roundtable: Re: Video Switches

roundtable: Re: Video Switches

Re: Video Switches

Bob Weber (weber@world.std.com)
Wed, 9 Mar 1994 14:45:13 -0500 

Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 14:45:13 -0500
From: weber@world.std.com (Bob Weber)
Message-Id: <199403091945.AA04417@world.std.com>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re:  Video Switches

Jamie Love writes:
>
>We have been asking congress to place langauge in the bill that would 
>require the FCC to set some type of standards or review for the system 
>architecture, including the issue of the "switches" and user interfaces.  
>We have taken the position that the broadband system should have at 
>least a crude server switch, which would allow consumers a choice of 
>content providers.  Is there any reason why the new broadband neworks 
>should not employ an open architecture with a switch, allowing 
>competition in the content market over a shared infrastructure of home 
>to head office wiring?


there are a number of ideas here that deserve to be distinguished:

* open architecture. this may refer to a common set of standards around
  transport and switching, ATM, SONET, etc. the idea here would be to
  have widespread adoption thereby fostering low(er) cost through
  scale economies.

* competition in the content market. this is a more difficult matter.
  A question is, who has power, the content orginators or the content
  packagers or the distributors.

* over a shared infrastructure. does this mean that the end user can
  acess many content packagers over the same connection?

what seems to be missing is reference to two critical capabilities:

* finding tools. how do you locate content in video land that you want?
  channel surfing in a 500 channel videoverse probably won't work too
  well.

* addressibility.  a 500 channel videoverse gets really interesting if
  you can locate the channels you want regardless of where the source
  is, much like surfing the internet today. gopher, www, wais, etc.
  work because of addressability and finding tools (crude though 
  they may be)

bob weber
-------------------

Robert Weber                           Voice: 617-654-0621
Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc.   Fax:   617-654-0654
One Liberty Square, 11th Floor         Internet: weber@world.std.com
Boston, MA 02109-4843                            weber@ncri.com

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