> From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi....@nanog.org Wed May 18 16:12:17 > 2011 > Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:53:10 -0600 > From: Brielle Bruns <br...@2mbit.com> > To: nanog@nanog.org > Subject: Re: Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth Than Any > Other Company > > On 5/18/11 2:33 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote: > > If we're really talking efficiency, the "popular" stuff should probably > > stream out over the bird of your choice (directv, etc) because it's > > hard to beat millions of dishes and dvr's and no cable plant. > > > > Then what won't fit on the bird goes unicast IP from the nearest CDN. > > Kind of like the "on demand over broadband" on my satellite box. Their > > selection sucks, but the model is valid. > > > > If someone hadn't mentioned already, there used to be a usenet provider > that delivered a full feed via Satellite.
There were, at different times, two companies that did that. Both went under because expenses exceeded income. The one that was _much_ more interesting was the one that Lauren Weinstein had a hand in. It piggy-backed a Usenet feed in the vertical blanking interval of several big "independant" TV stations -- ones that were carried by practically every cable company in the country. Distribution to the cable companies was via satellite, but the USENET feed, being _part_ of the video signal, consumed _zero_ additional bandwidth, and rode the satellite links for free. To get the feed, all you needed was a TV tuner with 'video out', and the purpose-huilt decoder box that extracted the vertical interval data. This service died as the independants moved to encrypted transmission, because the encryption did _not_ perserve anything in the 'blanking' timeslot. only the 'viewable' field-image was trasmitted, _as_ a full-field image. Sync, blanking, etc. was _locally_ generated on the receiving end. An "elegant" idea, done in by changing technology. *sigh*
