true On demand over satellite

[dirtysouth_boy3001]

I'm wondering what you guys think about this. I know with the tech that's in place now it'll be pretty much impossible plus without 2-way satellite dishes. Do y'all think though we will see it in the near future or is it just a pipe dream.

 

[jayn_j]

I'm wondering what you guys think about this. I know with the tech that's in place now it'll be pretty much impossible plus without 2-way satellite dishes. Do y'all think though we will see it in the near future or is it just a pipe dream.

I think it is a matter of bandwidth. The downlink would need to be nationwide, or at least spotbeam wide.

It works on my comcast because there is a distribution system that uses a higher bandwidth cable and only inserts it into the cable signal at the last distribution amp. That means that it only uses cable bandwidth to the dozen or so users on my block. This allows them to distribute everything on 4 or 5 channels. On satellite, they would need to dedicate hundreds of channels, and dozens of transponders to the task.

There is also the issue with pausing and rewind. Frankly this works poorly on Comcast, with maybe a half second lag. I would assume it would need a phone link back and then a modification to the downlink stream. Figure 2-3 seconds lag, which would be quite annoying.

 

[Claude Greiner]

I think the only way this is going to happen is with larger hard drives. What I think has to happen is that they need to dedicate an entire 1 terabyte drive for on demand, and then its a matter of increasing the bandwith that these movies are downloaded at so they can beam an hour long show in a matter of 5 minutes.

With a Terabyte, you can get about 1000 hour long shows on a drive in standard def