[opendtv] Re: NTIA: National Broadband Map has Helped Chart Broadband Evol
- From: Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2015 19:33:30 -0400
Craig wrote:
First, that the article does not explain what "digital video" is. Am I
watching "digital video" or "traditional TV," when I watch full length
episodes at cbs.com?
Yes.
You don't know, Craig. Not only don't you know, but I doubt very much whether
the clueless survey takers, and responders, were consistent on this point.
Suffice it to say that a very healthy percentage of TV is being consumed online
already, and I believe that 50% or more, as of now, is a decent estimate. It is
very possibly higher than that.
But the legacy video networks are not dead yet, especially the DBS systems.
The
cabled nets can make a bunch of money selling broadband and video in bundles.
The DBS systems provide a nice complement to the wireless data sold by the
telcos
The DBS systems are starting to struggle, Craig. Being limited to one-way
broadcast-only is a significant obstacle. Even if old timers were brought up in
the days of by appointment TV, and continue to feel comfortable with that, I
very seriously doubt that younger generations would ever want to revert to that
limited technology, even when they age. Things change. Going backwards never
works.
Problem is that most cabled systems have far more than 200 homes per node, so
they need to keep building out the fiber coax branching trees.
And I did the math. Even with DOCSIS 3.0 we are talking a theoretical 27.5
Mbps
if an entire 1 GHz HFS system with 200 home nodes, is dedicated only to
downstream data. But you need upstream too, and most systems never meet the
theoretical numbers.
Upstream is always typically slower than downstream, in these systems. The
takeaway of this math should be that once you have decided to deploy a 2-way
network, those MPEG-2 TS one-way broadcasts become a huge waste of bandwidth.
Even just 120 6-MHz channels, which I think is a conservative figure for MVPDs
these days, can ease the deployment of broadband significantly. "Efficiency"
depends on capabilities you need to support. Having broadcast streams take up
bandwidth in a 2-way network reduces efficiency of deploying 2-way service.
Also, once homes are cabled with coax of fiber, which most already are,
restructuring the upstream nodes does not require house calls. That's a big
cost savings.
As I explained, the cable cos already have all the backhaul in place. They
will
need to upgrade their MPEG-2 encoders which currently chew up lots of
bandwidth. Encoders that supply all the different files are not terribly
expensive, and most edge servers are updated during off peak hours with all
the
files for popular programs.
You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth, Craig. You were just
complaining about needing decades, because of the expense, and I'm telling you
that companies like Netflix are perfectly happy to step in and take that
responsibility. Now what? It seems like you're trying to make the case for the
local broadband monopolies to retain more of that monopoly, even when others
are willing to take a bigger role.
Nobody was building hardware acceleration for Flash into their graphic chips
-
Flash ran on the device CPU.
Thank you for making my point. Sure enough, Craig. If Apple and others make it
a point to NOT request hardware accelerators for Flash, but do request
accelerators for their own fave schemes, the outcome of any power-draw test is
going to be pre-determined, right?
Anyway, water under the bridge. Like I said, supplying these different
protocols is now the job of CDNs. No reason to assume that this has a huge
impact on the backhaul networks.
Bert
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