[opendtv] Re: News: Sirius Founder Says Company Won't Be Able To Compete
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:27:51 -0400
Tom Barry wrote:
> Streaming media becomes complicated when the bandwidth
> comes anywhere close to the total average bandwidth you
> have available. Then you have considerations of constant
> and max bit rates plus a significant time to accumulate
> any sort of a safety buffer.
>
> This used to be true for quality real time audio but
> these days an audio stream takes only a small percentage
> of a broadband connection and people can afford to be a
> bit sloppy, which simplifies things.
>
> Likewise, streaming HD video still takes some cleverness
> on broadband and is mostly not available yet for wireless
> mobile. But there is some sort of Moore's law equivalent
> for wired and wireless broadband and it should do for
> video the same as for audio. This should mostly reduce
> the issue to a fight between rights holders and
> distributors.
>
> Local TV broadcasters seriously need to start looking
> into streaming.
I generally agree with this. But you're only looking at connections at
the adges of the network. So I would add that if you look at what goes
on in the network, wide distribution of radio or TV shows over broadband
is inherently a much more complicated process than doing this via
broadcast. But in the end, who cares, if the network is in place and the
bandwidth has become adequate to handle the load?
My "broadband" at home now is a tad over 1.5 Mb/s, from ADSL (I measured
it to make sure). Not enough for HDTV yet. I'd have to subscribe to
cable now, to get more than that. And the cable core network itself
would have to be upgraded, I'm pretty sure, if everyone were to start
wanting HDTV over the broadband IP pipe, vs using the dedicated cable
broadcast channels. The same situation occurs in Verizon FiOS.
The advantage of broadband TV distribution is, in principle, you can get
whatever is available worldwide. There's no botteneck broadcaster/cable
provider that has to make the choices to send over the cheap, one-way
pipes.
So in short, this nirvana of TV over broadband will only come at a
price, which will show up as subscription fees for the broadband
connection. But if we can eliminate separate other fees we have to pay
now, like telephone service fees, then the whole idea becomes really
interesting.
Broadcast TV over this broadband pipe would have the same feel as FOTA
TV has today, ads and all, only it could come from the whole world. And
at least some broadcasters would potentially get very large audiences.
Bert
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