Kind of interesting, no comments on the IPTV blogs. Is it about the content? Does this stuff just not entice people? I am not sure, but I will admit that having VOD on Dish doesn't do a lot for me. Of new enhancements, its pretty low on my list. I understand Scott's argument that this is the way of the future, but he also hits on the biggest stumbling block: bandwidth. While I am happy with my local cable internet provider, the thought of al my neighbors running 10GB downloads all at the same time is not a happy one. Can you say dialup speeds?

"Even if you are lucky enough to have a nice fast connection at home, too much IPTV viewing and your internet provider can shut your service off for violating their download caps" When did "unlimited" stop meaning unlimited? This goes back to the one bad apple spoiling the bunch analogy. You've got a small percentage of broadband customers running file sharing of illegal and copyright material and it potentially ruins it for everyone else. They only put caps on the unlimited bandwidth for abusers that go to the extreme. I don't think most broadband providers will shut down IPTV users because they aren't using gigs and gigs of bandwidth on an hourly basis. A movie here, movie there isn't going to raise any red flags like the idiots sharing bit torrent like there is no tomorrow. Let's hope this is the case anyway.

Scott, One thing about broadband to rural customers. If you don't have access to DSL or cable, you have major restrictions on how much you can download (and upload) on satellite broadband. In my case, 200MB for a 24 hour period. Don't know of many movies that are less than 200MB. Until telco's and cable companies reach 100% of the U.S. population with at least 1Mbps down broadband, IPTV is nothing but a dream. Sure 99% of towns and cities will have it, but there will be a lot of people in the boonies (in my case less than a mile too far) to be able to benifit from any IPTV service.

This is where satellite companies could actually lead the way instead of copying cable co's efforts. Instead of video services, they offer data service which they then use IPTV to deliver video content. The upstream could be whatever the customer chooses (dialup, cable, dsl, or even satellite) since all the customer is sending is channel/show requests and DVR commands (FF, RWD, PAUSE). Instead of having "The Discovery Channel" you could just pick any show offered by Discovery and stream it. Of course this depends on content owners allowing this to happen. Using spotbeams to reuse available spectrum, they could cover the entire US. Stream HD content might pose a challenge however, even with h264, minimum bitrates of 4-5Mbps are required.