At 4:39 PM -0500 11/13/06, Bob Miller wrote:
>Forever is a long time. The way we do things in this country the next
>correct time to chance modulations and codecs will be the day that
>87% of the public has legacy receivers a percentage of which can
>benefit from A-VSB. We have to wait for that moment to screw the most
>people the most.
>
>More likely is that most of us will continue to pay little to no
>attention to OTA. Everyone will have a receiver in their big DTV sets
>and the fact that you can actually possibly receive something with it
>will be a trivia question on Jeopardy. One which any one under 30
>won't get.
We are NEVER going to see installed percentages above 80% for the
ATSC standard. The ONLY way this could happen is if the government
FORCED everyone to buy integrated receivers. Today, monitors are
selling quite well, and when NTSC goes away there will be even less
incentive to include tuners in a display.
But to argue percentages based on the technical underpinnings of the
standards completely misses the point. We are dealing with
techno-politics and the cozy relationship between the
politicians/regulators, and the industries that they regulate. The
ONLY reason that the OTA franchise still exists is Retransmission
Consent. We are now at the point where more than 85% of U.S. viewers
are resigned to the fact that they must pay for advertiser supported
TV.
The reason that DTV is working in Europe is that the broadcasters are
TRYING to attract an audience to the service, and providing enough
programming choice to make the proposition viable. On the other side
of the coin/ocean, U.S. broadcasters are trying to eliminate the OTA
audience so that they can collect monthly subscriber fees via cable,
DBS, or TelcoTV.
Regards
Craig
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