[opendtv] Re: PBS National Datacast
- From: Bob Miller <bob@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:19:24 -0500
Craig,
Do we need any more confirmation that it is indeed the technology that
makes the difference?
Simple question, if the US had a decent COFDM modulation in place today
would Disney be using NTSC for MovieBeam?
No!
In fact they would not even be involved with such a venture.
Bob Miller
Mark Aitken (Work @ Home) wrote:
>FROM:
>http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6308573.html?&display=Features&referral=SUPP
>
>w w w . b r o a d c a s t i n g c a b l e . c o m
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 'Beam' Me Up-in Analog
> Disney's VOD service relaunches with new investors, HD movies, same
>old platform
> By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/20/2006
>
>
> In this story:
> Costly service
>
>
>
> Broadcasters are distributing video-on-demand (VOD) movies, including
>high-definition titles, to a set-top device with reams of disk storage.
>Sounds like a perfect application for the digital television (DTV) spectrum,
>doesn't it?
>
> Not necessarily. The "datacasting" application is actually being
>delivered over analog spectrum by MovieBeam, a VOD service tested by Disney
>in 2004 and relaunched last week as a separate company. MovieBeam features a
>$48.8 million war chest, heavyweight partners like Cisco and Intel, and an
>agreement by 39 PBS stations in 29 markets to use their analog broadcasts to
>deliver the service.
>
> The MovieBeam set-top box, which is being sold under Cisco's Linksys
>brand for $199.99 (after a $50 rebate), doesn't have a DTV tuner. In fact,
>it doesn't have a functional analog tuner either. It comprises a small
>indoor antenna, 160-gigabyte (GB) hard drive, the necessary chip technology
>to receive the datacasts, and a host of inputs and outputs.
>
> But the box won't work in its current configuration come February
>2009, when analog broadcasts cease and DTV takes over. MovieBeam executives
>say there is an easy upgrade path to DTV, by connecting to a peripheral
>tuner, and they have an option to use PBS stations' DTV spectrum through
>their deal with National Datacast, the for-profit PBS subsidiary that
>aggregated the analog spectrum.
>
> Executives at PBS stations that were involved in early tests insist
>MovieBeam works well on the analog spectrum. "I was pleasantly surprised by
>its success," says Michael Boylan, president/CEO of WJCT Jacksonville, Fla.
>
> Still, some are wondering why Movie­Beam isn't using the DTV
>spectrum now. "I think this is about five years too late," says one engineer
>familiar with the technology. "The world has moved on."
>
> It has been suggested that MovieBeam's investors, which include
>venture-capital firms Mayfield Fund and Norwest Venture Partners, are
>betting that analog won't shut down on time. MovieBeam and National Datacast
>executives say that they're planning on the 2009 turnoff date but, right
>now, analog broadcasting is more reliable as a national platform than the
>DTV spectrum.
>
> "This gives us a robustness we wouldn't have otherwise," says
>MovieBeam President/CEO Tres Izzard. "For DTV reception, many homes require
>the installation of an outdoor antenna with line-of-sight to the tower. What
>we get is the ability for a small indoor antenna to provide a simple
>plug-and-play service."
>
> Kevin Fong, managing director of Mayfield Fund and a MovieBeam
>director, says MovieBeam was simply looking for the best coverage at the
>lowest price. "The analog signal footprint is very well understood," he
>says.
>
> Using the analog spectrum to deliver movies as digital files is much
>slower than with digital. National Datacast says the throughput of the
>MovieBeam service is around 1.2 megabits per second (Mbps); DTV stations
>could do it four to five times faster while still supporting high-def
>broadcasts. But MovieBeam backers say delivery speed doesn't matter, since
>the disk-based set-top doesn't need to receive the movies in real time and
>the service will send only 10 new movies a week, one or two in high-def.
>
> The service is using Microsoft's Windows Media 9 (also know as VC-1)
>advanced compression scheme to encode the movies at considerably lower data
>rates than current MPEG-2 applications, allowing it to send a
>standard-definition movie as a 1.5-GB file and a high-def movie in 4 GB or 5
>GB. That equates to encoding rates of around 1.7 Mbps for an SD movie and
>5.7 Mbps for an HD movie and a transfer time of around two hours and eight
>hours, respectively.
>
> "We have a hard-disk cache, and we are able to use the bandwidth 24
>hours a day," says Fong. "We trickle movies from the hard disk, and
>consumers don't see the downloading times."
>
> Costly service
> WJCT's Boylan says MovieBeam's upfront cost "seems a little
> high"-particularly since the $4 rental for a movie is what Comcast charges
>for VOD titles. But he notes that his station gets paid either way; the
>annual revenues that PBS stations get from National Datacast for providing
>spectrum are based on their market size, not the adoption of the service.
>
> Josh Bernoff, principal analyst with Forrester Research, says that
>offering HD movies on-demand is a selling point for MovieBeam. But he thinks
>the Movie­Beam box still doesn't have that much potential as a
>stand-alone product. "This thing belongs as a feature of a DVR or satellite
>box," he says. "The idea of a separate set-top whose only purpose is movie
>rental-that is pretty challenging for a product like that to succeed."
>
> One broadcast source suggested that MovieBeam might use a different
>delivery method, such as the Internet or cable, to feed the box in the
>future. And incorporating MovieBeam's functionality into a broader consumer
>product may be the goal for Cisco, which recently entered the set-top market
>with its purchase of Scientific-Atlanta, and Intel, which is promoting the
>"Viiv" home-entertainment PC platform.
>
> Intel spokesman Kent Cook considers MovieBeam "an interesting model
>for content delivery" and says Intel is "working very aggressively" at
>creating a Viiv-based product, such as a set-top, that would also receive
>the MovieBeam service. He adds, "Stay tuned."
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Albert Manfredi" <bert22306@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 9:26 PM
>Subject: [opendtv] PBS National Datacast
>
>
>
>
>>John Shutt wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Moviebeam is using NTSC with dotcast. PBS has not allocated
>>>any DTV bits to any datacasting service at all at this time.
>>>
>>>
>>Well, this site:
>>
>>http://www.pbs.org/digitaltv/dataNS.html
>>
>>says that PBS either is, or soon will be, providing this datacast service
>>over their DTT transmitter. It's called PBS National Datacast. And it
>>makes
>>sense, especially if the previous dotcast was limited in its coverage, as
>>the article explaining how it works said. (They gave the example of 1.7
>>million viewers in the LA area, which is a small fraction of that
>>population.)
>>
>>But you're right, they don't mention Moviebeam by name. They say:
>>
>>"The Digital Difference
>>
>>"As PBS stations in the data broadcasting network convert to digital
>>broadcasts, PBS NATIONAL DATACAST will begin offering commercial
>>datacasting
>>services over digital television transmissions."
>>
>>It seems a natural fit for Moviebeam and other similar services.
>>
>>This could work well, actually, and it's not cold fusion at all. Since the
>>Moviebeam folk are clever, they may well have added another layer of
>>forward
>>error correction to the basic Viterbi 2/3 and RS[208,188] when
>>transmitting
>>their proprietary file formats over DTT. They would achieve a C/N margin
>>improvement similar to what E8-VSB provides. Why not? After all, their
>>streams don't need to conform to any standard other than to fit in the
>>MPEG-2 TS frame, with appropriate non-conflcting headers. They could use
>>A/90, the LLC/SNAP header option to avoid any problems with conflicts,
>>then
>>add more interleaving and more redundancy to the packet stream.
>>
>>The extra FEC may be enough to make the indoor antenna work in most cases,
>>even if you get no usable signal when trying to watch the real-time DTT
>>channel of that same station.
>>
>>
>>
>>>We are on the list to have our analog transmitter modified, but I can't
>>>believe they will still go through with it.
>>>
>>>
>>It has to be considerably better than Dotcast over NTSC. Did you read how
>>that works? It's similar to IBOC radio, when the radio channel is also
>>carrying the analog station. Except it's possibly even more compromised,
>>since it is fit right around the VSB carrier, in a relatively very narrow
>>band (not in the relatively much larger guard band IBOC depends on),
>>apparently heavily attenuated before transmisssion, and uses plain QAM
>>instead of COFDM. I would expect that for such a system to work reliably,
>>the Moviebeam clever lads have already figured out how to add in
>>robustness
>>in the data packet stream.
>>
>>Bert
>>
>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
