Video On Demand Almost Here For San Franciscans

BeatlesForum.com writes: "Looks like San Francisco-area folks could be in for a taste of video when you want it, according to this article from Reuters. The article mentions that we will be able to start and stop the on-demand stream whenever we want. Kinda sounds like TiVo now, except you still have to fit around the broadcast schedule. Interesting statistic quoted from the article, though: it is expected that 5.5 million homes will have VOD by the end of the year. Imagine being able to pull up 2001: A Space Odyssey at 2:38 a.m.."

Got this on Long Island...

[smart.id]

On Long Island we have this. It is called I/O (Interactive Optimum), and it is provided by Cablevision.

Re:Not the time to try new things in advertising.

[Lumpy]

WRONG!!!!

These boxes insert ad's at the beginning and end. and there can be a myriad of ways to use it. Hell these things can start the targetted advertising. (already built in guys :-) so you dont have to watch an ad on how amy has a nasty yeast infection. But instead you get assulted with steve pushing dell computers. These things can also operate as DCT's and will probably offer that feature at a "cost" in the future.

Been here for ages in Hawaii

[gengee]

I've had digital cable for about 2 years or so here in Hawai'i - And we've had video on demand at least that long. In the beginning the selection was small and quality would sometimes degrade during 'prime time.' But for the last year or so quality has been perfect, and selection has steadily increased (To about 200 movies, usually 5-10 new movies every 2 weeks or so).

How will this work?

[scriptkiddie]

Last time they tried this, the major roadblock was that no one could figure out how to build a server fast enough to stream multiple, unique video streams. Even assuming you're using conventional televisions and the stream size is limited to 500kB/s, you've maxed out Fibre Channel bus at 40 users under ideal conditions - and for each such group of 40 users, you need a complete copy of all the video material available, at perhaps a terabyte. There's just no way, using today's technology, to get more data on to the network - so the cable company will be stuck with tens of thousands of VoD servers, all reading information off their hard drives at the maximum rate for 24 hours a day.

I just can't see them making that kind of investment.

It's already out there, and it really works

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works with this type of technology day in and day out, I can tell you it is here, and it's here to stay. Just about all of the cable companies that my company services, have said that there digital box returns after VOD was rolled out went from aroun 50% to less than 10%. It's a good source of revenue for the cable providers. As far as streaming the movies, the way that we do it, is if there are say 5 people that order the same movie within say 60 secs of one another, then they will actually all be receiving the same stream, which of course takes less bandwidth, until one of them decides to pause, rew, ff, etc, and then they break out of that stream and will have a single stream of their own.

One of the really cool offshoots of VOD is SVOD (Subscription VOD) which is currently being deployed through a number of operators. SVOD is where you can watch past episodes of shows on premium networks, such as The Sopranos or Band of Brothers, which means you could finally get to see that episode that you may have missed.

Cheers

We've had this in Austin....

[Anonymous Coward]

since the begining of the year and it plays dvd quality video.

Already in Louisville, KY

[NextGen]

I guess it's easier to roll it out in a smaller big city. Insight Communications is our provider, and the service is pretty good. I've already watched a couple of movies on it. And yes, you CAN get p0rn on it as well. ;-)

Time Warner Communications in Brevard County, FL

[Gangis]

Time Warner Communications is preparing to roll out their VOD service pretty soon here in Brevard County, Florida. Average price is $3.99 a video, and will be available for multiple viewing for a single customer within 48 hours of purchasing the movie. The digital cable remote controller already has VOD featurs, such as a switch that allows us to control the VCR or VOD. There are buttons like those you'd expect in a VCR, such as Rewind, FF, Pause, etc. Yes, you can pause a VOD!

Mmm... LotR in DVD-quality through VOD...

Re:How will this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want some additional information about how the servers actually work, you can check out the wesites for either of the two largest suppliers of these systems at www.schange.com or www.ccur.com

only now???

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile over in Belgium:

The national boradcasting company (VRT [www.vrt.be]) is working together with the largest telecom operator (Belgacom [belgacom.be]) on a Video-On-Demand platform.

They are using 2Mbit SDSL connections (yes - that's 2 Mbit UP and 2 Mbit DOWN! ;-) to stream the media into the tester's homes.
And the SDSL connections will also be available for home use too!

According to what I've heard, all tests are going very well, and it should get commercial in january or february.

Happening in Australia too

[purplemonkeydan]

Pretty rare that Australia is actually somewhat close to leading edge ;)

Optus [optusinteractive.com.au] are trialling a digital VOD system in Sydney. You can subscribe to the commerical trial, and pay to be their guinea pig ... err ... early adopter. They are using Liberate as the platform, and Pace STU's.

The movies are about 6 months old, which is 12 months better than standard pay TV.

Broadband 101

[Anonymous Coward]

VOD is possible because of broadband. Analog cable tv channels are about 6MHz wide (including audio) across the available spectrum (currently 25MHz to 1GHz). They have been standardized (FCC) at certain frequencies, i.e. channel 2 is always 55.25MHz and certain frequencies are not used such as the FM frequencies (88-108MHz). Digital Cable modulates that same 6MHz to get a data rate of 28MB/s to 38MB/s depending on the modulation type (QAM64 and QAM256 respectively) that gives you about 10 to 15 digital video channels (respectively). Cable Modems typically use 1 or 2 6MHz blocks (channels) over the entire plant.

That's roughly a total of 54GB/s of bandwidth available on FLAT a 1GHz plant.

VOD is sometimes done in a distributed fashion. With QAM Modulators and Content servers located at a hub site, each serving a small number of nodes (a node typically has 100-1500 boxes in it). A group of channels will be reserved for distributed use only.

Lets say that were're in a city with 150,000 VOD capable boxes. Lets say that this plant has 15 hubs and 10 nodes per hub If you had 4 Channels per node allocated to do VOD at each hub, you would have the capability to serve 144MB/s per 1000 boxes in addition to the normal video lineup. That's an additional 21GB/s on the plant overall using up only 4 channels on the spectrum!!! Of course it is assumed that not all boxes will be ordering VOD at the same time. The revenue for the cable companies is potentially enourmous (you can do the math for $5 per buy).

I work in cable tv and I have seen many headends installing the necessary equipment to pull this off.

Blockbuster beware...

Jake