1380533
story
dlkf writes
"CNN reports that Hartwell, Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute used to transmit TV signals over the phone line. With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."
Lack of technical info (Score:1)
Re:Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my! (Score:2)
This is the kind of choice and competition that deregulation was supposed to bring; too bad that it is taking so long for the new infrastructure to be rolled out in most parts of the country. But this new tech should help speed things up: perhaps the existing DSL providers could expand into TV service as well, and really stir things up. Can't wait: more competition means more choice and lower prices.
hah.. (Score:2)
--
Forget Verizon, Use Speakeasy (Score:1)
You're obviously pretty deep in fantasy - you left out a lot of features that are in Verizon DSL that are sure to make they're way into the TV service:
All of the above unfortunately happened to me when I had BellAtlantic/Verizon DSL (in addition to the previously mentioned tendancy for the service to not work). I wish I were being sarcastic, but I'm not. I hope this TV service isn't being run by any baby bell, because I hear they're all pretty bad.
I have since switched to speakeasy.net for DSL service and the difference is just phenomenal. The one time I thought my service was actually out I called up their tech support to report the problem. Once the tech support guy and I had traced the problem to my Linux NAT box he offered to transfer me to a level 2 technician to help diagnose the problem in my box! This is such a massive difference from Verizon where I would have to pretend I was using Windows when I called up and where their level 2 tech support was always just as useless as their level 1 tech support. I recommend Speakeasy every chance I get so that they grow strong and prosper so that I can use their service for years to come.
Re:Information Age Barriers (Score:2)
DSL was invented at Bell Labs in the '80s, and promptly put on the shelf because they saw no practical application for the technology. And difficult as it is to imagine, they were right.
Why? Because when there are very few home PCs (compared to today) and those PCs don't store or push a whole lot of information, then you won't have people willing to pay for fat pipes. When most of your information is text, an 80MB hard drive is an unspeakable luxury for a desktop box, and a 14.4 modem will do just fine. If you have a lot of people who want to connect to you simultaneously, and you can afford it, ISDN was available, and didn't have the 12,000 foot line limit.
Now, we have a need, and that need is being filled. I wish I lived in a world in which technology was available because it ought to be rather than because people would pay to satisfy a need.
As for me, I like my DSL just fine, and had it transfering packets within two weeks of my order. (Not that SBC actually sent me the necessary software or anything, but there are ways around that for the resourceful...)
Don Negro
Re:Ma Bell (Score:1)
AT&T's cable modem service. I use Qwest
DSL (the business package). Aside from
the tremendous expense (close to $100 a
month for 640K DSL, 5 static IPs and
domain hosting), I've been very happy with
the service. I wish I could get service
for closer to $50 for 1 static IP (hello,
NAT!) and the above.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:1)
Re:why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels???? (Score:2)
DISH has a switch, I think the SW64 that can be used to hook up 6 recievers to the two dish's (two LNB's per dish, one dish per satalite, or the DISH500 which is actually two dishes, four LNBs...).
Or you can skip four recievers, and hook up another SW64 and six recievers to the second SW64...or another SW64 and....
That was a bit over a year and a half ago. There was talk about a bigger multi-switch. A house two doors down has this setup and a lot of recievers for it's local population (I only have one reciever).
The real problem is each dish gets an even and odd polairity signal, and can feed out one but not both. The reciever asks for whichever one has the channel it needs. There are two LNBs on some of the recievers so it can can serve two recievers. A switch can take in both LNBs, and set on to even and one to odd forever, and give the recievers whichever they ask for.
That is then compounded by having more then one satalite. DISH does this by having either two dish'es, and a switch, or one slightly eliptical dish that gets both signals and acts as the switch as well. I beleve that DirecTv does the same thing, but I'm not sure.
The external multi-switches are a bit of a kludge, but they work. I don't know if DirecTv has them.
P.S. I think the mPhase stuff doesn't send 60 video channels down the phone line, just one selected channel (or two or so). The limit of 60 is probbably in the head end, and not that hard to change. But that is a total total total guess. It would work that way if I had to design around the current constraints... :-)
Re:hmmm. (Score:2)
You do get the 144Kbits/sec. Around here it is even a fair bit cheeper then ISDN.
Never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything. There are more xDSLs then you can shake a stick at. I know there is an HDSL which is 1.5Mbps/sec both ways, and an SDSL that I think is symetric, but no specific speed, and quite a few others. There is also a lot of variation in supported speeds and distances depending on the equiptment at each end.
Sometimes you can get a faster speed from one provider or the other even though they all use the same wires from the RBOC.
Re:hmmm. (Score:2)
IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second). ADSL often goes up to 384K bits/second to the subscriber, or better, and 128K bits/second from the subscriber (my service is "at least" 384K/128K, but my downloads are typically around 1.1Mb/sec).
It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.
Is there anyone here (Score:2)
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:1)
Lets see, here in SE Michigan, in wonderful TimeWarner cable land:
Standard cable: $33.57 (plus taxes)
Plus $9.50 for 2 premium channels, or $19.95/8
Or $10.95-$34.95 (Plus the $33.57 for standard) for various digital cable packages...
Standard includes 71 channels (counting 2 shopping, and 11 public access/messageboards)
And for (coming soon for the last 2 years!) Cable modem: $39.95
If only I was in one of the cities around here where Ameritech is a competitive cable supplier...
You don't want it over HFC (Score:1)
McAllister place is probably to far from the DSLAM or something. When higher badwidth becomes practical (like alcatel's new DSL stuff) then this won't happen.
gg
Re:Does it mean... (Score:1)
Re:I've got a way of upping the number of channels (Score:2)
Why.... (Score:1)
Phone companies trying to get on the bandwidth wagon... it will never happen, the phone companies will die as other companies (cable, sattelite,mind transfer...whatever) come in with infrastructure that isn't based on 200 year old telegraph wires.
(PS the phone company should have done their upgrades 20 years ago instead of sitting on their butts.)
Re:Why.... (Score:1)
I also have several friends in the telcom business. they all agree that this is very normal, and undocumented items/fixes/wires are very normal. (one is a infrastructure manager, and is suprised monthly with technicians calling on things that dont exist)
So yeah... I "think" I know from the solid background I have and information I have access to.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:1)
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
Re:Yeah, make one monopoly compete another monopol (Score:1)
Re:Ma Bell (Score:1)
i'd have to guess that the plans to upgrade this entire plant were on the table a year and a half (at a minimum) before the merger.
but, as things usually happen, it took a long time for them to justify that it needed done. finally, once justification was complete, the merger happened around the bend. in order to make the merger seem plausible, they most likely shelved it until after the whole thing was over with...
i believe you're giving credit to the wrong people... at&t probably caused your cable plant's upgrade to actually be *DELAYED*
just a thought...
(that's the way things go elsewhere in the world of US telco companies
Re:i cannot believe this... (Score:1)
don't listen to the drivel of all the trolls that post on slashdot.
most are just insecure in some way or another and behave like the bullies at a gradeschool playground.
canada & the u.s. each have very serious assets and neither diminishes the other's. there certainly isn't anything wrong with any country being "better" at something than another; it's perfectly natural and healthy. once you're the "best", you get lazy, and we all know how well that motivates the human spirit...
cheers.
Peter
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:2)
What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.
If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
Enough already (Score:2)
But seriously. I don't see how telephone lines can scale to the same level as coax. Why should I believe this is anything but a niche tech.
--
Re:Enough already (Score:2)
It isn't 60 channels, it's 60 in that particular installation. Since the video is coming down the DSL on demand it could be 500 channels of choice.
Though I guess I still wonder what happens if you have three or four TV's and everyone wants to watch different stuff.
--
Not the only people doing this (Score:2)
Check the old press release at Myrio's web site. [myrio.com]
A little more info: Myrio's system is based on streaming MPEG-2 through full rate DSL. That's typically about 8 Mbps, and is enough bandwidth for two set top boxes to watch two different TV channels (or movies) simultaneously. There's no real limit to the number of TV channels the system can handle. The video quality is very high - movies are very close to DVD, and TV is better than regular cable.
Full disclosure - I work for Myrio. I don't know anything about MPhase.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels???? (Score:3)
I don't see the problem, the bandwidth exists (i.e. your phone line), there's hardware (mpeg encoding and decoding chips). What's holding things back??
And by the way, 60 channels is not enough.
Re:If they can do this why only 100Mbps over Cat5? (Score:1)
i like that
but it also means that i can't record one channel, while i watch another, drat!
greetings, eMBee.
--
Re:How about 60,000 in Phoenix (Score:2)
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:2)
At least that's my understanding of the technology --the bitrate was back-of-the-envelope bitrate of an MPEG2/4 video, I am sure others can do better.
Re:No thanks! (Score:2)
Of course, usual disclaimers apply
Re:hmmm (Score:2)
Re:i cannot believe this... (Score:1)
Visit this [wctc.net] if you're interested. Not much about the tech, just the service offering.
Leigh
cool, but (Score:1)
----------------------
Re:VDSL (Score:2)
There is no advertisement that I have found anywhere in the valley for this service. I am not even sure why they offer it...
Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
Re:Nothing New (Score:1)
This may provide more detail.
Sorry, I am not an html whiz.
Re:My (former) telco is doing this. (Score:1)
Kind of funny how limited to 240K/s is still faster than most other places in the world's DSL....
Yeah, it's been around for 2-3 years, actually! (Score:5)
Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV [imagictv.com], and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.
This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.
It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4)
1. won't have internet access
2. won't have telephone access
3. won't be able to watch tv.
Might as well just go outside at that point.
Re:My (former) telco is doing this. (Score:2)
But yes, anything over 200K/sec is very impressive. I'm sitting on crappy Bell Sympatico High Speed here, and it truly sucks the nut. 120K/sec downstream, 15K/sec upstream. Pathetic.
My (former) telco is doing this. (Score:4)
It doesn't translate directly to the standard coax that we're used to coming out of our walls, but a special connection that plugs into a 'tuner' box, and 'tunes' one channel at a time, much the same way small-dish sattelite 'tuners' work.
Anyone I've asked has said that it hasn't hurt ADSL performance (same network as the VibeTV stuff) too much.
NBTel's supposed to be worldclass in telecommunications (or something). After all, one of my hometown's main industries is hosting callcenters. That's right. You call AOL customer service, you get Moncton(Riverview), NB, Canada. Same with Equifax.
Oops, drifting offtopic. Anyway, my point was that this is being done, and it's similar quality to small-dish sattelite TV (Bell Expressview, or Starchoice in Canada).
Before the cable company in NB got bought by Shaw/Rogers, they were talking about providing telephone service. Stange how things get twisted around.
Before anyone gets too excited (Score:2)
CNNFN, I think, got suckered by this story.
You can read all the dirty laundry on ragingbull.com, any searches with terms such as confict of interest, fraud, investigation and so on will find old posts that reveal more.. of course, this is just my humble opinion. The people that stuck their money into that stock at $20 (now at $2) are pretty anxious to get their head back above water.
hot diggity! (Score:1)
OTOH, my own downtown Atlanta neighborhood of Grant Park is behind a pair of DACs, so no DSL for me and there are too many trees and highrises for me to get a Dish.
My mind is positively blown that to get the cutting edge in consumer bandwidth, TV and telephony, I have to move out to the GODDAMNED STICKS! What the hell is the world coming to when there's a DSL line coming to within walking distance of my fatass uncle's still?
So please, Mr. Georgia Tech graduate, wouldja put the friggin' bandwidth where the friggin' people live?
--
Re:Ma Bell (Score:5)
_____________
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:5)
1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access.
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels?
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil.
I'll agree that I think this is a backwards step. We should be moving away from old telephone lines to something approaching TV cable, or ideally, fibre. However, most of my region(I live in a town of 10,000 people) have fibre optics. In fact, I have fibre going right up to across the street(where there's a big telephone company box of some sort). Mind you, my impression is that Canada(and especially Ontario) is rather well-connected.
4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
5) Imagine cable support through your telco.
I was recently chatting with someone about this
Well, I've got news
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
hmmm. (Score:1)
I don't I would get it to start. I wonder if they are providing local stations? I also wonder if they are a middle man and they are just getting it from the local cable company. This might have a future in places where cable doesn't go currently.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:1)
So what happens when... (Score:2)
It's all well and good to say that you won't notice latency in your TV signal because it's coming in on a controlled network, but do you want your TV eating up your bandwidth?
They're already doing this in Canada as well.
Competition (Score:1)
/. says it's new, so it *must* be new ... (Score:1)
Silly me, here I thought DSL came about after the deregulation of the American cable industry as a means for telcos to deliver video to customers' homes ...
What was I thinking, I am glad /. says it's new, even though it has been deployed for a year by Ameritech Cable in at least one market I am familiar with ...
You can just learn something new every day around here. Gosh and golly, isn't that just ducky? :)
This is your /., this is your /. on drugs. Any questions?
Re:If they can do this why only 100Mbps over Cat5? (Score:2)
Siva
ntl beat you by almost a year (Score:1)
If you look here [askntl.com], you'll see that ntl in the UK have been doing this for a while now. For £19.99+/month you get 512kbps downstream, a load of TV channels, very cheap phone calls (3p/min max) and video-on-demand. And that's just on the analogue service. I don't know what they do on the digital service...
-- Nick
homechoice in the uk (Score:1)
Re:Another way to look at this... (Score:2)
With the copper wires running to your house, they were only using about 8 KHz of bandwidth before, whereas the cable could carry much more. Adding stuff like DSL and TV just uses more of the bandwidth.
With fiber, you're already using a large part of the optical spectrum in large installations, and the glass will not transmit efficiently past certain wavelength boundaries.
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Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:2)
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
Point conceded. Phones tend to be more reliable during disasters (though this does vary based on your location.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
Perhaps I'm lucky, but I have had no cable outages since I got cable in 1986, save for when power was out to the distribution centre, which didn't matter because it was out for me as well. Phones, however, I have seen be out for extended periods due to emergency maintenance (this was before they were buried underground).
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
Here in the U.S. (specifically metropolitan Southern California), you pay an extra $5 for the extra channels, and then (if available) an extra $5 for the digital tier (which, if you have premium channels, greatly increases the number of available channels).
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
Municipalities generally contract out with one cable provider to provide cable for the residents of the city. Residents pay monthly; the contract length between the municipality and the cable provider varies but averages around 3-5 years. When the contract is up, the cable provider and and of their competitors may petition for consideration for the new contract.
Well, I've got news :) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine :) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
You've been very lucky, then, and it seems like Ontario would be a good place to be if you wanted good phone service. Here, unfortunately, you have your choice between the unwilling ("I hate my job"), the incapable ("Um. I can't fix this right now even though you waited six hours for me. My supervisor can come out a week from Tuesday"), or the simply missing ("WHERE IS MY PHONE TECH?"). Mostly it's simple cluelessness and an amazing lack of initiative that would make any geek blanch with horror.
As for bashing the technology, it seems like the bandwidth used to provide this should be put toward the improvement of the signals already carried on the line, i.e., DSL and voice. I agree that any development which results in a choice improves the market, but support is an integral part of that choice, and Joe Shmo who isn't a geek needs to have at least reasonable support.
Thanks for your examples and the courteous reply.
Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:4)
Re:Yeah, it's been around for 2-3 years, actually! (Score:1)
The South Will Rise Again! (Score:1)
Pick what I want (Score:1)
Information Age Barriers (Score:2)
#define RANT
I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?
Negroponte makes it clear in BEING DIGITAL that he thought a long time ago that this sort of thing was possible and practical. I've been largely of the belief that if this was somehow thwarted by the pre-1996 competitive marketplace, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should have solved it. Still, we wait for the market in these services to change, and it doesn't.
Finally, someone takes an interest in doing this (and only on a small scale). This is a test reaching some 60 customers. 1) Why wasn't it done before? 2) Even if it is made to work, how many decades will it take to reach me because nobody wants to really compete and shake things up out there? I can't believe that this is such a fundamental technical breakthrough, and the real barrier has been "business" decision makers who can't confront changed business models.
#undef RANT
Re:Ma Bell (Score:1)
Re:In the UK we call have it too www.homechoice.co (Score:1)
Well, if it only costs 20 tic-tac-doh a month then it is worth it, by golly!
Re:why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels???? (Score:2)
I understand your point, but the only way that cable has competed against satallite is that the cable companies allow you to hook up as many TVs as you like for the same amount of money (and no extra equipment, except for speciality channels)
It's really important to some people that they can watch whatever program they want, while their spouse watches another, and each of their 1+ kids watches seperate programs in their own rooms. (IIRC, DirecTv [directv.com] or The Dish Network [thedishnetwork.com] don't allow you to hook up more than 4 TVs per dish)
My Telco is Doing this... and I work there! (Score:1)
Some things that we've run into:
This project has had its headaches, but it has been great experience to work with so many high-end network devices. It rocks to work for a small company in a small town and have access to such cutting-edge technology!
Re:My Telco is Doing this... and I work there! (Score:1)
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:2)
--
wow (Score:1)
The poster you were responding to was talking about American telcos, no doubt. They all suck. I've yet to hear of one that's reliable and trustworthy.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
TCI Redudancy (or lack thereof) (Score:2)
--
Does it mean... (Score:1)
Oh great (Score:1)
hartwell georgia is where it will (Score:1)
Re:No thanks! (Score:1)
Unless it was a disaster that destroyed equipment, i would say never. OTOH you may have known that and where just trying to be funny.
Re:If they can do this why only 100Mbps over Cat5? (Score:2)
Re:Ma Bell (Score:2)
Remember, it hasn't been AT&T doing cable for 50 years suddenly doing broadband internet. AT&T bought their way into this market in the last few years and they bought different companies with varying degrees of competence. It takes a _long_ time for a company to get its acquired workers assimilated into the 'borg'. Hell, I should know... my company was bought out 14 years ago and we _still_ refer to them as the 'evil empire'.
Re:Ma Bell (Score:2)
hmmm (Score:2)
Re:Information Age Barriers (Score:1)
Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?
Simple. Your telcos have been relying on old technology, in which they have a substantial investment in time, knowledge, and, above all, money.
No one, even modern telcos, likes to put money toward something that may or may not be the Next Big Thing, but will certainly require a deviation from the established manner of doing things. This requires a leap of faith that few are comfortable with, especially those conservative souls who serve as Directors for a large corporation.
Being Slashdotters, we easily recognize the benefits of quick advancements in technology, and find it unfathomable that such incredible improvements should sit idle while the moneychangers haggle and worry. We just don't see the fear in the eyes of those same moneychangers, nor do we feel it in our hearts.
Luckily, the clamor for faster, wider pipes is becoming loud enough to be heard in the top-floor boardrooms. As the din increases, you'll see more and more improvement, starting in the areas that show the most benefit for the costs: metropolitan areas. It may take awhile before it gets to the rural areas, because it's all about money, man.
Re:Impressive, but (Score:1)
Re:why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels???? (Score:1)
Re:Impressive, but (Score:2)
A Google search for 'mPhase Traverser' [google.com] gives a lot of sources for info on this technology, but I don't see anything that says that it's actually streaming 60 channels simultaneously over DSL. You're only watching one channel at a time, maybe it's only receiving one at a time?
Sean
Re:hmmm (Score:1)
in fact it's pretty much the best thing *they* can have.
The trick is they don't broadcast you. they give ou what you want to see. I tried something similar with a disguised internet-tv set top box.
But I was still using broadcast tv and the set top box was tunning the channels to provide the famous 'context-sensitive' tv interaction, thus bringing the user real interactive tv, with a real broadcast, running a site with time/channel aware contents. (something lik that, well you get the picture)
Anyway, the real good thing about it, and that's why this last one is better, is that the service provider will tune for you, thus will know exactly what you are watching, when, knowing who you are giving precise statistics and even real time ratings, which is very very good business.
Giving much more acurat ratings, than the statistic inquiries methods, providing an invalueable information to advertising companies.
Oh well..
Re:Cable/phone/DSL (Score:1)
i cannot believe this... (Score:4)
I laughed when I read this little piece of "breaking news"... This kinda technology has been in use for over a year in Moncton, New Brunswick CANADA... yeah that's right... Canada...
I lived there while they were rolling it out last year, never got to test it myself since it wasnt available on my street, but I hear it was comparable with cable. Check it out if you want http://www.nbtel.nb.ca , click on Vibevision for more info.
Re:In the UK we call have it too www.homechoice.co (Score:1)
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:1)
Here we go. Pulled out the monthly spam from Bell ExpressVu.
City - Channels, Cost/month $CDN (1.5CDN = 1US)
Thunder Bay - 54, 36.46
Ajax - 64, 39.39
Oakville - 64, 41.99
London (North) - 65, 38.84
Toronto - 65, 39.88
Ottawa(East) - 67, 35.92
Richmond Hill - 69, 43.26
One of expressvu's packages claims to have 106 channels, for 36.95 a month, by comparision.
9 movie channels is another 16 bucks a month.
Or you can pay nothing, and get them all
Re:Ma Bell (Score:1)
Re:Ma Bell (Score:1)
Mod this Up as informative (Score:1)
Thus the advent of DSL.
Not new, and yes... I think verizon has the experience needed to give this a bad rep. Oh well...
iTV in Hong Kong (Score:1)
Re:i cannot believe this... (Score:1)
No thanks! (Score:2)
This is OLD tech. (Score:1)
Another way to look at this... (Score:2)
I think financial limitations, and limits on the resources available help creativity. DSL and this are a good sign of that in my opinion. I think it's a great idea and if they can do all this with simple telephone lines I look forward to what they can do with tv cable and fiber optic connections.
I've got a way of upping the number of channels... (Score:2)
You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...
Re:I've got a way of upping the number of channels (Score:2)
Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.
Impressive, but (Score:4)
While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.
What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).
Re:Information Age Barriers (Score:4)
Where there is already a govt sanctioned monolopy that offeres a comparable service that is proven to work and is affordable, why would any competitor come to YOUR town and set up shop. No guaranteed customers. Which is probabally why it's first appearing in a "small town" where in the article it mentions that the cable company wouldn't hookup a line to his business for just one subscriber....
Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Until they tell you that you are too far away from the CO.
Pffft!
Wow... (Score:5)
Introducing...
The Verizon TV Service!
Sorry. Sarcasm overload here. Although quite how far into the realms of fantasy I am I'm not sure...
Ma Bell (Score:5)
Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my! (Score:3)
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The COBOL Warrior