BIT RATE
Covering cable TV, broadband and Internet video technologies
Calling the Broadband Bluff
Here’s another way to frame the debate over usage-based billing: After years of broadband providers marketing super-fast, unlimited Internet access at a fixed monthly price, customers are calling their bluff. Broadband networks were originally designed with oversubscription ratios (the total theoretical peak capacity available to all subscribers vs. the actual amount of bandwidth available) ...... Read More
Comments (0)Ten Years Ago, TiVo's 'Black Thursday' Crash
Back in the early days of TiVo, shortly after the fledgling company launched its very first digital video recorders, there came “Black Thursday”: a crash of its TV listings database that destroyed TiVos across the country. Richard Bullwinkle, now chief evangelist for Rovi, recalled the dark day during a panel discussion at the Future of Television East conference Thursday in New York ...... Read More
Comments (0)Why Monthly Broadband Usage Caps Won't Really Work (But Usage-Based Billing Will)
You’re a broadband provider. Do you want to portray yourself as (a) an unabashedly greedy monopolist/duopolist or (b) a clueless monopolist/duopolist whose lame network can’t meet demand? Or what the heck, take them both, and maybe even throw in the idea that cable and telco TV providers are hoping to inhibit usage of Internet alternatives to their multichannel video packages. These ...... Read More
Comments (14)Rogers: Game on For TV Everywhere
Up in the Great White North, Rogers Communications — Canada’s No. 1 cable operator — has kicked off a test of a TV Everywhere service (see Rogers To Launch ‘TV Everywhere’ In November). The cable company yesterday (Nov. 17) launched Rogers On Demand Online “in private customer testing” and the service will be made available publicly near the end of ...... Read More
Comments (0)Rembrandt: We Agreed To Drop Patent Claims On Cable Modems
Is there a greeting card that says, “Sorry for suing you. You were right, your products don’t infringe our patents”? Maybe with a sad little puppy on it. Rembrandt IP Management — the patent-licensing firm that had sued the five largest U.S. cable operators and sought millions of dollars in royalty payments — claimed in a statement Monday that it withdrew its leg ...... Read More
Comments (1)MoCA Shoots For 800 Megs Over Coax
Zoom! The Multimedia over Coax Alliance is now looking at delivering a high-performance mode for the next generation of its spec capable of hitting a whopping 800 Mbps over existing in-home coax cabling, Cable Digital News reports. You could easily fit more than 40 HD MPEG-2 streams in 800 Mbps — not that anyone other than Bill Gates has that many TVs in his house. The 800-Meg mark would be ...... Read More
Comments (0)Moto's Cable Unit: Breaking Free From Mobile Phones
Motorola is said to be shopping around its Home & Networks Mobility division, asking for upwards of $5 billion (see Goodbye Moto?). That potential move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, may be a better outcome for the Home & Networks Mobility, which includes the cable equipment businesses, than under Moto’s scenario of splitting into two. The company reiterated yester ...... Read More
Comments (1)CBS to Sculpt Sitcom From a Twitter Feed
Can you cobble together a half-hour TV show out of the short, profane outbursts of a 73-year-old man? Well, sure, but more to the point: Will it be funny? CBS is about to give it a shot. The network has picked up a comedy to be based on s**tmydadsays, an obscenity-laced Twitter feed launched just a few months ago, according to WSJ’s Digits blog. The Twitter account was started by Justin Hal ...... Read More
Comments (5)TiVo Wants FireWire Waiver For Cable-Provided DVRs
As RCN gets ready to roll out TiVo-supplied HD boxes in early 2010, the DVR maker is looking to dot an “i” on one detail. TiVo DVRs don’t have an IEEE 1394 interface (a.k.a. FireWire), which under existing FCC regulations is required for all operator-supplied high-definition set-tops. In a Nov. 6 filing with the FCC, TiVo wants the agency to clarify that it doesn’t hav ...... Read More
Comments (0)Is the Movie Industry Crazy for Wanting to Lock Down Its Blockbusters?
Big movie studios want to move up VOD windows to even before a film’s DVD release. But before they do that, they want to make sure a cable subscriber who orders a blockbuster in HD can’t rip it, and then push it out to millions of his closest friends over a peer-to-peer network. The technical feature that would let cable operators block the copying of VOD titles from set-tops is ...... Read More
Comments (2)Verizon Pulls the Fiber Alarm
Not that I blame Verizon for trying to defend its $23 billion FiOS fiber-to-the-home network, but the telco’s objection to Comcast’s claim that it delivers services over a fiber-optic network is just plain silly (see Better Business Bureau Refers Comcast ‘Fiber-Optic’ Claim To FTC). Why is it silly? Because Comcast actually does deliver services over a fiber-optic netwo ...... Read More
Comments (5)Here Comes the Broadband-Enabled Car
What could you do with 100 Mbps under the hood? Alcatel-Lucent, along with Toyota and other partners, is showing off a 2010 Prius outfitted with a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband connection that provides a slew of entertainment and information services — including video on demand, piped into the rear-seat headrests, to divert whiny kids on their way to Grandma’s house. & ...... Read More
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