[opendtv] Re: Execs see challenges bringing Net video to TV
----- Original Message ----- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> 


The problem is "only" that heavy investment by the ISPs is needed. But
the point is, it could change everything about TV content distribution,
if the congloms so decide.
Heavy investment? How about an impossibly impractical investment. Bert, I tried to show you that in order to deliver HD unicast streams to only 100 viewers, it would take more infrastructure than we have here on our 45,000 student campus, which only has a 1 GB backbone. What size infrastructure would be required to feed one HD stream to 45,000 viewers? 45,000 x 16 Mbps is what. I'd be willing to bet that is close to the entire bandwidth available on the planet.
As for your "server in every neighborhood" idea, where are you going to put all of these servers, who is going to maintain them, and who's going to pay for it? Are you going to mount RAID 5 drive arrays on phone poles? We just saw that 100 people need over a Gigabit per second, so every 100 homes would need a server. That's a lot of equipment to put out there, Bert. It's just not a workable option.
OTOH, multicasting is designed specifically to overcome these network limitations. The tradeoff is that a multicast stream is delivered simultaneously to all recipients, and cannot be started on demand by each viewer. It is another form of broadcasting, where the content producer chooses the time and place to "push" the content, and the recipients are either ready to receive, or they miss out.
So, as an intellectual exercise, your ideas are intriguing. From a practical standpoint, they are impossible. 

John





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