Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

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Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby Tape Splicer » Fri Jan 13, 2012 11:09 am

Once again TELUS' Optik TV outshines SHAW in the way subscribers are able to view and interact with the programmed content. The overall appearance of the TELUS on screen information has a fresh up-to-date look. This app will add to that smart clean look.
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DAILY NEWS Jan 12, 2012 8:22 AM
Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV

2012-01-12

TELUS' Optik TV Galaxie music is getting more interactive and user-friendly. The service, standard with all Optik TV subscriptions, already offers 45 channels of music across dozens of genres. Now, customers can browse the music channels by launching the application from their main menu - they can check out what's playing, look at playlists, and view album art from within the application. This Galaxie Mediaroom enhancement will give Optik TV customers an improved, interactive music experience with their service.

TELUS Optik TV customers will be able to launch the Galaxie Application from the main menu. This advanced application allows users to browse all 45 channels and see what's playing without changing the current channel and provides a pleasing look and feel to the Galaxie service. Customers can enjoy album art for not only the song currently playing, but also the one up next, and previously played songs on each channel. Optik TV customers will also be able to review the playlist of the last 24 hours of songs played on each channel, which has been the most requested feature on Galaxie users' wish lists.

The Galaxie music service on TELUS Optik TV includes 45 professionally programmed music channels in all popular genres including Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classical, Country and many more, and is included at no additional charge for all customers.
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby Mike Cleaver » Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:05 pm

And if you have good ears and discerning audio tastes, you can hear the crappy low bitrate lossy compression on all of them.
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby PMC » Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:12 am

Mike Cleaver wrote:And if you have good ears and discerning audio tastes, you can hear the crappy low bitrate lossy compression on all of them.


It does sound like a 16 bit sound card compression. The classical music channels are ok, if not using the feed to be a pre-amp.
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby TRENT310 » Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:00 pm

It's interesting to see that many customers don't care about the technical delivery of the content, but rather the availability and presentation of the content. That's where Telus has success with their IPTV offering by using Microsoft Mediaroom which is graphically pleasing and since it uses an on-demand, client/server architecture appears to have more "channels" available even though the physical medium (tip and ring) would never be able to simultaneously deliver all of those channels. Each IPTV set top box uses additional bandwidth (if they are streaming different content) so the technical limit is the number of STBs and not channels. Meanwhile on services delivered on coaxial cable, the limit would be the number of "channels" (either traditional FDM NTSC but also FDM with 256-QAM on top) but there is no theoretical limit of the number of devices (set top boxes) that can receive different programming simultaneously.

I work in the telecom industry and have done many installs of both types of systems... and honestly the customer doesn't care about the technology delivering their media - if it looks nicer (MS Mediaroom has an Xbox-like user interface) and the PVR is easier to use they'll go for it. The average customer also doesn't care that the TV service is eating into their internet service since it's running on the same transmission method (VDSL2 - and yes, even if they are on separate VLANs).

Both Telus and Shaw are undergoing changes to improve the technical delivery of the content (voice data video, whatever it's all data) - I've been involved with Telus moving their DSLAMs closer and closer to the subscriber (you might see some new additional cabinets hanging off existing cabinets in your neighbourhood) to offer better VDSL2 service since the physical layer speed is influenced by cabling length. VDSL2 will train all the way from 100Mbps with a short perfect line down to 1Mbps if the line is long and quality is poor. It's going from last mile to last km to last few hundred feet. Soon it will be fiber to the sidewalk or pole and then it enters your house as old telephone line because customers don't want their front lawn dug up. If it's aerial no problem. Powering the equipment is still an issue because people expect telecom services to continue functioning during commercial power failures/problems. Right now to power the outside cabinets it's 384V DC powered from the Central Office's battery banks or Remote Switching Centre upstream. Having that coming into your house might raise some issues.
Meanwhile Shaw's changes are to remove as much analog NTSC television as possible - the frequency division multiplexing that has been used for decades on CATV - and replace them with phase modulation like 256-QAM (or perhaps even higher level modulation) which offer better use of the spectrum available on the coaxial cable, delivering many downstream/upstream internet 'channels' (DOCSIS 3 channel bonding) or more HDTV (many HD channels can fit in the spectrum footprint of an old NTSC analog 6.25MHz channel). Cable spectrum is exactly like over-the-air spectrum and the reasons for going digital are the same reasons for OTA TV going digital. The difference is that OTA spectrum is managed by Industry Canada in coordination with the International Telecommunication Union while the CATV spectrum is wholly decided by the cable operator (the only time both really cross paths is when a cable installation is leaking signals out into the free space air).

The average customer does not care about any of that though... like I said, presentation of the content and availability of the content matter because it's what people see and deal with whenever they watch TV. The speed deficit on the internet connection probably doesn't matter to most people, as long as they provide a Wi-Fi access point with the service.
I care because the 'last mile' or 'last 100 feet' is the bottleneck with tip-and-ring delivery of services (squeezing around 25MHz of reliable bandwidth on a system originally designed for 4kHz bandwidth), coaxial cable has a greater physical medium bandwidth (5MHz to 800MHz reliable bandwidth) which to me has more long term potential. I don't really choose a service provider for the customer premises equipment but that's just me - most customers look for the whole experience ignoring the backend. And that is where Telus is winning those customers. From a technology standpoint it's interesting how much is being squeezed into 2 tiny wires, and from a marketing standpoint how those technical deficiencies are masked by a nice looking user interface.

On the topic of audio compression... you guys nitpick about IPTV delivered compressed audio at like 128kbps but yet satellite radio at 4Kbps-32Kbps is totally acceptable?
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby albertaboy4life » Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:24 pm

No argument here about satellite radio data rates being ridiculously low. I hate the digital artefacts but I'm a captive/captured listener in that I can't yet listen to the online streams in my car to get better audio and conventional AM/FM service doesn't deliver content to my liking. I don't know of any Canadian equivalent to SoulTown et.al. Can I get an amen, Anotherwpgguy?

The other factor is that my car stereo doesn't stand a chance next to my home audio equipment in terms of sound quality. I have a Sirius after market radio in my car which when connected to my car's stock radio using the miniplug input jack reminds of the sound quality of AM Stereo in a 1985 Chrysler New Yorker and 1989 Chrylser Dynasty using their stock Infinity radios.

Conventional broadcasters don't do a great job either, audio-wise. Jon and I were recently having an offline conversation about the practice of some broadcasters in this country using beat up vinyl for the source of their CanCon libraries and then digitising the crappy source audio at a poor bit rate which just made the lousy recording sound even worse.

Mr. Cleaver has commented in the past about the lack of fidelity and over-compression of FM radio in Canada.

As for Cable, I'm among a group of folks who beat up SHAW over audio dropouts in the past and SHAW's insistence that 3 (or more) per QAM and old MPEG-2 encoding was just fine when using 2 per QAM would mean close to Over the Air quality for their HD service. Don't get me started on the bandwidth argument.
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby Howaboutthat » Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:50 pm

TRENT310 wrote:It's interesting to see that many customers don't care about the technical delivery of the content, but rather the availability and presentation of the content.


I'd go even further to say that many customers in this financial age, care most about the cost of the content, and not the low bitrate and 'lossy' compression, and that's why you're seeing these very low start-up rates. Always ask what it goes up to 3-6 months down the road and if you're locked in.
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby hagopian » Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:54 am

Cogent points on delivery.

Also - notice how fast generational equipment changes keep coming. LTE, 4G, etc. I think a lot of folks are hurting financially, so they will dump over priced cable, once they have a delivery system that makes more economic sense. (Netflix 8 bucks a month - ok sure, there is a lack of really killer content, but they have great documentaries).

The example of the QR code comes to mind. Comes out - great promise and already it is being run over, by something else.

So - tech startups are a gamble and buying in long term, is a crap shoot, too.

I have a feeling there is a seismic shift coming - I wonder what's next/?
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Re: Galaxie Introduces App on Optik TV(BROADCASTER)

Postby PMC » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:52 pm

hagopian wrote:I have a feeling there is a seismic shift coming - I wonder what's next/?


Ubuntu TV http://www.ubuntu.com/tv

There is also Apple and Google TV... read that G has signed a deal with Samsung and LG. Ubuntu will probably be there too... Apple will probably go it alone, as does MS.
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