| Why IPTV? I don't really understand the infatuation with IPTV, or at least how it's implemented with current providers such as AT&T U-Verse. The way Verizon does it with FiOS TV seems like the way to go, since it's compatible with existing equipment and doesn't have any restriction on the number of TVs receiving HD channels. |
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 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:5
 ·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
| Verizon is doing both. As a bridge they deployed technology emulating existing HFC CATV network. This got them up and running as quickly as possible. They are also experimenting with IPTV.
IPTV represents a totally different way to distribute video, more like going to the Library then watching TV. One needs to keep in mind broadcast TV and Radio business model is an outgrowth of technology limitations. Prior to the Internet is was impossible to deliver customized content. High speed Internet access eliminates that constraint.
Except for live events there is no reason to "broadcast" by that I mean send the same programs to millions of households at the same time.
I'm a little surprised FairPoint is doing this. Only a small percentage of their customers, those connected to FAST (Verizon FIOS), have a fast enough first-mile connection to support IPTV. The bulk of Fairpoint's investment is going to expand DSL in rural area. Long DSL circuits mean speed is too low to deliver TV.
The other business reason to invest in IPTV is because it increases demand for faster Internet access.
/tom |
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 tubbynetreminds me of the danse russePremium,MVM
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:I don't really understand the infatuation with IPTV, or at least how it's implemented with current providers such as AT&T U-Verse. The way Verizon does it with FiOS TV seems like the way to go, since it's compatible with existing equipment and doesn't have any restriction on the number of TVs receiving HD channels. from what i have seen (and i am by *no* means a video guy, but the majority of the savings from an iptv solution comes in on the provider end in terms of overhead space and management. you no longer have to worry about pulling down digital (most often) feeds, perform analog conversion (if required), modulate the data with a carrier, and then throw it on the wire (at a cost of frequency bandwidth of your existing plant). as more and more services have been added to the typical "connected" household, many providers (especially cable) have experience last-mile bandwidth crises because there is not enough spectrum to handle X analog channels, your smattering of digital channels, your upstream and downstream carriers for your internet, as well as a separate channel for digital voice. providers such as cox have tried to take an aggressive stand and push 1ghz plant to all markets, giving them a little more space to play, especially as d3 comes out and requires multiple channels for the up and downstream communication.
in a pure iptv solution (and i still consider fios iptv), all of your data remains digital, in the sense that there is no frequency modulation with a carrier at a central node. everything is just a packet on a data wire and you are limited only by the speed of your fiber links. less overhead, less gear, easier to mess around with channels, etc at the headend. the only thing that fios is doing (and is very advantageous) is the use of moca. they understand that most houses have been wired for cable/satellite and have existing rg6 through the walls, etc. using moca, they can push iptv to the home and let the moca boxen convert for easier viewing (even though a digital box is still required). i have a feeling that if verizon said that they needed to run new cables through a person's house for fiostv, the penetration rate of such a service wouldn't be as large.
my two bits.
q. |
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| reply to tschmidt
Unless you're doing IP multicast, you're going to consume more bandwidth by doing IPTV versus doing regular broadcast TV over a HFC type of network.
For on demand, IPTV works well. For broadcast channels, I think it's going to needlessly consume bandwidth. |
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| reply to tubbynet
said by tubbynet:from what i have seen (and i am by *no* means a video guy, but the majority of the savings from an iptv solution comes in on the provider end in terms of overhead space and management. you no longer have to worry about pulling down digital (most often) feeds, perform analog conversion (if required), modulate the data with a carrier, and then throw it on the wire (at a cost of frequency bandwidth of your existing plant). as more and more services have been added to the typical "connected" household, many providers (especially cable) have experience last-mile bandwidth crises because there is not enough spectrum to handle X analog channels, your smattering of digital channels, your upstream and downstream carriers for your internet, as well as a separate channel for digital voice. providers such as cox have tried to take an aggressive stand and push 1ghz plant to all markets, giving them a little more space to play, especially as d3 comes out and requires multiple channels for the up and downstream communication. in a pure iptv solution (and i still consider fios iptv), all of your data remains digital, in the sense that there is no frequency modulation with a carrier at a central node. everything is just a packet on a data wire and you are limited only by the speed of your fiber links. less overhead, less gear, easier to mess around with channels, etc at the headend. the only thing that fios is doing (and is very advantageous) is the use of moca. they understand that most houses have been wired for cable/satellite and have existing rg6 through the walls, etc. using moca, they can push iptv to the home and let the moca boxen convert for easier viewing (even though a digital box is still required). i have a feeling that if verizon said that they needed to run new cables through a person's house for fiostv, the penetration rate of such a service wouldn't be as large. my two bits. q. FiOS is not IPTV except for the VoD portion.
The regular TV channels use the exact same technology that regular cable companies do. The only difference is that the fiber goes all the way to your house and not to a node on the street. |
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 RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:I don't really understand the infatuation with IPTV, or at least how it's implemented with current providers such as AT&T U-Verse. The way Verizon does it with FiOS TV seems like the way to go, since it's compatible with existing equipment and doesn't have any restriction on the number of TVs receiving HD channels. One advantage of IPTV over regular TV is that regular TV uses one channel per TV Channel. IPTV, since it uses TCP/IP and more than one TCP/IP session can simultaneously use a TV Channel, can use Multicast to carry the TV Channel Stream. This usage, of course, requires that you use IPv6 Multicast not IPv4 Multicast since the latter has an individual stream per user (STB) while the former has one stream that all STBs tuned to that TV Channel will receive (the box is told to monitor a designated IPv6 IPN that is the destination of the stream - a feature of IPv6 where the user's host can have more than one IPN at the same time). |
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tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:5 Reviews:
·Fairpoint Commun..
·Hollis Hosting
| reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:Unless you're doing IP multicast, you're going to consume more bandwidth by doing IPTV versus doing regular broadcast TV over a HFC type of network. For on demand, IPTV works well. For broadcast channels, I think it's going to needlessly consume bandwidth. I assume internally ISP will use some form of Multicast to save not only internal network bandwidth to to reduce load on video servers.
"Wasting bandwidth" is always a contentious issue. It really only comes into play if you don't have enough. Unused bandwidth is like empty seats on an airplane.
If we assume both first-mile and internal network has enough capacity to support wide deployment of demand based IPTV there is no reason to "conserve bandwidth."
/tom |
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| reply to RARPSL
Is U-Verse using multicast? Why can only two or three sets receive HD channels at the same time?
This is a big deal breaker for me. |
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RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:Unless you're doing IP multicast, you're going to consume more bandwidth by doing IPTV versus doing regular broadcast TV over a HFC type of network. For on demand, IPTV works well. For broadcast channels, I think it's going to needlessly consume bandwidth. Broadcast is suited to Multicast (at least IPv6 MC) since more than one TCP/IP Stream can be carried over the same bandwidth as a single TV Channel. Since with IPv6 the STB can be assigned not only its own private IPN (needed to talk to the headend as well as receive On Demand) but others that are used for TCP/IP Broadcast. While IPv6 MC, each MC stream has its own destination IPN. The STP is told when it tunes to TV Channel X, to listen to the IPN that is carrying the TV Channel X stream. |
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RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:Is U-Verse using multicast? Why can only two or three sets receive HD channels at the same time? This is a big deal breaker for me. There is a major difference between IPv4 MC and IPv6 MC. with IPv4 you have a seperate session for each user's stream so you have duplicate streams with the same content (one each addressed to the IPN of a user who is watching that content). This is like each user connecting to YouTube and watching the same video. With IPv6 there is only one stream and each user watches it.
As to your question about U-Verse each stream uses part of your available download bandwidth. Multicast will not help since there is still the need to receive the stream. IPv6 MC reduces the total bandwidth on the node allowing more IPTV streams to be carried. |
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| All of this is good in theory, but until a provider actually deploys IPTV that will not limit the number of TVs per household, I'm afraid it's a crippled product that's inferior to current HFC networks.
In other words, if I had the choice between U-Verse and cable, I'd probably end up sticking with cable due to the number of TVs limitation. |
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tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:5 Reviews:
·Fairpoint Commun..
·Hollis Hosting
| said by fifty nine:if I had the choice between U-Verse and cable, I'd probably end up sticking with cable due to the number of TVs limitation. Agree - get no argument from me on that.
Sweet spot for VDSL is 50 Mbps at 1500 feet. 50 Mbps is not enough bandwidth to support more then three HDTV streams and requires costly deployment of Remote Terminals to shorten copper loop length.
Verizon is taking the right approach. Emulate HFC for rapid time to market and deploy IPTV as it matures. BPON is only 622 Mbps shared by typically 16 customers. That is only 38.8 Mbps per customer. BPON uses ATM that effectively reduces customer payload to only 35 Mbps. 35 Mbps is a lot of bandwidth in today's broadband market by not enough for serious IPTV.
Migration to GPON substantially improves the situation, 2 G and elimination of ATM yields 125 Mbps per customer.
/tom |
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 lovswr
join:2001-09-15
Smyrna, GA | reply to RARPSL
Would this allow me to pause live TV. If many users are all streaming from one, how long can I individually manipulate those bits?
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lovswr = good hivswr = bad |
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Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | reply to tschmidt
said by tschmidt:Except for live events there is no reason to "broadcast" by that I mean send the same programs to millions of households at the same time. /tom Theoretically true but both linear digital cable and IPTV have their advantages and disadvantages. Only about 30 (major broadcast and cable network) channels have really large viewership and with current technology it makes sense to provide them through linear digital cable. The several hundred channels that have relatively small viewership however waste a tremendous amount of bandwidth when provided in such a way and are much better suited to non-linear transmission such as IPTV. |
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| reply to fifty nine
I agree. The "FiOS TV" model seems like the way to go. The picture quality is much better on FiOSTV than U-Verse. I really hate the viewing restrictions on U-verse. If one of these companies was smart, they'd buy a satellite company for TV and just offer fast internet service. |
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| reply to tschmidt
Well, I like your 'other' business reason to invest in IPTV, but we don't currently have enough bandwidth for the number of individual streams needed or wanted at the quality it should be. I had a problem last night where I wanted to record two HD streams and finish watching a third. It couldn't be done on U-Verse ( as an example). The problem is worse because we can not record and watch HD on two TVs. If we had much more bandwidth, then maybe IPTV would work, but right now it isn't quite there. I'm sure the solution will be to make the image quality even worse than it is... That's not acceptable. I love the idea of IPTV, but the implementation leaves something to be desired so far... |
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| reply to fifty nine
BINGO! |
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| reply to fifty nine
I hope they're not. We've almost canceled U-Verse because of this issue. The other option is to go TWC, and I HATE, HATE, HATE them. We can not do DirecTV ( condo, no lOS), which would be a good alternate, IMHO. |
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| reply to lovswr
You can pause live TV if you have a DVR. |
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Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:All of this is good in theory, but until a provider actually deploys IPTV that will not limit the number of TVs per household, I'm afraid it's a crippled product that's inferior to current HFC networks. IOW IPTV should (eventually) work great with FTTHome and that's what Fairpoint wants to use it with. BTW, even Verizon tends to limit VOD, etc. to 7 TVs per household. |
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