> The cable TV delivery costs are not that big compared to content costs.
I was under the impression that infrastructure buildout was very expensive and was the main reason why it took someone of Google's size to create a new fiber service.
> If you want live TV, the bandwidth and jitter requirements are enormous, the burst requirements for fast channel switching are a pain.
Netflix seems to be pulling it off OK. Do you mean that the costs are high for the business (in terms of bandwidth spent delivering content) or that the costs are high for consumers (in terms of getting a fast enough connection to make this realistically possible)?
The reason it took Google is that this is an economy of scale industry - it doesn't make financial sense to do anything small, you invest either a lot or nothing. That's what "barriers of entry" mean.
I am speaking about the technical bandwidth burst + jitter requirements on the whole channel from your [caching] servers to the settopbox or equivalent.
Netflix is not available where I live, but as far as I know, it's not a TV service, it's a completely different animal. Launching a movie is trivial because it's done once. For TV, imagine a person on a couch with a remote pressing the 'next channel' button, browsing through 10+ live TV channels in one minute. It is a major pain to get this experience to feel pleasant on an internet TV setup.
Movies can have a small buffer for better viewing experience, but a live football game needs to be, well, live - so that you see a goal before getting a tweet or SMS about it.
I was under the impression that infrastructure buildout was very expensive and was the main reason why it took someone of Google's size to create a new fiber service.
> If you want live TV, the bandwidth and jitter requirements are enormous, the burst requirements for fast channel switching are a pain.
Netflix seems to be pulling it off OK. Do you mean that the costs are high for the business (in terms of bandwidth spent delivering content) or that the costs are high for consumers (in terms of getting a fast enough connection to make this realistically possible)?