NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/hardware-part1/5679

Text File | 1996-08-05 | 7.7 KB | 152 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!dsinc!scala!news
From: [e-mail] (Dave Haynie)
Subject: Re: Can AT Surfer compete with Apple/Disney?
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet administrator)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:40:54 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Dave Haynie)
References: <4g4t4s$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4g573b$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Nntp-Posting-Host: gator
Organization: Scala Computer Television, US Research Center

In <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (G. Baldwin) writes:
>Dave Haynie ([e-mail]) wrote these words of wisdom:
>: In <4g573b$[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jason Compton)
>: writes:

>Point here - cable probably will not grow much larger unless there
>is a way for them to lay out miles and miles of wire for little
>cost.  I think they have started to reach a point were its just not
>profitable to lay more wire down.

I agree. Cable only makes sense in dense-enough areas. The cable
company pays the same for cable to lay 20 miles of cable, whether it
services one house or a thousand.

>: Now enter digital. You get 4-8 digital (MPEG-2) channels in the space
>: of each analog channel. While updating cable boxes isn't cheap, they
>: can pay for it by charging for new channels. And that $300 per set top
>: is one hell of a lot cheaper than new wire.

>Enter HDTV with Dolby AC-3 in a few years.

AC-3 is part of the MPEG-2 profile, included in that 4-8 digital
channels per 6MHz slot. Full HDTV channels take a whole 6MHz slot,
mainly because you don't send full HDTV for anything that doesn't need
it. That's the main reason lower resolution profiles were pushed for
so hard. Terrestrial stations each get a new 6MHz slot, and don't want
to be forced to use it all for one HD transmisson. You might have
enough interest for football or first-run movies in the full profile,
but it's useless for probably 80% of what's going over the air right
now.

>If cable companies go and fill up their 300MHz coax lines with 120 TV
>channels, and the rest with cable modems, or even local phone service
>(this last telecommunications bill that bans porn also allows some
>interesting aspects with the telephone industry as well), they will
>run into problems when stations start to go HDTV (pay stations such
>as HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and the Movie Channel will probably go
>High Definition before everyone else, who will need time to make the
>switch), but the point remains, they will run out of bandwidth quick!

Sure, they'll be back to where they are today. But that's 10 years
from now in their thinking, nearly forever. They had to invest big in
infrastructure to get to where they are today, but the next phase is
practically a free ride. The move to HDTV can be very gradual --
digital's digital after all, you can put anything on the network you
like. The pay channels will be at the mercy of the various service
providers, not the other way around, in getting HDTV out
there. DBS systems have the same problem as cable companies today --
they're limited in real channels. They mainly went digital last year
to get up to the level of a modern analog cable system, rarely
surpassing it in terms of number-of-programs.

>: Cable modems are part of the whole "digital TV" picture; you get about
>: 25 Mbits/second/channel using typical encoding schemes. That's 2.5x
>: your typical Enthernet speed. Sure, you'll have lots of people sharing
>: it eventually, but in the move to digital TV, every cable company is
>: going to be able to find a spare channel or two for cable modems,
>: since that's an instant revnue stream.

>Ahh, this may also bring in another problem.  Sharing.  Some of these
>lines may get tied down at 7PM to 10PM.  And I'm sure people are
>going to want to do more than just recieving - what about 2 way video
>teleconferencing?  That isn't gonna happen on a cable modem... it
>would be a lot more popular right now, but alas, you just can't do it
>on a 28.8 modem... and you probably won't be able to do it on a Cable
>modem.

They're definitely going to get loaded during peak hours. The cable
companies will have some control over it; they can allocate more
bandwidth to cable modems during peak hours, except of course when
these coincide with other forms of peak hours. And they very well
might. That doesn't necessarily mean the cable companies aren't going
to go ahead with this -- 99.9% of their potential customers won't
understand any of these issues. All they'll see is surfing the Web,
ideally, 1000 times faster than they do today. It'll probably take a
year or two before such systems become unusable, depending on where
you live :-) Also, it's unlikely, outside of central CA anyhow, that
you'll find the cable as the weakest link. They'll have to run that
into a T3 or better, and find a lull in other net activity, before
that happens (and you can figure that if a gang of newbies are all
videophoning Mom on your cable system, they're doing it on everyone
else's too, so it's the whole Internet bandwidth, not your local
bandwidth, again as the limiting factor).

>Agreed.  There is at least 1 person on every block that has to have
>the newest and best "toys".  "Hey, we can't have our Legos anymore,
>but damn it, we can have our $800 Laserdisc player and new $1200 THX
>Preamp..." - I love it.  8)

But that's really important. If you don't get enough consumer response
from these folks, the product is doomed. Look at recordable digital
audio tape -- DAT found a professional niche, DCC is dead, and
MiniDisk is floundering at best. None of these were found to be cool
enough to enough people at the right price and time to create a
consumer market. Any new item moving into the consumer market is faced
with the same problems. That's one reason why the DVD folks are
talking to each other these days -- they think that's an amazing
market and don't want to wait five years for the dust to settle on
something consumerish.

>ISDN may not either.  ISDN has been out for a long time, yet the
>price has not come down much.

It's very popular in Europe, where the rates aren't as
crazy. Especially since they're much more comparable to POTS rates,
which are a bit crazy to being with. The RBOCs can price IDSN
affordably if they have the network to support it and really want to
make it popular.

>Even worse, some phone companies are RAISING rates.  USWest (aka
>USSRWorst) decided that they were gonna raise flatrate ISDN rates
>from $80/month to over $180/month.

They're free to pick their own insanity level. If they price ISDN
within shouting distance of Frame Relay or a piece of a T1, no one's
going to buy it. If they gave it away for free, they'd be swamped.
Bell Atlantic made some noise about $30/month some months back, but I
have yet to get the coupon in the mail.

>Even Internet users haven't really jumped on the ISDN bandwagon yet -
>not only do they need to pay costly install charges, and high rates
>for usage, but also those hookup charges to the Internet itself!
>Toys are gonna start to get clostly when you go over the 28.8/33.6
>KBaud limit...  8(

Time for that second modem/phone line...

And this RBOC idiocy certainly does illustrate how easy it would be
for a cable modems to kick it into high gear. I would sign up today at
$30 or $40 a month, which would be considerably less than the ISP plus
toll phone charges I typically pay these days. I'll worry about
network overloading when happens.

Dave Haynie          | ex-Commodore Engineering |   for DiskSalv 3 &
Sr. Systems Engineer |  Hardwired Media Company | "The Deathbed Vigil"
Scala Inc., US R&D   |    Ki No Kawa Aikido     |     [e-mail]

         "Feeling ... Pretty ... Psyched" -R.E.M.