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

Wed May 25 14:15:08 UTC 2011

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brandon Butterworth" <brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk>

> > On the financial side, it is trivial.
> 
> The opposite, the bits were paid for but unused back then so
> financially it was worth using them. In digital tv every bit has a use
> and so a cost, hence they are used for more TV channels instead for
> parasitic services. You end up competing with TV if you want any
> quantity so hard to make viable today.
> 
> > On the engineering side, _impossible_.
> 
> The opposite, completely trivial now. Digital TV is a mux of a number
> of bit streams, some with compressed video others with meta data for
> epg, alternate sound, interactive apps etc. Adding another stream to
> the mux is trivial, you just have to pay for the bandwidth though as
> most are stat muxed it's possible to create room at the expense of the
> vbr streams where the video encoders reduce the quality of as result
> of back pressure from the stat muxer

And sanction means both "approve of" and "order the death of" and academic
means both "very important learning-related" and "doesn't matter".

His assertion, Brandon, had to do with *whether you can still slip it in
without anyone noticing and having to do anything at any other stage of the
transmission chain*, which was Stargate's Unique Selling Proposition.

Yes, we know that its possible to move bits down a digital distribution
channel, Captain Obvious.  :-)

Cheers,
- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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