[clug] Trump Telstra once and for all

[Andrew Goodall]

On 11/10/2006, at 7:17 PM, Sam Couter wrote:

> Err... The video streams are multicast. How does limiting the  
> number of
> streams to each end-point limit the bandwidth required?

Welcome to the 90s, where ATM is the way of the future!!

All TransACT video is MPEG-2 over ATM, from the 'streamer' in the  
head-end through to the ISG. The ISG pulls the MPEG-2 frames out of  
the ATM cells and wraps them in in UDP/IP, spitting them out the  
Ethernet interface to the i3 Mood set-top box (or your PVR/PC). So  
its only multicast from the ISG to your LAN.

Of course, the Motorola Streamaster just decodes the MPEG-2/ATM  
stream and decodes the MPEG-2; no Ethernet involved.

> I figured the two-stream limit must have been an anti-piracy  
> measure, or
> a "pay us more money to watch more TV because we can" measure.

At the time I felt that way, too, but I think its fair enough that  
TransACT protect their network capacity.

But be careful; given the way that TransACT treat their current  
customers by attempting to force them onto long contracts with high  
penalties at every step of the way, they might take your 'feature  
request' to be a good idea and run with it. :p