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Originally Posted by dellwear
But surely that means only 55 people on the platform will be able to use the service at once!!
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As dezzo said, there's a really detailed thread on this on DS.
It won't just be 55 people able to watch, 'cause cable can do something called narrowcasting, where signals are only sent to a small number of homes. I guess the closer the broadcast equipment is to your house (in terms of network architecture, not geography), the fewer "other people's" films you'll recieve, increasing the chance that there is spare capacity for you.
The company producing this (On Demand Group?) must have gone over the numbers and concluded that there is enough capacity in each narrowcasted area to serve the amount of people they expect to use it.
One last thing - the original poster said this is likely to be TIVO like technology, which it isn't at all. TIVO (and other PVR/DVRs like Sky+) cache the programmes on the client side (that is, in your house). Video on Demand caches the programmes server side (at ntl datacentres). ntl's systems have far more capacity than a TIVO box, which is why choice from 500+ movies is possible.
I can't wait for this! It looks to be the biggest improvement in cable TV since digital was introduced!