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RE: AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections "irrelevant"

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Sun Apr 02 01:08:40 2006

On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, Edward B. DREGER wrote:
> Again, I don't see how AT&T can claim "DSL is fast enough" in one
> breath, then turn around and say they're ready to deliver IPTV.

This has been covered in other public presentations.  The access
link for VDSL2 has about 25Mbps at the proposed distances.  Using
6Mbps of the access link for Internet leaves about 19Mbps for IPTV.

> I'm curious how program content is currently stored.  (Note that I'm
> totally ignoring live broadcast.)  If MPEG-2, I'd guess conversion to
> MPEG-4 might produce less-than-desirable image quality.

There is no standard, or rather lots of standards. Based on published
articles, ESPN stores SD content at about 40Mbps MPEG2, and HD content in
100Mbps DVCPRO HD. Starz/Encore stores their content at about 15Mbps
MPEG2. A lot of video is still stored on film and tape (e.g. DigiBeta,
Beta SP, etc)

Cable, satellite and telco are all moving towards a new codec, most
people predict H.264/MPEG AVC, but have different migration timelines.
I wouldn't be surprised if some programmers supply their video streams
in multiple native formats, while other program streams will be
transcoded from an existing stream.