AT&T will increase HD compression on U-verse
Good news, U-verse fans, you'll be upgrading from the current 2 HD / 2 SD video stream system to three live HD streams in 2009. The (potentially) bad news is that comes with the price of additional compression, as AT&T's IPTV service squeezes its MPEG-4 video streams down to 5 Mbps from a current size of 6-8 Mbps, according to CTO John Donovan. Count another bonus as the Total Home DVR will throw as many as seven video streams around the house, up from the current five. With a last mile DSL strategy that gives it less breathing room than Verizon's FiOS, there's only one way to add more streams, but is there going to be a PQ price to pay? We'll find out soon, and don't expect AT&T to stop there, Multichannel News quotes Donovan saying encoders currently in development could reduce bandwidth even further.
