Posted by Bill Fright on 11/10/05 16:34

AnthonyR wrote:

> <marks542004@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1131572540.281420.97030@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>This may be off topic - please suggest other newsgroup if applicable.
>>
>>There was a report on my local TV news about several cable companies
>>carrying several TV series on-demand.
>>
>>Does anyone know the carrying capacity of a cable network for this type
>>of thing.
>>
>>When I was involved with computer networking 15 years ago video
>>conferencing always wound up killing the networks.
>>
>>I know speeds have gone up considerably but there must be a point at
>>which the on-demand capacity breaks down.
>>
>>
>>regards
>>
>
>
> Not sure on the answer but i thought the same thing.
> In fact Time Warner offers me so many OnDemand channels now it's impossible
> to watch a fraction every day.
> Besides Movies from HBO, Showtime, TMC etc... they offer A&E, CNN,
> FoodNetwork, Comedy Central you name it
> everything OnDemand now. I don't know their limits but so far everything
> runs pretty smoothly.
> I wonder after every single customer goes digital, uses broadband and movies
> over IP at the same time what will happen?
>
> AnthonyR.
>
>

To me it's all about the bandwidth. Sure they can cram more programs
into the pipe as they continue to lower the quality. Any of you guys who
are compressing your high quality shows to mpg2 (DVD) know what I'm
talking about. The shorter the show the higher the quality.

Maybe I have too much time on my hands or I'm a huge nerd but I love to
go to retail home theater stores and talk bandwidth with people. My
favorite is to have them show me HD via satellite.

So nothing will happen (as far as a major system crash) they'll just
keep lowering the bit rate and decrease the overall quality to fit more
programming in the pipe.

Next time I hear digital quality I'm gonna throw my cell phone at somebody.

[Back to original message]