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| reply to jfmezei
Re: CRTC Decision August 30/2010 In the IPTV scenario, there is a benefit to being smart about the bitrate because overall, it lowers load. So for example, while I may have to factor in the max bitrate so I can calculate the capacity for simultaneous streams, lowering the B/W of certain streams by using more compression or a variable bit rate will lower the load at each point. The practical effect could be that if I watch 3 action channels, I have 5 megs of internet bandwidth leftover to the home, but if it is 3 weather channels, I could have 15mbps.
With QAM cable, there is no added benefit to variable bit rates. But there is a benefit in that I could group 4-5 simple channels in a QAM and perhaps 2-3 action channels in a QAM. As cable providers move to IP based solutions, they will see the same benefits a telco IPTV provider would. | |
Reviews:
 ·Bell Fibe
4 edits | I have a Bell FibeTV box, and right now it presently allows me 2 HDTV and 2 SDTV channels.
The line sync is 25Mbps/4Mbps and speedtests show approx 22500/3500 with the TV's turned off. Each HD channel is 720p and uses 6 to 7 Mbps in H.264 (which looks better than a Rogers MPEG2 channel -- and a 320 gigabyte HDD can record 100 hours of high-def). My speedtests go down to 16 Mbps when the box is recording or watchin a HD channel, and I go down to approx 10 Mbps when the box is doing two HD channels.
I think that constant bit-rate is better from a QoS perspective. I've been able to do Dropbox file transfers (video editing of self-recorded video, between friends throughout the U.S.) at a whopping 2.7 Mbytes/second to 2.8 Mbytes/secon, and suddenly turn on the TV to perfectly smooth HDTV, with the dropbox transfers immediately dropping to 2.0 Mbytes/second with absolutely no interference, no stutter (not even a single frame of stutter) to the IPTV. The QoS behaviour of the hardware is apparently really very good and seems to be set up to work flawlessly at my location so far, even when I simultaneously max out my upstream/downstream at the same time. I'm on a 100% Ethernet infrastructure for both TV and Internet (the FibeTV box is connected via Ethernet.... no coax cable). VBR will have a lot nastier QoS management, so I think CBR is better for now. Each HD channel, regardless of station, appears to be roughly 6-7 Mbps in 720p, and is pretty good quality, better than Rogers cable despite lower bitrate due to the use of H.264 ... (only terrestrial HD at 19 Mbps and no subchannels seems better). It's nice to know predictably how fast my Internet is. I glance at my PVR, and can guesstimate my speedtest to +/- 1Mbps, based on how many channels my PVR is recording/watching.
Internet (and by definition, Fibe TV) was down a lot yesterday, so there's some growing pains. And the Motorla VIP1232 settop box has crashed a couple times (it autorebooted), mainly during unusual situations of being disconnected, although far more reliable than I've seen certain infamous Rogers boxes to be. It's a brand new service after all, but it has remarkably few glitches for such a brand new service in Canada. I still have my TekSavvy Cable, but am undecided whether I keep both connections -- Fibe TV (and probably the other carrier based IPTV services such as Telus Optik) is the best TV service in Canada, while I prefer TekSavvy, but Fibe TV includes a 25 Mbps connection included (at Fibe6 prices, since it slows down to 6 Mbps if 2 HDTV and 2 SDTV channels are all being recorded simultaneously -- my Motorola box can record 4 shows simultaneously).
My rationale for getting Fibe TV is I wanted a TiVo-like box with high-def. The Fibe TV box has the equivalent of a season pass feature (record all episodes), search feature, 14 days of TV guide data, keep-until-space-needed or until-i-delete, as well as record-extra-time-at-end feature (useful for sports too), keep configurable number of episodes or all episodes, good high-def widescreen onscreen TV guide with PIP capability, etc. And 100 hours of HD recording in one box. If one wanted the best high-def PVR in Canada, the Mediaroom-based IPTV boxes (used by Bell Fibe TV) are among the best, since TiVo is not available in high-def in Canada (yet)...
Someday, there'll be fierce competition for IPTV, who knows. I'm a reluctant Bell triple-play customer, chiefly because I wanted the best Canadian high-def PVR... | |
Reviews:
 ·TekSavvy DSL
 ·Cogeco Cable
| said by mdrejhon:My rationale for getting Fibe TV is I wanted a TiVo-like box with high-def. The Fibe TV box has the equivalent of a season pass feature (record all episodes), search feature, 14 days of TV guide data, keep-until-space-needed or until-i-delete, as well as record-extra-time-at-end feature (useful for sports too), keep configurable number of episodes or all episodes, good high-def widescreen onscreen TV guide with PIP capability, etc. And 100 hours of HD recording in one box. If one wanted the best high-def PVR in Canada, the Mediaroom-based IPTV boxes (used by Bell Fibe TV) are among the best, since TiVo is not available in high-def in Canada (yet)... I've been doing that for years using a small Acer Revo neatly tucked behind my TV. Best of all it can share all its recordings with other TV's that also have Acer Revo's stuck on the back.
Now I use ATSC antenna as my source which limits me to 24 HD channels. Which is true 1080i/720p HD at up to 22Mbps.
The advantage is my price is $ 0 per month. I will supplement that with a Netflix subscription once they launch later this year. Bell can take their Fib service, including its huge annual cost and keep it.
I'd rather have my Revo + XBMC (or Boxee or whatever UI floats your boat) and get things like Hulu, ability to playback MKV's ability to record 4 HD streams at once, and so on and so on... I prefer open standards and over the top services. At 25MBPS there's no reason OTT services can't come directly from providers such as HBO or whomever.
That's where the market is moving. The real competition should be who can give the fastest cheapest pipe to the internet. Regulation should be centered on making that happen, the market will cause the remainder of innovation to sprout products and services from there. | |
| said by CanadianRip:At 25MBPS there's no reason OTT services can't come directly from providers such as HBO or whomever. Just because subscribers can oder 25Mbps does not mean that the entire upstream infrastructure would be able to handle the whole population pulling 20Mbps at the same time. Simply take TSI as an example, 60-70k subscribers sharing 16x 1GbE AHSSPI yields an average bandwidth of only ~250kbps... nowhere near enough to support a significant chunk of the subscriber base watching 4Mbps stream at the same time during peak hours.
If HBO had to stream everything as unicast to 100M subscribers, they would need over 300Tbps of transit capacity which would be quite technically challenging and expensive... right now, Google, Facebook and others are complaining about how hard it is to implement even "lowly" 1Tbps interconnect capacity between sites. | |
jfmezeiPremium
join:2007-01-03
Pointe-Claire, QC
kudos:22 | reply to CanadianRip
Bell's system is based on Microsoft's Mediaroom. So if STBs crash, it is normal.
Mediaroom isn't all that new. AT&T also uses it. And if I am not mistaken other Telcos in Canada use it, but may be using an older version.
Just because your internet throughput drops by a steady 7mbps does not mean that the TV feed takes a constant 7mbps. It can be the DLSAM which drops throughput on your internet VLAN by 7mbps for each HD channel you open. But the HD channel itsel may have a very variable bitrate within that 7mbps total. | |
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