

As you have described, Wi-Max would cover urban areas - most of which already have some form of broadband. Having a range of 20km (ideal) and operating at that range would require the end user to have an equally powerful transmitter.

Wi-Max in rural areas is pretty much already dead in the water if you happen to live in an area like I do with lots of trees and hilly terrain. Dry, flat areas with sparse vegetation will fare better.

So, a great additional option if you already live in an area that has broadband. Out-of-reach to those already out of the reach of other broadband options....

[edDV]

It would need to be some kind of advanced form of Wi-Max even to satisfy one house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

Limitations
A commonly held misconception is that WiMAX will deliver 70 Mbit/s, over 70 miles (112.6 kilometers) when the recipient is moving or mobile. Each of these is true individually, given ideal circumstances, but they are not simultaneously true. In practice this means that in line-of-sight environments you could deliver symmetrical speeds of 10Mbps at 10km but in urban environments it is more likely that 30% of installations may be non-line-of-sight and therefore users may only receive 10Mbps over 2km and if the recipient is on the move the bps rates drop significantly. WiMAX has some similarities to DSL in this respect, where one can either have high bandwidth or long reach, but not both simultaneously. The other feature to consider with WiMAX is that available bandwidth is shared between users in a given radio sector, so if there are many active users in a single sector, each will get reduced bandwidth. However, unlike SDSL where contention is very noticeable at a 5:1 ratio (if you are sharing your connection with a large media firm for example), WiMAX does not have this problem. Typically each cell has a whole 100Mbps backhaul so there is no contention here. In practice, many users will have a range of 2-, 4-, 6-, 8- or 10Mbps services and the bandwidth can be shared. If the network becomes busy the business model is more like GSM or UMTS than DSL. It is easy to predict capacity requirements as you add customers and additional radio cards can be added on the same sector to increase the capacity.

WiMax might get you an internet connection but not high quality IPTV. What is really needed is fiber to the home or fiber to the last mile with coax connecting the house.

Remember to get cable quality HDTV MPeg2 we are talking a 20Mb/s sustained per one way feed. MPeg4 reduces that to ~8-10 Mb/s. A typical house will need 3-5 feeds plus return control, phone and internet.

Current cable internet may advertise 6Mb/s but that isn't sustained and the allowed bandwidth per month is tightly controlled. About 100 houses share one 35Mb/s down channel.

We are talking >50Mb/s sustained bandwidth requirements for one house with 3 TV sets and a 2 channel DVR.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Frankly, Internet access should be a public utility like garbage collection, sewer, water, gas, and electricity. (Now that will start another discussion, I guess!

I live in a rural area (even though only 4 miles from the nearest town's center), so of those utilities, I get electricity. No sewer, water or gas. I pay for private garbage collection.

Imagine if you live many miles from the nearest municipality - such as some of the more remote parts of Texas....

What ever happened to the high altitude flying drones that were supposed to provide internet access like satellite but without the 44,000+ mile round trip (and delay)? (See High Altitude Platforms)

[edDV]

Interesting to contemplate a switched network solution for IPTV over cable TV. Current 750MHz cable intrastructure has about 125 6Mhz RF channels. Each 6MHz channel can carry 37Mb/s data.

Using current technology, one coax from the server could satisfy > 100 houses with some channels reserved for peak load.

A form of switched network IPTV is currently being used to supply VOD and "On Demand" service on current cable.

[edDV]

Frankly, Internet access should be a public utility like garbage collection, sewer, water, gas, and electricity. (Now that will start another discussion, I guess!

What ever happened to the high altitude flying drones that were supposed to provide internet access like satellite but without the 44,000+ mile round trip (and delay)? (See High Altitude Platforms)

How about balloons teathered to those west Texas windmill towers. There's a business plan.

Not these


but these

[RabidDog]

One major point .. joost ISNT IpTV its basically p2p Tv . At the moment its pretty poor quality and the stuff on there is mostly c++p.
When the bandwidth expands to more than 2mbs for everyone they will have a viable service. When I used it, it took 800k of my 1mb to display low quality TV. If they add some good quality content and up the bandrate to maybe 1500 they will have a juicy prospect. I reckon that's 2 years away (in the UK) . it may be doable in South Korea or Japan