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 | http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 318.0/November 30, 2007

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HEADLINES:

-  The Week / George Gilder on the Exacosm (Video)
-  Friday Feature / IPTV’s Ascent?
-  Friday Blogger Bonus / 2009 Market Crash?
-  Readings /


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The Week / George Gilder on the Exacosm (Video)

George Gilder  speaking at the 11th Annual Gilder Forbes Telecosm Conference (Video):  We are in the world of the Exacosm and this is the eleventh annual Telecosm Conference, so I thought I’d offer eleven laws of the Telecosm to introduce this event…


View the video of George Gilder’s Telecosm 2007 keynote:

http://www.discovery.org/v/29

The Gilder Telecosm Forum

The next logical step in the evolution of the Gilder Technology Report (published by Gilder Publishing, LLC in association with Forbes Inc., 1996-2007), the Gilder Telecosm Forum is the web’s premier technology investment discussion forum.

 

To learn how to join this powerful network of talented, tech-savvy investors and thinkers online daily to debate, discuss, and decode new and emerging technologies and share valuable and actionable investment advice, visit http://www.gildertech.com/ today.


Friday Feature / IPTV’s Ascent? (Gilder Telecosm Forum)


Gilder Telecosm Forum Member #1 (11/24/07): Looking at that IPTV Daily, they seem to distinguish between IPTV and Internet TV. I just figured they were the same. I am still trying to fully understand the difference. This forum does not seem to make as clear a distinction.

 

Gilder Telecosm Forum Member #2 (11/24/07): No, the [Gilder Telecosm Forum] has made a crystal clear distinction between the two. You just haven't had the chance to see the multitude of posts, IPTV is a "walled garden" and is transported over telco lines for a subscription fee. Its video and audio packets do not traverse the Internet. Cable TV (currently a broadcast system) will eventually become IPTV (unicast and multicast). A major driver for IPTV is bundling and high-definition content.

Web TV or Internet TV (free TV) is just that. It's carried over the Internet. YouTube and Joost are two examples. Additional resources on free TV:
http://worldtv.com/charts/ | http://www.internetvideomag.com/

 

George Gilder (11/24/07): This is an excellent distinction today in the minds of the vendors, who cherish it. But it will tend to dissolve as both cable-cos and telcos find themselves delivering both IPTV and Internet video. More and more cable "channels" and more and more fiber-to-the-home bandwidth will be devoted to Internet fare, which increasingly will be sold seamlessly for reasonable payments.

Internet broadband is already the most profitable cable service and the telcos will discover that they can compete with cable chiefly by offering the more varied longtail content available on the net. The market for real-time system-on-a-chip decoders and transcoders will take off when every household has to provide converters for all the acronymic soup of SD, IMS, VOIP, MPEG, 3D, DOCSIS, DVD, DRM, H.323, HDTV and PC cable, telco, and satellite video protocols.

All the networks will have to link to each other largely through session border controllers, the new age routers operating at layer 5 (the session layer), which handles quality of service, security, and transactions usually using the session initiation protocols (SIP). This is the application that is already spurring the market for upper layer network processors and content addressable memories, and as they spread all the "walled gardens" will tend to give way to the EZ Eden Garden paradigm.

Gilder Telecosm Forum Member #1 (11/25/07): Is the "convergence" of the IPTV and the Internet TV what is being termed VoD?

 

George Gilder (11/25/07): Video on Demand (VoD) is the name used by scores of companies to depict some contrivance of video servers and broadband links designed to deliver movies and other video to a home display "on-demand."

Until residential fiber is widely deployed (2010) and coax is upgraded to scores of megabits per second (2011+), all these systems will remain high end niches compared to the existing information superhighway VoD system (1955).

In general, the optimal superhighway for VoD turns out to be the Interstate Highway system, with Netflix using UPS trucks going about 50 miles an hour, delivering 5 million DVDs per day in the US or some 50 petabytes per day, as much as all US Internet traffic put together. Deliver 10 DVDs in 2 days & you have a 24 hour data-rate of close to 4 megabits a second (which is about the speed of an MPEG2 stream over DirecTV or a digital channel over CableTV). Blue Ray disks triple that rate--12 megabits a second--using the same UPS trucks.

Once in the house, however, these DVDs need to be Telecosmicly decoded at wirespeed, regardless of their particular protocol or resolution or aspect ratio. This creates a large opportunity for suppliers of multiprotocol media processors. Perhaps others on the board can bail me out here, by naming the producers of some of these devices.

Beyond UPS, the first upgrade will be IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), spearheaded by Microsoft using the same kind of system-on-a-chip decoders used in DVD players. Now being pioneered around the globe, IPTV mostly consists of specialized channels on the model of the cableTV industry. There is a different net for every video supplier, from DirecTV to Comcast to Verizon to ATT, but all will use the same media processors used for DVDs.

With a lot of buffering and other tricks, such as Digital Fountain raptor codes, it is possible to deliver adequate lower resolution, higher latency video (though faster than trucks) over the conventional layer 3 and 4 best efforts Internet or through wireless systems such as MediaFlo and DVD-H.

When all these incompatible IP nets--fiber, coax, satellite, wireless--are interconnected by advanced generations of Session Level Layer 5 routers, called Session Border Controllers (now produced chiefly by a single company), it will be possible to have end to end Internet TV, ubiquitous video teleconferencing, VOIP with video frills, and VoD projected around the world.

These video systems will still need the usual media processor decoders. It would also be nice to interconnect the various High Definition household displays without turning the floors and ceilings into video backplanes drooping with wires. Ultra-wideband systems are competing with other short reach broadband wireless systems to obviate the wires.

With technology stocks being promiscuously bashed and flummoxed, there should be an opportunity in there somewhere.

To read more posts by George Gilder and the Gilder Telecosm Forum members, visit http://www.gildertech.com/ and log on today.
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Friday Blogger Bonus / 2009 Market Crash?

 

Gilder Telecosm Forum Member (11/24/07): Having heard a number of references to Harry Dent, I'm interested to see the Forum’s opinion on Harry and his demographics, particularly in relation to the baby boomers. In a nutshell, Harry says that this market will boom through next year, and then bust big-time in 2009, followed by another large housing crash and years of recession. The basis for all this is that the boomers will be past there peak spending years by 2009-10 and they will be downsizing in housing. Their numbers he says cannot be replaced.

Obviously, a market crash in 2009 will be right in the face of all that we believe. I would love to hear what the great minds on this board think of this scenario!

 

George Gilder (11/25/07): This is a world economy. Unless we go Lou Dobbsville (a peculiar form of grievance sump where the world's richest and most productive people feel victimized by the wretched of the earth), the ascendant young savers of Asia and other low tax regions will buy our stocks and other assets as we grow older. If we spurn protectionism, we will continue to benefit from the cornucopian inventiveness of a booming world economy and be able to buy and sell around the globe, igniting growth and prosperity everywhere. If our tax rates and regulatory climate remains favorable, the world's leading investors and entrepreneurs will come here and buy our high end housing as we scuttle off in our RVs, virtual reality pods, and cushiony coffins.

But if we turn green and swirl nauseously left, raise taxes while the rest of the world is lowering them, debauch our currency deciduously, and twist our economy into a pretzel to avoid emitting CO2, all bets are off.

 

To read more posts by George Gilder and the Gilder Telecosm Forum members, visit http://www.gildertech.com/ and log on today.
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Readings /

Sigma Designs surges on upgrade and outlook
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/sigma-designs-surges-new-record/story.aspx?guid=%7B89672E11-A5BB-434E-8238-C375E708A08D%7D


Google's quest for 700MHz is so on
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/30/official-googles-quest-for-700mhz-is-so-on/

Apple developing mini-disc adapter for slot-loading drives
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/29/apple_developing_mini_disc_adapter_for_slot_loading_drives.html

Weekly GTI Index
http://www.gtindex.com/  

 

Online Education Revolution Finally Here (more or less)
http://www.disco-tech.org/2007/11/online_education_revolution_is.html

 

Power Transmission Without the Power Electronics
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov07/5714
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Friday Letter Editor: Mary Collins George / mcollins@gilder.com
 

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