2006: Battle for the Living Room

[wco81]

I'll just toss this in also just because:



With all the distribution announcements at CES this year, looks like the 'battle' will come even sooner and be even more aggressive than I thought. Ignoring the above article, it seems everyone from Yahoo and Google, to Cable and Telcos, to the 'usual players,' to people like iRiver and other smaller companies; they're all gunning for it.

Well the IPTV stuff was suppose to be rolled out already. Verizon has rolled out FiOS TV to some cities already. AT&T (formerly SBC) hasn't rolled out anything after promising HDTV/data/VOIP/wireless bundle for a lot less than purchasing those separately.

But the rumors are, the AT&T IPTV solution will be 720p VC-1 streams at under 5 Mbps. If that is what they deliver, they can keep that garbage.

I'm really skeptical of all these distribution announcements. Previous CES announcements have fizzled. What ever happened to things like the Moxi or Tablet PC?

I think people are pretty unimpressed by the Google deal. Who wants to log on to be able to use their player? Their stock bumped up this week but when does it not bump up?

Fox and Direct TV has a deal. You can download Desperate Housewives for 99 cents. Better than iTunes. But if you have a Direct TV DVR, you can just record it directly with the same remote you'd use to download it for 99 cents. They're also promising pre-air downloads for $2.99. That's okay, I can wait for the air date.

 

[aaronspink]

Well the IPTV stuff was suppose to be rolled out already. Verizon has rolled out FiOS TV to some cities already. AT&T (formerly SBC) hasn't rolled out anything after promising HDTV/data/VOIP/wireless bundle for a lot less than purchasing those separately.

ATT has IPTV in trials currently. Don't know when the rollout schedule is. Apparently the IPTV system is very very sweet.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[mckmas8808]

Fox and Direct TV has a deal. You can download Desperate Housewives for 99 cents. Better than iTunes. But if you have a Direct TV DVR, you can just record it directly with the same remote you'd use to download it for 99 cents. They're also promising pre-air downloads for $2.99. That's okay, I can wait for the air date.

HA! I'm with you wco, I'll either record the content or wait for it to air. The only reason for someone to honestly buy those shows is because they can't record it (lack of VHS, DVD, or DVR unit) they forgot to record it, or they want it portable (i.e. Google's service for Ipod and PSP).

 

[wco81]

ATT has IPTV in trials currently. Don't know when the rollout schedule is. Apparently the IPTV system is very very sweet.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

What happens if you have a couple of dual tuner PVRs and you want to record a couple of programs on one while watching a third stream on another?

Or if the son is downloading something while a couple of people in different rooms are watching HDTV at the same time?

Or you have a neighbor who's a bandwidth hog?

I've heard ATT's plan is for VDSL at around 20 Mbps total to carry video, data and VOIP. And Japan has speeds over 100 Mbps.

Oh well, it's some progress.

 

[patsu]

Well the IPTV stuff was suppose to be rolled out already. Verizon has rolled out FiOS TV to some cities already. AT&T (formerly SBC) hasn't rolled out anything after promising HDTV/data/VOIP/wireless bundle for a lot less than purchasing those separately.

But the rumors are, the AT&T IPTV solution will be 720p VC-1 streams at under 5 Mbps. If that is what they deliver, they can keep that garbage.

I'm really skeptical of all these distribution announcements. Previous CES announcements have fizzled. What ever happened to things like the Moxi or Tablet PC?

I think people are pretty unimpressed by the Google deal. Who wants to log on to be able to use their player? Their stock bumped up this week but when does it not bump up?

Yes. Different groups have been pushing IPTV every year and it went no where. Besides the huge cost to sustain the entire operation, the other major problem is marketing.

The value proposition wasn't formulated correctly, the benefits weren't explained properly, the system is hard to use (for laymen). Prior attempts I'm aware of were/are limited to small scale pilots that met with luke warm responses. Most people are either unaware of them, or don't understand them.

Fox and Direct TV has a deal. You can download Desperate Housewives for 99 cents. Better than iTunes. But if you have a Direct TV DVR, you can just record it directly with the same remote you'd use to download it for 99 cents. They're also promising pre-air downloads for $2.99. That's okay, I can wait for the air date.

Case in point.

 

[aaronspink]

What happens if you have a couple of dual tuner PVRs and you want to record a couple of programs on one while watching a third stream on another?

QOS. This is part of the battle currently going on with the FCC wrt the telco's being able to QOS a certain amount of bandwidth on the net connection to deliver the HD content. Part of the point of IPTV systems is that you don't need a local PVR. At its end, everything is recorded/stored at the IPTV head (movie libraries, etc).

Or you have a neighbor who's a bandwidth hog?

Um, IPTV isn't cable.

I've heard ATT's plan is for VDSL at around 20 Mbps total to carry video, data and VOIP. And Japan has speeds over 100 Mbps.

Given a 20 Mbps VDSL link, think about a 10-16 Mbit VC1 content channel. Considering that 16 Mbit VC1 encoding seems to be sufficient for 1080P, everything should work fine.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[patsu]

Story about Apple's move into the living room. It's still my top vendor for the livingroom although they did not release MacMini II for the living room in Jan MacWorld SF.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/27/technology/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm