[opendtv] Re: Digital TV: Brazil to Adopt Anything But the American System
- From: Nat Ostroff <nostroff@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 12:11:49 -0500
John,
I could not have told the story better. Thanks for the summery of the
events from those days. The lack of technical knowledge and vision as
well as the political influence that was exerted on NAB and others to
"not rock the boat" has delivered the over the air TV business into the
hands of the telecom folks. I suspect, just as they planned. If the
Sinclair petition for a dual standard had been approved we would today
be able to decide what businesses we, as broadcasters, wanted to
address. That petition sat in the FCC without any action longer than any
other on record. I can only speculate what forces were at work to delay
the FCC. If you all remember, it was during that time that certain
companies, in a coordinated fashion, issued press releases that claimed
that they had found a "miracle chip". Based on those press releases the
FCC finally rejected the Sinclair petition because"technical advances
promised to solve the problems of 8VSB". You can only wonder about the
timing of those press releases today and what went on behind the scenes.
Of course, the miracle chips never really amounted anything but their
vapor wear announcement killed any chance for a COFDM alternative.
I think that there is a book in here somewhere....
nat ostroff
John Shutt wrote:
>Both the NAB and the MSTV were more concerned with then pending Campaign
>Finance Reform legislation that could have included forcing public license
>holders to provide free airtime to candidates than they were about ATSC's
>problems.
>
>They were being told by Zenith, Nxtwave, and others that ATSC's problems
>were trivial and solvable, and were being told by Congress that rocking the
>DTV boat by petitioning for a change in modulation schemes and delaying the
>spectrum auction could result in candidate airtime giveaways.
>
>As it turned out, the problems weren't so easily fixed, and we probably
>would have been further ahead in the transition if the Sinclair petition
>were adopted back in 1999-2000. It's sickening to see all the DVB-T
>products there are available to the rest of the world, and how few ATSC
>products are available to us.
>
>It will be interesting to see the subscription rates with Crown Castle for
>mobile phone TV. And to imagine that we could have been providing content
>for no charge to the same DVB-H enabled phones is mind numbing.
>
>And in the final twist of irony, it appears that with the current Abrahamoff
>scandal, there is once again calls for public funding of campaigns, which
>will in all likelihood include OTA television stations giving away spots to
>qualified candidates. So it may well be that the NAB and MSTV get stuck
>with 1) a crippled digital television standard that will never perform as
>well as the rest of the world, 2) delays in turning off NTSC, and 3) giving
>away political spots for free.
>
>John
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Nat Ostroff" <nostroff@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
>
>>I know that we did have support and I personally appreciated it.
>>However, the cards were stacked against us because the NAB and it's
>>kissing cousin the MSTV seemed to be the captive of inside the beltway
>>Washington interests. At the time it was hard to believe but now, given
>>the big buck moves by NEXTELL and Qualcom and others it seems more
>>plausable.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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