Broadcast television in an IP world

Sat Nov 18 02:03:52 UTC 2017

On 2017-11-17 18:56, shawn wilson wrote:
> Besides Netflix, does anyone else offer CDN boxes for their services?

This is where local TV stations are different as they are already
present in the market they serve. They can connect locally, transit-free
to the local ISPs.

(and buy transit only for those outside of the local ISP's footprint).

Of course, when CBS sells rights to a local TV station based on its
antenna footprint, going OTT changes that as it allows a Burlington VT
station to serve people in California in another affiliate's exclusive
territory for that network.

Which is why the TV stations might require "working" geolocation to be
able to serve a Comcast customer in Burlington VT but not a Comcast
customer in Wilmington Delaware (assuming COmcast serves both for sake
of discussion).

Without this, we'll see CBS offer a nationwide SVOD service (oh wait,
they already do), and leave local TV station to have web based
newscasts since other programming will be through CBS All Access (which,
being a national service uses CDN services to get near to people).

Either way, I see TV content moving to the web which means the numebvr
of hours currently spent watching via OTA or Cable are moving to IP
networks.

An IPTV service such as Bell's already pushes that "cable TV" content
through its last mile IP infrastructure, so the main difference is loss
of multicast when programming originates outside the "BDU/MVPD"
environment. But with more and more people watching TV "on demand", the
advantages of multicast dimisnish (except for sports) because mroe a d
more programmin is watched withg unicast, at which point no different
from Netflix, Youtube etc.