actually available, in someone's opinion. Vast areas of franchises were never cabled so it isn't that as the % would be a lot bigger.

I was reading the FTTH Council guide to business plans http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/nl/member_area/member_area...

the widespread availability ( / uptake ? ) of satellite TV, or the presence of cable, both counted as negatives in the viability of an FTTH project.

Is the UK an unusually large user of satellite TV compared to EU as a whole ?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Is the UK an unusually large user of satellite TV compared to EU as a whole ?

I've heard that we have an unusually high uptake compared to most of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_television_by...

And they claim to have hit the magic 10 million subscribers. Presumably a lot of subscriptions serve more than one person so it's better than 1 in 6 penetration.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 07-Feb-11 14:54:13)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

VoD of any vintage - interesting storage system...

Even fairly small TV stations still archive off their old material from on demand storage, to tape robot systems for near on demand, i.e. can be re-ingested if it is actually needed. In short the cost of storing material is still high enough (at least when storing at 25Mbps or higher bit rates) that you cannot afford it.

Shame

Remember the gaming system that streamed video - now that could make use of FTTP very well, imagine being able to rent a game for 48 hours for say £7, and the video is rendered remotely at 1080p 25Mbps and streamed to you as you play. The console need only be able to play the video i.e. less hardcore graphics engine needed.

Combine that with the social side of XBox live, or PSN and friends could play a game as a group, without lengthy downloads, and play different games each Friday game night.

Yeah, that sounds like a cool system. I'm still a bit sceptical about it but that would certainly be anther good use for FTTP. I'm not sure what the market for that is though. Possibly higher than VoD.

In 2002 we had about the same use of satellite as DK and SE ~26%. AT was much higher. DE had a lot higher cable TV takeup.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

In 2002 we had about the same use of satellite as DK and SE ~26%. AT was much higher. DE had a lot higher cable TV takeup.

It seems likely that the rise of Sky is what halted VM and prevented them clearing their debts. Overall Sky's service is somewhat better than VM's and has been for a while.

But the problem for FTTP is that it seems to me that everyone daft enough (like me) to pay extra to watch TV is already doing so. Anyone that wants several hundred channels and over fifty HD channels can have them. Well..aside from some very rare premises at the north side of a mountain

I recall when UA did Sutton they laid cable to all of the streets surrounding the Roundshaw estate, but not the Estate itself, having put up with all of our access being swimming in mud through the winter we got no benefit out of it.

I won't pay for bundles where 99% is of no interest to anyone in the house (no kids, no movies fans, no sports fans, no scifi fans).

I might pay a nominal sum for content not available elsewhere (Sky Arts? Seems Murdoch might finally have discovered Rockpalast, 30 years late. Rockpalast was/is of course a program from a Public Service Broadcaster, free to air in Germany). But no one is offering me that opportunity, so no one is getting that piece of my rapidly decreasing disposable income.

I did sign up for ClassicalTV's VoD service once (they do more than their name suggests), but since they can't even index their content properly (search for Artist F, click, get Artist Q), I very quickly gave up. They may have had the content, but they didn't have the competence. (They were also Windows-only, which wasn't helpful).

At my current employers, there are lots of folk in and around the IT department who swap their dodgy newsbin copies of paid-for US TV series before the programmes arrive on paid-for TV here in the UK. [Works internet is so poor they copy them at home and bring USB sticks etc in, but that's a different story]

If these folk took the same attitude to distributing dodgy copies of paid-for software as they do to distributing dodgy copies of paid-for TV, the IT department would very quickly get shut down (and we'd probably be a happier place as a result). These are not particularly young or junior people either. How does that work? Should they care what the Managing Director thinks?

Legitmate VoD is tomorrow's solution. Has been for years, will be for years - sadly for the networking and storage companies (and Microsoft) who have been promoting the **** out of it for years.

Rockpalast fanpage: http://www.rockpalastarchiv.de/welcomee.html
Rockpalast official: http://www.wdr.de/tv/rockpalast/

So I can get higher quality porn delivered straight to my 103" TV.

It is lifesize!

In reply to a post by zebedeeeeee:

my 103" TV.

I give up .

Yours is definitely much bigger than mine.