The Internet's Clearly Not Ready to Stream Big TV Events | Hacker News Reader

The Internet's Clearly Not Ready to Stream Big TV Events

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10 pointsghosh6 comments

I agree with the basic sentiment expressed here. I don't currently have a TV subscription but am looking into getting one to watch the local news, HBO and some basketball and hockey.

The current streaming services don't seem to be very competitive comparatively, with a basketball/hockey streams charging $150 per year each alone for what could be a low quality, spotty service.

I hope streaming drastically improves in the near future. It's pretty frustrating to want a relatively small set of programming and yet be forced to pay for tens of channels you'll never look at through basic cable + add on premium packages.

With that being said, I did see something recently about cable changing here in Canada soon to cap basic cable at $25 per month and other channels have to be available separately and not in packages, which could make streaming even less competitive.

The difference is the delivery model. Internet streaming is unicast, and (correct me if I'm wrong!) Cable TV viewers are receiving multicast feeds to their neighborhoods.

OTA broadcast is also best described as multicast.

Satellite -- I don't have the fine details of how this works, but I think it's basically multicast streams your receiver is tuning into.

The fact is that internet streaming is much more convenient for users, but each user puts a measurable load on the system.

edit: I know that they're not literally multicast unless they're an IP network, but it's a good comparison

edit2: ISPs bringing CDN servers/equipment in-house is a good way to mimic other forms of TV distribution, but it is expensive as it requires bandwidth upgrades to support the constant stream of data coming into their network which their users may not ever request.

IPv6 has multicast built in, lets hope the ISP's leave it switched on, as it will help their interconnects and create a new set of application innovations.

I for one would like to see a p2p multicast protocol for super fast file delivery, no more queuing for a download, you just get whichever part is being sent out at that time.

Or Dropbox/Google Drive uploads that automatically send to the different geographical endpoints rather than wait for the data centre to replicate it...

I don't have the fine details of how [satellite] works, but I think it's basically multicast streams your receiver is tuning into.

It's plain old broadcast/downlink. A digital stream multiplexed with MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 channels of video data. There's also an in-band signalling stream for other uses (guide data, turning subscribers on and off, etc).

Why don't modern devices take advantage of free OTA braodcasts? FCC regs? Power requirements? I remember reading about Japanese devices that could receive UHF/VHF TV back in the day, and I always thought it was neat. Seems like a lot of freely available content that is being ignored in favor of more complicated, lower quality, and high bandwidth delivery methods.

The US and EU finalized DVB-H in the early 2000s. Digital broadcast television with a transmission standard that was good for battery life on mobile receivers. The current US broadcast standard ATSC-8VSB doesn't work well with a receiver in motion and needs a lot more receiver power.

I worked on a number of prototype devices with this technology. Qualcomm even launched a service in the USA using their DVB-H variant called MediaFLO. Target and Best Buy sold MediaFLO player units!

We were ready to go. Test transmissions were happening all over the world...and then the iPhone launched. People could watch YouTube on their phones and the desire for mobile broadcast TV evaporated, literally, overnight. MediaFLO shut down about a year after launch.

(ATSC-8VSB eventually adapted to the technical needs for mobile, but nobody cares anymore).

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