IPTV on any broadband connection?

An impressive sounding IPTV and VoD set top box has been announced by MatrixStream at CES2006. It claims to deliver HD and DVD quality TV over any ‘best effort’ broadband connection. Wonder what ‘best effort’ broadband actually means. There was a time not long ago that 128kbps was argued to be broadband. The title refers to powerline broadband but makes no mention of it in the article. It claims it can deliver over any connection by using MPEG-4 (H.264) codec.

As fancy as this gadget sounds though it ain’t diddly without decent content behind it.

VoIP Silos

Om Malik at the CES 2006 has valid points on the lack of interoperability of VoIP handsets between different VoIP services. Standardisation enables a unit to be mass produced more easily as it can be used in more situations. Mass production means lower production costs which means cheaper units. Having these VoIP silos will inevitably mean that handsets will be more expensive for a service who’s chief selling point (at the moment) is the cheap cost of calls. How long would it take for the cheaper calls to pay for the handset?

This story mirrors the current WiMAX certification process where vendors have standardised the fixed and mobile WiMAX standards in effort to reduce CPE costs.