Wednesday, May 09, 2007

150 Mbps? Remember when we were thrilled with 56K?

This is only tagentially TV related, but the cable industry announced today a new modem design that will allow 150 megabits per second downloads. If you have Comcast high-speed Internet, you'll already have your skeptics hat on: There's usually a pretty wide gulf between what a modem is capable of and what it really delivers.

But whatever. When this arrives, it'll be a big step toward the inevitable TV future, when all programming will be downloaded or ordered on demand. What that means for broadcasters is very much up in the air (it's also a useful reminder that it's not just newspapers that are sweating our changing information economy!).

7 Comments:

At 3:19 PM, May 09, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And perhaps the end of the DVD gravy train. If I can order Night at the Museum for $6, or pay $20 at Best Buy - I'll choose the former.

Of course there is always movies I'll want on DVD/hard copies, but not most.

 
At 3:21 PM, May 09, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And speaking of Comcast, I sure hope Qwest gets into the cable industry.

Or Verizon or anyone to compete with Comcast.

So no desire to find out what HD channels Comcast is adding, Andy? Please. :)

 
At 3:32 PM, May 09, 2007, Blogger AndyW said...

Ooh, sorry. Last time I asked, they were still not disclosing. They've bumped a bunch of the digital tier channels and some of the music channels, so they've certainly laid the ground work for a significant HD expansion.

I'll give another call up there on Friday (I'm out all day tomorrow) and let you know.

 
At 9:26 AM, May 10, 2007, Blogger Eli the Mad Man said...

I drool at this concept. Which I believe will happen sooner then later. Heck, it was only a mere 22 years ago when my brother and I, the young PC entrepreneurs that we were (although back then it was Commodore Amigas), were selling 9600 baud modems from our house. And those were rocket ship fast back then! 56k wasn't even a concept yet!

Technology jumps and increases at an exponential rate. Can't wait for this!

 
At 5:53 AM, May 11, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

HA! I was clipping along with my 300 baud acustic modem and my Atari 800 and was gob smacked when 1200 baud came out. Compuserve was all text based and coooool. Dang, how old does that really make me??

150 Mbps? ..... I'm startin' to twich a bit. ;-)

 
At 7:17 AM, May 11, 2007, Blogger Eli the Mad Man said...

HAHAHA! Compuserve! Holy cow... I remember that too. You by chance remember a network called FidoNet? We had a network in Northern California called PopNet, but that was local. FidoNet was nationwide.

 
At 10:58 AM, May 11, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was living in the vacuum of North Dakota when I bought my Atari 800. (1981) The 300 b mode had just come out and Compuserve was all I had heard about.

I do not remember hearing about fidonet until the mid 80's. I remember looking for these new BBS's that I could dial into and trying to get an Atari user group going in Minot, ND. Never took off.

Ahhhh the days of wine and roses....... where's my walker. ;-)

 

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