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DTR-T2000 - strange problem with CH55 on Crystal Palace

Slightly off the off-topic conversation :o_O: I'm sure it was on the Michael Portaloo programme on channel 5 last night where he was investigating an old nuclear bunker. Communications with the public - if possible - would be via radio. This leads me to thinking - it's all very well to have TV/radio via the internet, rather than broadcast - but what happens if there is some disaster - earthquake say - which knackers the telephone lines, broadband cables etc. Easier to repair one multi-killowatt transmitter rather than loads of individual bits of cable. Of course, if you believe the 5G spin, you'll be able to use the mobile network for your broadband. :eek:
 
I have no idea how emergency public information broadcasts are going to work in a world where all AM radios have been scrapped in favour of Internet narrow-casting.
 
EEPhil said:
what happens if there is some disaster - earthquake say - which knackers the telephone lines, broadband cables etc. Easier to repair one multi-killowatt transmitter rather than loads of individual bits of cable.
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Yes, but how would you feed your working transmitter and from where?
 
Given that the government's plans for handling a major disaster have generally been found (when made public years later) to be hopelessly inadequate I doubt that communications being reduced to word of mouth would matter a fig.

And as we aren't in an earthquake zone I doubt they have a plan for that and the wires won't break anyway.
OTOH nuclear war or a super-storm might well flatten the radio and TV transmitter masts.
 
As MikeSh says, not yet. But millions of people already use iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Netflix, Amazon and NowTV so lots of people are using it all at once. It's not lots of people each having an individual connection, multicasting makes the distribution of IPTV more efficient than you might realise

But internet capacity is improving all the time and I see no reason why this wont continue. When I first got broadband at home I recall it was something like 512k. Less than 15 years later I now have 80M from fibre direct to my home and could upgrade to 300M using the same fibre if I chose.

Other improvements such as IPv6 will help as well as the infrastructure

So change IS coming and IPTV to almost everyone will become reality

So there will be no need to maintain an expensive network of transmitters just for broadcast TV. In any case the bandwidth will be required for other internet services such as 5G
 
sasquartch said:
When I first got broadband at home I recall it was something like 512k. Less than 15 years later I now have 80M from fibre direct to my home and could upgrade to 300M using the same fibre if I chose.
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Tell that to someone out in the sticks, miles from anywhere.
 
I'm not "in the sticks", and the best I can get (without subscribing to cable TV) is 3Mbps.

People not in the not spots always seem to assume everyone has the same access. There is only one way to deliver a universal service, regardless of a physical link (let's face it - there will always be addresses waiting to be connected) - and that's wireless broadcast. Just because it is possible to send most people's TV individually by IP rather than by wireless broadcast or cabled broadcast doesn't mean you should. It is plainly ridiculous to send the same data to 10 million homes individually, simultaneously, when it is possible to just send it once and everyone picks it up.

When it comes to disaster planning, you cannot assume the infrastructure will be intact. Emergency broadcasts by AM radio are universal, and suitable transmitters fairly easy to set up if necessary (and available in the military)... but no use at all if everyone has thrown out their AM trannies and analogue-capable TVs because there are no peace-time services that use them. Yes, there are a few of us still around who could build a receiver - but what could we build it with, under what conditions, and how quickly? Until recently (or even still now), the necessary kit was commonly available and not a problem.

Good old electro-mechanical POTS telephones keep working under the most challenging conditions - not so "modern" DECT handsets etc, and certainly not IP telephony.

The rush to replace what has worked well enough for years, with the latest bells and whistles just for the sake of it, is a false utopia.
 
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I'm not assuming you have the same access as me.

Read my post - I've said all along it WILL be possible at some point in the future

I live in a village that had atrocious broadband and for that reason was upgraded to fibre to the premises

It's not difficult for remote villages to get fast broadband once fibre is installed and in fact technically simpler over long distances compared to copper. The problem is persauding BT or Virgin Media to roll out.

Eventually everywhere will either have fibre or 4/5G wireless services that will make IPTV practical
 
Black Hole said:
...which still does not make it desirable.
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Not to you and a fair number of other people, but for most the ability to watch what you want, where you want, on the device you want and when you want is a big draw. It's PVR+++

We paid the extra for a 'fibre' connection as the 'copper' one in our area was as good as yours at about 3M - at least we had the option. (We had copper at our previous house, but that gave us 10M most of the time, so we were looking at a big drop.)
More recently we subscribed to Netflix and I watched the whole 5 series of Breaking Bad in 4k. Much to my surprise there was almost no problem with buffering, etc. I continue to watch a few other series on Netflix and on a recent two week trip to the USA I was able to continue to watch those on my tablet in the hotel via their free WiFi - again much to my surprise. iPlayer wouldn't work of course.
A couple of years ago I wouldn't have believed I'd be doing any of that in my lifetime.

So this stuff is coming, and most people will eventually have access to either fast cable or fast wireless (eg. fibre/5g). Of course not everyone will want or be able to have those, but that's true of broadcast TV as well.

As to disaster planning and response ... Well, if you think about it, disasters - real ones, not the major accidents that the press loves to call 'disasters' - tend to be things that it's not really practical to actually prepare for anyway. So the usual response is: Send in the emergency services and military and then send in food and medicines. Then catch your breath and see how it goes. I don't think there is really a better plan - not in the real world anyway.
 
Just reading my monthly Zen newsletter and there was a reference "Zen is part of the Netflix Open Connect programme, which means their content is delivered more efficiently on our network."
So I googled that programme which led me here:
https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/
In that page is a link to an overview pdf which gives a bit of an insight into some of the stuff going on behind the scenes to reduce bandwidth issues. It's only five pages (about 300kB) and not heavy technical, so if you are at all interested have a look.
 
Have got the DTR-T2000 is it supposed to have some kind of memory because every time I unplug it I have to reinstall everything
 
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