All things related to multicast

[Toerless Eckert <>]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 06:30:48PM -0400, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> To each other, or to the world ?

Well, i am just looking for a stream that i can receive with a
RealPlayer across the Internet for some testing without having to bother
setting up a RealServer.

> We have not been able to get Real multicast broadcasts to work, although 
> the players receive just fine (and we didn't try very hard).

What streams can you receive with a RealPlayer ?

> BTW, since Quicktime 6 is now out with MPEG-4 support, when will IPTV 
> follow ?
> 
> http://www.apple.com/quicktime/preview/quicktime6/

I think IP/TV 3.4 FCS is either June 10 or 14 th. - forgot the exact
date. The problem with MPEG4 that we have is that unlike Apple we can
not have a free receiver with MPEG4 decoder because Cisco so far does
not want to spend the 1 Mio $ per year that you need to bail out of
the per-receiver MPEG4 license to the MPEG-LA. Apple as far as i know
has done this, and with their QuickTime penetration of the desktop it
certainly makes sense (i guess they'll also put out quicktime 6.0
for windows in a while, right ?).

So with IP/TV, the standard receiver will have to be MPEG-LA licensed now.
I think that you get a set of licenses with each IP/TV server you buy,
and then you can buy additional licenses which i think more or less
exactly cover the license fees to be paid to the MPEG-LA. As the
per receiver license fee is quite low (25c per viewer for the MPEG-LA),
this is thus not really an issue with actual enterprise IP/TV customers,
but it certainly will have the effect that we can not put up this receiver
for free anymore for example on the webserver of Uoregon for people across
I2 to download it. Unless somebody develops a tool that throws a quarter
to Steele Street, Suite 300, Denver, CO (MPEG-LA) for every download.

Now you should certainly be able to use QuickTime to receive IP/TV
3.4 sourced MPEG4 streams, but of course the QuickTime 6.0 receiver
does not support SSM - unlike IP/TV 3.4, which does. 

Cheers
        Toerless