rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
 ·Charter Pipeline
| Great! Now they can oversubscribe VIDEO!
This technology sounds really interesting but the article I read said operators need to be very careful how they over allocate "standard channels". Standard channels being those that are part of the basic or expanded tiers for which everyone pays even if they don't watch them.
Unlike VOD, where you don't pay if the system cannot find the bandwidth to stream the content, when the plant runs out of bandwidth to deliver standard channel, subscribers are going to get steamed.
It seems that all this fuss is for the coax portion of the HFC. I would guess that the fiber portion has plenty of bandwidth for all the HD channels and packet bandwidth we could ever need or want. Rather than invest in exotic switching games, why not use the investment to push fiber deeper into the coax plant? If AT&T is trying to deliver U-Verse over a mile of POTS copper, surely the bandwidth available in a mile of conditioned, tuned and amplified coax blows that away and more than compensates for the shared architecture. |
|
zed260
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN | wrong you can never have enough bandwidth
as for fiber even it is being pushed in some ares to its limts
with this technology we could easily see around 3 too 5 times the number of channels even over fiber |
|
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | Pushed to its limits? Care to share? |
|
zed260
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN
·Charter Pipeline
| well you can only send a certain number of chanels over fiber
heck i have around 500 channels in my area and i would gladly pay more to get more channels
theres a limit to how many channels you can send though fiber
however with sdv
you can in theory see 200 plus megabit internet connections as common as 5 or 10 is now
maybe 2000 tv channels maybe more |
|
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
·Charter Pipeline
| I don't understand why 500 channels is the limit. Did they bury one strand? Is fiber no more capable than coax?
Right now I have ~200 channels arriving to my house over coax that is not using SDV. Add to that the fact that ~75 of those channels are double-transmitted (once in digital and once in analog). I've read that several digital channels (if not more) can be transmitted using the bandwidth of one analog channel. If true, 75 x 3 = 219. 200 + 219 = 419. My coax system also has VOD, HSI and Phone service.
I'm not great at math but somewhere in my second paragraph I'll bet there is at least the capacity to carry 500 digital channels. If I had fiber all the way to my door, there would be no improvement?
If this is true then I don't understand all the fuss about fiber. It's not limitless but when compared to copper or coax, I thought it was practically unlimited. |
|
zed260
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN
·Charter Pipeline
edit:
November 21st, @12:38PM
| reply to rradina
your most likely on fiber right now
as for bandwidth 1 gigahertz fiber is equal to about 166 analog channels each analog channel is equil to about 10 digital channels or 1660 or around 2 to 3 hd channels 500 hd channels
as for internet and phone they use almost no bandwith
12 megherts for phone to around hundreds of phones both ways
internet is less 8 megahertz
if you were on pure coax you'd have tops 74 analog channels no internet or phone ether
as for the double transmitted that not entirely true its analog even if you have a digital cable box since they don't wanna waste bandwidth transmitting same channel twice
i have 500 channels 78 analog 400 digital and phone/internet |
|
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
edit:
November 21st, @02:35PM
| reply to rradina
said by rradina 
I'll bet there is at least the capacity to carry 500 digital channels. If I had fiber all the way to my door, there would be no improvement?
If this is true then I don't understand all the fuss about fiber. It's not limitless but when compared to copper or coax, I thought it was practically unlimited.
Fiber has lots of bandwith, but the cable boxes only have 860 Mhz tuners. 860 Mhz = 136 channels "slots", digital compression allows that 136 "slots" to have more viewable channels.
In reality that 860 Mhz signal over coax equals about 5 gbps bandwidth, but industry standard method of using that bandwidth limits the number of channels able to be carried on it.
To get around that cable box tuner limitation means either new cable boxes (with higher rated tuners or fiber inputs) or a different method (SDV or IPTV) to put the content on the channels. |
|
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
·Charter Pipeline
| reply to zed260
Regarding fiber -- I'm sure fiber is in the network but I still have good ole coax coming to my house. The pedestal in my back yard is also still coax. I don't know where it goes to fiber but that's not the point. The point is, they are able to deliver a lot of service over "last mile" coax. If they spent their money pushing fiber even deeper (like the telco FTTH plans), wouldn't this make more sense than a voodoo SDV oversubscribing scheme?
Eventually this is where everything will probably go but the cable company doesn't want a la carte programming and SDV seems like they are trying to cheat fate.
Regarding my system's digital package. The package used to be mostly analog with only some digital channels. However, now the digital package is all digital. Yet they still carry the analogs because I have a lot of old TVs in my house without converter boxes and they still get expanded basic.
Bottom line, I question whether a single strand of fiber is limited to 500 continuously transmitted streams. Maybe there are limitations with current techniques or equipment but that's the beauty of building a quality plant. Later you can upgrade the repeaters, head ends and CPE. And the smart operator buries multiple strands so that future upgrades can be paced without disrupting the existing products. Just use a different strand. |
|
