[opendtv] Re: Sling TV Struggles During Final Four | Multichannel
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 10:08:34 -0400
On Apr 10, 2015, at 7:13 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why? We know it will change in the decades to come. That does not prove
anything.
Sure it does.
Only a fraction of the physical infrastructure needed for massive conversion to
IP streaming of entertainment exists today.
You just posted an EE Times article that state department:
We live in the moment of 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV, with a growing
number of consumers viewing video sent over unreliable and
bandwidth-constrained mobile networks, while CPUs and GPUs inside their
mobile devices come with multiple cores, massively parallel processing
capabilities and a very large cache.
And yet, we all know that no current video codec can comfortably handle 4K
distribution to UHD TV at home, let alone deliver HD video to mobile devices.
We have read many of Yoshida's articles over the years. She seems to have a
decent understanding of where we are with you expect to emerging technologies -
that's her job. So will Bert try to tell us, yes, 4K streaming is still
problematic, but everyone can enjoy HD now?
Probably...
;-(
The reality is that only a small percentage of the population is using video
streaming now, and there are many reported traffic jams. Most of the issues
come when too many people try to watch a live event. The traffic analogy simply
points out that it takes infrastructure to solve these problems. Thus we hear
Bert claim:
When Sling ran into problems, it was because many people wanted to watch the
same content at the same time. One likely problem they ran into was not
enough Sling servers at the edges of some of these ISP nets.
Not enough infrastructure according to Bert.
Probably true. The fact is neither I nor Bert know what infrastructure Sling
has deployed - if they have any edge servers deployed at all.
But edge servers do not solve this problem. You cannot pre-cache live events to
bypass congestion. You need reliable WAN pipes that connect to every ISPnthat
has Sling subscribers, and these interconnects must have sufficient capacity to
handle the local demand. Bert then discusses a more realistic solution:
But another way to tackle this particular problem would have been for the ISP
nets to use authenticated IP multicast (there are ways to do this, and I
posted the IETF source some time ago). Either way, these qualify as teething
problems, not anything like "the Internet isn't ready," as you claim. It
doesn't take a decade to set up an ISP net for authenticated multicast,
Craig. No one involved with TV over the Internet is making the claims you
make, Craig. Ever wondered why?
This may be the appropriate solution. IP multicast is certainly a good way to
conserve network bandwidth. In a sense, nothing has really changed in the
distribution of live television streams in the past century.
Back in the golden era of broadcast TV, the telcos operated dedicated (and very
expensive) video networks that distributed the content from the broadcast
centers in New York and Los Angeles to affiliated stations around the country
who were the local "ISPs" of that era. Then satellite replaced the telco
backbone. Now the Internet can do this with both Unicast and multicast streams.
The bottleneck today is the interconnections to the ISPs, and congestion on
their networks. These are problems that can be worked out as the infrastructure
is upgraded.
You might well have experienced the same problems, IF you had
chosen to subscribe to Sling to watch the Final Four.
No, Craig. The point is, *if* it was "the Internet" that was overloaded by
Sling, I should have experienced problems regardless. Just like you traffic
jam analogy. Everyone becomes affected. So the fact that I was not
experiencing those problems demonstrates that "the Internet" was not
overloaded. Certain servers, in certain locations, yes.
Stop the crap. We all know that the Internet is a network of networks that
allow data to move between these networks. Obviously the problems Sling
experienced did not break the Internet for everyone - that would be the
equivalent of saying that an accident on I-495 in D.C. Caused a traffic jam in
Gainesville.
The problem was that Sling experienced multiple traffic jams with THEIR
service. We can only guess why this happened, as it depends very much on how
they have designed their service, what interconnection agreements they have,
and how these are scaled to deal with spikes in demand.
Sling does not offer OTA broadcast channels, certainly not live, whereas CBS
All Access does. Are you going to claim that CBS All Access is an MVPD?
I address this. Programming from ONE network IS NOT programming from MULTIPLE
networks - there is a reason the word MULTIPLE is used in the acronym MVPD.
And Sling is working to offer the broadcast networks - clearly there are issues
to be ironed out, like what network feed they must deliver to which homes. We
DO know that for their DBS MVPD service they are required to deliver the local
broadcast stations in the market where the receiving dish is located. And we
know that CBS just reached a deal with its affiliates to offer the local CBS
affiliate signals to CBS All Access subscribers...but not the NFL games.
As you can see, this is very complicated - not the technology, but rather the
business arrangements. Technology is then applied to solve the problems. So how
will a local CBS station deliver its live stream to the ISPs in the markets it
serves?
In most cases they already do - cable and fiber systems already deliver these
streams to MVPD subscribers, so it is mostly an issue of routing these bits to
the ISP side of the house. If an ISP (e.g. AT&T DSL) needs these bits they can
set up a dedicated feed with AT&T, or put an off air receiver somewhere in the
local AT&T network.
More infrastructure...
2. Sling offers add on mini bundles of additional live linear
networks (i.e. multiple video programs).
Wwitv.com is a portal with loads of live and on demand streams. And Amazon
offers more than just one layer of video streaming authenticated access. I
don't see live streams or different layers of access qualifying as MVPD, any
more than some of these other OTT sites.
You could call Wwitv.com an MVPD, although it is really more of a search engine
that links to many streaming portals. And Amazon is a VOD service - they do not
offer ANY live network streams; they do offer access to older libraries of
content from the content oligopoly, and now a limited amount of original
programming.
That's the most credible point. MVPDs are different because they act as the
single gatekeeper for all your TV channels.
Not true.
They act as one of a limited number of "gatekeepers" of content that is ONLY
available in subscription bundles. They do not offer everything - I can't get
Netflix House of Cards or Orange is The New Black from Cox Cable, or DirecTV,
or Dish, or Sling. But I can get ESPN and the Fox News Channel from ANY of
these MVPD services.
Sling, instead, very much acts as that additional OTT site you might want,
whose ace in the hole happens to be live sports. Other OTT sites focus on
other content, such as movies, TV shows.
Sling is a skinny MVPD bundle. I'm not interested in their service because it
does not solve my problem: it does not offer the networks I watch the most.
"Maybe" the new Apple service will. Or maybe I could buy a PlayStation and
subscribe to Sony Vue - whoops, the don't offer ESPN and other Disney content.
It's not technology that is controlling this transition. As usual it is
business models.
Regards
Craig
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