HDTV Over IP

gravelpup writes " NASA Watch has this article about a NASA demo of streaming an HDTV feed over a 20Mbps network from D.C. to California. Suddenly, watching NASA TV at home over a dinky DSL connection doesn't seem so cool anymore." For some reason this just makes streaming high quality video over the net seem even further away to me.

Re:Stop whining about HDTV

[An Ominous Coward]

Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean the point is invalid. Companies try to maximize profits, not just make "enough".

Re:Stop whining about HDTV

[MajroMax]

Studio's hate HDTV. Why? Because it ruins a very important Video market. They now count on the fact that VCR's make low quality, grainy copies of on-air content. This means they can make tons of bank on [insert fav show here] box sets. Once you deal with a digital format they are sunk. People can now make a high quality recording for personal use. Hence no reason to buy an over priced box set from the local retailer.

Hell no. Having a family member that worked in broadcasting for 20 years, I can tell you that the reason that no one's producing HDTV equipment is cost.

You think that the _consumer_ gear costs an arm and a leg? Just try upgrading the cameras, monitors, editing equipment, and mastering equipment. For each studio.

On the station side, you're going to need a new control room, bloody TRANSMITTER [horribly expensive pieces of equipment], and sometimes a tower to boot, addition to ugrading the news studios and remote trucks (mirowave and satellite links).

And all that for crappy programming that three people in the entire country own the equipment to see in the native resolution.

the steady shift to "pay as you go" tv

[DrSkwid]

TV over IP is probably going to herald Video On Demand and you know what that means : pay as you go TV.

Maybe then though the bandwidth on the TV satellites can be utilised for IP traffic.

There are so many barriers to success though, that although it's a cool tech achievement widespread deployment will probably have to wait for a paradigm shift in the internet infrastructure. All those ISP's have got a lot of investment in their current hardware that the budgets probably project them for at least 5 years use.

My DSL provider (ntl:) is also a cable TV provider. The analogue TV & cable modem comes into my house on the same wire. 50 channels of TV & 1 x 512k data. I don't think that they are going to squeeze 20mbps of data through there too any time soon.

but let's look forward to fibre to the door and then we'll see things happen but probably not for quite a few years yet.

Our kids will probably get it but by then our eyes will be too dim to notice the difference between HDTV and analogue!

It would stand to reason then...

[iforgotmyfirstlogon]

... that NTSC over IP isn't all that far off. HDTV has 5 times the information of NTSC, ergo, NTSC over IP should only take up about 5Mb/sec.

-Freed

Technology envy

[Alien54]

There is the old adage I remember from retail, given the way people behaved sometimes. Some people would ask around for a system that would not cost much, and not be obsolete for 4 or 5 years.

The eventual answer was that "If you can buy it, it is obsolete."

Technology envy strikes again