Tom Barry wrote: > We have to be careful here of what is possible in the written > standard vs what can and will be done in the industry. We have > just had a couple statements about how many features may not be > used because they would break very early model receivers. Yes, but Tom, people who complain need to be consistent in their complaints. Otherwise, they carry no weight. No one cares whether the new Internet application breaks old receivers. No one cares whether the updated codec will bring your old PC to its knees. You are simply expected to make it work, even if that means buying a new PC, because failing to do that means that soon enough you'll be left out in the cold. It is very obvious to me that one could take this same approach with ATSC. The standard is fine with this. Design new applications, break old receivers. What keeps this from happening is simply an unwillingness to operate TV distribution on the PC model, by the service providers (OTA broadcasters in this case), and I'm not so sure that the average Joe out there thinks this is a bad thing. > And > the broadcast industry for the most part just converts everything > to baseband and encodes it on the fly as a single a/v stream. > > These decisions may be the correct ones but they do NOT lead to the > flexibility and upgrade paths that may be pointed to in the written > standards. > > Evolution can only occur when you are willing to have some viewers > unable to use some new features, the same thing we may gripe about > on the Internet. > > Otherwise you are stuck. Maybe stuck on purpose as a sound business > decision, but still stuck. > > Much in the ATSC standard may never be used. And yet, there are quite a few new features that can be added compatibly. One obvious one being the M/H standard. Firmware downloads to specific receivers are another. H.264 and new video formats are another. Improved EPGs. And yes, even tagretted ads can be added, for those with the appropriate STB or new TV set designed to accept these. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.