Thanks, Milt. That's an interesting post.
There's a DCT white paper on the Ampex website that describes how the DCT 1700 was developed by Ampex in close collaboration with Digital Vision of Sweden and Time Warner. We also know that Time Warner is using DSTs for backup and DCTs for DVD mastering. I think it is fair to assume that AXC is going to be an active player in the process.
Video on Demand has always been one of the markets targeted by Ampex for its DST storage products. It's DST libraries were used extensively in a lot of the early trials by the likes of NBC, MCI and as Hal mentioned Hyundai. For reasons having to do with financing, politics (HDTV, telecom deregulation), and technology, however, the market has not really developed as fast as expected. This time may be different, though. Deregulation is chugging along. HDTV is coming along fast. And most importantly, the explosive growth in networking technology (xDSL, wireless broadband, ATM) makes it more likely that VOD will be one of the early killer apps of digital TV, especially if the content providers figure out quickly the sweet spot that will provide the most demand.
There's a white paper on the Ampex web site that describes the different roles of DST in the delivery of video content. Below is a link that takes you an article that provides much of the rationale used by FOX TV, one of the 4 networks, in choosing the Tektronix/Ampex team to provide important pieces of its move to digital TV.
tvbroadcast.com
The DST drives will be responsible for a major philosophical change as the FOX broadcast plant will go from shuttling tapes to shuttling files. "The DST drive, which hangs on the Fiber Channel, was one of the enablers for us," says Setos. "Not only does it stream at four times realtime, it also is a data drive, so it's not like making a copy or playing a tape. You simply tell the machine to do something with an icon, drag and drop, and it happens......"
".....Setos says that the fact that Ampex, once the pre-eminent manufacturer in broadcast-related products, is the maker of the DST tape drive is nothing more than a coincidence. "The joke is that they've come back into the industry not by any design of their own, just that they happen to offer the best highest-density, highest-speed data drive on the market," he adds.
Setos says that the DST tapes are going to be a "real killer" in the FOX plant, while smaller stations can rely on small exabyte drives that offer some advantages over traditional tape decks. "I think stations that invest in very high-value video tape recorders are investing in dinosaurs," he adds.
Take note of the way that FOX is using the DSTs to store the content as data files. Also take note of the way that the DSTs allow FOX to move video (in the form of data files) more efficiently at faster than real time speeds to RAID arrays that stream the video for broadcast transmission. That sequence of tasks is going to be the same whether video on demand is transmitted over copper lines (ADSL, VDSL), wireless (satellite) or by conventional fiber/coax (Time Warner, TCI) so whichever way the video on demand market eventually develops, Ampex's DST products are going to be some of the most viable storage solutions out there with the most attractive technology roadmap (30-40 MBps + quad-density in 1998,
30-40 MBps + fiber channel +10x density in 1999, all with full forward compatibility). |
