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Tests reveal T-Online needs 2Mbps per channel using MPEG-4, which means ADSL2+ upgrades are necessary
T-Online Hungary has set September/October as its commercial launch target for its IPTV services and is currently running its second pilot, reaching one-quarter of Budapest and 200 employees. The company is using MPEG-4 Part 10 encoding and is dedicating 2-3Mbps to a standard-definition stream after finding that even the latest compression technology does not provide good enough picture quality at 1.5Mbps. As a result, the company is unable to fit two simultaneous streams of SD into its standard ADSL lines and is now planning to launch services in those areas where it has ADSL2 or ADSL2+, while upgrading the rest of the network. It estimates it can provide up to 10Mbps to 60 per cent of T-Online subscribers using ADSL2/2+ The company is using Microsoft’s middleware and according to Andras Tudos, chief IT and technology officer for T-Online Hungary, fast channel-change (one of Microsoft’s key selling points) is a must-have. “We think our main competition is analogue cable, not digital cable,” he explains, referring to the fact that analogue television services have much faster channel change times than digital. T-Online Hungary already offers audio and video streaming off the Internet and sees entertainment as its growth market, especially as there is little premium in mobile phone rates in Hungary compared to fixed line. |
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