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Technology

Broadband Access Via Digital TV Signal? 14

Posted by Cliff from the new-ways-to-get-online dept.
SlashChick asks: "My mother saw a TV commercial the other night about a new form of broadband access which works via a digital TV signal. You place a digital TV antenna on your desk and it receives broadband data at up to 768K/sec. Uploading is accomplished via a dial-up modem. The company mentioned on the TV spot is Web Hopper, which is available in Cincinnati, OH. Are any Slashdot readers familiar with this service or other similar ones? Is this a good option for those who still can't get DSL or a cable modem?"
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Broadband Access Via Digital TV Signal? More

Broadband Access Via Digital TV Signal?

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  • Sure, you get faster downloads, but your phone line is still tied up for the upload side.

    If you can't get anything else, it might be worth a look-in, but I'm sceptical that it will be much use for anything but the most basic of Internet usage.
  • Well, I have no expirence with this, but it obviously works the same way as DirecPC. These services may have fast downloads, but the uploads are obviously very slow. For people doing e-mail and surfing the web, this is just fine.

    But for people like me (and I'd guess most /.ers), this wouldn't work well. I'd rather be stuck behind an ISDN line than use something like that (which I did for about 2 years). The big difference is the ping time. Using a dish has very high latency for obvious reasons, and radio would only be a bit better. So while this works for downloads, when you want to do anything with uploads or where pings matter (such as online gaming, which is one of my favorite things) you wouldn't get much of a ping (10,000,000,000 msec maybe ;)

  • Hmmm, the site says:

    "an always available rate of up to 256 kilobits per second with no download cap"

    I guess that is ok, but it is only double ISDN speed for about the same price and you still tie up a phone line? Personally I would wait till they have wireless upload too, if you need something now just go with ISDN, should be able to get a cheap router on eBay and the service will be about the price of this wireless and be availible in most areas.
  • It looks like channel 12 WKRC Cincinnati is an analog television station, not a digital one. I was really interested to find out the specifics behind subchannel broadcasting on a DTV signal... oh well.

    If it is indeed an analog station, it's likely VRTI internet or Vertical Re-Trace Interval. The VRTI is the period of time when the scan-gun in your telvision dims (or turns off) and jumps from the last line in the picture to the first line in order to begin painting the next interlaced frame. This interval happens sixty times a second and can carry nearly anything if modulated right. I don't know what the resulting bit-rate would be, though.

    It could also be a subcarrier within the bandwidth for channel 12, but I can't see them getting those kind of speeds with it (although its possible).

    I remember reading about this many years ago and never seeing it put to real use... perhaps this is the first example?
    • It is probably the digital channel going unused. Broadcasters have been granted rights to do anything they want with digital channels until 2006 or so when DTV is officially mandated and all that jazz. I think this is an example of a broadcaster using their digital channel for internet service, something that has been an idea for a long time but not yet implemented anywhere (to my knowlege).
    • Some of those vertical intervals are already being used. Radio-Electronics had an article 20 or so years ago. I seem to recall interval 19 being specifically mentioned. Anyway that's where they put stuff like closed captioning and (I think) that signal from PBS that newer VCRs use to auto-set their clocks. If anyone's desperate for info it probably won't take me but a month or so to dig out that particular R-E issue.
  • File this under "only if desperate." It costs $325 to install (currently being waived) and then an ongoing $40/month, and you still have to continue your current dialup ISP service (probably around $20/mo, depending.)

    It does nothing for the upstream link, which is probably okay for most things, but remember that opening a web page can involve lots of connections and POTS modems are not known for their low latency. At the most, you get 256 kbps downstream, keyword being "at most."

    They advertise that the internet service will be "just as good as your TV reception", which isn't a strong statement to me. I realize that they're talking about digital TV and not analog TV (probably?) and that digital TV is supposed to be much more immune to interference. Still, it's something you have to live with.

    Oh, and it's Windows 98SE or later only, with no support for anything else. This means they're probably using some custom funky TCP/IP stack. Whew, sign me up.
  • The upload is still through your modem. There is also iBlast [iblast.com].
  • The government is now giving a free monopoly to the broadcast television companies and now they're even letting them charge for it!
  • I hope they are encrypting the data. Everyone's traffic is being broadcasted to thousands of homes, all across the tri-state area!

    Hmm, surveillance equipment will cost you what, maybe $5, at your local Ripoff Shack.

    -IAmTheSuit
  • Uses the same principle as DirecPC, so yeah is is useable for downloads. Just remember it will still take 5 mins to send that 1MB e-mail outbound though. But then again why on earth would you send an e-mail that large.

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