Quote:
Originally Posted by Horizon
In some cases its cheaper yes, especially Freeview. But take cable, as an example, which as a reminder is two-way technology, not one-way like satellite mostly is.
Virgin Media currently, at least in my area, have 48 transport streams or channels available.
Most of these streams can carry several tv channels each, or broadband data as well as some TV/EPG data.
That 48 streams/channels are being "broadcast" into every home in East London that has cable irrelevant of whether the houses are watching all the channels or not. Obviously, no single household is simultaneously watching hundreds of linear tv channels, watching on demand shows and using the internet all at the same tv.
Probably each household at a maximum needs a dozen or so channels, say 20 if you're being very generous and allowing for future 4k services. So, there's at least almost 30 channels of bandwidth being wasted. That's not cheap and it isn't efficient.
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Yes. Cable's different. That's why I didn't include it and said "DTT / DSAT".
Question is, would building out a VoD system to cope with all the simultaneous requests for EastEnders, the Champions League Final, Doctor Who etc be cheaper for Virgin - and the channels who they pass some of the costs on to - than the currently seemingly inefficient method?
I don't know the answer which, again is why I didn't include cable, but if it's not cheaper why would Virgin make that switch? And if it is, can they persuade enough of their users that they want to watch shows as VOD rather than as linear streams?