BT to Offer TV-on-Demand via Broadband

Ignition wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

But you'd look really silly if anyone was watching you. Also,
standing on the highest mountain and shouting about it is a highly
inefficient way to get your message across, because sound levels
drop with the inverse square of distance, and the highest mountains
are invariably sparsely populated, so nobody would hear you. You'd
probably be better taking up spamming instead.

I think most who took that view would have their heads way too far up
their own recta to see or hear me anyway to be quite honest.


No, as I mentioned last time, sound intensity levels drop with distance,
so whether people have their heads up their arses or not doesn't matter,
because the sound won't travel far enough. That's why red indians used
smoke signals innit, otherwise they'd just have shouted to each other.

Anyway, before I let you get on with, er, whatever you're doing, I'd
suggest you take up buddhist meditation, and while meditating consider
yourself to be a grain of sand in the desert, and that will help you get
over your injustice that you once had to reduce your broadband
bandwidth, and you will feel peace and tranquility and you may even come
to love BT for allowing you to have broadband at all.


--
Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info

DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband
internet and FM

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html

Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law
(Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if
that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is
likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible
alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have
some competition in the premium-content arena.

Unlikely. 2mb will be the fastest for a long time yet because of
underinvestment by BT. Other countries get much faster and beter services
for much cheaper than what we pay for 512k. Eg. Hong kong, £15, 10mb.
Compare that with the UK's fantastic 512kb/s for £30 at a massive ten times
faster than dial-up, and tiscali are slow coaches... Hmmmm.

"Moldy" wrote in message
...
The only problem with your calculation is that you are working it
through based on the speed YOU were using, not the maximum speed which
was available.

You can have any speed you want. Lots of T3 lines and a nice server to tie
them all up you can have as fast as you like

All at a cost of course....

And, of course, the maximum speeds of domestic broadband services is much
faster and cheaper in other countries.

"Antony Colwood" wrote in message
...
IIRC BT developed ADSL in the '80's for Video on Demand but couldn't
actually provide a service because the regulatory framework of the time
forbade them from being a broadcaster.

This is highly unlikely. Look at how BT have made a mess of broadband in
britain and look at other countries with 15mb and even faster services for
cheaper than what we pay for 512kb

Max wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 18:04:36 -0000, DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

I've just recorded 1 minute each of BBC1 and Channel 4, and the
average bit rates we

BBC1 = 4.79 Mbps
Channel 4 = 4.03 Mbps

Simple maths shows that you're wrong anyway.

OK, so go and argue with Nebula. I took the figures I quoted from the
"Technical Information" dialogs in Digi-TV.


It's not me that needs to argue with anybody, you're the one that's
wrong, I'm just pointing out where you're wrong. And I've had a Nebula
DigiTV card, and I've seen where it says 15 Mbps for BBC1, but this is
just data that's extracted from the video stream, but it's actually
incorrect information. You get the same incorrect information out of
PVAstrumento (http://www.offeryn.de/pvas_prerelease.htm), here's an
excerpt from a report file for a Channel 4 programme run through it:

"VIDEO: Resolution 704 x 576
(cropped D1)
Aspect ratio is 16:9
Frame rate 25.00 fps
Nominal bitrate 15000000 bps
first PTS: 00:04:26.599

AUDIO: MPEG-1, Layer 2
48.0 kHz, Stereo
Bitrate 192 kbps
Frame Length 24.0 ms (576 bytes)
first PTS: 00:04:26.514"

which says the *nominal* bit rate is 15 Mbps, but near the bottom it
reports the actual bit rates, like this extract from teh same file:

"Video bitrate: max 5418 , avg 3801 kbps"



This is the 2nd grossly incorrect post I've read of yours today. I
never have really understood why people try to sound so certain about
something, yet end up getting it so wrong? Oh well.

This from the guy who isn't even aware of MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3?
ROTFLMAO!


I suggest you get off the floor, wipe the smile off your face, and
realise that DVB-T, DVB-S and DVB-C do not use MPEG Audio Layer 3. I am
aware *of* MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3, because it's the very well known MP3
format, but it cannot be used in DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C or DAB. For
example, from the DAB specification ETSI 300 401
(http://wwwbode.cs.tum.edu/Par/arch/d...s/dab_main.pdf 1.85 MB) it
says in the 4th paragraph at the start of chapter 7 Audio Coding:

"The simplified block diagram of the audio decoder in the receiver,
shown in figure 22, accepts the DAB audio frame in the syntax defined in
subclause 7.3.2 which is a conformant subset of the MPEG Audio Layer II
[3, 14] bit stream syntax defined in subclause 7.3.1. This allows the
use of an MPEG Audio Layer II [3, 14] decoder."

You won't find it mentioning anywhere that it uses Layer III, because it
cannot use it, simple as that, and the same goes for all the DVB spec's.


--
Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info

DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband
internet and FM

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Ignition wrote:

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:


But you'd look really silly if anyone was watching you. Also,
standing on the highest mountain and shouting about it is a highly
inefficient way to get your message across, because sound levels
drop with the inverse square of distance, and the highest mountains
are invariably sparsely populated, so nobody would hear you. You'd
probably be better taking up spamming instead.


I think most who took that view would have their heads way too far up
their own recta to see or hear me anyway to be quite honest.



No, as I mentioned last time, sound intensity levels drop with distance,
so whether people have their heads up their arses or not doesn't matter,
because the sound won't travel far enough. That's why red indians used
smoke signals innit, otherwise they'd just have shouted to each other.

Anyway, before I let you get on with, er, whatever you're doing, I'd
suggest you take up buddhist meditation, and while meditating consider
yourself to be a grain of sand in the desert, and that will help you get
over your injustice that you once had to reduce your broadband
bandwidth, and you will feel peace and tranquility and you may even come
to love BT for allowing you to have broadband at all.


I'm emmigrating in a year or so to another G8 country with probably less
availability, but 10mbit/1mbit cable and 8mbit/768kbit DSL for similar
prices to mid-range 1Mbit DSL here so no chance of liking BT

Max wrote:

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:08:21 +0000, Ignition wrote:


Bulldog are trialling and Easynet have been offering 8Mbps products for
a while now.


I believe they had to jump through a lot of hoops to demonstrate there
would be no RFI problems, though.


Because at the moment 512k is being seen as the standard speed in UK
DSL. Until prices drop on the higher bandwidth products, and there's no
incentive to do that while they aren't being superceded, it will remain
that way.

Some ISPs offer 512k as an entry level service fgs.


Huh? Did you mean 128 and 256kbps services such as those offered by
Tiscali?

That was silly of me, was referring to other countries not this one, the
150k and 256k services available from Tiscrapi amongst others certainly
aren't even entry level 'broadband'. Would call them midband and nothing
more.

We're busily
dropping our already pretty low end lower still due to cheap dialup and
monopoly priced DSL.


The problem here is: What price should ADSL be, and who is going to
subsidise it if it's not profitable to the telcos? BT are entitled to
expect a reasonable ROI, after all.

Reasonable certainly, however one might question why they are enabling
everywhere and how much subsidy between exchanges occurs if this
reasonable ROI is so essential. Indeed how quickly do they project
receiving this investment back?
I'm not saying too much more about BT's finances, they make a fair
amount of cash but the city knows they are in for more regulation or EC
intervention, note their Price/Earnings ratio and compare it to their peers.
Also one might note the extra competition elsewhere, the effect that
inevitably has on quality of product and that BT are due another kicking
from the European Commission for their obstructive conduct towards LLU.

True, RADSL only works at up to 512kbps, but that's intended to get
the greatest possible coverage in terms of distance from the exchange.
It's not at all clear what the solution will be for cost-effective,
high-bandwidth connectivity in more remote areas.


It isn't DSL, however the current obsession with DSL means that local
authorities are more than happy to throw money at BT to deliver it to
exchanges at the expense of wireless companies.


Forget wireless as a possible solution for mass connectivity - there
simply isn't enough available spectrum to support it. It's suitable
for niche markets, however.

You might be right, however for isolated 'niche' rural areas it offers
some options.
For most, DSL = 'broadband'.


Cable is usually lumped in with "broadband", even though the term is
technically incorrect.

In what way? I'm interested. Is 6Mhz wide QAM16 downstream and
1.6/3.2MHz QPSK upstream not 'broad' enough?
My comment was more though referring to 'BTBroadband' etc and BT using
their extra marketing clout to make DSL synonimous with HSI.

Max wrote:


OK. Your meaning was unclear, was all.



The problem here is: What price should ADSL be, and who is going to
subsidise it if it's not profitable to the telcos? BT are entitled to
expect a reasonable ROI, after all.


Reasonable certainly, however one might question why they are enabling
everywhere and how much subsidy between exchanges occurs if this
reasonable ROI is so essential. Indeed how quickly do they project
receiving this investment back?
I'm not saying too much more about BT's finances, they make a fair
amount of cash but the city knows they are in for more regulation or EC
intervention, note their Price/Earnings ratio and compare it to their peers.
Also one might note the extra competition elsewhere, the effect that
inevitably has on quality of product and that BT are due another kicking

from the European Commission for their obstructive conduct towards LLU.

Fair point.
To some extent, this comes down to the regulatory framework in various
countries. The UK (or rather it's guv'mint) decided to pass telecom
infrastucture to the private sector, to the further impoverishment of
the populace in general. In that context, BT are entitled to charge
the going rate for leasing space in their exchanges for competing
telcos wanting to dip their beaks into LL unbundling. Because BT
already own the exchanges, they're in an excellent position to charge
rents that are reasonable in general commercial terms, but probably
not what the EC Commissioners had in mind when they called for
unbundling in the first place.

One would question going rates when it's cheaper for other telcos to
rent houses next door to most exchanges and run lines from exchange to
these properties! I'd be much happier with a cost plus model for these
things.

Forget wireless as a possible solution for mass connectivity - there
simply isn't enough available spectrum to support it. It's suitable
for niche markets, however.


You might be right, however for isolated 'niche' rural areas it offers
some options.


I really don't agree. Wireless systems are a LOT more cost-effective
in urban areas than rural. But wireless is inevitably rubbish when
latency is an issue - try gaming through a satellite downlink, for
instance.

Agreed, but where cost of backhaul is prohibitive wireless and satellite
offer options.

Cable is usually lumped in with "broadband", even though the term is
technically incorrect.


In what way? I'm interested. Is 6Mhz wide QAM16 downstream and
1.6/3.2MHz QPSK upstream not 'broad' enough?


Oh, gawd... (wishes he'd avoided the term )
Briefly, in radio and electronics, "broadband" refers to a system
which depends on modulated carriers over a range of frequencies. That
is in contrast to "baseband" systems. such as Ethernet, where the
information signal itself is transmitted over the medium.
More simply, DSL and similar work by sending "radio" signals down the
wires, while cable and such just send the raw data as a series of
bits.

That's what I thought you were saying. Actually monsieur the cable
network is not baseband, it's RF as well It's hybrid fibre/coax, have
a google of DOCSIS for more information. Transmitted over RF then media
conversion to fibre for transmission over CWDM or DWDM, it's digital
information encoded in symbols which are encoded in RF waves. Main
differences between cable and DSL are that cable is a broadcast
architecture based on time sharing, and uses QAM/QPSK rather than DMT
If/when baseband is implementable over EPON or similar with coax tail as
is being tested in Scandinavia you'll have 2 way data services of T3 and
up available to businesses, and maybe even 10mbit to homes. *drool*

My comment was more though referring to 'BTBroadband' etc and BT using
their extra marketing clout to make DSL synonimous with HSI.


You're too tolerant - I blame Tony Bliar, Tessa Jowell and their
cronies for the appalling mess we're facing. BT have only taken
advantage of a weak legislative legislature - which I guess is down to
us voters. (YMMV)

On the contrary, I live in a Liberal Democrat area and will be voting
that way, and I couldn't agree with you more. So far Ofcom are making
some of the noises I want to hear, time will tell if they decide to use
the extra teeth Parliament have given them.

Max wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 19:38:57 -0000, DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

you're the one that's wrong

Fine, I'm wrong. But you're still an arsehole.


Hahahahahahahahahahahaahaha.


--
Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info

DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband
internet and FM

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:04:31 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote:

Andrew wrote:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote:

Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law

How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could
get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still
too expensive.


Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up
pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows:

1995 - 33.6kbps
199? - 56kbps
2003 - 512kbps

so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen
different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling
speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very
close to Moore's Law:

33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps

For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband
connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty.

but then if the current rate of broadband take up continues and
'everybody' switches to it for TV, they are also giong to have to
cut the contention rates as well. I have 25:1 (I think its about
that). It will only take one or two to start watching streamed TV for
the speed to drop dramatically.

Currently I am getting close to maximum speed as I am one of the first
on a newly enabled exchange.

Les Hellawell
greetings from
YORKSHIRE - The White Rose County