On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 15:43:34 -0800, Ralph P. Manfredo <rmanfredo@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > I disagree. Latency is very important if you are doing interactive TV. > Long latency with interactive game shows, movies, etc will be an issue > believe me. Latency was an issue with a video system we did for a race > track, where there was a large video panel (billboard size) in the infield > and the horses are in the same field of view as the video panel. Think > about it. Would you be happy watching a race you just bet on and the live > horse was several feet in front o where he is shown on he screen? Question? > Did I bet on a race that was already run. Believe me, latency is an issue > with real-time video or interactive video. > Sorry Ralph, I wasn't very clear. Worst cast latency in any IPTV network is going to be under a 100 MS from the network side. Traditional cable network seem to have latencies measured in weeks if my Time Warner Cable trick play control on VOD is any indication. The application level latencies can be much higher. In particular, the video processing latency can be several seconds from ingest to display on the TV because of transcoding, DRM/CA, and buffering in the STB. What I should have said is that the latencies on a IP network will be low enough that it will not be an issue and application level latencies will be the dominant visible latency. You race track example isn't the cable equivalent experience we were discussing. In your case, latency matters because the viewer has two sets of inputs are are not matched in time - you are seeing two races out of sync. As long as both sets of visual inputs are the same, I can't tell the difference sitting in my home. The user has no way of knowing the total delay from TV ingest to display on their TV, just how out-of-sync the video/iTV experience is. As long as they are in sync, how can I tell as the viewer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.