More data: More fun?

[Orstio]

www.esa.int/export/esaCP/...ing_0.html

Tomorrow's spacecraft will be capable of generating more data than they can transmit to Earth. In some cases, this could be more data than can even be comfortably handled by today's computational methods. What benefits are there for us in this flood of data?
 
If you know how to transfer huge quantities of data, you could revolutionise some Earthly applications. In the entertainment industry, you could transmit films via satellite to waiting cinemas. Since the information is digital, audiences would see a perfect picture every time. Film distributors would no longer need endless rolls of celluloid film. The menu at cinemas would not be limited to feature films either. You could beam sporting events, musical concerts, and even news reports into cinemas, showing them live.

[Mentor]

it should be easy to beam a signal at high bandwidth for say 1/10th of an AU, all you need to do is have repeater stations placed in space to retransmit the data to orbital stations and then to a groundlink, somewhat like the network of comm satelites they intend to set up at Mars to send data back to Earth but with more capacity, that concept is limited by just haveing one station at the Mars end to send the data all the way to Earth, if you had 50 or 100 in concentric rings between earth and Mars then the signal would be proportionaly stronger and the bitrate far higher, just a matter more of the will to do something about it than an inability to do something about it.

Mentor.