[opendtv] Re: IP-Based TV Will Revolutionize Entertainment

<unlurk />
<anarchist>

I may be taking Craig's side in the great "what is IPTV?" debate w/
Bert, but I read this as a non-tech (well, OK, non-IP, non-XML,
non-RSS, take your pick) editor/writer trying to describe what can and
is being done with RSS (which uses XML) and IP-based protocols (like
BT, for example). I mean, the kenosis (sp?) guys showed
you can do a torrent over xmlrpc, right?=20

Maybe this makes Kon's point, that IBM and Harris are not exactly the
shining examples of the leading edge here, but for me, the real
takeaway from the article really was "Far too few industry
traditionalists grasp the implications of IP".

Of course, my takeaway may have been personally amplified by reading
about Malone and that Fox news guy last week, too.

</anarchist>=20

-V=20
<lurk />

On 4/30/05, Kon Wilms <kon@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 18:30 -0400, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
> > > Is this is a paid advertisement, because everyone and
> > > their brother is using XML for content management and
> > > description these days. I love how people have been
> > > doing this stuff for years, but when someone like Harris
> > > does it, 'that's news'.
> >
> > Well, the news is that XML will (might? should?) be used
> > for IPTV, and evidently the news is also that something
> > like XML needed to be specified for IPTV at all, as far
> > as many at the NAB were concerned anyway.
>=20
> But it is already being used for IPTV. Once again, point me to what they
> did that is suddenly so revolutionary that it warrants news attention.
>=20
> They used the 'webservices' buzzword and use a SOAP connector - thats
> about it. This 'article' is equivalent to me releasing a press release
> saying that I am using MPEG4 for video encoding. So what?
>=20
> I wonder how long it will be until they realize the one small problem
> that other people have stumbled upon years ago -- that XML and SOAP are
> very bandwidth intensive and don't work well on a broadcast delivery
> network. If you have thousands of hosts on a IPTV network polling
> servers over SOAP (or even basic XML over HTTP) for programming and VOD
> information (even just EPG data), things slow down very quickly.
> Nevermind that all the STBs need a SOAP layer to parse this data, which
> can be overly complex and degrade the user interface speed when using a
> slow processor.
>=20
> I've run network analyzers on SOAP-based STBs that poll the server for
> each EPG page view. The traffic flow from one STB was enough to make me
> concerned. For these situations its easier to use the 'old' distribution
> model of multicasting EPG and guide information to receivers.
>=20
> And what about the small companies out there with serialized binary XML
> streaming stacks, with small-footprint STB clients that run in a hundred
> Kb. *Those* are the people that should get press if one wants to talk
> about next generation XML use in the IPTV world.
>=20
> Last but not least XML is just ordered text, and anyone can slap a SOAP
> and webservice connector on a content management system with an
> interface to a back-end database, with *no* development effort. The
> complexity is in the fine details.
>=20
> Cheers
> Kon
>=20
>=20
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