Hello INTERNET TV; Good Bye Cable/Satellite?

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/f293a

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

Dead Duck, before it starts. Very few throughout the world have broadband, let alone 100 Mbit/s. The last figures I saw were >90% of Internet users were still on 56 kbit/s modem or lower. The absolute highest bitrate available here is 1.5 Mbit/s download (I have 1 Mbit/s max , more usually ½ that, ADSL, as it's the best affordable solution).

That is not the only limitation, though. To view live TV, you must have no bottlenecks between the transmitting server and the consumer, through an average of 8 nodes, no matter what the demand is. Very frequently, I can't even see a tiny 1 minute streaming video without a glitch, at a hundred or so kbits/s, even when I have a good connection to my ISP.

[lecter]

Well, it depends how you look at it...live streaming TV at good quality is indeed hard to achieve. However, using systems like the iTunes video store to download HDTV quality episodes right after they've aired is a great way to go...I love TV, but haven't had cable in my home for over 4 years now, nor do I miss it thanks to the marvel of captured episodes.

[Dr Mordrid]

Broadband penetration;





Streaming looks practical to me at least here, which is a huge market, once the speeds are upped.

That said: you don't need those speeds if the program is downloaded in the backround while viewing another. Not good for channel surfers, but for those of us without ADHD and who actually look at the channel guide at the start of the evening....

[Brian Ellis]

Aren't you mixing up your units? 3,000 megabit/s???????? 768 megabit/s MINIMUM????? I have 1 megabit/s MAXIMUM.

Even so, only <45% of US households have broadband today according to your figures. In many countries, this is ~0%, so this needs looking at globally, not parochially.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes I mixed them in the first draft which is what you quoted...it's early and it wasn't a good night, so put your shorts back on

Still; my point about straming & penetration stick. Streaming is only necessary for channel surfers, which we are not.

[wkulecz]

If AT&T is serious about this they will un-throttle their DSL pipes and open up the possibility to a lot more users. When I first got DSL is was "raw" and I was getting 3+ Mbit/s, the installer said his tests showed I could get 5+ Mbits/s if I upgradded to their premium "business" service. Now its throttled way back and I'm lucky to get 1 Mbit/sec, although they keep sending promo offers for service upgrades

OTOH Time-Warner's roadrunner is faster very early or late in the day, but much worse than DSL during peak times.

I've kept both because roadrunner Email service has frankly sucked, and it goes down alot. DSL has only been out twice, once when SBC swiched to yahoo and screwed up my account migration, and the second when Houston was mostly underwater from tropical storm Allison -- the story was one of the SBC facilities flooded and they took equipment from our DSL location and others in the city to restore phone service to the affected area, so our DSL was out for a few days, we never lost phone service on either line and could still get net acces via old school modem. True or BS I've no way to tell, but DSL has been way more reliable than cable, intrestingly the roadrunner service is out way more often than the cable TV service is.

TW in our area is going to become Comcast soon, and if the price goes up any more, I'm open to trying alternatives unless they add a lot more HD channels.

--wally.