Re: Ofcom says 4 national HD channels on DTT

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

Peter Hayes wrote:

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?

25 years? Not a chance. 15 years tops. Freeview will be analogous to
black and white TV in 10 years from now, so people will have migrated
away from it in droves.

People will increasingly be using on-demand over time as well,

On demand isn't multicasting, the ISP hardware requirements are
massive for OD. Pumping out a stream is chickenfeed in comparison.


I didn't say on-demand was multicasting. And you've got it the wrong way
round, because on-demand is easy for ISPs to provide, because there's no
real-time element - i.e. it can be fit in around when other users you're
sharing the DSLAM with are also using their connections, whereas live TV
streams are BOTH high bandwidth and real-time.

An HD live stream would be using a bit rate of say 10 Mbps, and as that's
real-time so no buffering is acceptable, that is *THE* most demanding
application, and on-demand will always be chicken feed in comparison due to
there being no real-time element involved.


which the Internet is ideally suited to whereas Freeview can't
deliver
jack *** on demand.

I treat television as an OD download mechanism, archiving content for
watching when I want.


Most people aren't as organised as to record everything they want to watch
before they watch it, and when on-demand viewing is available they don't
even need to do this, because they simply choose what they want to watch and
watch it.


If people have to shell out £1.99 a time for their OD content, which
is the obvious subtext, it'll have to work.


Why would people want to pay £1.99 for on-demand content? So far I've used
both the BBC iPlayer and 4oD to watch programmes I've missed, and I've not
paid a penny yet.

4oD provides films to download, which is basically a video rental service.
That kind of thing has its place, because it's easier to watch someone
on-demand rather than say getting DVDs sent to your house and then sending
them back again and so on.

You seem to have issues with on-demand for the sake of it, rather than
having any legitimate issues.


What I do see in the next 10-15 years is the end of broadcast
television as we know it today, irrespective of the delivery
platform. People will downloaded content, with live content being
limited to news and sport.


I think there will be a slow move towards viewing on-demand, with, as you
say, news and sport being watched live. But I fail to see why this is a bad
thing. I would much prefer to watch something exactly when I want to watch
it rather than having to watch it or at least record it at a certain time.

You've said yourself that what you do is assemble your own on-demand
"library" by recording stuff that you want to watch, so you're even bloody
doing this yourself already, and you're complaining about broadcast TV as we
know it today going into decline. You're basically being hypocritical.


Of course the broadcasters could scupper that, see below... But they'd
just be cutting their own throats.


Yes, they would be cutting their own throats if they tried to impose things
like forcing us to watch adverts and so on. But they're not stupid, so they
won't cut their own throats....


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.


Once you've recorded a stream on a PVR they'll obviously allow you
to skip the ads and so on - why wouldn't they let you do this? We'll
watch TV via the net on set-top boxes just like we do on Freeview or
whatever, it's just that they're connected to the Internet rather
than receiving a radio signal.

If that's the way it'll work then fine. But don't you see the
potential for the DRM weenies to prevent ad skipping?

http://www.onlinereporter.com/article.php?article_id=9433


I haven't got time to read that article, but of course it's *possible* to
stop ad skipping, but people would just not use that service and they'd use
whichever service did allow them to skip ads.


"ITV called ITV.com "total freedom of entertainment."

"The content will only be available for streaming, not downloading.
Also, viewers will not be able to fast-forward through the
commercials."

(Obviously you can't skip ads if the content can't be downloaded...)
Duh!


You can't fast forward adverts on live TV either, can you?

You can't blame ITV for stopping people skipping the ads on content they're
providing people to stream that they've missed - at the end of the day,
things like this simply make you more likely to set up the PVR to record
things.

But if I've missed something that I wanted to watch on ITV (which would be a
massive rarity), I'd prefer to watch it with ads in that not be able to
watch it at all because I'd missed it.


So there you have it - no PVRs - you probably can't even pause live
content should the phone ring.


No, you're assuming that there won't be any PVRs for live Internet streams,
but there will be. People will simply decide not to watch live Internet
streams if they can't skip ads whereas they can on other platforms.


That's a strong indication the way the broadcasters will approach
multicasting. No downloading for starters. [1]


Multicasting is by definition LIVE. It is simply the live TV stream being
simulcast over the Internet. You cannot fast forward live TV, and you cannot
fast-forward a live multicast stream - they haven't invented time travel
yet.

Multicast is simply a more efficient distribution method in comparison to
the ridiculously inefficient unicasting distribution method that live
streams use at present where every single person that wants to watch or
listen to a live stream is delivered with their own individual stream.

The required bandwidth for the broadcasters for unicast is:

total bandwidth = stream bandwith x number of users

The required bandwidth for the broadcasters for multicast is:

total bandwidth = stream bandwith x number of **ISPs**

Multicast reduces the Internet bandwidth requirements for the broadcasters
by about 99-99.9% - the higher the audience figures the higher the saving.


So in the true tradition of rip off Britain the user is being asked to
pay more for less.


Enlighten me as to why people won't be able to record multicast streams on
an IPTV PVR????


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info


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