INFO: Telkom/DSTV : Movie on Demand Sevice

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RoosTa

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Hah, I knew it: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=23714&page=1

Today I received a phone call from Telkom about their new service. They asked me if I was interested to help test Telkom/DSTV movie on demand service for free. No charge whatsoever. (I still can't believe it)

This is how it will work: Your line will run at 4512kb/s (this figure might change according to your line speed), though your ADSL and DSTV service will be split; 512kb towards your ADSL, and 4000kb/s dedicated to DSTV. They will install their own 'modem' and connect this to your DSTV. The movies will be 'high' quality with full Dolby Digital surround sound and will be on demand; (speculation) Meaning you'll most probably stream the movie and be able to watch it once as if you've rented a DVD. The movie will not effect your ADSL connection and will not contribute towards your cap.

They will start rolling out the test phase in mid-August. So I will keep members of this forum updated.
 
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It's pretty cool that they can do this with normal DSL, imagine what would be posible with VDSL. VDSL supports speeds up to 52 megabits per second. HDTV on demand? :D
 
yeah its not vdsl/adsl2

4000kbit is a bit under a normal dvd quality although thats a dedicated dvd video stream and this one has to support audio so it will probably be like 3800 video 200 audio or there abouts, and a ormal choppy dvd is 4200kbit just the video and hectic dvd can be 8000kbit

so it shouldnt be too shabby,but content is king, I wonder what they'll be showing you during the free run... i hope its not an animated test pattern
 
why cant they compress the content with divx or xvid? I have an LG divx/xvid player at home and it is awesome. No choppy playback, awesome quality. Just plain beautiful. Worst case you might have to buy a new decoder unit, but thats fine if you can get away with less wasting of our precious bandwidth!
 
eye_suc said:
why cant they compress the content with divx or xvid? I have an LG divx/xvid player at home and it is awesome. No choppy playback, awesome quality. Just plain beautiful. Worst case you might have to buy a new decoder unit, but thats fine if you can get away with less wasting of our precious bandwidth!
Click to expand...

Well it is local bandwidth so I don't see a problem. DivX is a good idea though. Remember you only pay for the movie, not the bandwidth.
 
I think the box/modem they install, will most probably handle the decompression.

Funny thing though, the sales guy told me they will 'ugrade' my line to 5mb, though my router is reporting 4512kb/s.
 
divx is ok but it is choppy, as you'll notice in dark scenes where you'll get blockage but because of moving frames and the optical point being elsewhere you dont really watch for it.

DSTV now is about the same sort of quality, the point is people want proper sound with proper dvdish video.

Another reason is the resolution, if we want to move forward with high res content this is the best method, sure you can get divx to be at a higher res but if you keep the bitrate the same you get more blockage
 
hmmm, fair enough, but if the movie size is smaller the transfer time will be less :) its win win for the service provider (people not clogging the system) and the user. but in any case, if it can be done with video, why oh why cant it be done with normal ADSL usage?
 
it can www.streamtvnow.com but the okish streams need 760kbit

also its not transfer then watch, its streaming so there is no transfer time to worry about besides latency which will be under a second, well under a second..
 
ok, no transfer, streaming then, but if it is encoded then there is still less traffic :) its a shame the testing of this service is Random. is it Random? I wouldnt mind trying it!
 
if telkom can give you those speeds without inturputing normal adsl why cant they give us better service think what that service would cost?
They cant tell they cant do it thier the moinopoly so they have the money
to make bettre packages or does it just go into thier pockets.
(wonder if someone secretley tape these telkom honcoas what their lifestyles
are like hmmm go to europue , amercia , asia drive lastest cars biggest house
youve ever seen maybe) they proberly buy r20 000 suits!!!
 
it is encoded, all video is, master tapes at film studios are huge and its roughly 1gb a minute, so it is encoded and compressed just to a higher standard than divx

divx is ok, its nice and nobody hates it but its not dvd quality
 
Is anybody else seeing a flip-side to this ?

Sure, in theory, the network can handle this. And with any modern TeleComs company I would say great: about time. But Telkom ? There is already an increase of between 200-1000% in latency between the beginning of the month and the end of the month as everyone max's their cap.

They can't provide decent 512K solutions, but they want to do 1Mb / Video solutions ?

On the other hand: Most people could probably tell there has been some things different on the network : Usually after month end my wireless latency drops immediately as all the ADSL users stop downloading - This month this has not happened. People are fiddling ...
 
Can somebody possibly let me have some contact details regarding this fieldtest? I would love to be part of this and provide plenty feedback..

Please?
 
The quality will depend on the sophistication of the encoding, currently DSTV is somewhat shocking from a quality perspective. The picture looks ok on a TV, but on screens where image artifacts are more noticeable it is evident that somewhere in the pipeline significant degradation is happening. I suspect the mpeg encoding is where the shortcuts have been taken.

Generally the mpeg encoding scheme is not very resolution specific, increasing the image size should not increase blockyness and other quantization flaws, usually it will just get slightly blurry on edge boundaries. An increase in image complexity is usually what will cause blockyness, such as chess board type patters or areas with highly patterned or textured surfaces.

Switching to Divx/Xvid formats would improve the quality significantly, and since the system is aimed at on demand content rather than continuous broadcasts they could prepair the files in advance. New content formats, despite the various advantages, are unlikely to be adopted by a place like DSTV which already has a significant investment in its current mpeg based technologies.

Of course the real question is how they are protecting the content, not that I think anybody would really want to keep a copy of anything DSTV pushes out.
 
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