Someday, when you go on-line you'll enjoy the same quality and variety of video you now see on cable TV.

Someday. But not today!

As yet there really is no elegant, cost-effective, and entirely satisfactory appliance that integrates TV, phone and computer. However, the goal of integrating and standardizing all media is overwhelmingly guiding hardware and software developer's efforts in all three media.

So don't worry, that someday is coming very soon.

In this report, we will present three issues.

• First, we provide an update on the status of cable, DSL and wireless efforts to delivery broadband over the "last mile" to homes and businesses.
• Second, we move to the active strategies of codec developers, such as, RealNetworks and Microsoft to scale their narrowband compression technologies toward broadband MPEG streaming delivery.
• And third, we describe transmission of HDTV video over the Internet, which will become wide distributed over the next decade or two.

Cable Leads the Way toward Broadband Delivery

While the combination of fiber and DWMD will produce more than adequate backbone network capacity, the promise of fast Internet access for the "last mile" to the home users has been long anticipated. With more than two million current customers the cable industry is moving fast. But, which "last mile" high-speed option--cable, DSL, or satellite--is best?

Cable offers the fastest potential download speeds available to home users up to 30 Mbps, more than 500 times faster than today's 56-kbps modems. As with cable TV, the provider will send somebody out to install it for you. And once installed, it provides a constant connection, so you never have to dial up for Internet access.

The @Home and Road Runner businesses dominate the market. Actual download speed currently falls far short of the 30-mbps potential, however. Your PC's Ethernet interface brings it down to 4 Mbps to start with, and delays on the Internet slow it further. Overall, these structural considerations mean an average download speed of between 1.5 and 3 Mbps. Upstream information puts an even worse strain on the infrastructure. @Home has already limited upstream speed to 128 Kbps in some markets and is considering this limitation nationwide.

In competition with cable modems, the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) standard was adopted in 1997, paving the way for the first DSL services. ADSL uses regular phone lines to send information to users at up to 6 mbps. Unlike cable and satellite systems, high-speed phone lines offer high bandwidth upstream up to 640 kbps. ADSL lets users talk on the same line they're using to access the Internet. In 1999, there are only about 300,000 homes and businesses using DSL. DSL is the clearly superior for buildings in a central business district. Cable will have an advantage in home businesses. However, both cable and telephone operators will have to upgrade their facilities to become regular ISPs. This means they will need routers and high-speed facilities at all central offices.

On the other hand suburban areas will see DSL and cable compete on even terms. Hughes Electronics introduced the DirecPC satellite dish and box in early 1997. DirecPC promises download speeds of up to 400 kbps, which is slower than cable's usual 1.5 to 3 Mbps, but the speed remains constant no matter how many people use the service. Most importantly, DirecPC is available in any U.S. location with an unobstructed view of the southern half of the sky. EchoStar together with Microsoft has created a set-top TV box combining its number-two satellite-TV service, DISH, with WebTV. Net access will come only through a built-in 56-kbps modem, though EchoStar is boasting a data broadcast service at 30 Mbps. The wireless LAN industry has been held back from competing with broadband companies because the existing wireless bandwidth has been significantly less than Ethernet. The wireless IEE 802.11 standard for 2.4 GHz for High rates 11 Mbps and may change that.

The following Table shows how this new bandwidth access to homes and businesses may be utilized.

TABLE : Bandwidth Requirements

Application	Required Bandwidth Mbps (after compression)
Video Conferencing	0.384
Video Games	1.0
Video Catalog	1.5
Virtual Video Mall	1.5
Complex Web pages	1.5
Corporate LAN (10Mbps Ethernet)	1.5
Digital TV (MPEG-2) · On demand Live Sport	. 1.5 3.0 6.0
Entertainment Video (HDTV 1080x1920x24-bit color)	19.3 to 38.6
Medical Imagery	20
Digital Professional Photography & Stock Video	20

Scaling RealNetworks and Microsoft Codecs for Broadband

Four things need to happen before the broadband industry can take off:

1. Content providers' distribution costs need to drop dramatically.
2. The quality of streamed video, which is limited by the packet loss and other problems that occur in traditional Internet transmission, needs to be improved.
3. Compelling content needs to be developed that gives consumers a reason to invest in a broadband connection.
4. Improved business models need to be created to increase revenues and lower overall costs for the broadband industry.

What is RealNetworks' broadband strategy?

RealNetworks is working with the broadband providers such as, cable provider @Homes. Broadband users tend to use more of streaming video product than narrowband customers because they get a better experience. RealNetworks' broadband codec effort has been to try to develop a MPEG-quality video but at sub-mega bit rates in the short term and over time deliver true broadband. As the world moves gradually toward a convergence of the television and PC, people will increasingly use digital set-top boxes to go online and watch TV. Because of limited memory, the big set-top makers like General Instrument and Scientific-Atlanta already have their own proprietary compression algorithms. To get to the point where the set-top box makers will want to bundle them into their product, RealNetworks has to become the de facto compression standard. That means it has to forge as many deals as possible with content providers--as well as with cable, DSL and satellite companies. But it has to act fast. Unless it is able to lock up proprietary deals now, not only will companies like Microsoft and Apple be likely to become much bigger threats but set-top makers and studios will probably start devising their own compression technology.

In 1999, RealNetworks announced several broadband-related deals, specifically with Excite@Home Liberate, Inktomi, Intel, Enron and WebTV, a subsidiary of Microsoft. The company is also in talks with a number of cable, DSL and satellite companies as well as several digital set-top box makers. Compression and better support of different formats promises to revolutionize online video, both at high-speed and low-speed line.

What Is the Windows Media Broadband Strategy?

The Windows Media Broadband Jumpstart initiative is Microsoft's end-to-end strategy for jumpstarting broadband business models and overcoming the barriers to making broadband services a reality. Microsoft's content delivery strategy includes content delivery through more efficient Content Distribution Systems, such as through land lines or satellite broadcasting, to a cache at the Internet access provider (either xDSL or cable modem), and finally to the end user.

These Content Distribution Systems not only increase efficiency but also lower the cost of delivery substantially. The following Content Distribution Systems and Internet access providers have already joined Microsoft's broadband jumpstart initiative: · Content Distribution Systems: Akamai Technologies Inc., iBEAM Broadcasting Corp., INTERVU Inc. and Sandpiper Networks · Caching vendors: InfoLibria, Inktomi Corp. and Network Appliance Inc. · Digital subscriber line (DSL) access providers: Rhythms NetConnections Inc., NorthPoint Communications, Covad Communications, Jato Communications Corp. and FirstWorld Communications · Cable access providers: RoadRunner, which services Time Warner and MediaOne, and High Speed Access Corp.

The Content Distribution System partners, also known as "edge providers," move content to the edge of the Internet and as a result, bypass congestion. The edge distribution model circumvents the Internet because content is not subject to the same delivery problems as it is in the standard model. Therefore, the highest-quality streamed content is feasible for entertainment, education and advertising.

Building Bridges Between the Standards

The future holds a need for an interaction between the TV and the Internet. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has defined specific types for the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) that can be used to deliver MPEG-2 encoded, TV quality video over IP networks. AT&T has developed a prototype system that transmits stored or live video using these types and it works successfully over their Intranet. The video outputs of such systems can be displayed directly on regular TV sets.

As the Internet backbone and the residential access bandwidths increase, similar systems can be used to transmit high quality video over the Internet to residential users. Since this approach requires layer-three functionality at the receivers, it may not be optimal for the transmission of regular TV broadcast channels, a task that requires multi gigabit per second data processing. On the other hand, it opens significant new avenues for video-on-demand as a part of information-on-demand and narrowcasting applications to justify its existence along with other means to carry broadcast TV channels. One problem with the broadcast video is its sequential access.

For example, we have to listen to an entire news program although we may not be interested in every news item that it includes. A much better way of viewing news programs can be made possible through a descriptive index to the news provided as a web page with links for video-on-demand transmission of the news segments. AT&T, is developing capability that generates a digital multimedia library of TV programs automatically using scene change detection and closed captioning information.

Together with MPEG-2 over IP, it provides on-demand, non-sequential playback on a regular TV set with video quality. Both IP based high quality video-on-demand and narrow-casting applications can be developed based on the existing set of the Internet protocols. In particular, RTP/RTCP can be used for the transport, Session Description Protocol (SDP) can be used for transmitting the session information to the receivers and Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) can be used for session control including VCR type control functionality. Consider the use of the URL information embedded in broadcast TV pictures. Currently, URL references are used in many TV programs, e.g. providing additional information on the subject matter of the program. Accessing the web pages pointed by these requires manual transfer of the displayed URLs from the TV to the web-accessing device, typically a computer. A URL embedded in a picture could be extracted through image analysis and character recognition and transmitted to the web-accessing device, which downloads the indicated page automatically.

Standards Conversion is the most complex, technically difficult and degrading of all of the techniques for building bridges between TV standards. It is also the most desirable since the material actually becomes a signal of the destination TV system, which can be recorded and reproduced by equipment of the destination TV system. Converting between TV systems with same frame rate are usually reasonably effective. Conversion between TV systems with differing frame rates is extremely difficult. The units that perform these conversions are known as Digital Standards Converters.

What broadband technology convergence needs is meaningful standards.

Without standards hardware and software developers can't create broad solutions for consumer demand. Two serious avenues for converging standards include:

1. Windows NT based Media architecture.
2. Cisco's architecture for voice, video, and integrated data (AVVID) through network development.

The combination of AT&T's cable broadband strategy with Microsoft's Web-TV software platform within advanced set-top boxes offers an interesting competitive scenario.

Traditionally, standards evolve in three ways:

1. A vendor dominates a market and sets a de facto standard (for example telephony from AT&T, or PC operating systems from Microsoft).
2. Standards organizations establish standards (for example ATM, or HDTV).
3. Vendors and market collaborate that can not be clearly attributed to any one organization ( for example TCP/IP or VCR formats).

Residential broadband networks are moving too fast for a single vendor to dominate, or for standards organizations to establish standards. There is no clear architecture or vendor dominating. So how will standards emerge? The streaming video is at the crossroads of all this technology convergence. It is the bandwidth crisis of delivering video that will prove decisive in the selection of competing technology standards.

Conclusion

The delivery of streaming video significantly impacts broadband technology convergence. The following conclusions are becoming established:

1. The Internet backbone combination of fiber and DWDM will perform at greater than 10 Tera-bps range and provide plenty of network backbone bandwidth in the next few years.
2. The "last mile" connectivity will remain twisted pair, wireless, and coax cable for the next few years, but broadband (20 Mbps) access will grow to 80 million users in 2008.
3. Corporate and e-business can make excellent use of the 1.5 Mbps access with video product demos, video instructions and interactive video customer service.
4. The authoring, editing and Web publishing tools for streaming video are widely available, inexpensive and easy to use.
5. New codec improvements will emerge rapidly from the numerous competing codec developers.
6. RealNetworks will dominate narrowband streaming for several more years, but Microsoft's Windows Media and Apple's Quicktime will grow rapidly and target the multi-Mbps delivery.
7. Both RealNetworks and Microsoft will scale their codecs to streaming MPEG standards.
8. Caching server clusters will lead to new ISP arrangements for rich media providers.
9. Intelligent networking software for routing and tracking will lead to general changes in IP networking protocols.
10. New standards replacing MPEG-2 will come more quickly than currently anticipated because of the potential demands to achieve benefits to last mile delivery.