Its the trillion dollar question. Telcos and cable companies are retooling and/or rebuilding their networks to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible out of their plants. Satellite providers are looking at every
alternative means of increasing banwidth to, and adding a return path from the home.
None have achoice. There is no question that households will consume an ever increasing amount of bandwidth. The question is how much. What will peak simultaneous bandwidth consumption to the home be in the
next 5 and 10 years ?
Television, High Speed Data, Telephony, sharing home movies and pictures, remote backup and applications that havent been thought of will consume bandwidth. A lot of it. But lets break it down to get some minimum numbers. Because if a provider cant hit minimums, they will have problems.
First of all, lets start with Television since that’s a battleground that all providers are fighting on. The very near term future of television is high definition. A high definition stream is going to require a minimum
of 8mbs per second on average. Thats a minimum. Now some people are trying to say that they can do high definition in far less bandwidth, they cant.
Even with the best compression, lower bit rates fail the smell test. More importantly, because its easy to see the difference in picture quality as bit rates are reduced, viewers will complain about reduced picture quality, and picture quality will become a competitive element. That competition will keep bitrates at 8mbs, if not higher for
sports and movies. So lets work with 8mbs.
Today its difficult for people to imagine a High Def TV in every room, but within 10 years HDTVs will be ubiquitous. More importantly, over the next 5 years, the homes with a HDTV in every bedroom and the family room, with HDPVR with Terabyte drives centrally housed,or connected to each PVR will be the most important homes in the neighborhood.
Why ? Because if the household can afford to be the first in the block to be an all HD household, they will be a household able to buy everything that the provider sells. They will also be the more technically sophisticated household, so they will be more likely to buy all the options for high speed data, in home wireless data and eventually media, online backup of PCs to a central location and anything else the provider can think of. These are the “whale” customers. The most profitable customers that always pay their bills and never churn off.
So lets look at our customer, The Whales, and their 3 kids and see what services they use.
First, each of the 3 kids has an LCD HDTV that operates both as a HDTV and a PC monitor. Their PC is of course connected to the net , and is also their stereo. It is not their TV PVR because of the hassles of cable card or lack of satellite PC connectivity for programming. Instead they have a provider installed HD PVR that shares a multi terabyte drive with their PC.
The kids are collectors. They save every bit of music and internet content that catches their fancy on their hard drives. They used to use ITunes, but instead they use a freeware desktop that front ends Itunes and
all the different broadband environments that have been created and presents it as a unified front. It of course strips out any and all commercials by identifying the tracking information that is part of the internet url or embedded in the content itself.
When it comes to TV content, they use the same front end to programatically control the provided PVR. With the front end, they dont use season passes any more. They save networks. Everything on MTV. It gets saved to the PVR. Everything from HDNet and HDNet Movies, CBS, NBC, HBO, Showtime, ABC, TNT, ESPNs, they all just automatically get saved. They understand the concept of mutliple terabytes and at 8mbs a stream, they know they can save content to their hearts content and if they need more storage, they can delete something or just add more
terabytes. Its cheap. So their PVRs have basically become network spiders pulling in content 24x7x365.
Of course they cant watch it all, but so what. When something they want to watch in realtime is on, like an NBA game, they watch it. If they arent at home, they use the front end to re route it to their personal IP address
that they bought their name-url for. At the mall during the game ? Just program the front end to send it to markcuban.pda. Never miss a minute, just watch it on my phone/PDA whatever at the mall. Of course, if all
their buddies want to watch it, they have added their personal urls toa buddy list and its multicast to them all. Their own personal version of slingbox.
But wait, there is more. Because they have collected everything on disk, they can use the front end to progam their own TV networks and share it from their goowy.com pages. A little MTV, a
little ESPN, a little HDNet and boom, their own tV network. Of course, they can use redswoosh.net to insert contextual commercials and even make a little money from it if anybody watchs. For fun, they program in some home videos and pictures from the party they went to last week, set to music of course
None of this is far fetched. In fact, its likely. But back to the original question. What is the max amount of simultaneous bandwidth being consumed during a day ?
3 Tuners bringing in 3 networks in bedroom 1 , one being watched, two being saved. Thats 24 mbs. Same thing going
on in bedrooms2 and 3.Thats another 48mbs. thats 72mbs per sec and thats just the kids rooms.
Of course mom is watching a day and date release on HDNet Movies in the living room while saving Desperate Housewives for the hubby to watch later. Thats another 16mbs. We are up to 88mbs and going strong !
Dad is working on the collage of movies and pictures that he wants to give to the grandparents as a gift. So he is uploading and downloading digital pics and HDV files to and from the family storage site on
box.net. He hates that the kids use so much bandwidth, but thank goodness he is able to finally buy the 100mbs package.
When he is done with the collage, or at least after he makes some progress on it,he is going to plug in the
portable hard drive he got from the satellite company to the USB 2.0 port on his 80″ plasma. Ever since they bought
Netflix, he has subscribed to their movie service. They send him a hard drivefull of hundreds of movies that
Netflix customizes to his tastes, he loves murder mysteries. He watches as many as he wants to/canand
whenhe is done, he sends it back and gets another disk with the genre ofhis choice. His only
complaint is that they wont split genres on a disk, so he cant order half chick flicks for the wife, which of course
creates problems from time to time.
But it works itself out. There is enough bandwidth, and enough TVs to go around and every Sunday they look forward
to the family tradition of going to the movies together.
So there you have it. My over simplified vision of the bandwidth and technology consumption of a family of the
future. Not necessarily your typical family, but one of the millions of upper income families that every provider
will do whatever it takes to make happy. Which they just might….
If they offer more than 100mbs of bandwidth.
m
Since not everyone will need/want/have a use for this much bandwidth. And if they do it might not be as soon as is projected here. The internet as we know it hasn’t changed that much from ten years ago; sure more available content and a little more dynamic content.
Comment by runescape money -
Since not everyone will need/want/have a use for this much bandwidth. And if they do it might not be as soon as is projected here. The internet as we know it hasn’t changed that much from ten years ago; sure more available content and a little more dynamic content.
Comment by wow powerleveling -
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Comment by Hoover -
When you can finally get access to fiber optic all the way to your house the uses are limitless. 100MBps will be easy, and easy to justify from a consumer standpoint since it will be all of the major services boiled into one
Comment by Emc -
Actually, most of this technology is already available in some form or another. Granted, the HDTV part is just being introduced and I would agree that the bandwidth required for true HDTV quality just is not here yet. Unfortunately, the “network” may still not be ready. It sort of reminds me of the days of having to log onto providers like AOL and go to the “internet portal” to look-see at the ocean but not really go in…
Unfortunately, DSL is still a bit on the slow bandwidth scale and will make the HDTV jump very uncomfortable.
Cable is just too quirky since it’s a shared technology (remember party line phones) and now companies like Comcast are LIMITING bandwidth AND then trying to claim they are making the system faster. Ironically, Comcast cable is the only thing that even gets close to your magic 8mb number, but if you actually used the service the way you describe, they would cut your service off. (just google “comcast bandwidth” for the horror stories-I know I am being forced to switch to DSL)
Therefore, I think we will have to wait for fiber into homes (sorta like that jump from AOL portal to true ISP internet) to be the magic bullet that will even get close to your full description. Then again, greed may overtake and “better compressions” (if people will listen/watch to MP3/VHS/iPod A/V they will listen/watch to anything…)
Then again maybe DMCA will get so strick in the future, all this will just be pipe dream anyway.
Comment by Jeff T -
Definatly where the future is. I also see the masses turning to cell phones that will sub out our home pc’s. Crazy idea’s but if I told you, I might never get my chance to become successful 😉 you understand bro.
Comment by photos tatouages -
When you can finally get access to fiber optic all the way to your house the uses are limitless.
Comment by whales -
What do you all know about BPL (broadband over power lines)? It promises to revolutionize everything we know about broadband to the home. It is touted to be MUCH faster than cable or DSL. All you do is plug into any outlet power outlet and you’re on.
Comment by Steve W -
Great article and good follow-up comments from the people posting. I’d like to add that I think you’ve actually underestimated how much communication each individual person will require in the near future. Right now you’re measuring this communication in terms of bandwidth for individuals with enough money to pay for this “large” amount of bandwidth. Which is good, because its where fortunes will be made. And sophisticated monitors of all shapes and sizes will be all throughout a home, so I think you’re on target there. But I think you’ve underestimated how much will be consumed per person and how important it will be.
When you look at the children of today, they have developed constant communicaton needs unlike anything anyone has ever seen or known in the past. Children today require rapid answers to questions on any topic and expect to find the the answers almost instantly via the internet as it is today. Children also carry with them a mobile phone. Children talk to each other constantly now, in ways and amounts that previous generations did not have the opportunity to do. From the moment they wake up they’re instantly searching for communication. They need to see television and hear music to stay in touch on a general level, they then need to stay in touch with the people in their lives who are important to them, so they call friends and family on a cell phone. They have a computer and ever more devices that allow all sorts of communications. The outlets available to them to both give and receive communication are already amazing. Beyond that video games and online gaming, and learning techniques being used by educators today that mimic gaming have taught the children to respond to these kinds of communication ques in ways that us older people (i’m 42) simply don’t have the capacity to handle because these kinds of response skills are probably best learned as children. Where video games go, there so too will go the “internet” world,..the world of communications. The adults who will arrive on the scene 10 years from now will have expectations much much higher than just a piddley hdtv in every room and will resent their need for communication to be contained by anything as constraining as bandwidth. Just as the current crop of adults could not bear the constraints of having only a little bit of memory for their computers and other devices..and so pushed with all their might to make computer memory essentially unlimited at almost no cost, hence providing the platform from which to address this bandwidth issue. The next generation of adults will, if bandwidth is still rationed as memory once was, will make it their collective unconcious mission to make bandwidth a non-issue in the way memory has become a non-issue. Once that is behind them, then you are absolutely right, the people will be creating their own creations of sight and sound acquired from the sources available to them and will distribute that to their friends and the world as their expressions of themesleves at that moment for their friends and family. Social protocals will develop that will evolve that will provide the “language” the people will use to share their messages. This wiil evolve rapidly in the same way that email and IM came to so quickly have a language and protocals all their own. Content will be king. But the kings will not be the ones who make a fuss about what is being done with their creations once its unleased into the communication wild, the kings will simply be the ones who keep on creating content. To retain ownership of every word that pours from your pen will rapidly vanish because things will move too fast. So, instead, you must just simply keep communicating. “Keep talking” will be the motto of tommorrow. And if you need to draw a breath, that is already being taken care of too, for its the bots that will eventually rule the communication world.
The money to be made will be in creating the little artificial “you’s” who go about and do your biddings in your communication sphere. Here is where the money will be made. And to prove it, just look at what made Bill Gates so rich. You can sum up his success in one word “upgrades”. This is just another way to say “keep talking”.
Look at what the kids are doing today. They are in constant communication. And they expect this will continue and get even better. They won’t permit anything to stand in the way of this in the future.
A great way to understand this is to go back and stuyd the internet phenomonon of Gary Brosloma and the “Numa Numa Song” which took place last year in 2005. This sounds like a really strange place to go study about this, because its essenttially just a bunch of kids that grooved on the same song and liked to shoot little videos of themselves dancing to that song in their bedrooms. Thats the core of it. Thats all. Thats it.
Except that MILLIONS and MILLIONS of kids, WORLDWIDE all joined in the fun, within the space of just about six weeks. And they all did it just for fun, independently of each other, just because they wanted to.
But more importantly, because they could.
Bandwidth will not stand in the way. 10 years from now I suspect your estimates will have been far too small.
Oh yea, and one more thing. One of the commenters here asked “who would want to watch TV all day”. I would respectfully say to that person that you are looking at this from the perspective of the past. In the future, TV will go with you, will be with you as you travel, be wherever you’re going, and won’t be only one-way as tv is today. Its also being chopped up into pieces and recommunicated as Mark mentioned. In the future, it won’t make sense to be ANYWHERE without something to view. Not because you may or may not wish to be entertained, but because you will NEED it to satisfy both these communications desires children are aquiring today, as well as to feel like you are participating in the world. Because, in fact, communication WILL BE the world of the future. Sure we’ll still have outdoors and trees and whatever, but they won’t be the focus or nearly as revered as they are now. That is old-thinking. New-thinking will be “hey, did you get my message, what did YOU think about that??”
Comment by Johnnie -
Bandwidth to the home, how much is enough…??
optimze what we have, idea.. when anything gets sent all this info follows; file size, file name, file location, referral..etc do we need it can we optimize our current internet bandwith ? should be the Question. I truely believe in video on demand and pay per view to be a VOD solution for all. to learn more on VOD check out XonDemand.
Comment by Hoover -
Let’s hope your vision never comes true. Every person in the family is in their own space doing their own thing.
In some ways I think that getting a computer for each of my kids was a mistake. When we only had one computer for the whole family to use, the kids used to gather around it and watch music videos and browse the web together.
Oh well. At least my kids talk to each other through myspace.com…
Comment by Dave Siegel -
Yes, The internet as we know it hasn’t changed that much from ten years ago; sure more available content and a little more dynamic content. But an HTML page is still HTML and an MP3 is still an MP3.
Comment by Bushuo -
The ever increasing want of internet and the ease of online shopping is becoming ever popular with the masses. Thus increasing bandwidth want and need. This will never go away as the demand for speed only goes higher.
Comment by Tkeysites.com -
very good!
Comment by 11nong -
Mark,
Why is it that those of us who have HDNet cannot view the Mavs games in HD, and have to put up with the crappy picture and audio provided by UPN 21 ??
Comment by Colby -
If the Whales can afford all that technology – there’s no reason why they cannot have 100Meg to their house today, right now.
What you missed out on then, is the requirements of the upstream providers.
If each household will have 100 Mbps, then someone like RoadRunner or Comcast absolutely have to be able to supply 100 Tbps.
Somewhere along the lines, an element of responsibility needs to be in place – just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean that you SHOULD do something. Why transfer and store all that data if it’s not going to be utilized? Because you CAN? That’s a pretty lame reason, if it’s a reason at all. …And blah blah blah “Who said I need a reason???”
well, you do, you tard. grow up.
Comment by Michael Bailey -
On a previous post you discussed “multiple tiers of service” and “HOV lanes”. As Healthcare becomes more dependent on the internet I can see another tier and service lane opening up. There may come a time when it will be common for the media center in our home to include an interface for virtual reality. Common or relatively minor health problems could be handled with a visit to the Virtual Physician (VP) who records your visit in your personal Health Information Record via the National Health Information Network. (Our VP could be a virtual reality version of Dr. Welby, Dr Gupta or even Bones or Dr. Crusher from Startrek.) Depending on the urgency of the problem we may need to factor in a Medical Services Tier and a “911” lane in the bandwidth. Since the whole world will have access to it we can use any fees generated from the use of that tier and the 911 lane to finance the remainder of our Healthcare System. (16% of GDP and growing.) Its just a thought.
Comment by Terry Loftus -
I was reading your post and having quite a chuckle because I thought that you were kind of out there, all the way up until I realized that I was a closet “whale”. When I got Windows Media Center I rewired my whole house so that I could use it to it’s fullest. Then we added the Xbox 360 onto the network since I wired the house with additional bandwidth suckers in mind.. Slowly (not even thinking about it) I’m adding more and more to the personal network.
Heck, 5 years ago I was whining about the price of a 17″ monitor. Now I’m looking at a 32″ Widescreen LCD for my computer and won’t think twice about the price of it because of it’s dual use with WMC. Since I can watch TV on it, play NBA2006 online, and work with it, it’s now a no brainer and easier to justify pricewise.
After 6 years working on construction of fiber optic networks I can tell you that there is a boatload of unused fiber out there just waiting to be used. When you can finally get access to fiber optic all the way to your house the uses are limitless. 100MBps will be easy, and easy to justify from a consumer standpoint since it will be all of the major services boiled into one (phone, internet, cable).
Netflix will hopefully by then have adapted their business model to download movies using video on demand. I’ll be able to get any type of TV show from any network at any time.
Ahh, those will be the days.. Thanks for the thought provoking post Mark.
Comment by EJ -
There are so many things wrong with the scenario laid out by Cuban it’s not even funny.
Chief among them is that ignores the basic reality of bandwidth being a more finite resource than storage, it ignores the nature of packet-based, non-multicast networks and it ignores the current trends in digital content distribution.
Anyone who has ever subscribed to a podcast or created a Tivo Season Pass can see where this is headed.
The traditional programmed and scheduled television network is living on borrowed time. Instead, we will be subscribing to individual shows through RSS feeds made available by content providers and cataloged on a central index run by your cable/satellite provider.
Shows will be downloaded to a centrally-located server with big storage. The server will distribute shows throughout the home using your domestic fiber network, or out on the net so you can watch your shows anywhere.
The kids will NOT be recording and archiving entire networks. They WILL be subscribing to individual shows, or maybe getting that occasional on-demand stream for when they missed an episode because they weren’t subscribing when it ‘aired’. They WILL be making playlists of already-downloaded shows to kick back and watch on a lazy afternoon.
With that in mind, how much bandwidth do you REALLY think will keep The Whales happy? I’d say no more than 20-30mbps.
Comment by Uchendu Nwachukwu -
Uh, “24x7x365”? . . .
Do the math. I’m sure you meant to say “24x7x52” if anything 🙂
Comment by JPW -
Brilliant. One of your best posts ever.
BUT, the question isn’t about bandwidth — it’s about bridging the gap between now, and the scenario you painted. Let’s take broadband as an example. DSL is a 1970’s technology that should have died in the 70’s. It became realistic in the 00’s simply because cable companies were slow to market their product, and even slower to make it viable in high-volume neighborhoods.
The company that provides huge bandwidth while the mainstream carriers catch up isn’t going to win the game. They will make a fortune, and should *immediately* change business models to become a content provider or media outlet. Let’s be real – NYNEX built the FLAG program in the 1980’s (at least in Scandanavia). They’ll have it built as Verizon within the year.
So you don’t want to compete with that. You want to milk it while they’re struggling, then become their #1 contractor for other services months after they’ve launched and become the backbone you no longer have to pay for.
Comment by Kevin Glennon -
Mark, The one change I would have to make to your vision is the concept of the traditional TV networks still being significant.
TV networks are middle men. If they are buying content from Mark Burnett and reselling it to the consumer, then the only value they are adding is the delivery network. The Internet and IPTV changes all that. Now the content producer can sell direct to the consumer.
With this barrier to entry removed, it will also pave the way for low budget content providers, which can either give away their content with embedded ads, or undercut the ‘premium’ content from the big content producers. Look at what MariposaHD is doing. More comments about them in my blog.
Comment by Bill Paul -
If the kids are TIVOing entire networks then that implies local storage of content and therefore a large amount of the HDTV bandwidth is local and not off-LAN.
Content will likely continue to grow in size faster than bandwidth to the home and therefore synchronous consumption of content off the IP networks will be the exception not the rule. The TIVO model of pre-ordering your content will prevail.
Now about the petabyte storage array in the closet…
Comment by Lee Crawford -
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/02/the_united_stat.html
Comment by tony -
Why does everybody keep thinking this is what will happen?
Dreaming up these scenarios is rather easy, but realistic; I doubt that.
Sure TV/Cable comp. feel the hot breath of IP based networks with their possibilities right now (voip/tv etc.) and the technology is available however the implementation is years behind (multicast/ipv6/fibres etc.) I doubt ‘regular’ media will chuck their existing networks/technology which they have invested so much in, to venture into IP based networks. Sure they’re spending a lot of time researching now and tipping their toes in the water. But at the end of the day it will probably be a hybrid world.
Since not everyone will need/want/have a use for this much bandwidth. And if they do it might not be as soon as is projected here. The internet as we know it hasn’t changed that much from ten years ago; sure more available content and a little more dynamic content. But an HTML page is still HTML and an MP3 is still an MP3. So as everything is brewing now and really exciting I think we will see a breaking point from the current trend within the next couple of years after which old and new-media will coexist.
Comment by Jan van den Berg -
Lebroz, JFYI DSL and Cable at the moment BOTH use COPPER wires!
The reason you loose connection with a dial up line is interference, could be from anything from a flourescent light bulb in the room, to something you have no control over somewhere else on the line, to someone calling you. With DSL and Cable you still get interference but with the way packet transmission works, you never notice. Has nothing to do with it being “always on”.
Mr. Cuban,
Definatly where the future is. I also see the masses turning to cell phones that will sub out our home pc’s. Crazy idea’s but if I told you, I might never get my chance to become successful 😉 you understand bro.
Comment by JRW -
The way P.O.T.S. plain old telefone system copper wires work with data is hit and miss with hiss. old school primitive stuff…
Broadband DSL and Cable use digits 0’s and 1’s
Your dial up is using a analog modem that has software algorythyms most famously “56k”
So bursts of electricity are going in patterns, when you listen to broadband radio the electric running through your telefone line is much more stable, kinda like your shower, imagine it on, then imagine someone turning the water off n on
With DSL/Cable there is a constant flow of electricity that never turns off, thats why when it first came out they marketeed the always on internet connection 4 dsl/cable.
hope ya got sum of that Jim
Cuban yeah you,
tip get back into the telecom game
that way if you produce some nice media
(movies n what not, you’ll have an outlet 4 it)
Comment by Lebroz -
I have a couple of general questions regarding bandwidth and internet connectivity….
I recently changed ISPs, replacing my Comcast high-speed cable connection with a more affordable dial-up connection (PeoplePC Accelerated)….
Here are my questions….
Why do I constantly lose my internet connection when using dial-up? Is it possible that incoming phone calls are disrupting my connection? (I have a single phone line, therefore I have to unplug my phone in order to use the internet.)
Also….
When I listen to Mavs games (free online radio broadcast) why is it that my internet connection is more stable? Do fewer disconnects have anything to do with bandwidth required for the radio broadcast?
I hope these aren’t ‘silly’ questions. Thanks.
Jim Parham ~ Yuba City, CA
Comment by SpiderWeblogs -
HDTV’s in ever room…PVR’s with terabyte drives…downloading movies from Netflix instead of waiting for them in the mail… All this talk makes me want a time machine.
Comment by gadget boy -
Great post Mark! I love your forward thinking and you’re right, the things you mentioned, or a version of them are coming to us and I wish it would be sooner than later. There are still so many bandwidth limits, rural communities such as where I live but we can all dream right?
I look forward to the day where 100% of our communications is IP based so we can watch, listen , record and share anything with anyone anywhere. It may take longer though with AT&T & Verizon wanting to charge Google and other giant tech companies extra to keep the data flowing. Maybe Google will just buy them out and it will be a Google and Microsoft world!
Comment by David Ward -
Don’t be so hard on Mom for vegging out in front of the teevee once in a while. She spent all last week in a an 8-channel hi-fi, 4-display-hi-def conference over Access Grid –http://www.accessgrid.org/ . (Mom works from home and real-life meetings are a luxury good in the post-Peak Oil world.)
Comment by Don Marti -
Don’t you think that this dream of bandwidth aplenty will be hindered by content being DRMed up the wazoo?
Comment by Mo -
Good topic. I can see two scenarios in
the future to deliver this kind of media access:
1) Combination Broadcast/On Demand. Live events
like sports and news must be delivered while it is happening, either you watch it live or it goes to your PVR. Movies (new and old), TV shows, etc can be sent round the clock and cached on your PVR.
They’ll be encoded so you can’t view them until a certain time and only with certain access.
How much new media is being posted? Certainly
a satelite can beam it all down. Think about how
often HBO and other channels repeat movies.
2) If you have 100Mbps bandwidth, why store anything? Just click and view, live streaming.
Heck, you wouldn’t need to store anything.
I love this idea. Forget all the networks.
You got content? You sell the content!
NBA sells games to us. Sitcoms, talk shows, etc.
You just download them. There will be a million
stations. Everyone that has content is a station. Whoever has the most viewers is
automatically elected president.
Comment by Robbie -
Mark,
Great article, you definately are a think tank. I would am curious to see what technolgy holds. Why wouldn’t you be able to cache data on the terabyte of storage each household would have/need? This would work more like a browser, equaling less bandwidth over the wire. Or even compression and up-converting is gaining ground and improving (although the need for bandwidth far out paces this technolgy). Businesses are already using similar technolgy for sharing files to remote offices by way of caching, pre-fetching, file sharing servers, and etc. Either way we will need a silver bullet to keep up with quality, function, and the dreamers.
Comment by Scott R -
Why do you assume people want to watch TV all the time? Especially wealthy, technically-savvy people?
Comment by Alek Andreev -
Why would you need a PVR for IPTV? IPTV is interactive, so it makes sense that everything is on demand. If I can stream my movie from the TV station at any time, why would I ever want to record it in my house? IPTV is (or should be) more than a traditional TV stream over the net.
Comment by Alek Andreev -
http://www.vongo.com is already doing netflix on the internet, and I don’t necessarily see them having to stream their own station to markcuban.pda because you ipod will connect directly to the internet and stream whatever you want because we will have wireless broadband everywhere.
Comment by PaulD -
in 15 yrs, what will be more important – gasoline or bandwidth?
Comment by Clark -
Will they have to lay more cable to do this? Is there dark cable, or is the current cable sufficient? OR will they do this in a wireless manner?
http://www.aireview.com/index.php?act=view&catid=6&id=3677
Just storing this link here, so I can find it again later.
Comment by bland response -
More pipe dreams from this fortunate knucklehead.
How about the website – http://www.Dstan.com
I’m building it and it will have instant psy downloads – no more packets, everything will shoot into your brain from the rays of the LCD screen.
Comment by Stanislaw -
The only thing I’ll disagree with is that the kids WILL have a cable card in their computers. Graphics cards in the next few years will have coaxial in or some sort of input for video built into the motherboard. That technology will be increasingly in demand due to Microsoft MediaCenter XP or Vista being the de facto standard for OSes moving forward. Microsoft is selling their media solution hard.
Comment by Randy Peterman -
Hmm I dont see HD being 8mbps, especially in 5-10 years with 1080p becoming more prominent. Also you talk about Netflix sending hard drives, why would they not just use the internet, since you know everyone would have 100+ Mbps.
Comment by Curtis -
Why do they even think about using Satellite TV when they seem to have universal multicast and IPTV?
Some not so subtle plugs for your own companies, FilesAnywhere is about to meet the Gdrive, which is free! What’s the reason to use FA when Google can do it for free?
I doubt Groowy will have the ability to make personalised channels, if anyone will be allowed it’ll be Comcast/Cablevision/SBC/etc.
I lean more to the idea that content will still be stored on servers rather than the user’s drive; it makes sense for the user in terms of space, and the content owner in terms of security.
I see a future with content either streamed on demand from ESPN/NBC/etc without adverts for a monthly fee or with targeted adverts for free.
Comment by Adam -
Hey Mark, you get a lot of pitches from tech companies needing investment, etc. Do you see technology so that small content producers can distribute their content in this hew HDTV landscape you detailed? Will I be able to get my training content on PVRs distrubting solely through the net?
Comment by Bob Tabor -
I cannot wait for this scenario to be available to the masses. I want a centralised PVR that the whole house can use anywhere anytime. Great piece Mark.
Comment by Chris -