Craig wrote:
“I don't think the cable industry thought then, or thinks today that their
proprietary STBs are a problem.”
Well then, why do I constantly see the HUGE investment in STBs as becoming an
obstacle to progress? If it’s an obstacle to progress, it is an obstacle that
they created.
The public also had a HUGE investment in NTSC receivers, but that did not
prevent the OTA broadcasters *or* the cable/DBS companies long before OTA, from
essentially obsoleting that standard in due course.
Cable companies can easily sunset all analog and digital broadcast streams, go
all-IP instead, and expect their customers to buy the necessary equipment, if
they haven’t already done so, including the modem itself. No reason to think
that the existing STB base should be an insurmountable problem. If cable
companies drag their feet in such a change, it is only because they continue to
rake in revenues from the old technology. Let’s not kid ourselves.
“And technically, ISPs know nothing about what's in the IP packets, thus they
did not "introduce" h.264.”
From the point of view of the consumer, such as myself, H.264 was introduced
when the TV network sites, and other such, began streaming H.264. These
appeared over ISP nets. The significant point being, the ISP did not hesitate
to relay these streams, because my PC was mine, not theirs. If I had to buy a
new PC, they didn’t need to care. Same could apply now, to cable companies that
go all IP. It is the proprietary STB, an investment made by the service
provider, that creates the obstacle to progress.
“While this is technically possible, the numbers still don't add up. I don't
want to open that can of worms again, because we just went through the numbers.”
Groan, Craig. The numbers add up perfectly well. We JUST finished going through
them. A cable company that transmits, say, 150 channels of broadcast, analog
plus SD plus HD, dedicates 5.7 Gb/s of system capacity to that. This is a huge
waste of capacity, going into every household of every PON, that could instead
be applied to broadband. Makes no difference how many households are fed by a
single PON. These channels take up a lot of valuable real estate.
This is the way cable evolved into broadband ISPs. Still today, the broadband
ISP role is considered secondary to the broadcast TV provider role. This can
change, though, as fast as they decide.
“As I stated before, it is far more likely that the transition will take place
in several waves”
Obviously. Did I ever say otherwise?
“Blacksmiths make good money these days”
Perhaps, but I’ve walked up and down my street thousands of times, and have yet
to see one. That didn’t used to be the case, Craig.
Bert