BIT RATE
Covering cable TV, broadband and Internet video technologies
How Much 'TV Everywhere' Will Comcast's Caps Allow?
My estimate: almost 500 hours per month. Comcast last week announced it would initiate a trial next month to provide full-length episodes from Time Warner Inc.’s TNT and TBS and other networks, to customers who already pay for cable TV and broadband. (See Comcast, Time Warner Inc. Try To Blend Online TV Models, Nets Jump Into Comcast’s Online VOD Trial and TV Everywhere: The Ball Get ...... Read More
Comments (11)Cybersnooping: It's Illegal in the U.S.
Apparently I wasn’t explicit enough in my post earlier this week about why it’s ludicrous to compare Iran’s use of deep packet inspection to block and intercept the communications of dissidents to the use of DPI technology by U.S. ISPs. Let me spell it out: It’s illegal in the United States for service providers to intercept or disclose private electronics communication ...... Read More
Comments (3)TV Everywhere: The Ball Gets Rolling
The cable industry’s first crack at “authentication” is supposed to kick off next month, when Comcast offers a trial group of 5,000 subs access to TNT and TBS episodes, and eventually other programming. (See Comcast, Time Warner Inc. Try To Blend Online TV Models.) Today’s announcement has already raised several questions: Why did Time Warner Inc. start with Comcast rat ...... Read More
Comments (3)CableLabs Floats Bandwidth-On-Demand Concept
Pigs eating too much at the Internet trough? CableLabs has sketched out a system that would let cable customers tell their providers when they want more bandwidth — or less — and pay more (or less) accordingly. As Cable Digital News‘ Jeff Baumgartner reports today, CableLabs last month quietly posted a document on its Web site, describing a “method for dynamic control o ...... Read More
Comments (4)The Evil That Routers Do
In a fascinating display of political rhetoric, activist group Free Press is warning that a technology used by repressive regimes in Iran and China to spy on or block Internet communications is also employed by U.S. Internet service providers as a tool to manage their networks. The group links to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal reporting that the Iranian government appears to be e ...... Read More
Comments (0)FiOS TV Tees Up N.Y.-Area News
In what might be the official launch of FiOS1 in the NYC area, Verizon on Monday, June 22, “will reveal new choices for local programming available on the Verizon FiOS TV Network in the greater New York/New Jersey region,” the company said in a media advisory yesterday. We got wind of the forthcoming FiOS1 launch in the Big Apple and suburbs last Monday — see Verizon Expected ...... Read More
Comments (0)Did Canoe 'Overhype' the Zone-Targeted Ads?
Canoe Ventures has pulled the plug on what was to be its first crack at addressable TV advertising: Community Addressable Advertising, or CAM, which would have let advertisers deliver a second piece of creative to a subset of the 2,400 cable zones in the U.S. based on income level. Multichannel News first reported the news yesterday — see Canoe Scraps Initial Zone-Ad Plans. At the Promax/BD ...... Read More
Comments (2)TI's DOCSIS Guy Now Cable Europe Labs' CTO
Peter Percosan, previously Texas Instrument’s top ambassador to the cable industry, has taken on a new gig as chief technology officer of Cable Europe Labs. The new job’s going to require just a bit of air travel for Percosan, who has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Monday was my first day in the office … which is in Brussels,” Percosan wrote in an e- ...... Read More
Comments (0)Verizon Expected to Launch FiOS1 NY Next Week
Local news and weather channel FiOS1 New York will launch next Monday, June 22, available exclusively to Verizon FiOS TV subscribers in the New York metropolitan area, according to a source familiar with the telco’s plans. (See Look Out, NY1: Here Comes FiOS1.) Asked whether FiOS1 NY will launch next Monday, a Verizon spokeswoman said, “We don’t have anything to announce right ...... Read More
Comments (1)Let's Party Like It's 6/12/2009!
Massillon Cable TV, an operator in northeast Ohio, is throwing a party next Friday — complete with fireworks and a band — for employees and partners to celebrate the end of broadcast analog TV era. “Our employees have put in a lot of work to get here and we want to thank them,” says Massillon president Bob Gessner. “We’re staying up until midnight. It ...... Read More
Comments (0)Are You Ready for HD? High-Def Makeup, That Is
As I walked down 31st Street toward 6th Avenue in Manhattan yesterday, a shiny silver poster tacked onto the wall around a construction site caught my eye. “Are you ready?” the ad asked impertinently. At the bottom, “HD” stood out in large type, above which was a URL: hd-generation.com. Guerilla marketing for a new cable network? DirecTV’s HD campaign gone gonzo? ...... Read More
Comments (0)FCC: Bring on the DTAs
The FCC has granted a waiver request to Evolution Broadband for two low-cost digital terminal adapters — or DTAs — and has signaled it’s ready to give the OK to other manufacturers of similar devices if warranted. The FCC, in the order released Tuesday, noted the Evolution Broadband waiver was the first granted for a low-cost device rather than for a specific cable operator&#x ...... Read More
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