OT: how smart cable TV works

[jra at baylink.com (Jay Ashworth)]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ryan Finnesey" <ryan.finnesey at HarrierInvestments.com>
>
> I have TWC in NYC. I see now I can restart most of the shows I watch.
> How is this done?

On digital cable systems, it's because your cable box is now really a
GoogleTV/Rokubox like thing that only looks like a "cable converter".

You tell it to pause, it allocates a channel for you, and -- courtesy of
a Supreme Court decision last year -- turns into a remote node for a massive
DVR in the headend.  Same way they do all the on-demand stuff.

Is it the same MPEG encoding that came out of the station/network's MPEG 
encoder?  Almost certainly not.

Is it the same bitrate?  Hell^no.

Cheers,
-- jra