"eager" wrote:
> What is this IP TV, should I buy another TV set now, or could I use the
> service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have.

The Onion covered this revolution about 9 years ago:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39109

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
news:Xns9A14AC775DD03JamesLLugojcom@216.168.3.30.. .
> "eager" wrote:
>> What is this IP TV, should I buy another TV set now, or could I use the
>> service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have.
>
> The Onion covered this revolution about 9 years ago:
>
> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39109
>

Thanks, but I am not talking about attaching a PC to my TV and installing a
TV card in my PC ...

"eager" writes:

> Thanks for answering my post, but you still haven't answered my question
> (not that you have to)
> " ... could I use the service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have"

Why don't you ask the vendor of the service?
And ask how much bandwidth it requires for High Def?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Bruce Barnett" wrote in message
news:yekprwpn0iw.fsf@mail.grymoire.com...
> "eager" writes:
>
>> Thanks for answering my post, but you still haven't answered my question
>> (not that you have to)
>> " ... could I use the service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have"
>
> Why don't you ask the vendor of the service?
> And ask how much bandwidth it requires for High Def?

Well, a sales person from a local Telco called me re phone and internet. I
asked him if they offer TV service as well, and he said they do, but had no
clue ....

"eager" wrote:
> Thanks for answering my post, but you still haven't answered my question
> (not that you have to)
> " ... could I use the service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have"

Bruce Barnett already pointed out that the only entity in a position to
give an authoritative answer is the service provider that is selling the
service. If they don't have an answer, then steer clear of them!

But as a guess, the answer is almost certainly yes - you should be able to
use your existing TV. The IP protocol is packetization layer used to route
data packets and a converter box would likely be supplied allowing hookup
to any TV. A service provider that required customers to buy new TVs would
(IMHO) have a dead-on-arrival business model.

On Dec 28, 7:21*pm, "eager" wrote:
> What is this IP TV, should I buy another TV set now, or could I use the
> service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have.

Real IPTV is simply another way of connecting TV sets to a "walled
garden." It uses IP multicast typically, instead of broadcast channels
like standard cable TV, allowing the telco to use its bandwidth-
limited lines to customer premises.

So in other words, you will not receive ALL of the broadcast channels
in a true IPTV system. The set-top-box will join the multicast group
of just one of the streams, or a small number simultaneously, or it
will request video-on-demand via a unicast IP stream.

But, for example, Verizon FiOS is *not* IPTV. Verizon FiOS is instead
very much like cable TV, inside the home. It too broadcasts all
channels simultaneously in your home, except for the video on demand
channels.

So, if the Toshiba HDD is set up to receive either terrestrial or
cable broadcasts, using the standard terrestrial or cable frequencies,
it will work just fine over Verizon FiOS, for unencrypted channels
anyway. (I am assuming it has no CableCard. If it does have CableCard,
then it should work over Verizon FiOS even for encrypted channels.)

If you are connected to true IPTV, you could perhaps use the HDD of
the Toshiba, but you would be limited to recording whatever channel
the IPTV STB is "tuned" to. If the IPTV STB has an internal timer and
a combined channel select feature (select different channels at
different times), in principle the HDD in the Toshiba could be made to
work okay. Just set the recording schedule in the IPTV STB, and
simutaneously set the HDD to record from the external input for that
same time period.

Bert

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
news:Xns9A15702AABC11JamesLLugojcom@216.168.3.30.. .
> "eager" wrote:
>> Thanks for answering my post, but you still haven't answered my question
>> (not that you have to)
>> " ... could I use the service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have"
>
> Bruce Barnett already pointed out that the only entity in a position to
> give an authoritative answer is the service provider that is selling the
> service. If they don't have an answer, then steer clear of them!
>
> But as a guess, the answer is almost certainly yes - you should be able to
> use your existing TV. The IP protocol is packetization layer used to route
> data packets and a converter box would likely be supplied allowing hookup
> to any TV. A service provider that required customers to buy new TVs would
> (IMHO) have a dead-on-arrival business model.

Thanks!

"Albert Manfredi" wrote in message
news:2aee5b68-4bf6-4a39-8daa-657221cf675f@a35g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 28, 7:21 pm, "eager" wrote:
> What is this IP TV, should I buy another TV set now, or could I use the
> service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have.

Real IPTV is simply another way of connecting TV sets to a "walled
garden." It uses IP multicast typically, instead of broadcast channels
like standard cable TV, allowing the telco to use its bandwidth-
limited lines to customer premises.

So in other words, you will not receive ALL of the broadcast channels
in a true IPTV system. The set-top-box will join the multicast group
of just one of the streams, or a small number simultaneously, or it
will request video-on-demand via a unicast IP stream.

But, for example, Verizon FiOS is *not* IPTV. Verizon FiOS is instead
very much like cable TV, inside the home. It too broadcasts all
channels simultaneously in your home, except for the video on demand
channels.

So, if the Toshiba HDD is set up to receive either terrestrial or
cable broadcasts, using the standard terrestrial or cable frequencies,
it will work just fine over Verizon FiOS, for unencrypted channels
anyway. (I am assuming it has no CableCard. If it does have CableCard,
then it should work over Verizon FiOS even for encrypted channels.)

If you are connected to true IPTV, you could perhaps use the HDD of
the Toshiba, but you would be limited to recording whatever channel
the IPTV STB is "tuned" to. If the IPTV STB has an internal timer and
a combined channel select feature (select different channels at
different times), in principle the HDD in the Toshiba could be made to
work okay. Just set the recording schedule in the IPTV STB, and
simutaneously set the HDD to record from the external input for that
same time period.

Thanks!

On Dec 28, 6:21*pm, "eager" wrote:
> What is this IP TV, should I buy another TV set now, or could I use the
> service with the same HDD Toshiba TV I have.
>
> Thanks

My opinion about multicast in general, which I think many in this
group might agree with:

It is far more complicated than it needs to be.

I shudder each time I think of someone buying special hardware for
IPTV or anything similar. From a technical point of view, there is no
need. In fact, it is feasible to have an essentially unlimited number
of TV channels today accessible to the individual with no upgrade in
hardware or capacity.

The problem is duct tape: people (both technical and non) were so
eager to get IPTV deployment that they started patching up whatever
they had to be able to make an offering. Then general public
responded as they normally do to this type of sillyness. First there
is great interest and enthusiasm, then the system fails, then the
public becomes frustrated, the salespeople institue a program of
proactive and prolonged denial, startups funded by venture capitalist
come and go in the confusion, then finally the public becomes wise to
the lies of the "it really is easy to use right now" crowd and is
turned off. When someone finally does get it right, the adoption rate
is significantly abated due to the sour taste left in people's mouths.

We are not yet at the point where the public is turned off, but we are
definitely still in the mix of people tripping over each other trying
to assert a monopoly on the market.

What I would like is to be able to stop using the word "TV"
altogether. I would prefer to replace all the junk in my entertainment
center, including my XBOX 360 Elite and my 9 ridiculous remote
controls, 8 of which I don't use, with a mid-range PC an substantial
surround-sound speaker system, and be able to tune to any available
channel of my a PC-based remote. There would be PC everywhere an no
mention of "TV". With the the 680GB online on my desktop and an extra
500GB somewhere around here, plus the 80GB on my portable, that should
be enough to record my favorite shows.

But right now I have to settle for this:

http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

Ironically, as I type this message using Google Groups, I see a couple
of adverts in the right column:

1. "Understand Voice Over IP Free eBook: 11 Chapters on VoIP. Decision
to Deployment Done Right. ShoreTel.com"

Or better said, "Usually when someone tries to decide to deploy VoIP,
they make a mess because, truly, it's a mess and not ready yet."

2. "Verizon Fios TV- Amazing It's here. Realize the full potential of
TV with Fiber Optics"

This ad is misleading. The full potential of TV does not require the
bandwidth offered by a fiber-optic cable. My 800KB/s home Internet
connection, while not allowing me to watch 20 channels at once, is
definitely sufficient to offer more than what is being offered by the
next ad: Few people can watch enough TV channels, with standard
encoding, to saturate a 100Gb/s link, and make sense of it.

3. "Rcn Tv Digital cable package with over 140 channels with PPV and
SVOD."

140? How about 50,000? That's what's possible today with existing
hardware. The IP multicast people, or other research groups, need to
clean up the model first.

We simply have to stop offering duct-tape solutions, and know that the
market will reward an offering with solid integrity with acceptance
and adoption.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On Dec 30, 12:07*am, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

> The problem is duct tape: people (both technical and non) were so
> eager to get IPTV deployment that they started patching up whatever
> they had to be able to make an offering. *Then general public
> responded as they normally do to this type of sillyness. First there
> is great interest and enthusiasm, then the system fails, then the
> public becomes frustrated, the salespeople institue a program of
> proactive and prolonged denial,

I don't see it quite that way. What I see, instead, is that IPTV was
oversold by people who deliberately obfuscated the truth, or maybe
they simply didn't know what they were talking about. But then, what
else is new among marketers?

IPTV is a standards-based approach which telcos could use to offer TV
to subscribing households, to make the user's experience similar to
what they had become accustomed to with cable TV. But since the
telco's last drop to customer premises was very limited compared with
cable, at best ADSL originally, no way could the telcos use the same
technique as cable or satellite. They could not just blast all 150-odd
broadband TV channels into every subscriber's home.

So, in spite of the marketing blather, IPTV was nothing more than a
closed system, just like cable or DBS, but the switching of channels
was done inside the network, rather than inside customer premises. It
did *not* mean that anyone could suddenly watch TV stations from
anywhere in the world. That can in principle be done with IP streaming
anyway, even before "IPTV" became a household term, assuming not too
many people do this at the same time, and assuming the content is made
available.

I'm always relieved when mindless hype becomes deflated. Too bad it
takes so long sometimes. IPTV is not the same as "TV streams over the
Internet." It is a subset of that. IPTV is more like "a cable TV-like
service offered by your telco."

Bert

In article <27fd141e-66e9-4c2a-97a7-
eac46f38fe3b@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, jaibuduvin@gmail.com says...

> I shudder each time I think of someone buying special hardware for
> IPTV or anything similar. From a technical point of view, there is no
> need. In fact, it is feasible to have an essentially unlimited number
> of TV channels today accessible to the individual with no upgrade in
> hardware or capacity.

You mean, use a PC instead of a cable or satellite tuner ("special
hardware")? It might be technically feasible, but is that what the
market wants? There are millions of desk calculators in use, even though
you could argue that, from a technical point of view, there is no need.
Every PC has a free calculator program that even emulates the appearance
of a real, physical calculator ("special hardware"), but you don't see
desk calculators going away.

> The problem is duct tape: people (both technical and non) were so
> eager to get IPTV deployment that they started patching up whatever
> they had to be able to make an offering. Then general public
> responded as they normally do to this type of sillyness. First there
> is great interest and enthusiasm, then the system fails, then the
> public becomes frustrated, the salespeople institue a program of
> proactive and prolonged denial, startups funded by venture capitalist
> come and go in the confusion, then finally the public becomes wise to
> the lies of the "it really is easy to use right now" crowd and is
> turned off. When someone finally does get it right, the adoption rate
> is significantly abated due to the sour taste left in people's mouths.

What do you mean by duct tape? Can you provide details about what you
think is wrong with existing offerings?


> What I would like is to be able to stop using the word "TV"
> altogether. I would prefer to replace all the junk in my entertainment
> center, including my XBOX 360 Elite and my 9 ridiculous remote
> controls, 8 of which I don't use, with a mid-range PC an substantial
> surround-sound speaker system, and be able to tune to any available
> channel of my a PC-based remote. There would be PC everywhere an no
> mention of "TV". With the the 680GB online on my desktop and an extra
> 500GB somewhere around here, plus the 80GB on my portable, that should
> be enough to record my favorite shows.

Such PCs exist today, complete with TV tuners and DVR functionality. And
people use them as such. You seem to find virtue in the PC's flexible
and programmable nature, but that doesn't mean that the general public
want to us a PC for everything. For example, you mention that you have
an Xbox 360. Why don't you just use a PC for playing games? You must
have found value in a turn-key proprietary gaming console. But
technically, is there anything it can do that a properly configured PC
cannot?

The same thing applies to set-top boxes for TV, be it IPTV, cable, or
satellite. Just because a PC could do it, does not mean that the buying
public wants to run out and replace their TV with their PC.

On Dec 31 2007, 8:48*pm, Ethan Howe wrote:
> In article <27fd141e-66e9-4c2a-97a7-
> eac46f38f...@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, jaibudu...@gmail.com says...
> You mean, use a PC instead of a cable or satellite tuner ("special
> hardware")? *It might be technically feasible, but is that what the
> market wants? There are millions of desk calculators in use, even though
> you could argue that, from a technical point of view, there is no need.
> Every PC has a free calculator program that even emulates the appearance
> of a real, physical calculator ("special hardware"), but you don't see
> desk calculators going away.

This is a good point but...when comparing two options, one must
consider all contextual elements when assessing virtue. In this case,
the form-factor of the calculator versus the form factor of a PC
cannot be ignored. If every desktop calculator came with dual 8GHz
CPU's with 16 terabytes of RAM, people might still refrain from using
them to do word processing because it would be ergonomically
inconvenient.

> What do you mean by duct tape? Can you provide details about what you
> think is wrong with existing offerings?

Good grief. I would not know where to begin.

When I look at the RFC's for IP multicast, etc. It's a mess. Of
course, this is my subjective opinion. The people who concocted IP
multicast might beg to differ. To assess virtue, I often use the
bright-19-year-old test: If a bright-19-year-old attempts to use a
proffered framework and finds employment is exceedingly difficult,
then something is wrong with the model.

> Such PCs exist today, complete with TV tuners and DVR functionality. And
> people use them as such. You seem to find virtue in the PC's flexible
> and programmable nature, but that doesn't mean that the general public
> want to us a PC for everything. For example, you mention that you have
> an Xbox 360. Why don't you just use a PC for playing games? You must
> have found value in a turn-key proprietary gaming console. But
> technically, is there anything it can do that a properly configured PC
> cannot?

Actually, I did not find value. The night I bought my XBOX 360 Elite,
I had to take it back to the store because the (custom-made) power
supply failed. This was a problem that Microsoft was supposed to have
fixed.

I bought it because my friend has one, and he kept nagging me to get
one, so I did. I like it, I guess. It cost almost as much as I would
have paid for a low-end PC, but then a low-end PC would not have the
graphics power of a dedicated console. I would much rather have used a
PC with a powerful graphics card. That way, I could play games, use
the phone, write code, and pay bills without leaving my couch. It
could also run my sound system, take speech-reconized input, etc.

About the general public: *Most* people who buy XBOX's are not are
aware that there is a general-purpose computer inside. Most people are
not aware that some PDA's can become more powerful than their "cell
phones" if the right RF add-on chip is provided .

This is all a matter of perception. What is a smartphone anyway? A
phone or a computer? Does an XBOX use a hard disk for mass storage?
Whem Microsoft or its affiliates writes games for XBOX, do they have
specialized compilers or do they use Visual Studio?

> The same thing applies to set-top boxes for TV, be it IPTV, cable, or
> satellite. Just because a PC could do it, does not mean that the buying
> public wants to run out and replace their TV with their PC.

The buying public has no idea. The buying public figures that, if it
were so simple to replace an expensive proprietary, monopolistic
device with general-purpose hardware, someone would have done it by
now.

I have a $180 million-dollar story about perception:

I worked for a starup that made a counter-top device that was supposed
to revolutionizes web browsing in the home (kitchen, garage, etc). It
was a network appliance. I joined the company because the VP of
development told me that they had "designed" the device in four monts,
which was unprecented in the hardware space, and I was extremely awed.
The company IPO'ed and got $180 million, spend $100 million on
rediculous things in less than 1 year, and after having about $60
million left, realized it was heading south fast, and completely
changed its business model. While I was at the company, there were
some problems with some LED's on the device, and since I was the only
EE in the company, I was assigned to fix it. I asked the VP of dev for
the electronic schematics, and he had no idea what I was talking
about. After about 45 minutes of utter frustration on both our parts,
I learned that he did not have any schematics because they were in
Asia. The device was nothing more than a repackaged laptop motherboard
from China. We got into an argument about whether it was a custom
device or a regular computer. I had one of my former employees proved
that it was essentially a PC by booting both Windows and Linux on it
using a standard IDE hard disk (normally we booted QNX over Flash).

I urged, repeatedly, a risk of my own peril, that the engineering
department stop portraying it as a custom device and tell the other
people in the company, especially the sales and marketing people, what
it really was - a standard laptop computer straight out of China. The
engineering department refused. They were blinded by the pride of
having "designed" their own device.

Finally, several months after the company tanked and all the marketing
people got layed off, we were all sitting around drinking,
reminisicing about what could have been, and I was criticizing the
engineering department for their lack of objectivity, and the
marketing and sales people got angry that I was criticizing their baby
until I told them that it was a standard computer on the inside of the
device (a laptop motherboard), that could have easily booted Microsoft
Windows CE (which they would have *LOVED* to have done), and they were
shocked to silence - shocked because, had they known that it had been
a standard computer, they could have made recommendations to the
engineering department to dump the proprietary path and use commodity
components which would have save the company millions of dollars and
got rid of some major feature and reliability problems we were having
that made the product unattractive.

But it was too late. It was too late because fiction superseded fact.

IPTV is not here because:

1. IP multicast is very iffy.
2. The buying public does not realize that a PC is techniclly capable
of displacing their TV.

If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
with the model.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

Le Chaud Lapin writes:

> If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
> write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
> will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
> cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
> solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
> with the model.

The problem with multicast, as I see it, is a chicken and egg. It's
the routers - and I mean all of the ones between the sender and the
receivers - including firewalls - that have to support the multicast
(IGMP) protocol.

Until that is done, the clients can't use it. And until the clients
use it, the routers won't support it.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Jan 1, 7:21*am, Bruce Barnett
wrote:
> Le Chaud Lapin writes:
>
> > If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
> > write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
> > will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
> > cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
> > solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
> > with the model.
>
> The problem with multicast, as I see it, is a chicken and egg. *It's
> the routers - and I mean all of the ones between the sender and the
> receivers - including firewalls - that have to support the multicast
> (IGMP) protocol.

Yes. But this is a technical issue, IMO. The average user doesnt'
know, doesn't care. The do want multicast, though they not phrase it
that way when they ask for it:

"I'd like to be able to provide my mom-and-pop live-video feed to
anyone in the world who wants to watch it, simultaneously, whether
there are 10 people watching or 10 million. When can I start doing
that?"

To us, that translates to multicast.

> Until that is done, the clients can't use it. And until the clients
> use it, the routers won't support it.

Perhaps we should give the router vendors a bit more credit for trying
to deploy what the IP multicast people recommended.

If the IP multicast group (and other IP research groups for that
matter) got all the kinks out, I think the router vendors would try to
support it.

There is always a small (but wealthy) segment of the buying public
that, while not understanding the technical intricacies, can see the
benefit of the general idea of a new technology [fuel cells, stem
cells, solar cells, network mobility, etc, super-super-caps, single-
sign-on, artificial intelligence, general aviation fly-by-wire], and
that group is generally powerful enough to induce merchants to to
invest on a promise while everyone waits for the promise to fulfill
itself.

I went to Cisco's web site and searched for multicast and got 14,300
hits:

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/search....com=cisco.com

I think that's an indication that they are willing to deploy against a
promise.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

"Le Chaud Lapin" wrote in message
news:4f90b54b-3d0f-429e-8c2d-c8fcaa71af99@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 1, 7:21 am, Bruce Barnett
wrote:
> Le Chaud Lapin writes:
>
> > If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
> > write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
> > will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
> > cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
> > solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
> > with the model.
>
> The problem with multicast, as I see it, is a chicken and egg. It's
> the routers - and I mean all of the ones between the sender and the
> receivers - including firewalls - that have to support the multicast
> (IGMP) protocol.

Yes. But this is a technical issue, IMO. The average user doesnt'
know, doesn't care. The do want multicast, though they not phrase it
that way when they ask for it:

I spoke to a user that has an IPTV and he does not like it.
He said that ISP gives him 7 Mbps of bandwidth, 2 Megs for each TV, +
overheads ....
Basically, it sucks.

Cable TV, and Cable internet is the way to go.
IPTV and ADSL are less reliable.

Bruce Barnett wrote:

> The problem with multicast, as I see it, is a chicken and egg. It's
> the routers - and I mean all of the ones between the sender and the
> receivers - including firewalls - that have to support the multicast
> (IGMP) protocol.
>

Actually, the routers in the core need to run a multicast routing
protocol like one of the flavors of PIM. IGMP is only used on the edges
to allow endpoints to indicate that they wish to join a multicast group,
etc. The multicast routing protocol helps to establish the actual
multicast distribution tree in use which gets the traffic where it needs
to be .... and not where it doesn't need to be .... based on IGMP "joins".

> Until that is done, the clients can't use it. And until the clients
> use it, the routers won't support it.
>

Too true.

"Bruce Barnett" wrote in message
news:yekbq851y1i.fsf@mail.grymoire.com...
> Le Chaud Lapin writes:
>
> > If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
> > write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
> > will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
> > cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
> > solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
> > with the model.
>
> The problem with multicast, as I see it, is a chicken and egg. It's
> the routers - and I mean all of the ones between the sender and the
> receivers - including firewalls - that have to support the multicast
> (IGMP) protocol.

Nope.

2 points.

1. IGMP is the protocol between a multicast client and the routed network -
it doesnt go any further than the 1st hop.

normally multicast routing between routers uses a different protocol - M-BGP
/ MSDP, or PIM SM / SSM seem favorite.

2. multicast tunnelling is alive and well (the original MBONE used lots of
tunnels to connect islands of multicast capable routers together).

Tunelling lets you get multicast across a unicast only set of devices such
as routers and firewalls - this istn one i use, but GRE and maybe others
should be pretty simple.

>
> Until that is done, the clients can't use it. And until the clients
> use it, the routers won't support it.
>
agreed - but there are other choke points as well - ISPs for example seem
reluctant to deploy multicast....

>
> --
> Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
>
--
Regards

stephen_hope@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl

In article bf7678d66a5b@u10g2000prn.googlegroups.com>, jaibuduvin@gmail.com says...
>
> > What do you mean by duct tape? Can you provide details about what you
> > think is wrong with existing offerings?
>
> Good grief. I would not know where to begin.
>
> When I look at the RFC's for IP multicast, etc. It's a mess. Of
> course, this is my subjective opinion. The people who concocted IP
> multicast might beg to differ. To assess virtue, I often use the
> bright-19-year-old test: If a bright-19-year-old attempts to use a
> proffered framework and finds employment is exceedingly difficult,
> then something is wrong with the model.

Duct tape = IP multicast, etc. = a mess = your subjective opinion?
I was hoping for details not sweeping generalizations

I have to say that your measure of "virtue" is perhaps only something
that a frustrated 19-year-old can appreciate. These individuals are in
the minority. A more relevant measure of virtue for an IPTV
system (or any broadcast system) is:

1. Can grandma turn it on a use it easily?
2. Does it work 100% of the time?
3. Is it cheap enough for most people to afford?
4. Is there a economic model that will support the infrastructure costs?

Certainly, there are technical challenges behind the scenes, IP
multicast (or the lack of support therefore) is perhaps just one.
Perhaps your frustrated 19-year-olds can work on those challenges, and
be part of the solution. Complaining about how the world owes them a
"better model" or something to that effect is not an effective use of
their talent

> About the general public: *Most* people who buy XBOX's are not are
> aware that there is a general-purpose computer inside. Most people are
> not aware that some PDA's can become more powerful than their "cell
> phones" if the right RF add-on chip is provided .

Yes, and why should they know or care? An automotive engineer will
perhaps care about the technical virtue under the hood of their car, but
the general public does not. They will be blithely unaware of the
thousands of technical problems that had to be solved while the car and
its drivetrain were in development, all so that they could enjoy the
end-user ownership and driving experience.

The same goes for the Xbox, the desktop calculator, and any turn-key
IPTV solutions. The virtue is found the end-user experience. The general
public will not care about the technical details, or whether a PC could
do the same job.

> This is all a matter of perception. What is a smartphone anyway? A
> phone or a computer? Does an XBOX use a hard disk for mass storage?
> Whem Microsoft or its affiliates writes games for XBOX, do they have
> specialized compilers or do they use Visual Studio?

The Xbox does not require a hard disk for mass storage. Game state can
be saved on memory cards. They use a licensed developers kit with cross
compilers and proprietary testing hardware. It costs about $10K. For
amateur programmers and students, Microsoft provides a development tool
similar to Visual Studio, but it is locked-in to C# and special
restricted libraries. However, my point is that this is irrelevant to
the general public, who are the ultimate consumers of this or any
technology. They do not care whether specialized tools or Visual Studio
was used.

They want to know if they can buy a game and play it, and have a good
time. The fewer the steps, the fewer the hassles, the more virtue the
end user will find in the solution.


> > The same thing applies to set-top boxes for TV, be it IPTV, cable, or
> > satellite. Just because a PC could do it, does not mean that the buying
> > public wants to run out and replace their TV with their PC.
>
> The buying public has no idea. The buying public figures that, if it
> were so simple to replace an expensive proprietary, monopolistic
> device with general-purpose hardware, someone would have done it by
> now.

The buying public really does not care whether the device is proprietary
and monopolistic or general-purpose hardware. Cost is something they do
care about, and all things being equal, the lower-cost solution will win
with the public, but there are notable exceptions, where the more
expensive solution is more popular because it is more desirable.

In fact, the irony is that monopolistic and proprietary devices have
succeeded against cheaper, more "open" devices. For example, the iPod
vs. no-name, low-cost MP3 players from Asia. Or the aforementioned Xbox
against the PC. The fact that a PC can probably be configured to play
games does not make it automatically the easiest and most desirable
solution for the general public. In fact, a startup company a few years
ago tried to sell a set-top video game console that did not try to hide
the fact that it was a commodity PC using off-the-shelf parts and open
source operating system and developer tools. Despite the obvious virtue
in such an idea, the product never materialized despite millions of
investor dollars being thrown at the idea.

While the jury is still out on IPTV, I believe that the same result is
possible: monopolistic, proprietary devices, if done well and packaged
right will succeed over the general purpose hardware.


> I have a $180 million-dollar story about perception:

[--snip--]

> But it was too late. It was too late because fiction superseded fact.

Wait, why did the company fail? Because the product had technical issues
that the engineers could not solve? The way you tell the story, you make
it sound like the the company failed because the marketing department
realized too late that they could have told the engineering department
to use commodity hardware? This does not make any sense: Since when does
the market department make technical recommendations to the engineering
department? And why would the engineers listen to a bunch of
salespeople? They did not listen to you, and you were hired as an
engineer, right?

If the engineering department chose to go the proprietary path, then
they (you) should have been able to fix the problems with the LEDs
because it was truly proprietary and designed by your engineers. If the
engineering department really instead chose the commodity path
(regardless of whether they called it proprietary out of pride), so
what? They (you) should have been able to fix the problem more easily,
because you were using "a standard laptop computer straight out of
China." Either way, at the end of the day, the buck has to stop at the
engineering department for unsolved technical problems. It is not
responsibility on the marketing and sales department.

On Jan 1, 4:49*pm, "stephen" wrote:
> "Bruce Barnett" wrote in message
>
> > Le Chaud Lapin writes:
>
> > > If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about #1, I challenge you to
> > > write a a multicast application for 1 million nodes in < 1 week that
> > > will work without heavy hand-holding and duct tape. IMO, if you
> > > cannot, and you are a skilled coder and relatively bright, and have a
> > > solid understanding of the principle of multicast, something is wrong
> > > with the model.

The model works quite well. The problem is that most likely, a single
"relatively bright" coder doesn't have access to all the points in the
network that he needs to have access to, to enable multicast. So
whatever he does may not travel very far.

> agreed - but there are other choke points as well - ISPs for example seem
> reluctant to deploy multicast....

They are reluctant in general, perhaps largely because multicast would
have the potential to clutter up their networks without them getting
fairly compensated for all the traffic.

UNLESS the ISP is itself the IPTV provider. That's when it pays off.
They have their closed network into which multicast streams will be
routed, but only to the edges of THEIR network, anly only from source
devices owned by the ISP. And those receiving the multicasts are
authenticated before they can receive the streams.

So that means proprietary protocols in addition to IGMP between end
systems (IPTV set-top boxes) and routers. In addition, in order to
provide the sort of fast response end user have been accustomed to
with cable and DBS, the IPTV provider will probably have the most
popular choices always active throughout the network, so that IGMP
"joins" only have to travel as far as the first router before the
stream starts flowing to the STB. Which means that the principal
bandwidth-saving feature of IP multicast becomes somewhat compromised,
making the system look even more similar to cable broadcast.

In a closed "walled garden" such as IPTV nets are, that is a feasible
tradeoff. In the Internet, it is not.

Bert