Subject: future of IP over VBI WG

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 15:07:02 -0500

Dan (and WG):

With the publication of "The Transmission of IP Over the Vertical
Blanking Interval of a Television Signal" as RFC 2728, now is a good
time consider the future of the WG. Previously, the WG had agreed to
also work on a draft for IP over WST. That effort appears to have
never gotten off the ground, and our sense is that interest in IP over
VBI has waned considerably over the last year. At this point, we
believe the WG should be closed, as there seems insufficient interest
in continuing the work. The mailing list would remain for discussion,
as needed.

If folks think the WG should continue -- and more importantly -- there
are volunteers willing to do the work, please speak up quickly.

Thomas & Erik
Internet Area ADs

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 06:36:02 -0500

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From: John Clancy <[email-masked]>
To: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 11:31:36 +0000
Subject: Re: future of IP over VBI WG

Hi,

Having been one of the people in Europe who did quite a lot of the pushing
for a WST-based IP-over-VBI standard, and also having made a submission to
the WG on behalf of the Interational Datacasting Association, I'd like to
respond to your mail, based on my experiences during and since our work
here in Europe on WST IP-VBI.

Firstly, some of the early proposals which were being pushed for WST-based
IP-VBI, mainly from Nother American vendors, just had no real chance of
being accepted by the Europeans, and *much* time and inertia was lost on
the WST version of the standard as a result of this.  The European
Association of Consumer Electronic Manufacturers (EACEM) did a lot of work
both on Commercial Framework and Technical Specification for "TeleWeb", a
system that would deliver web content to next-generation analog TV sets
(PAL/SECAM), and would be easily portable to the digital TV environment.
However, this organisation was far too slow-moving, even allowing for the
fact that big players like Siemens, Sony, Philips were intimately involved,
and this slowness of movement has allowed, in my opinion, furter resistance
to be built up by the digital TV lobby.  It remains to be seen if TeleWeb
will ever commercially launch in the European market.  However, the work
done by the TeleWeb team delivered a sensible specification for IP over
VBI, so it is that spec which will likely be implemented for VBI
datacasting, if TeleWeb services ever launch.

This aggregate slowness of movement from IETF WG and EACEM has resulted in
many people, including myself, losing interest in standardisation for WST
IP-VBI - the amount of bandwidth available in the market is shrinking, and
broadcasters are already rapidly switching over to digital broadcasts.
Even if IP on VBI is launched on WST, the shrinking bandwidth means that
services such as streamed audio, using IP-based players at the receive end,
are just not practical due to the limited bandwidth.

Therefore, de facto, I believe that unless the TeleWeb project goes ahead
in Europe (and if it does, I believe that it will probably only be
seriously implemented on digital TV at this stage), then WST-based IP-VBI
is dead.  And, despite my wishes that things were otherwise, the events of
the last 24 months (I attended an IETF meeting in Washington on this
subject in December 1997), make me believe that there is no commercial
sense in making any further effort on WST-based IP-VBI.  I cannot speak for
the NTSC market, as I have no real experience there, and there may indeed
be a lot of unused VBI, due to lack of Teletext services, but for
PAL/SECAM, I think we can just forget it.

Best wishes for a happy & peaceful Christmas, 

John Clancy,
Bocom International.

PS - Feel free to circulate this email to the WG, as I don't have the
address to hand to do so myself.

>are volunteers willing to do the work, please speak up quickly.

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