writeups

Fri Jun 18 13:34:02 PDT 2004

Quoting Rich Holland (holland at guidancetech.com):
> Chuck Yerkes wrote:
> 
> > MBONE *is* more modern.  I feel about it like I did when people
> > were all excited about CompuServe mail;  "but we have this inter-net
> > thing here..."
> 
> Yeah, and it's live and cool and all, but I have 2 problems with it:
> 	1) It's live; it's not something I can download the next day
It CAN be live.  But you can just as easily feed delayed streams into it.

If you took a popular event (macwold keynote) and streamed it fresh
over the MBONE every minute, that would be 60 streams of multicast
data going out per hour that the event lasts.

60.  Compare with current day (won't say "modern") point to point
streaming where 5,000 try to connect at once.

> 	2) If I don't control the firewall at my client site, I don't
> 	   get access to the MBONE, typically.
Well, that's usually a Layer-8 problem (above the technical into
the political).

> So while the MBONE may still be useful and nifty, I'd *still* like to see
> something downloadable; it shouldn't be hard to run the camera into a splitter,
> sending one signal to the VHS and another to a video capture card capable of
> recording an MPEG-4 stream...  *THAT* is something I'd pay $35/year for, since
> I can't show up at meetings anymore.

A friend has one of those little Eye-TV things for his Mac that's
been REALLY handy for him.  He'll tape off a 2+ hr movie onto a
VCD to save it or watch some show off his laptop in an airplane or
at lunch (or meetings?).