[opendtv] Re: Spectrum is too valuable

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 02:50:02 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

They are already benefitting from "progress." The average bill for
a cable company has more than doubled

Yes, and people are bailing out. The slow pace at which these changes are
occurring is in large measure caused by consumers who are slow to change -
fearful of what might lie beyond. It's true. There's real anxiety there. But
since the younger crowd don't seem to share in this paralyzing dread, it's only
a matter of time.

The rental business at Blockbuster fell off a cliff. The income and
cash flow disappeared. And the cable companies played a major role in
killing them, providing the broadband networks that now deliver
movies without the need to get in a car.

Tell me something I don't already know, Craig. This example also applies to TV
content distribution. No, not in the sense that we used to have to drive to a
store to get it, but in the sense that we used to be constrained to
by-appointment viewing and, for you, to only one source gate. (And please don't
bother with your DVD boxed sets of old TV series.) The Internet opened up a
whole new set of options.

When a better mousetrap becomes available, it gets used because consumers
demand it, and the new replaces what came before. Finding myself having to
belabor the obvious again.

The mantra is 100% accurate. Broadcasters did not care about HDTV.

Read my lips, Craig. That does not matter. What matters is that the consumer
wanted it. I remember you or someone else, years ago, asking "what's in it for
the broadcaster?" And my answer was, "survival." If their competition went HD
and they did not, they would soon lose out. It's very simple, and it happened.
Cars and radial tires? Same thing. Cars/homes and air conditioning? Same thing.

TV was dragged kicking and screaming into the future,

But they got there. And so will the cable companies' transition to IP. Kicking
and screaming couldn't matter less.

h.263 saw limited adoption in teleconferencing and portions of it
were used in MPEG-4 video. Neither saw any significant use, as
MPEG and the ITU joined forces to develop h.264,

Later on, Craig. You must have been sound asleep all those years. H.263 was
initially developed for ISDN, fixed rate 64 Kb/s lines, but it also got used
over IP. H.264 came later, originally called H.26L while in development. There
was plenty of media streaming going on already, in those years, although the
quality was not that good. Going to full screen always returned a soft image.

http://focus.ti.com/pdfs/vf/vidimg/h26l_wp.pdf

I was watching full length TV episodes before H.264 was deployed, which is why
I noticed when suddenly the PC couldn't keep up with the H.264 streams. In
fact, in some cases in those early days, some of the codecs wouldn't allow full
screen viewing. But I was already watching full length episodes for catch-up
purposes. In those days, very much presented on the web sites associated with
the day of the week when the program aired "live."

This article is from March of 2006. Which means it is describing what was going
on in 2005. There was already plenty of TV streaming going on then, although I
don't see explicit mention of full length episodes from the major TV networks.
But the mid-2000s sounds about right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/yourmoney/12sliver.html?ex=1299819600en=b93a73a9426aeb16ei=5088partner=rssnytemc=rss&pagewanted=all&_r=0

And this is why it sounds so absurd to me when the trade scribes attribute TV
over the Internet to AppleTV or similar, limited, johnny-come-lately boxes. And
also your insistence that this all started ca. 2010.

It is deployed Bert. But there are too many homes on most PONs to
switch from broadcast MPEG streams to Internet UDP delivery.

Vague generalities are totally unconvincing. I already did the numbers for you,
Craig, and you evidently, from what you wrote, you did not understand.

An HD stream requires 5 Mb/s with H.264. If you prefer, make that 5 Mb/s
AVERAGE. That means that if you use DOCSIS 3.0, which exists today, and you
don't waste 5+ Gb/s equivalent capacity on broadcast, you can feed 1140
simultaneous HDTV streams from a single PON. Statmux easily handles any peaks
you might think are a problem.

Divide up that 1140 simultaneous HD streams into however many households you
like, Craig. Two per household? Do the simple division. It always comes out to
a number that is VERY feasible for existing PONs, TODAY. Mix in a few SD
streams, and your vague generalities sound even more absurd. Add in the fact
that streaming protocols are self-regulating, and your insistence is doubly
absurd.

IMMEDIATELY is not happening.

Immediately can happen. You were claiming that this would take decades, but it
could happen anytime. The only technical issue may be in distributing the
needed edge server capacity. But that does not require digging up neighborhoods
or making house calls.

This should tell you something Bert. The MVPDs are not controlling
this transition.

The MVPDs are controlling their end of it. And the congloms have been and
continue to migrate to Internet delivery all by themselves. No conglom is
insisting that cable companies MUST continue to use broadcast MPEG-2 TS
streams, Craig. AT&T has had an IPTV network for years and years.

Bert



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