[opendtv] Hysteria over modulation standards... get a life as analogue television service continues(atsc) in the US !!!

After a long absence I read opendtv today over a delightful glass of Cloudy Bay 
this afternoon. Unlike Cloudy Bay opendtv is a distinctly less than pleasurable 
experience and leaves a bad taste in the mouth,  because the same old arguments 
are being trotted out by the ATSC apologists six (nearly seven soon...) years 
down the line. Unfortunately ATSC remains a niche cottage industry business.

It is like being in 'Groundhog Day' on opendtv when it comes to modulation 
wars, but the economics and the take-up tell the real story. As ever, down 
these long tedious years, the two most pertinent recent contribitions were made 
by Stephen Long and Frank Eory who a) both know what they are talking about and 
b) have very different backgrounds. However the most coruscating comments came 
from Kon Wilms, which surprised me as I normally thought of him as neatly 
nuanced. The real tragedy for the US is that free OTA television is on the way 
out once (if, etc...) NTSC is phased out, unlike in other parts of the world 
where digital OTA TV is now big business (UK, France, Germany, Taiwan, 
Australia, Italy, CEE, etc...) and there is, of course, a reason for that. 
COFDM = Creates Opportunities For Digital Media. It could have course been 
different but free OTA broadcasting in the US is now a sunset industry. There 
will, of course, be others who inherit the wireless earth in the US for video 
services eg FLO and Modeo but as Frank observed you will, of course, pay for 
those services. The irony is that xOFDM systems will be used in the US now. And 
it could have been different for US OTA broadcasters (cf Japan!!).

Its very obvious that the ATSC 'experiment' has failed because a)the business 
model never really worked b) the modulation standard never really worked 
properly c)there are multiple dominant competing digital distribution platforms 
d) apart from a few outriders the broadcasting industry didn't either care or 
understand e) a few vested interests were more interested in preserving the 
8VSB patents (look where that has got them and the very same fiasco is now 
being replicated in the mobile TV standards wars and they are *AGAIN* going 
nowhere) and f) rival DTV systems all worked much better from the start. The 
results are tragic and, of course, predictable.

The current round of spats on opendtv is strictly for the connoisseurs of 
modulation standards wars and is perhaps a precursor to the s*** hitting the 
fan when the NTSC service is turned off. Perhaps, just as an impact assessment, 
a trial should be undertaken like in other countries. NTSC should be turned off 
early in some major markets and see how good ATSC DTV QoS is. That would 
prolong NTSC for a long-time once the results were in. It is going to be very 
amusing to watch the perfect DTV storm coming. And totally predictable.

As  OTA broadcasting prepares for its last hurrah in the US I leave you with 
the thought that billions of dollars are now being invested in laying down DTV 
infrastructure in other countries (eg the BBC/Arqiva announcement this week of 
a $3.5 billion high power DTV network in the UK) because MILLIONS of consumers 
have bought DTV boxes for the other system. And do we know what % of TV homes 
in the US are exclusively using ATSC STB's? But the ATSC apologists are like 
the Bourbons of old: 'They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing' As 
replicated on opendtv, but for a long time I have added the two principal 
offenders on opendtv to the spam list along with the endless ads for certain 
pharmaceutical products and business scams.

I have long been convinced that ATSC was in fact a clever conspiracy by the 
broadcasters to slap a preservation order on analogue television rather than 
build a commercially viable DTV infrastructure...

Kind Regards,

Dermot Nolan

MPEG4 HDTV, COFDM, Slingbox, IPTV, and MDTV all in use at home...



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