[mythtv-users] Some notes on Google TV

Robert Johnston anaerin at gmail.com
Wed Nov 17 00:16:57 UTC 2010


On 16/11/2010 5:25 AM, Mike Perkins wrote:
> Brad Templeton wrote:
>>
>> But the hard reality is that transcoding loses quality and is
>> expensive, and as the satellite companies offer their DVRs for "free"
>> that's a path that will be less popular, in spite of the advantage it
>> confers in unified interface, and all the tools you get when you can
>> read the plaintext video stream.
>>
> "...plaintext video stream." Now *there's* an interesting concept!

Given that it's how Sasktel's IPTV system currently works (Though they 
are "Upgrading" to the MS MediaRoom implementation, which may enable 
encryption), along with free.fr and some other IPTV implementations out 
there, it's not nearly so outlandish as you might think.

With IPTV and Multicast, at least, the upstream provider can use routing 
rules to effectively restrict the available channels on a per-user 
basis, without having to re-broadcast unicast. This makes for the best 
of both worlds, as far as bandwidth efficiency and stream security goes. 
There is little need for per-channel encryption, as channels that users 
have no access to simply do not arrive at their box. With Satellite or 
Cable, all users receive all channels, and thus restrictable channels 
must be encrypted to obfuscate them from users who are not authorised to 
view them.

Unless, of course, you are mis-reading "Plaintext" as "ASCII", rather 
than the cryptographic definition of "Plaintext" as the unencrypted 
version of the "Cyphertext".


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