[opendtv] Re: PBS National Datacast

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
>>    
>>

 
 
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