lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/15/86)
The following represents my personal opinions. The current indications are that (given proper pricing) it will almost always be in a site's advantage to participate directly in Stargate whenever possible (via cable TV feed or sat receiver) rather than try rely on other sites for phone feeds of certain classes of Stargate materials. Among many other benefits, those sites receiving materials directly from the broadcast channel will always be at an advantage when it comes to participation in discussions in a timely manner. Especially as the number of sites and traffic grows, the broadcast channel will be increasingly attractive even to very small sites (including one person and "read-only" sites). The amount of coordination, money, and time it takes operate a phone-based hub, especially in major metropolitan areas where there may be many potential users, is rapidly becoming impractical. Part of the reason for the many "non-local" netnews links on the current network is that existing local "hubs" are often unable to reasonably handle more than a relatively few sites without considerable system, resource, delivery latency, and/or other cost effects. And of course the current "solution" to this problem, involving sites feeding sites feeding other sites in a fanout arrangement, only increases the problems with article delivery delays. This in turn is made worse by the lack of moderation for most materials, yet this very arrangement makes moderation difficult to use effectively in the existing environment. With Stargate, on the other hand, there is no direct incremental cost (to the network) for adding another receiving site. There is no delivery load placed on existing receiving sites by other sites joining the cable/satellite network. The fact that all operational sites receive the same broadcast material at the same time will allow moderation, at various levels, to work much more effectively than in a phone-based network--an important facet as traffic, sites, and users continue to grow in numbers. The broadcast nature of Stargate offers tremendous potential for supporting many more sites and users in a useful manner than could be supported in a non-broadcast environment. This will allow for the participation of many organizations and users who would not otherwise be reasonably able to contribute to and benefit from the quality people/knowledge/information resources that can be made available. --Lauren--
caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX) (08/23/86)
In article <950@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes:
:The following represents my personal opinions.
:
:The current indications are that (given proper pricing) it will
:almost always be in a site's advantage to participate directly
:in Stargate whenever possible (via cable TV feed or sat receiver) rather
:than try rely on other sites for phone feeds of certain classes of Stargate
:materials.
As I understand, the WTBS uplink which carries Stargate is or will soon
be scrambled.
Will the Stargate decoder accomodate this scrambling, or will it be
necessary to dedicate a descrambler and sign up for WTBS descrambling at
the TVRO rip-off rate?ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (08/26/86)
In article <387@omen.UUCP>, caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX) writes: > As I understand, the WTBS uplink which carries Stargate is or will soon > be scrambled. > > Will the Stargate decoder accomodate this scrambling, or will it be > necessary to dedicate a descrambler and sign up for WTBS descrambling at > the TVRO rip-off rate? Well, I'm not sure if the STARGATE signal would be affected, depending on the tolerances of the box. Using the MA/COM technique, the video is only scrambled by fiddling with the sync. The only thing really encrypted (scrambled) is the audio. Presumably real TVRO junkies already have devices in their hands to restore sync to video signals as many of the better services have already done this form of "scrambling." Anyhow, the advantage of STARGATE using TBS is that it is available unscrambled in a vast majority of the markets. Those who pay for cable at all usually get it for no additional charge. -Ron
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (08/26/86)
> As I understand, the WTBS uplink which carries Stargate is or will soon > be scrambled. > Will the Stargate decoder accomodate this scrambling, or will it be > necessary to dedicate a descrambler and sign up for WTBS descrambling at > the TVRO rip-off rate? I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the scrambling schemes generally do not mess with the vertical interval, which is where the Stargate information is tucked away. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/27/86)
First of all, I would not consider it to be an absolute certainty that
WTBS will go ahead with scrambling soon, mainly due to the various
Congressional actions regarding scrambling in general which are
currently stirring up a lot of confusion (watch C-SPAN for the details).
Many programming services (including some religious operations) are
claiming that they are being "forced" to scramble by cable company
coercion, and this has some Congressmen livid. In general, the advertiser-
supported services are not thrilled about scrambling in any case, and
I think would happily avoid it if they could. This is a rapidly
evolving issue.
If scrambling does take place:
1) The Videocipher scrambling system apparently does not damage the
vertical interval data.
2) Only DIRECT satellite receivers of WTBS would need a descrambler,
all sites receiving materials from cable TV would already be
descrambled at the cable company headend.
3) I have discussed the issue of key fees (for decoding WTBS)
with SSS. This issue isn't fully worked out since scrambling
has yet to occur, but I can see a couple of possibilities:
a) The data subscriber would not need to pay the fee normally
imposed on a viewer of WTBS, since they only want to watch
the SSS data, not the WTBS programs.
or:
b) To keep things simple, the fee would be paid, but it would be
so small as to not be significant. For example, even under
the current pricing schedule (and Congressional action will
most likely result in lower prices by forcing people like HBO,
etc. to sell to third-party groups at lower rates), the
rates for advertiser-supported services are comparatively low.
The package of both CNN and CNN2, for example, costs less than $2/mo.
My own suspicion is that SSS will attempt to set things up so that
their data feeds don't have to pay any standard WTBS key fee. But given
all the confusion right now over Congressional action on scrambling,
etc., the detailed handling of this issue is somewhere down the line.
Anyway, even in the WORST case I would not expect to see significant
key fees (SSS doesn't want them, either!) and in any case the whole
issue only affects users with their own earth stations, not
cable TV subscribers.
--Lauren--lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/30/86)
I just had another conversation with SSS regarding scrambling issues. As I mentioned in my previous message, they are *not* thrilled about scrambling. A primary reason many advertiser-sponsored services are being prodded into scrambling is threats from cable systems to drop them if they don't scramble. It's these kinds of threats that Congress is investigating, by the way. I did confirm three points: 1) The vertical interval data survives videocipher scrambling, at least when descrambled with the "commercial" decoders (which are slightly more expensive than the consumer decoders). There is no reason to believe the consumer decoders will have any problems in this regard, though I'll be in a position to test this for sure with SSS shortly. 2) While pressure has been building for SSS to begin fixed-key scrambling testing in a couple of months (in fixed-key mode, anybody with a videocipher box can receive the video without specific addressing), there is no specific date planned at this point for addressable scrambling, which requires considerably more work to make operational. 3) I have been told again that the issue of data subscribers not being happy with the possibility of having to pay the same key rates as conventional WTBS viewers (even if those rates are relatively small) is understood and that all efforts will be made to deal with this issue in an appropriate manner. Once again, I emphasize that these scrambling issues only affect direct reception of SSS data via satellite receiver, NOT those persons who would receive the data via cable systems. --Lauren--