Re: Ofcom says 4 national HD channels on DTT

"DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote:

Peter Hayes wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote:

MPEG-2 STBs will only be made obsolete once virtually everybody is
using MPEG-4 boxes. And by that time I'd hope that DTT would just be
switched off anyway, because the Internet will make it look like a
seriously antiquated system, because by that time we'll probably all
have 100 Mbps connections and will be streaming 1080p or possibly
2160p or whatever HD channels over the net.

I doubt if this will happen for many years, certainly not for Joe
Bloggs, for a number of reasons.

They want to press one button to get the programme they want, not go
furtling round the internet looking for the next episode of
"Coronation Street".


The BBC HD channel will eventually be integrated into the BBC iPlayer. ITV
HD will be integrated into whatever ITV does on the net, same with C4, Five,
etc.

I've seen it mentioned that the broadcasters might cooperate to bring their
channels and on demand stuff together, which would be the sensible thing to
do, IMO.

HD channels are only higher bandwidth versions of other live streams at the
end of the day, and 1 Mbps live streams of the BBC channels are going to be
launched later this year. You can see what's been on the trial here:

http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/streams.html

1Mbps suggests the quality will be crap except in a YouTube sized
window.

The internet isn't a very reliable delivery mechanism. Users won't
want their paid-for 2160 HD playout stalling. A few stalls and the
box goes back to Curry's.


The HD streams would be delivered via multicasting, where the ISPs would
each receive a stream directly from the broadcaster (as opposed to receiving
thousands of streams now with one stream per user), and then it's up to the
ISP to get that reliably to their users. BT's 21CN next generation network
that's being rolled out nationally over the next 2-3 years will support
multicasting inherently, so presumably the ISPs themselves will also be able
to use multicasting to get the HD streams to the customers, with the
bottlenecks moved towards the customers' ends, and then it's up to the ISPs
to make sure that the quality of service is good enough.

Are you proposing the removal of the dreaded contention ratio that slows
the internet to dialup speeds at certain times? 50 users on one "modem"
all watching Coronation Street in HD (shudder) will kill access.

The on-demand part of BT Vision is delivered over the Internet, and Tiscali
TV's on-demand part is also delivered over the Internet, and I haven't heard
any horror stories about these not working, so I fail to see why other ISPs
can't provide live streaming.

Perhaps these delivery channels aren't being used as much as their
proponents imagine, so the current infrastructure can still cope.

The massive investment in new ISP and exchange kit will have to be paid
for by someone.

Joe Bloggs doesn't want to mess about downloading content on some user
friendly equivalent of a computer or AppleTV like device.


One of the things that the BBC is planning in relation to their BBC iPlayer
work is that they want to make set-top boxes available that can handle BBC
iPlayer content so that people can watch iPlayer stuff on their TVs rather
than on their computers. And there's already a lot of IPTV set-top boxes
available from the likes of Pace and so on.

The Internet will become a TV platform in its own right over time, and
eventually it will kill off Freeview,

Freeview will be around for at least 25 years. Politically it'll be
impossible to kill off. And how do you receive TV in the caravan if the
only access is satellite or the internet?

because people will just migrate to the Internet because all TV channels
can be in HD over the net whereas they ain't ever gonna be on Freeview.

If it is to work it has to include all the features currently available
to the average viewer, simple one button channel (stream if you prefer)
selection, ability to timeshift and ad skip without some arbitary DRM
imposed restrictions, and zero additional cost.

Do you see all this happening? I don't. The content providers will screw
it up with their DRM paranoia for starters.

Joe Bloggs is used to "free" television. They won't take kindly to
paying ISP charges just to watch what was free.


It's not really like that though is it. You get an Internet connection for
everything, and watching HD over the net will just be an additional think
that's included if you choose to pay for superfast broadband.

And if you don't choose to pay for superfast broadband? Or don't want
broadband at all? You'll be stuck with some free or paid-for satellite
SD/HD system.

And that will be a disaster for many because they'll be asked to shell
out for quad or octal LNBs and receivers to replace the DVB-T kit
they've shelled out for to replace their analogue kit that worked quite
happily until DSO. See a pattern here?

Superfast
broadband is taking off in a massive way in Japan and Korea, so they're
obviously willing to pay the extra to get that, and once you've got it then
receiving an HD stream that takes up just 10% of the mximum bandwidth (10
Mbps for an HD channel out of 100 Mbps maximum connection speed) isn't even
as high a percentage as listening to a 128 kbps radio station on a 512k
broadband connection!

We're going to get ADSL2+ nationwide once the BT 21CN has been rolled out
nationally over the next 2-3 years, and apparently they're going to start
switching on exchanges from early next year. So we'll have fast enough
connections to receive HD within the next couple of years. And after that
it's pretty inevitable that we'll move to 50-100 Mbps connection speeds.

Everyone is overlooking DRM. The various devices currently in use, the
iPlayer etc, all attempt to impose DRM on the user. So by 201x or
thereabouts there may well be limited or no timeshifting, no advert
skipping, and certainly no stockpiling material for watching when the
user wants.

For many people the heyday of FTA television is now. If your picture of
the future comes to pass we'll be looking back nostalgically at the days
of 20-30 free DVB-T channels that we could timeshift, archive and ad
skip.

--

Immunity is better than innoculation.

Peter
.