On Nov 16, 8:37*pm, "www.GymRatZ.co.uk"
wrote:
On 16/11/2010 20:10, dennis@home wrote:

My other guess is that digital media will speed up through improved
compression techniques and technology requiring LESS bandwidth than is
currently needed. Certainly in a domestic capacity at least.

I doubt that, the current compression technology chucks stuff away and
degrades the image.
Compressing more will result in an even worse image.

But in the same way is it was "impossible" to increase the capacity of a
DVD until technology allowed more data to be stored on different layers
of the same disc. Perhaps compression was the wrong term to use, what I
ment was some form of simultaneus data transfer like diferent "colour"
binary digits... Blue, Red, Green, 0s and 1s
sort of like combination between DVD layers and multiple frequencies
transmitted simultaneously....
/////

NO! NO! a thousand times NO!

The bandwidth of any communication channel - whether formed by CAT5, 6
or fiberoptic or radio waves or plain audio or whatever - is a
physical limit of that channel (often expressed in MHz). No amount of
jiggery pokery with the electronics, compression algorithm maths,
frequency mixing, or any other deceptively clever compression scams,
can increase the maximum physical bandwidth.

Anything else is the same as a scheme to beat the second law of
thermodynamics. Otherwise known as squeezing blood out of a stone.

Yes many channels can be pushed beyond their stated specification - by
top grade cable & kit + careful installation & testing - but once you
have reached the real max that's your lot. Any attempt to push
further inevitably loses information.

And, yes, most compression algorithms are a compromise between
encoding speed and how much bandwidth (capacity) is left unutilised;
so there can be scope to use faster processing to reduce wasted
bandwidth in a channel but IMHO you will find it is a lot of work for
not much gain over current compression techniques.

Also in the case of a lossy compression method, it is pretty certain
that the encoding method will already be running near the maximum
bandwidth. That is why information has to be lost.

As to cat5 v cat 6 as others have suggested: insert ducts into your
new floor: make sure they can't get wet; these cables are unlikely to
stay the course: at some time not too far ahead fiberoptic will almost
certainly take over. Possibly the crunch point will be when cable
distributed high speed public networks become available running at
decent speeds 100Mbps probably sweeping aside conventional radio &
TV which will become internet services.

In chez nous cat6 was installed as there was minimal price difference
compared with installation effort & there was the feint hope of it
having a longer life. Cat6 also meant, I hoped, that if cabling
wasn't perfect, cat5 performance would still be attained.

HTH