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UK government report calls for the end of broadcast TV

77 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

theallan 14y ago
Nice idea, but I can't see this happening for a long time to come, for the fundamental reason that we simply don't get the required bandwidth to the premises. I live in a reasonable sized city in Scotland, and can't watch iPlayer streaming because we don't get the bandwidth (5km from the exchange...). FTTC will help, but its never going to have the reach of the wireless transmissions of broadcast TV (Highlands and Islands for example). Even worse is that with a massive number of new houses going up in this area, they aren't putting any "next generation" communications infrastructure in - meaning to get FTTP or even FTTC they will need to dig the pavements up in future, which is horribly expensive, and thus happens very slowly (if at all). Until we have a method of delivering high speed broadband over the current twisted pair, or power lines (or any other existing infrastructure), this simply won't happen.
- arethuza 14y ago
  There are some interesting projects trying to get broadband internet access to remote communities in Scotland: http://www.glenelg.co.uk/news/broadband-solution-provided-for-arnisdale-and-corran-by-tegola-project/ http://www.glenelg.co.uk/news/broadband-solution-provided-fo... http://www.tegola.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.tegola.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
arethuza 14y ago
This was a report from the House of Lords Communications Committee - not the Government itself. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news/governments-broadband-strategy-risks-leaving-communities-behind/ http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/... Also, it apppears to be talking about terrestrial broadcast TV - not the satellite broadcasting used by Sky and others. Edit: I love the comment from the report: "The Government's strategy lacks just that – strategy."
anon1849567678 14y ago
I'd very much like to see this in place, personally I have not watched TV in a long time (I am in the minority of course), but there really is no need to clutter up the RF spectrum with what is obsolete technology. Measures and facts like these only come in to place long after people stop using them however, so this isn't going to be implemented any time soon.
- ordinary 14y ago
  How well would the internet hold up against a billion people watching the Olympics opening ceremony[0]? _____ [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television...
  - dan1234 14y ago
    If Multicast[0] routing was used, it'd probably hold up quite well. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast
    - mobiplayer 14y ago
      That's not the point. The point is if ISPs and backbone companies can cope with all that bandwidth.
      - vidarh 14y ago
        If multicast was used, the bandwidth used wouldn't be particularly high, that's the point.
  - anon1849567678 14y ago
    That is a good point, it wouldn't really, not if a broadcaster tries to adopt the same model as TV - that is to broadcast messages. Perhaps by using some peer to peer technology? Or by caching copies of the video through out the network? There would definitely be problems that would need to be overcome. I think this should work in the general case however, there would still be problems to overcome, and I can only see it helping internet connection speeds.
k-mcgrady 14y ago
I can definitely see this happening but not for a while. We are only just completing the switchover from analog to digital this year (and if I remember correctly that process started around 4 years ago).
nicholassmith 14y ago
It's a great idea that's totally unworkable right now. Maybe 3, maybe 4 years time, when BT finally pulls it together and gets more fibre runs in, when there's a bit more of a sane understanding of download limits and so on then we'll see it.
rwmj 14y ago
The other part of this report - the focus on universal access to 2 Mbps broadband instead of higher speeds in cities - I think is wrong. It assumes that you can't have both, and it also assumes that 2 Mbps is good enough for everyone, whereas in fact it's ridiculously poor for anyone in a modern society (we should be aiming for 1 Gbps minimum in cities). Edit: One of the comments on the Reg article[1] points out that there wasn't a single engineer on the committee. [1] http://forums.reghardware.com/post/1494829 http://forums.reghardware.com/post/1494829
- DanBC 14y ago
  Many people would prefer a guaranteed 2Mbps that they can use all the time, rather than the advertising lies of "upto 30 Mb" - which is usually less than that, and which is then throttled if you use it for more than twenty minutes a day. While 1 Gbps is a nice aim to have (and if you're putting fibre in you may as well put in extra, you don't have to light it right now) most people would be fine, now, with 5 Mbps. 2.5 Mbps is fine for YouTube (etc) and acceptable for BBC iPlayer tv.
  - rwmj 14y ago
    Your comment is interesting because it shows the lack of vision that the committee showed too. Broadband internet isn't just about watching iPlayer. _If_ we had decent, reliable, two way 1 Gbps internet that would open up so many extra possibilities, including: - many more people being able to work at home effectively (fast downloads, clear multi-way video conferencing etc) - ubiquitous cloud computing - processors in many more devices, all connected all the time (with rich video and audio feeds as well as mere telemetry) - gaming -- playing, and enabling people to develop much richer interactive games - home medical diagnostics - all those things that we haven't invented yet [Edit: It's a shame the lack of vision isn't just for the Lords. Judging by the replies it extends to HN too ...]
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Well, you're asking people to dig up the roads and install a bunch of dark fibre in the hope that someone else will invent a use for it. That's a tricky position in the UK: We're in a severe recession; no-one wants roads dug up; the last time we had a fibre glut it didn't end well for pretty much anyone involved. Speed of connection isn't what's preventing most people from working from home - stupid PHBs do that. Synchronous 1Gbps is unrealistic for the next 5 years. Maybe asynchronous 100 Mbps is possible. Not forgetting that the aim is for everyone - isolated villages in Wales and Scotland - not just the 4 big cities who can afford it and need it. I'd agree that if people are putting fibre in (or building new housing (as someone else mentions)) or even just digging up the road that there should be a requirement to install extra fibre. the stuff itself isn't that expensive and putting lots in gives you economies of scale. I'm just more realistic about finding the money to pay people to light it.
mtgx 14y ago
With Gigabits speeds happening, why not? Even 100 Mbps would be more than enough for 1080p TV.
- VLM 14y ago
  This seems fairly likely since OTA can do 1080p and its only 19.39 megabits/sec complete with all the overhead. After all the overhead is stripped away the raw mpeg2 transport stream is around 18.3 megabits/sec. As a point of comparison, no one encodes DVDs and bluerays at full rate because then you run out of disks, and can't fit in all the garbage that purchasers supposedly desire, like mandatory unskipable previews and piracy warnings and so forth. But a good rule of thumb is your typical DVD is a round 6ish megabits/sec and a blueray encode stream should be around 30ish megabits/sec.
DanBC 14y ago
This title is incorrect on several levels. Yet again the Reg mangles details. 1) In the UK "broadcast" can mean over the Internet. It's a term defined in a couple of tv laws. 2) There's a difference between "terrestrial digital broadcast" (what the article is talking about) and other forms of broadcast; eg satellite, cable, etc. 3) No-one is asking for "broadcast" tv to end. The Reg article quotes the committee: > "We recommend that the government, Ofcom and the industry begin to consider the desirability of the transfer of terrestrial broadcast content from spectrum to the internet and the consequent switching off of broadcast transmission over spectrum." Weirdly that quote comes just after the Reg manages to give an incorrect summary: > Rather than take up vital electromagnetic spectrum, TV should be delivered exclusively over the internet, the House of Lords' Communications Committee concluded. Well, no, they're only talking about switching digital terrestrial tv to the Internet. They're not talking about cable or satellite tv.
- vidarh 14y ago
  This is pretty much just suggesting what industry started doing a few years ago already. There's already several IP based "cable" services in the Uk, with BT Vision being the main one; all the main TV channels offers streaming, and BSkyB - the main satellite provider - offers their "Sky Anytime" service which downloads over a broadband connection, as well as Android and iOS apps to stream to up to 6 mobile devices. With big performance upgrades being rolled out by both Virgin (cable) a BT, the number of subscribers that can trivially stream the TV shows is growing rapidly.
  - timthorn 14y ago
    BT Vision relies on DTT to provide Freeview services.
    - omh 14y ago
      It also provides a number of additional channels over IP
    - vidarh 14y ago
      I see that as a "cost cutting exercise": it's there, so it saves them having to negotiate deals and stream the content, as users would expect the Freeview channels and might not want two boxes. But the main appeal of BT Vision is the content it provides over IP - customers that don't care bout that might just as well stick to a Freeview box.
VLM 14y ago
I wonder why the environmentalists never weigh in. Probably too technical for them (as a group) to understand, or maybe there's political implications WRT who to support and who to trash talk. I've been in RF for quite a while and at 10 to 500 KW output for each station, broadcast TV and radio electrical demand adds up pretty quickly, for frankly fewer users every year. The killer is you usually see stats like 500 KW for a UHF transmitter (which is not entirely unusual, I know there's a 800 KW in Ireland where birds flying nearby must fall out of the sky cooked well done). So 500 KW for a coverage area of 4 million residents where I live is only an eighth of a watt per person per each transmitter 24x7. However ... only 1% of the population might watch that individual station at any given time... and only 10% or so still get the station OTA instead of cable or satellite or uverse or internet or whatever ... so suddenly thats 125 watts of transmitted RF per viewer, or perhaps 250 watts input power to the TX per viewer. Yikes. Its interesting that the power budget for watching TV OTA is now roughly, insanely, 50:50 where roughly one watt of transmitter power is required for each watt of TV power. This ratio is going to get even worse over time. "Soon" there will come a time when you need to transmit a KW per viewer and that's not really economically sustainable, aside from being a really bad environmental idea.
- andyking 14y ago
  Digital TV switchover has killed a lot of the mega-power transmitters, though. In the North West, for instance, Winter Hill used to run around 1,000kW for each of the analogue TV channels. Post-DSO, this is down to 100kW per multiplex, as the DTT signal is far more robust.
d4nt 14y ago
The use of RF frequencies to broadcast TV content is by far the best way to deliver that content for a certain subset of programs that cover live events for huge audiences[1]. Serving that stuff over IP would be a real challenge. I'd prefer it if we could keep a few RF broadcast channels around but move all the Family Guy and Top Gear re-runs onto on-demand IP based systems. [1] Things like major sporting events, Saturday night talent show finals, large scale news events e.g. 9/11, Christmas specials and key episodes of certain soap operas.
- saljam 14y ago
  I agree, it is challenging but there are already techniques which solve most of the problem. Namely IP multicast. Maybe this would finally push ISPs to properly support it?
  - Andys 14y ago
    Australia's upcoming NBN supports it, specifically for streaming TV.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  Would there be huge audiences if they were not broadcast? Does mass media primarily serve mass interests, or create them? If the promoters of sporting events didn't have automatic channels into everyone's home, would people seek out those channels if they had to directly bear the cost and effort to do so?
- goatforce5 14y ago
  Isn't IP multicast perfectly suited for this? It's already being used in various places around the world to deliver cable TV services to residential customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast#Commercial_deployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast#Commercial_deploym...
polshaw 14y ago
I'd very much like to see this happen. A lot of posters seem to be missing the point.. the idea is use the TV spectrum to allow mobile broadband to become a viable main-use broadband, which would set a decent minimum standard across the whole country without the need for re-cabling etc. For those of us with already fast internet, it would allow decent speeds (and theoretically prices) when travelling.. awesome (and IMO more useful than 1Gbps home internet). (note to ROW: we don't have LTE etc yet). Today, giff gaff offer unlimited mobile broadband for £10/mo (+texts and a few calls), although TOS states use on mobile only.
tudorw 14y ago
While we are messing around could we grab some of that TV bandwidth and run a looping broadcast of the most heavily trafficked media data for the last 24 hours to be cached locally ? Ceefax on steroids...
reustle 14y ago
I would love to see the end of broadcast TV. I know too many people that waste their lives away sitting in front of a TV every night and letting it stream content. Yes, someone will come along and duplicate that functionality on the web, but let's just ignore that for now. Content should move to and stay on-demand only.

77 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

Nice idea, but I can't see this happening for a long time to come, for the fundamental reason that we simply don't get the required bandwidth to the premises. I live in a reasonable sized city in Scotland, and can't watch iPlayer streaming because we don't get the bandwidth (5km from the exchange...). FTTC will help, but its never going to have the reach of the wireless transmissions of broadcast TV (Highlands and Islands for example). Even worse is that with a massive number of new houses going up in this area, they aren't putting any "next generation" communications infrastructure in - meaning to get FTTP or even FTTC they will need to dig the pavements up in future, which is horribly expensive, and thus happens very slowly (if at all). Until we have a method of delivering high speed broadband over the current twisted pair, or power lines (or any other existing infrastructure), this simply won't happen.

arethuza 14y ago
There are some interesting projects trying to get broadband internet access to remote communities in Scotland: http://www.glenelg.co.uk/news/broadband-solution-provided-for-arnisdale-and-corran-by-tegola-project/ http://www.glenelg.co.uk/news/broadband-solution-provided-fo... http://www.tegola.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.tegola.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

arethuza 14y ago

This was a report from the House of Lords Communications Committee - not the Government itself. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news/governments-broadband-strategy-risks-leaving-communities-behind/ http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/... Also, it apppears to be talking about terrestrial broadcast TV - not the satellite broadcasting used by Sky and others. Edit: I love the comment from the report: "The Government's strategy lacks just that – strategy."

anon1849567678 14y ago

I'd very much like to see this in place, personally I have not watched TV in a long time (I am in the minority of course), but there really is no need to clutter up the RF spectrum with what is obsolete technology. Measures and facts like these only come in to place long after people stop using them however, so this isn't going to be implemented any time soon.

ordinary 14y ago
How well would the internet hold up against a billion people watching the Olympics opening ceremony[0]? _____ [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television...
- dan1234 14y ago
  If Multicast[0] routing was used, it'd probably hold up quite well. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast
  - mobiplayer 14y ago
    That's not the point. The point is if ISPs and backbone companies can cope with all that bandwidth.
    - vidarh 14y ago
      If multicast was used, the bandwidth used wouldn't be particularly high, that's the point.
- anon1849567678 14y ago
  That is a good point, it wouldn't really, not if a broadcaster tries to adopt the same model as TV - that is to broadcast messages. Perhaps by using some peer to peer technology? Or by caching copies of the video through out the network? There would definitely be problems that would need to be overcome. I think this should work in the general case however, there would still be problems to overcome, and I can only see it helping internet connection speeds.

k-mcgrady 14y ago

I can definitely see this happening but not for a while. We are only just completing the switchover from analog to digital this year (and if I remember correctly that process started around 4 years ago).

nicholassmith 14y ago

It's a great idea that's totally unworkable right now. Maybe 3, maybe 4 years time, when BT finally pulls it together and gets more fibre runs in, when there's a bit more of a sane understanding of download limits and so on then we'll see it.

rwmj 14y ago

The other part of this report - the focus on universal access to 2 Mbps broadband instead of higher speeds in cities - I think is wrong. It assumes that you can't have both, and it also assumes that 2 Mbps is good enough for everyone, whereas in fact it's ridiculously poor for anyone in a modern society (we should be aiming for 1 Gbps minimum in cities). Edit: One of the comments on the Reg article[1] points out that there wasn't a single engineer on the committee. [1] http://forums.reghardware.com/post/1494829 http://forums.reghardware.com/post/1494829

DanBC 14y ago
Many people would prefer a guaranteed 2Mbps that they can use all the time, rather than the advertising lies of "upto 30 Mb" - which is usually less than that, and which is then throttled if you use it for more than twenty minutes a day. While 1 Gbps is a nice aim to have (and if you're putting fibre in you may as well put in extra, you don't have to light it right now) most people would be fine, now, with 5 Mbps. 2.5 Mbps is fine for YouTube (etc) and acceptable for BBC iPlayer tv.
- rwmj 14y ago
  Your comment is interesting because it shows the lack of vision that the committee showed too. Broadband internet isn't just about watching iPlayer. _If_ we had decent, reliable, two way 1 Gbps internet that would open up so many extra possibilities, including: - many more people being able to work at home effectively (fast downloads, clear multi-way video conferencing etc) - ubiquitous cloud computing - processors in many more devices, all connected all the time (with rich video and audio feeds as well as mere telemetry) - gaming -- playing, and enabling people to develop much richer interactive games - home medical diagnostics - all those things that we haven't invented yet [Edit: It's a shame the lack of vision isn't just for the Lords. Judging by the replies it extends to HN too ...]
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Well, you're asking people to dig up the roads and install a bunch of dark fibre in the hope that someone else will invent a use for it. That's a tricky position in the UK: We're in a severe recession; no-one wants roads dug up; the last time we had a fibre glut it didn't end well for pretty much anyone involved. Speed of connection isn't what's preventing most people from working from home - stupid PHBs do that. Synchronous 1Gbps is unrealistic for the next 5 years. Maybe asynchronous 100 Mbps is possible. Not forgetting that the aim is for everyone - isolated villages in Wales and Scotland - not just the 4 big cities who can afford it and need it. I'd agree that if people are putting fibre in (or building new housing (as someone else mentions)) or even just digging up the road that there should be a requirement to install extra fibre. the stuff itself isn't that expensive and putting lots in gives you economies of scale. I'm just more realistic about finding the money to pay people to light it.

mtgx 14y ago

With Gigabits speeds happening, why not? Even 100 Mbps would be more than enough for 1080p TV.

VLM 14y ago
This seems fairly likely since OTA can do 1080p and its only 19.39 megabits/sec complete with all the overhead. After all the overhead is stripped away the raw mpeg2 transport stream is around 18.3 megabits/sec. As a point of comparison, no one encodes DVDs and bluerays at full rate because then you run out of disks, and can't fit in all the garbage that purchasers supposedly desire, like mandatory unskipable previews and piracy warnings and so forth. But a good rule of thumb is your typical DVD is a round 6ish megabits/sec and a blueray encode stream should be around 30ish megabits/sec.

DanBC 14y ago

This title is incorrect on several levels. Yet again the Reg mangles details. 1) In the UK "broadcast" can mean over the Internet. It's a term defined in a couple of tv laws. 2) There's a difference between "terrestrial digital broadcast" (what the article is talking about) and other forms of broadcast; eg satellite, cable, etc. 3) No-one is asking for "broadcast" tv to end. The Reg article quotes the committee: > "We recommend that the government, Ofcom and the industry begin to consider the desirability of the transfer of terrestrial broadcast content from spectrum to the internet and the consequent switching off of broadcast transmission over spectrum." Weirdly that quote comes just after the Reg manages to give an incorrect summary: > Rather than take up vital electromagnetic spectrum, TV should be delivered exclusively over the internet, the House of Lords' Communications Committee concluded. Well, no, they're only talking about switching digital terrestrial tv to the Internet. They're not talking about cable or satellite tv.

vidarh 14y ago
This is pretty much just suggesting what industry started doing a few years ago already. There's already several IP based "cable" services in the Uk, with BT Vision being the main one; all the main TV channels offers streaming, and BSkyB - the main satellite provider - offers their "Sky Anytime" service which downloads over a broadband connection, as well as Android and iOS apps to stream to up to 6 mobile devices. With big performance upgrades being rolled out by both Virgin (cable) a BT, the number of subscribers that can trivially stream the TV shows is growing rapidly.
- timthorn 14y ago
  BT Vision relies on DTT to provide Freeview services.
  - omh 14y ago
    It also provides a number of additional channels over IP
  - vidarh 14y ago
    I see that as a "cost cutting exercise": it's there, so it saves them having to negotiate deals and stream the content, as users would expect the Freeview channels and might not want two boxes. But the main appeal of BT Vision is the content it provides over IP - customers that don't care bout that might just as well stick to a Freeview box.

VLM 14y ago

I wonder why the environmentalists never weigh in. Probably too technical for them (as a group) to understand, or maybe there's political implications WRT who to support and who to trash talk. I've been in RF for quite a while and at 10 to 500 KW output for each station, broadcast TV and radio electrical demand adds up pretty quickly, for frankly fewer users every year. The killer is you usually see stats like 500 KW for a UHF transmitter (which is not entirely unusual, I know there's a 800 KW in Ireland where birds flying nearby must fall out of the sky cooked well done). So 500 KW for a coverage area of 4 million residents where I live is only an eighth of a watt per person per each transmitter 24x7. However ... only 1% of the population might watch that individual station at any given time... and only 10% or so still get the station OTA instead of cable or satellite or uverse or internet or whatever ... so suddenly thats 125 watts of transmitted RF per viewer, or perhaps 250 watts input power to the TX per viewer. Yikes. Its interesting that the power budget for watching TV OTA is now roughly, insanely, 50:50 where roughly one watt of transmitter power is required for each watt of TV power. This ratio is going to get even worse over time. "Soon" there will come a time when you need to transmit a KW per viewer and that's not really economically sustainable, aside from being a really bad environmental idea.

andyking 14y ago
Digital TV switchover has killed a lot of the mega-power transmitters, though. In the North West, for instance, Winter Hill used to run around 1,000kW for each of the analogue TV channels. Post-DSO, this is down to 100kW per multiplex, as the DTT signal is far more robust.

d4nt 14y ago

The use of RF frequencies to broadcast TV content is by far the best way to deliver that content for a certain subset of programs that cover live events for huge audiences[1]. Serving that stuff over IP would be a real challenge. I'd prefer it if we could keep a few RF broadcast channels around but move all the Family Guy and Top Gear re-runs onto on-demand IP based systems. [1] Things like major sporting events, Saturday night talent show finals, large scale news events e.g. 9/11, Christmas specials and key episodes of certain soap operas.

saljam 14y ago
I agree, it is challenging but there are already techniques which solve most of the problem. Namely IP multicast. Maybe this would finally push ISPs to properly support it?
- Andys 14y ago
  Australia's upcoming NBN supports it, specifically for streaming TV.
sageikosa 14y ago
Would there be huge audiences if they were not broadcast? Does mass media primarily serve mass interests, or create them? If the promoters of sporting events didn't have automatic channels into everyone's home, would people seek out those channels if they had to directly bear the cost and effort to do so?
goatforce5 14y ago
Isn't IP multicast perfectly suited for this? It's already being used in various places around the world to deliver cable TV services to residential customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast#Commercial_deployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_multicast#Commercial_deploym...

polshaw 14y ago

I'd very much like to see this happen. A lot of posters seem to be missing the point.. the idea is use the TV spectrum to allow mobile broadband to become a viable main-use broadband, which would set a decent minimum standard across the whole country without the need for re-cabling etc. For those of us with already fast internet, it would allow decent speeds (and theoretically prices) when travelling.. awesome (and IMO more useful than 1Gbps home internet). (note to ROW: we don't have LTE etc yet). Today, giff gaff offer unlimited mobile broadband for £10/mo (+texts and a few calls), although TOS states use on mobile only.

tudorw 14y ago

While we are messing around could we grab some of that TV bandwidth and run a looping broadcast of the most heavily trafficked media data for the last 24 hours to be cached locally ? Ceefax on steroids...

reustle 14y ago

I would love to see the end of broadcast TV. I know too many people that waste their lives away sitting in front of a TV every night and letting it stream content. Yes, someone will come along and duplicate that functionality on the web, but let's just ignore that for now. Content should move to and stay on-demand only.