video on demand

hai

Interactive television allows the people to freedom in viewing videos.
An I think it is started in India too. What is the basic requirement
for these facilities?

A 2 way cable plant,  2 way cable boxes, and servers to store content.

Mark

<shijinmenon106@rediffmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1108737931.338671.268100@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> hai
>
> Interactive television allows the people to freedom in viewing videos.
> An I think it is started in India too. What is the basic requirement
> for these facilities?

One way cable plant with ability to address individual users with data 
streams.
One way cable
Cable boxes at the receivers that can be individually addressed (which 
should be common).
One way return channel (e.g. telephone line) well... really two way.
Server farm for content.
Software for delivering individual content.

To save bandwidth, if the number of movies is small on any day, then you 
might schedule streams to start at intervals of 10 minutes or so.  That way 
a customer can view one of the scheduled streams and not necessarily have 
his/her own stream using up bandwidth.  Of course, if the number of movies 
is large then the likelihood that this will help is low.  Pay per view on 
cable has a handful of movies at any one time and they start at intervals of 
perhaps 2 hours.  Consider what would happen if each "channel" were 
individualized. How many channels / bandwidth is available?  It's not 
unlimited is it?

Fred

How about

        a) A television,
        b) A video, and
        c) demand.

;-)

Fred wrote:

] Pay per view on
] cable has a handful of movies at any one time and
] they start at intervals of perhaps 2 hours.

Not at my cable company.  There are many on-demand programs available
instantly (well, within ~ 10 seconds).  I haven't counted, but the
number of programs would be of the order of 100+ movies, kids shows,
the previous night's news bulletins,  etc. etc.

And that's just the free stuff; there are more on-demand, pay-per-view
movies.

] Consider what would happen if each "channel" were
] individualized. How many channels / bandwidth is available?
] It's not unlimited is it?

It's not unlimited (kinda like asking if disk space is unlimited, ya
know), but it's pretty large... and great to be able to pause / rewind.

Ciao,

Peter K.