HDTV gets DSL-ized

LAS VEGAS--Net to Net Technologies said today that it, along with Tandberg Television, has successfully demonstrated high-definition television (HDTV) over ADSL by using two pair loop bonding techniques.

The demonstration, which took place last week at Tandberg’s facilities, used two ADSL lines with each providing 10.6 Mb/s of downstream bandwidth. One HDTV MPEG-2 stream, encoded at 15 Mb/s, and one standard definition MPEG-2 stream, encoded at 3 Mbps, were simultaneously transported over the bonded ADSL lines, which in aggregate provided slightly more than 21 Mb/s downstream.

During the test, Tandberg used its E5780 encoder to compress the MPEG-2 high definition signal. And while only a lab test, the ability to send HDTV signals down copper wires will become more realistic with the development of MPEG-4 and Windows Media 9 compression, said Matthew Byrd, vice president of marketing for Net to Net.

“Realistically you can do high-definition at 12 Mb/s with MPEG-2,” he said, noting that telcos can use HDTV as a differentiator when competing against cable operators for video subscribers. “If we wait around forever for the perfect technology, you’re never going to deploy it.”