[opendtv] Re: Fewer than 2 Million have OTA DTV in US

Bob Miller wrote:


Less Than 2 Million OTA Digital Users

http://broadcastengineering.com/RF/hd-ota-viewers-1221/

That means less than 1.8% of the 110 million US households
are receiving OTA DTV after NINE years.
Bob, you just recycled an old article we already discussed last week. What's the deal?
The interesting part of that article is that 19 percent of people watching HDTV are getting their HDTV content from OTA sources. The other interesting part of Paxton's remarks was that people are resisting paying extra monthly fees for HD content, which of course they don't need to do if they use DTT.
The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that it behooves broadcasters to continue to transmit HDTV in their DTT multiplexes, and that doing so should increase their share of the TV audience as more and more households buy HD sets (which they are doing), and refuse to pay more to their umbillical services. But hey. Wouldn't it help if broadcasters had spots to explain such simple little details on the air?
Your railing about 8-VSB as a modulation has been way off base for years now. The only part of the repetitive mantra that one can legitimately wonder about is why it's taking so long to get good receivers out on store shelves, except as strictly mandated by the FCC. (And the associated questions of why broadcasters and retailers continue to irefuse to promote their DTT product, etc. etc. as we have discussed many times).
For example, in a recent rant, you explained the situation with the old-tech STBs USDTV was forced to rely on. You explained that the LG 5th gen STBs for USDTV never materialized. Instead of falling back on your old standby, i.e. blaming the modulation with absolutely no evidence that it's the problem, you should be wondering why vendors are so adamant about their refusal to support US DTT with up-to-date products. Why did LG stubbornly refuse to make its 5th gen prototype solution available in FOTA DVRs, STBs, DVDRs? You never did answer that simple question with anything that made any sense. There is absolutely no legitimate reason why solutions developed in 2002 remain unavailable in products sold through the end of 2006, other than strictly as integrated receivers in TV sets (and one, lone, Samsung plain-jane STB, which only just appeared). The old favorite excuse of cost has been proved to be without foundation *long* ago.
I just hope that anyone making decisions on what to invest in does not passively listen to baseless fairy tales. There's no substitute for using your own head. 

Bert

_________________________________________________________________
Fixing up the home? Live Search can help http://imagine-windowslive.com/search/kits/default.aspx?kit=improve&locale=en-US&source=hmemailtaglinenov06&FORM=WLMTAG 



----------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

Other related posts: