Examination of Witnesses (Questions 252
- 259)
TUESDAY 29 JUNE 2004
BIPA, IWF, TWO WAY
TV, VIDEO NETWORKS
Chairman: Welcome. Thank you very much
indeed for coming to see us. Michael Fabricant will start the
questions.
Q252 Michael Fabricant: We heard
earlier that Local Loop Unbundling may or may not be of benefit
to people providing video down telephone lines. I would like to
ask Roger Lynch whether the recent announcement by BT is actually,
in practice, going to help the provision of such services.
Mr Lynch: I think it will help
it immensely. It has already been done now. Mr Bryant asked earlier
about when the Westminster cable system was going to be upgraded.
In fact, that whole area now is upgraded to the telephone to be
able to receive 60 channels of digital television and on demand
television. What Local Loop Unbundling and the announcement from
BT does is make it economically viable to roll that out in a large
area.
Q253 Michael Fabricant: Given that
Video On Demand is potentially here and now and, certainly in
certain parts of London, provided by Video Networks, and given
that you were listening to the debate earlier on when we were
talking to NTL and Telewest, do you think that Video On Demand
is the future, and broadcasting, in its traditional sense, is
dead, and therefore it follows the BBC is dead? Or do you see
the two co-existing?
Mr Lynch: I see the two melding
together, frankly. That is what we attempt to do on our service
now. We offer broadcast television, a large array of broadcast
channels, including all the BBC channels, as well as currently
about 5,000 different programmes on demand. Where it melds together
is things like on BBC1 currently, or BBC2 or Channel 4, where
you can look at what is on but you can also scroll back in the
programme guide and watch programmes that have been broadcast
already that are available on our server. So it is broadcast in
the sense that these are programmes that the BBC decided to commission
or produce and schedule but it is made available on demand much
like a PVR would do, except in this case you do not have to plan
it, it is available on the server.
Q254 Michael Fabricant: Of course
the BBC are talking about providing their own video archive in
due course. Have you spoken to them at all, because presumably
the technology that Video Networks is employing is similar sort
of technology to that which the BBC uses?
Mr Lynch: We have spent a lot
of time with the BBC on this issue. I think the technology would
be different in the sense that what we deliver is television,
whether it is on demand or broadcast. That implies a completely
different quality level than what is delivered on the internet.
The infrastructure that we build to do on demand television, I
think, will be very different from what the BBC would do to enable
the creative archive through the internet or through their interactive
media player. What we want to do, as the BBC frees up its archive,
is to make it available over our platform and, indeed, it should
be available over any other platform that could carry it to the
licence fee payers.
Q255 Michael Fabricant: Let us get
this absolutely clear: I am not paid to advertise Video Networks,
but I think you are one of the first in the UK to do this, if
not the first. Video Networks is providing broadcast television
down an ordinary telephone line (correct me if I am wrong) and
what I can do through some form of remote control or whatever
is get your server, your computer, based wherever it is—presumably
in London—to feed the programmes that I want in real time
down the telephone line and I look at a picture which is every
bit as good as broadcast television, by cable or by satellite.
Is that right?
Mr Lynch: That is correct. You
would not notice any difference, looking at the picture.
Q256 Michael Fabricant: Let us just
pursue this a little further. What future is there for cable or
satellite in the conventional sense, given that presumably it
is more difficult for a satellite footprint to actually target
an individual home? Is there a future?
Mr Lynch: I think, in particular
in this country, where you have such a strong and dominant satellite
provider there will be a future because they are very innovative.
They are just scratching the surface about what they will be able
to do with the SkyPlus box. I think what they will attempt to
do is continue to expand the capacity of that to capture more
and more of the broadcast signal and be able to store it so that
you can create your own on demand library. Where it will get difficult
is in relation to what you have been talking about, the creative
archive. Today we already have hundreds of archive BBC programmes
that are available on demand on our servers. We are already doing
that commercially with the BBC. We would like to expand that very,
very significantly. That is going to be very difficult for satellite
to be able to do.
Q257 Michael Fabricant: I think SkyPlus
can store about 18 hours at any one time. Of course, with a main
server, how long is a piece of string? You can have as many drives
as you want. Could I ask of Video Networks: how many hours right
now, with the equipment you have, are you capable of storing?
Mr Lynch: Our servers today store
10,000 hours of content.
Q258 Michael Fabricant: Which I could
access at any time?
Mr Lynch: Yes. Currently, I believe,
there are 7,000 items of content available on our servers, of
which 5,000 are entertainment, movies, television programmes and
music videos, and the others are more informational, such as we
have an information service with the Borough of Newham that has
probably 20 hours of content about local housing, benefits, health
and schooling.
Q259 Michael Fabricant: Presumably
you need sufficient bandwidth to deliver this to the consumer.
What bandwidth is it that you require and what are the constraints
to panning out your service throughout the United Kingdom, or
similar services by competitors throughout the United Kingdom?
Mr Lynch: Today we use about four
megabytes in total but we deliver not only the television service
with that, we deliver a one megabyte broadband internet service
for the PC. As we expand outside of London, the distance from
the telephone exchanges to the home gets greater and the amount
of bandwidth that is available reduces correspondingly. There
are newer technologies coming along, the first of which is encoding
the standard, such as Mpeg 4, of which we may well be the first
operator anywhere in the world to roll out this year, which will
reduce in half the amount of bandwidth that we require to transmit
a given video quality. There are also new standards coming out
in ADSL which will have the impact of doubling the amount of bandwidth
that can be delivered over a copper wire. So the compounding effect
of these technologies means that as we roll out our service to
larger and larger areas around the UK we will be able to deliver
very high quality pictures to a very high percentage of the population.
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