Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth Than Any Other Company

Wed May 25 03:14:56 UTC 2011

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Christopher Morrow" <morrowc.lists at gmail.com>

> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Lou Katz <lou at metron.com> wrote:
> >> > An "elegant" idea, done in by changing technology. *sigh*
> >
> > As USENIX director I sponsored and sheparded this project, called
> > "Stargate".
> > We at least got bits into the blanking interval at WTBS in Altanta.
> 
> So... would this have been feasible today? given the bandwidth
> required to send a full feed these days, i suspect likely not, eh?
> (even if you were able to do it on all 500+ channels in parallel)

I can't tell you whether it would be feasible from a *quantity* standpoint
unless you specify what your group list is -- big 7 text?  Probably.

Problem is, it depended (as he noted) on a peculiarity of the network TV 
environment at the time: it wasn't part of the signal, but of the *transport*
which -- at the time -- was carried around along with the signal, so you
could piggyback stuff there, and get it right to people's TVs.  MPEG2 and 4
don't carry the vertical interval, so any ride you can get isn't free --
rather similar to our Multicast discussion last week.

Back in the really bad old days, I'm told that the most stable frequency 
source the average civilian could get was the 3.58MHz oscillator in a
color TV set -- but *only* when you were watching *network* programs, at
which time that oscillator was effectively phase-locked to a $50k+ black
burst generator at network master control.

Frame synchronizers shot that plan out of the water.

Never been sure if that's apocryphal or not.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
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