Hi.

I was wondering if there are any indications that U.S. television
programming will be available outside the U.S. via IPTV services.

I currently reside in the U.K.

When I heard of IPTV the first thing I thought was; "As long as I have
enough bandwidth, I should be able to receive it anywhere in the
world"... which is why I'm setting up a 24Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2+ link in
hopes I can sign up to whichever corp in the U.S. releases this HDTV
over IP service.

The bandwidth would be the same as any cable/dsl service in the U.S.
but the latency wouldn't -- would that be a problem?

Thanks in advance for your input.

First of all, you have to check whether there is an IPTV provider that
can broadcast you the needed content, and you should also check its
service area. It is possible that the provider only broadcast the
content to a dedicated IP range.

If there is no problem with the provider, than you should check that
there is enough bandwidth on the whole network. Usually the
transatlantic lines are the bottleneck of the bandwidth. That means
you can have a 100mbit/s line from an ISP, but if the content can go
by 50kbit/s thru the Atlantic then despite you have a really fast line
you will get the content by max. 50 kbit/s.

The latency is not a problem, as at both ends buffers are used to
elliminate the jitters, and the latency is usually constant, thus it
does not cause any problem only you will see the same content 1 sec
later then someone else in the US.

So, for you the most important thing is that the bandwith between you
and your provider is big enough for the needed content.

Petres, Firstly, I very much appreciate your comment.

Secondly, I was wondering if I fully understood what you meant by the
trans-atlantic bottleneck.

At present I'm on a 2Mbps DSL connection which has allowed me to
download files from U.S. HTTP/FTP servers at approx 220 KB/sec. I can
also download basic 300k video streams from sites like LAUNCH music.
I'm assuming since I haven't yet upgraded to 24Mbps that and I can
already download beyond 50 KB/sec that I should be okay?

Your feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks.