[opendtv] Re: AT&T To Squeeze Four HD Streams Into U-verse TV Homes
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:11:07 -0500
Monty Solomon posted:
AT&T To Squeeze Four HD Streams Into U-verse TV Homes
Telco's U-verse Services on Track to Generate $4 Billion in 2010
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 9/16/2010 4:29:31 PM
AT&T will let U-verse TV customers access up to four high-definition
channels simultaneously by the end of the year, thanks to a
combination of DSL upgrades and improvements in MPEG-4 compression.
Until now, AT&T has allowed customers of the IPTV service to access a
maximum of three HD channels at once, because of bandwidth
constraints.
...
http://www.multichannel.com/article/457219-AT_T_To_Squeeze_Four_HD_Streams_Into_U_verse_TV_Homes.php
---------------------------------
Isn't hype annoying?
Reading further into this and into an article linked in this one, you find out
what U-verse is doing.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/89682-AT_T_CTO_Banks_On_Better_HD_Compression.php
They use VDSL to homes, at 25 Mb/s, instead of using the FiOS scheme Verizon
went to or the HFC plant of the cablecos.
The H.264 HD streams are said to be 6-8 Mb/s. IIRC, many years ago, MPEG-2 HD
streams were also said to be squeezable down to 6 Mb/s, and for regular
non-sports TV, certainly 9 Mb/s average is not unusual these days. No doubt,
the H.264 macroblocking concealement filter helps here, but this does not
appear to be a quantum leap.
But that's not the main point. Reading on, U-verse is sending these four
simultaneous HD streams to homes total, over the VDSL link. And the proprietary
STB is then required to switch upstream, to access other HD or SD programming.
Now, the main point of the older article was to argue for continued use of xDSL
over voice grade copper, instead of the FTTH approach Verizon took. Well,
there's certainly something to be said for that! But let's get real here. Even
with MPEG-2 compression, both Verizon and the traditional cablecos can deliver
hundreds of HD streams simultaneously to homes, if they wanted to, not just
barely four at a time. Especially if they stopped wasting bandwidth on analog
and on separate SD an HD digital streams. And these other schemes can also send
HD or SD VOD to homes, at the same time.
So, what exactly is the big deal?
Perhaps it would have made more sense to hype up the server farms and the
multi-Gb/s backhaul network that U-verse has to depend on, rather than the last
mile connection and use of so-called "MPEG-4."
Bert
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