"Andy Zbikowski (Zibby)" <zibby+tclug at ringworld.org> wrote:
> 
> Now that I read it again, you're right. But he's talking brodcast. Not
> satlite, but plain old brodcast tv. (Well, Digital TV brodcast now...)
> 
> Well, it is possible. I know there was some show before the advent of
> cable modems that included some sort of download in their show's signal.
> No idea how it was actually decoded on the user end.

Computer Chronicles used to do this.  They'd send batches of shareware
packages by using about 1/3 of the screen.  To humans, it just looks like
static.  I'm not sure how much stuff got sent.  They ran it for about 1-2
minutes, and while it was going, they would say what was getting
downloaded.  I suspect it ended up in the 30-50 MB range.

> Setting the FCC regulations aside, could this really work? First hurdle
> is that your brodcast tv signal is one way. It takes some high power
> equipment and tall towers to get the signal to you. You would need a
> similar setup to get it back for 2 way communication.

True, but there is potential here -- certain data is good to broadcast. 
Weather images and data, for instance.  I know that certain HDTV
broadcasts are supposed to include extra information, so the frameworks
are presumably already there, or are at least fairly well along.

Hmm..  Though I wonder what will happen if someone were to serruptitiously
include extra stuff in ordinary broadcasts.  Send out a whole Linux ISO in
ten minutes or less ;-)

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   Radioactive halibut is 
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   good for fission chips. 
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)                             
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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