[Beowulf] HDTV video file sizes

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 29 May 2007, laytonjb at charter.net wrote:

> I really, really wish they would actually do GigE to each house instead of the
> infernal DSL or Cable modem. I met a youg man who used to be a VP at
> AT&T and he did a study about bringing GigE to each house. It turned out to
> be cheap to do and AT&T had a good start at the infrastructure to handle
> that kind of bandwidth. So he wrote up the report, talked it over with some
> people and of course it was killed. I'm beginning to think that I should
> wear a vertically gray striped shirt with a number of the back as part of the
> "Bandwidth Gulag" that the communications have put us in. We suffer and
> they laugh.

Don't be so pessimistic.  It will happen, because all the major players
want to be first and biggest to score the "triple play" -- delivery of
phone, internet and media to the household.  Because data is delivered
in bursts -- it isn't enough to deliver a movie at playing speed (on
umpty channels they need to be able to deliver a MOVIE that you can
watch or not watch until later in a few seconds -- they'll get to
gigabits to the household in -- at a guess, three to five more years
(anybody with better numbers?).  At least in some cities, towns, venues.

They're running fiber down the country road that leads past my
neighborhood as I type this -- I've been watching them bury fiber
throughout Durham for the last three or four years.  The phone company
isn't even bothering to upgrade its DSL equipment (which is totally
obsolete) because I'm pretty sure that they're never going to replace
it.  It won't happen all at once because it is expensive, it may make a
stop or two at 1.5 Mbps or 45 Mbps along the way, but it won't be that
long now.  As you say, once the fiber is there (even if it isn't all the
way to "the household") there isn't much point in being stingy.

> At this rate we'll never see full streaming to the desktop. My only hope at
> this point is either Google will figure it out or perhaps Steve Jobs will force the
> communications knuckleheads to actually do the right thing (not that I'm
> a Jobs fan by any means). Or perhaps Jim Lux will develop a new high-speed
> downlink from satellites to get streaming video (maybe some kind of P2P
> cluster in space set up where you get feeds from multiple satellites). What
> the hell, I can dot my roof with small dishes if it means I can watch Grey's
> Anatomy when I want to.

No, I think that they'll have fiber running to households in decent
numbers starting in maybe 2010.  And whoever gets there first "wins".

    rgb

>
> Jeff
>>
>>     rgb
>>
>> BTW, if I sent you my google string, you'd have to send me the recipe
>> for your ribs, right?  Although all the spoilsports on the list have
>> fixed it up so that there's no point anymore...
>
> Well, I can perhaps send you the recipe, but we have to be careful so that
> the Kanasas Cit Barbecue Masters don't come looking for me. I see those
> guys that lokk the "Da Bears" fan club from the old SNL routines tracking
> me down.
>
>

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu