What's the current state of the SageTV EPG, forums, etc?

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by Brent

That has been a misunderstanding spread by several of the press. Kansas City, Kansas - less than 1/2 of the initial Google Fiber area does have some of their area where they "control" their own power lines, but that's it. Kansas City, Missouri has KC Power & Light and Google worked with them to get fiber on those lines. There are a larger than normal number of above ground power lines in the greater KC area and that might have helped Google lower their costs.

Yeah, I don't know the specifics. But if you pick up a copy of this months "Wired" magazine there is a full page article addressing this issue I was speaking of.

Honestly, it having fiber to each house sounds like such a pipe dream I really haven't paid much attention to the whole "Google Fiber" rollout. I just know I don't have it...

[mkanet]

I'm not going to have my hopes up too high, but, Sony is planning on changing things as we know it if they become a virtual MSO provider. This seems much more realistic approach than Google Fiber TV proliferation. Ideally, anyone with a fast Internet connection can enjoy cloud-based 1080P "real" TV channels and possibly movies too.

If this becomes a reality, it would be very interesting to see how cableTV companies would feel about this; which provide both TV and fast Internet. I'm curious how net neutrality laws would hold up.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Biggen

We will have to agree to disagree. Fiber will never be mainstream at least not in the next several decades. Too much copper is already under the ground to just abandon it and begin laying new infrastructure. I for one don't want to pay several hundred dollars a month to get gigabite download speed. I'm very happy with my 20Mbps using Comcast.

Just depends on the neighborhood. Most telco's have already run fiber to the neighborhood level switch, it's just a matter of the connection to the home itself. That can be done much like the way google does it, a one-time higher setup charge to cover some of that cost. If the neighborhood is direct burial, it will be harder, but many 'newer' tracts from the last 10-15 years actually have conduit runs from the box at the street up to the connection box on the side of the house, so that replacement is not difficult.

[hemicuda]

I'm betting on ISP's going to a tiered bandwidth structure. Hope not, but the cell Co's are already doing it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Just depends on the neighborhood. Most telco's have already run fiber to the neighborhood level switch, it's just a matter of the connection to the home itself. That can be done much like the way google does it, a one-time higher setup charge to cover some of that cost. If the neighborhood is direct burial, it will be harder, but many 'newer' tracts from the last 10-15 years actually have conduit runs from the box at the street up to the connection box on the side of the house, so that replacement is not difficult.

I would pay a $1000 setup for FTTH if it gets me 1Gbps bidirectional internet for $70/month!

I now pay $120/month for 150/10 service with a 250GB cap - so doing so would save me $600/year. In fact I might even pay a lot more than $1000 for the initial setup.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

I don't know about all -- unless you remove all the remote/rural areas in Canada and the US...

Certainly the rural folks will not get there but they will likely have to be happy with something like LTE.

There are advantages to rural living but this is one of the disadvantages. IMHO they have been getting hugely subsidized service for decades for products like phone and mail, but that is a discussion for another thread.

(On a related note - it is interesting to see that the US is in an uproar since Saturday mail service is ending. This ended in Canada in 1969.)

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

PS: If I were a betting man I would bet we'll see Google Fiber TV tech end up outside of Google Fiber someday. It's far from a sure thing, but I can't imagine them not using it in a larger consumer area than where it is now.

I think you lack an imagination then.

Google sort of had to do something like SageTV for Google Fiber. As a technology demonstration project, and probably just to get more users, Google had to do something with video. I'm a little surprised they didn't go to an all-streaming model, but I wonder is if the licensing situation proved to be too complicated to allow that.

Outside of Google's pet project, I have a hard time seeing the Fiber TV system making them money. I mean, TiVo has great brand recognition and they've really struggled. While I think everyone would have to agree that the Fiber TV system outperforms a TiVo, I really doubt that would be enough to change things.

Next, it just doesn't fit into Google's overall direction that well. It's a very Internet-driven company. DVR doesn't fit into that very well. I have a much easier time imagining them becoming an all-streaming virtual MSO provider, but I think if that were on the table right now they would have gone that direction with Fiber TV.

Finally, it would create a lot of headaches for Google. Headaches of a nature that Google likes to avoid. First of all they'd almost certainly have to deal with CableCard and the OpenCable ecosystem. Google doesn't want to do that- Google wants to provide- and control- the ecosystem. But perhaps the bigger headache for Google would be the support situation. Google doesn't like to provide customer/technical support. They've largely been able to avoid that. When forced they traditionally haven't done a great job. They'd have to get over that quickly if they wanted to sell a Fiber-TV-like system at retail.

So, I don't expect the system to see the light of day outside Kansas City. But again, I hope I'm wrong about that.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by wayner

Certainly the rural folks will not get there but they will likely have to be happy with something like LTE.

There are advantages to rural living but this is one of the disadvantages. IMHO they have been getting hugely subsidized service for decades for products like phone and mail, but that is a discussion for another thread.

This is my view as well. I live out in the boonies and I just can't see getting Fiber in my lifetime. Some type of high speed wireless is much more likely. I have a buddy who works on next gen wireless stuff and there are some interesting things in the pipeline. No telling how they will work out but there are a lot of people spending a lot of money on it.

And most of us don't care much about Saturday mail delivery, it's just the media making a mountain out of a mole hill.. But that is another story as well....

[wayner]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I have a buddy who works on next gen wireless stuff and there are some interesting things in the pipeline.

To be honest even the current gen stuff may be sufficient, although I don't know the range. With LTE on an uncrowded network you can get over 50Mpbs bidirectionally. That is pretty good. The issue then becomes reasonable pricing for a high volume of data.

Would rural customers pay $100/month for LTE service for 200GB/month?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I think you lack an imagination then.

No doubt!


But I remember a bunch of folks including the tech press (GigaOM, Engadget etc) saying the buyout of SageTV had nothing to do with HTPC/DVR/TV. And guess who had that one right... So I'll admit this is a little outside of Google's normal things like self-driving cars, computers built into glasses (and eventually contacts), and operating systems in the cloud. But it's not that crazy of a stretch.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

But I remember a bunch of folks including the tech press (GigaOM, Engadget etc) saying the buyout of SageTV had nothing to do with HTPC/DVR/TV. And guess who had that one right... So I'll admit this is a little outside of Google's normal things like self-driving cars, computers built into glasses (and eventually contacts), and operating systems in the cloud. But it's not that crazy of a stretch.

Yeah, I thought a lot of the speculation thrown about at the time was pretty crazy. In particular, GigaOM's assertion that it was all about Placeshifter was odd, given that Placeshifter was never particularly important to Sage, and because Google already had a bunch of engineers working what makes streaming complex. And I really didn't get the people saying it was about the PlayReady license (though I think that was people here, rather than any tech bloggers).

At the time I thought Agrawal was crazy- clearly Google was after DVR technology- but it some ways it looks like he might have been right. At this point it doesn't look like SageTV is going to get merged in with GoogleTV.

In hindsight, what happened was so obvious. I guess at the time I wasn't expecting Google Fiber to include regular TV service. Or really, I was expecting with speeds like that Google would be able to just stream everything. I still kind of think licensing got in the way there. The 20th Century Fox v. Cablevision precedent really forces non-sensical technical approaches to bypass copyright issues.