Has anyone considered that perhaps google is not looking at beating Microsoft but instead at beating TIVO, ABC, CBS, Warner Cable, etc?
sure, but...
You can't possibly believe that there is enough bandwidth to stream HD video to everyone, that's just not going to happen any time soon.
...wouldn't there be, if interdomain multicast existed and had a billing model that could lead to a compelling business model? right now, to the best of my knowledge, all large multicast flows are still intradomain. so if tivo and the others wanted to deliver all that crap using IP, would they do what broadcast.com did (lots of splitter/repeater stations), or do what google is presumably doing (lots of fiber), or would they put some capital and preorder into IDMR?
All you need is someone like Cisco to team with who can produce a network consumer DVD player capable of assuming the roll of a physical tivo box, say something like the kiss technology DP-600 box (cisco bought kiss last year) that the MPAA loves so much (MPAA bought thousands of them for their own purposes) and presto things are suddenly taking a whole new shape and direction.
yeah. sadly, that seems like the inevitable direction for the market leaders and disruptors. but i still wonder if a dark horse like IDMR can still emerge among the followers and incumbents (or the next-gen disruptors)?
So now you get a choice, buy a new HD TV tuner or buy a new DVD player that does standard or HD tv even after the over the air broadcast change happens in the US.
at some point tivo will disable my fast-forward button and i'll give up network TV altogether. irritatingly, hundreds of millions of others will not. but we digress.