[opendtv] Re: "It can't be done"

Craig wrote:

> I experienced this at the Grass Valley Group when I helped to lead
> the team that built the Model 100. The hardest task was to overcome
> all of the things that various people around the project said could
> not be done.

Craig,
For convincing GVG to produce the 100 series systems you deserve high
praise. These products were well designed; they filled a real customer need
and were therefore hugely successful. That effort however, is not analogous
to our current discussion. GVG is a very typical relatively unregulated high
tech. manufacturer who must produce a product attractive to potential
customers and must then make a profit from that product; not an easy task
but certainly not akin to your proposal that a national and heavily
regulated industry reinvent itself.

For the past 73 years the broadcast industry has existed in a system of
dynamic, sometimes chaotic, government regulation and mandates*. That
regulatory system is partly responsible for what the industry has become, a
very profitable enterprise and coveted by many.

A most recent mandate is the digital television conversion that has so far
cost the industry more than 1 billion dollars - and counting. In the midst
of this conversion you now suggest that the industry totally dismantle its
self and fund it's own resurrection. Craig, your a few years too late;
they've already spent that money on the current new system.
I would not necessarily be opposed to your proposal that a well designed and
more efficient shared carrier system be constructed. However, the cost of
such a reinvented system must be born by those to whom it provides
advantage, i.e.: use the auction revenues.

My point is: in your zeal to reign in what you consider to be a spectrum
wasting, overly profitable and undeserving industry, you attempt to make
your case by comparing Apples to Elephants.

Dale

* Yes, the industry itself had a hand forming these regulations, though that
was most often done to gain an advantage over others inside the industry.
The CE companies have also had their fingers in that pie; the current DTV
conversion is a prime example of something that has been to it's great
benefit.

>


 
 
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