are eircom still going ahead with there digital tv Plains

Gladiator

taken form an eircom email on what is need to get adsl

· Set-Top-Box - This is a box that allows you to receive a number of
interactive services such as Video on Demand, Pay per view events, web
browsing, email, home shopping and e-commerce services, all through
your existing television set.
· Infrared Keyboard - This is a cordless keyboard that allows you to
interact with your digital TV, type emails on screen, as well as visit
and scroll through Web pages on WebTV,
· DTV Remote Control - Typical of any TV remote control. It allows
users to control the TV, change channels, view the TV guide, and in
some cases send email in a similar way to sending a text messages on a
mobile phone.


i thought they had dropped all this, after fighting for it they finaly realized that it would cause billions to roll out and had dro pit for plain high speed internet

BNC

Gladiator,

You might get a response if you post it to the lads in ICDG (Irish Cable & Digital Guide).

Very helpful lot

www.boards.ie/icdg

[This message has been edited by BNC (edited 14-06-2001).]

chernobyl

i doubt that they will get the lisence to do so as they would destroy Chorus and NTL in both content and quality and therefore Eircom becomes a greater monopoly which aint gonna tolerated.

---

Britany Spears Looking incredible

dogs

What he said

Plus I don't think Eircom would really be in a (financial) position to do it, what with the axing of Rondomondo and such. (http://www.hackwatch.com/ .. for jmcc's unique if a little harsh slant )

Gladiator

thats what i heard and believe, that they finaly back down as they didnt have the money but that email made it sound liek they did

Skeptic1

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
i doubt that they will get the lisence to do so as they would destroy Chorus and NTL in both content and quality and therefore Eircom becomes a greater monopoly which aint gonna tolerated. </font>

The decision was made not so much to prevent Eircom's monopoly from increasing but to protect the monopolies of NTL and Chorus who have exclusive licences.

I strongly disagree with this approach. It's the reason we have unusually bad cable companies here. If Eircom were allowed to provide video services, NTL and Chorus would have had to follow. They would have been more aggressive in rolling out new services.

In order for Eircom to provide video services, they would have to have some sort of DSL in place. They would likely have provided Internet over this. ISPs would then start demanding access to the local loop in order to retain customers. At the moment there is only luke-warm interest in the LLU process from ISPs. Cable companies would have responded with cable Internet.

What you find with the current regulatory regime is cable companies, telcos, ISPs all scaling back their plans.

This is the only explanation I can find for the current situation in Ireland.

Gladiator

your missing the point, it would cost billions
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=1671378
read this, a canadian company developing cheap vdsl
and all it can carry is 5 digital channels,
now im sure centrain types if vdsl, will allow more channels but the simple fact is thats not going to be cheap for telecoms or the end user

[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 14-06-2001).]

yankinlk

welcome back joe22

dahamsta

I'm with Skeptic1 on this. Granting exclusive licences to the cable operators was a serious error of judgement on the part of the ODTR. In effect, the ODTR has justified and legitimised local monopolies in the television market, and hamstrung its own regulation powers into the process. If it hadn't been for those licences, it's quite likely DSL would already be rolled out; cable Internet access would be more widely available; and competition would have been introduced into the market.

Ditto vDSL and video channels - five channels is more than enough for an on-demand video system. If there was a problem, it would be down to local carrier bandwidth capabilities, not the local loop.

adam

Gladiator

i see what you guys are saying and your quiet right, i remember seeing something about trials like this in england afew years back,

were the user could request what to watch, but instead of being channel based it was program based.

like a person could decide to watch 3 hours of bob the builder.

i hadnt realized it would be done this way

[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 14-06-2001).]

Skeptic1

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by dahamsta:
...Ditto vDSL and video channels - five channels is more than enough for an on-demand video system. If there was a problem, it would be down to local carrier bandwidth capabilities, not the local loop.</font>

I would maintain that the number of 'channels' would simply depend on server capacity. Afterall, you can get thousands of realmedia channels over the internet. I'm not sure whether VOD simply means requesting individual films or programs but you should be able to offer any number of 'live' TV channels as well through these means.

It is more convenient to offer video as simultanious channels over a cable system because of its "bus" architecture. With the telephone line, you have the problem of low bandwidth but you have the advantage of lots of individual lines going out to the customers. In this situation it makes sense to tailor the stream to the users requirements upon request (whether that be a movie or a channel).

What I think the Canadian company was talking about was 5 simultaious streams. This would be possible with VDSL. You could have five TVs in a house whatching one of any number of channels. Even with plain old ADSL, you should be able to watch any number of channels so long as you watch them one at a time.

With a bandwidth of, say, 640kbs, you should be able to get VHS quality video with the appropriate compression software. In the case of movies, this compression could be done in advance and stored on disk. With 'live' streams you would need to use an array of processors in order to do the real-time compression.

dahamsta

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Ditto vDSL and video channels - five channels is more than enough for an on-demand video system. If there was a problem, it would be down to local carrier bandwidth capabilities, not the local loop.</font>

What I meant by that is that assuming we actually did have vDSL, and assuming the system was VOD (which is as far as I can see the only way of doing it over the POTS), there would be no problem with the local loop because the majority of people would only require one, two or maybe three streams (two tv's and one recording device). If a problem is going to be encountered anywhere, it would be in the carriers network because of a lack of available bandwidth. I get the feeling that if Eircom *were* allowed to roll out VOD, they'd make a hash of it, and consumers would find themselves encountering problems much like those encountered with dialup; which would result in choppy or even non-existant video. I reckon the same would go for the rest of them though, because ISP's appear to be notorious at not learning from their own and others mistakes. It's already manifesting itself in the LLU debacle - the Irish government and telco's should have seen all the screwups in the UK and stepped around them ages ago.

adam

Skeptic1

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
your missing the point, it would cost billions
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=1671378
read this, a canadian company developing cheap vdsl and all it can carry is 5 digital channels, now im sure centrain types if vdsl, will allow more channels but the simple fact is thats not going to be cheap for telecoms or the end user</font>

The way I imagined it being done would be for the user to remotely request a stream from the server in a manner similar to real media on the Internet. You would not have the problem of congestion so you could have a small buffer with little delay. Changing channels would be a matter of changing streams.

The server could have any number of streams available but only one would be being broadcast over the user's line at any one time. Theoretically, any number of streams (channels) would be possible.

But my point was simply that Eircom should be allowed to do this. I am not really concerned about the financial viability for Eircom.