[opendtv] Re: Market forces
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 08:13:41 -0400
On Jun 2, 2013, at 7:27 PM, "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> So the CEA didn't want OTA tuners, but it was perfectly okay to champion the
> cause of MVPD tuners or STBs. So, the CEA was just making sure to keep
> everyone dependent on MVPDs, but somehow they weren't in bed with MVPDs.
> Possibly …
It's clear they were not in bed with the MVPDs, who had then, and still have, a
small group of captive suppliers for Digital Rights Management (DRM) and STB
products. THis article provides a pretty good summary of how the cable industry
has used the FCC to keep any competitors at bay:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/how-big-cable-killed-the-open-set-top-box-and-what-to-do-about-it/
How Big Cable killed the open set-top box—and what to do about it
Researcher argues the FCC's set-top box strategy is doomed to failure.
But there is a much more significant issue at work here: the market for new
HDTV displays was built from the top down. Prices remained above $2,000 for
displays large enough to take advantage of HD resolution for more than a
decade. The homes that could afford HD were homes that already subscribed to
cable. And then there is the obvious issue of giving consumers what they want
and need. It was a given that most homes WOULD NOT use an ATSC tuner, but most
home needed a STB to connect to cable or DBS.
And then there was the reality that we were just beginning the transition to
DTV. We already knew that the underlying technology was evolving rapidly and
that it was high likely that the useful life of devices would be relatively
short, UNLESS a consortium of suppliers purposely tried to slow the processes
that were ongoing in related industries. One need only look at how the
technology for OTT video delivery has evolved rapidly in a free and open
market versus the total lack of evolution in markets controlled by the
distribution oligopolies. MPEG-2 still reigns supreme in the MVPD world, while
the OTT world has evolved from a plethora of proprietary codecs to h.264 and
now is preparing to deploy h.265.
Bottom line, we educated all of these industries about the advantage of keeping
the tuners and decoders OUT of the TVs, so that they could be replaced while
the display still had a useful life.
> Potentially, it could have been broadcasters? As you say many times, what
> broadcasters really want is to have their viewership on cable systems or DBS,
> not OTA, to get a piece of that subscription fee. So I suppose you could make
> that argument.
THANKS!
This has all been about maximizing revenues for the oligopolies AND controlling
the transition to digital distribution. You see a glimmer of hope that the
Internet will free us from this tyranny; I see OTT delivery evolving as the
Video on Demand component of the larger system which requires a subscription to
access the content that consumers want to watch live.
> Like I said, we did some comparisons of the price of monitors and TVs, back
> when all of this was happening. It became pretty obvious that the premium you
> paid for TVs with built-in tuners in 2007, was right around $40. As you
> noticed, prices have continued to fall since then. So, what are the royalties
> per TV set? My guess is they can't be much more than $15 or so. Even at
> today's low prices, still noise level.
I just posted the fact that royalties are at least double what you suggest
above, although some of this is for IP NOT related to the ATSC tuners. While
$15- $30 may sound like "noise level" to you, it is 15-30 times the royalty
manufacturers paid for the NTSC standard. And people actually USED these
tuners.
Here's another way of looking at this. If manufacturers simply forgot to put
the ATSC tuner chips into a TV, how many customers would even notice it was
missing?
This was nothing more than a TV tax for the companies that have a share of the
MPEG-LA royalty pool. WHo cares about "the marketplace, when you can
governments and government supported oligopolies around the world to mandate
the use of your IP, while putting the brakes on the rapid pace of digital
evolution that wiped out other industries that did not see it coming.
>> In reality HDTV was not a big secret at all. Thanks to the MVPDs, it
>> became a huge enticement to subscribe after ESPN and other cable
>> networks started HDTV broadcasts in 2002/2003.
>
> Rewriting history now? OTA broadcasters started HD transmissions in 1998. The
> cable companies opposed HDTV for the longest time, because they were worried
> about the spectrum it would take up. OTA was the first medium to transmit HD,
> and you can find any number of articles online that talk about how OTA gained
> popularity among early adopters, in those early years, exactly for this
> reason. And then how these early adopters later got their HD from the MVPD,
> at long last.
>
No Bert, you are re-writing history. Yes a few broadcasters started DTV
broadcasts in 1997-98. But there was VERY little HD programming. Being first is
meaningless if there is no real market. The real market was home theater,
driven by wide screen SD-DVD, which delivered 90% of the quality improvement of
HD for movies and TV dramas. The real growth of the HD market did not take
place until ESPN and the broadcast networks moved to HD for sports. And this
market was served primarily through the MVPDs, NOT OTA broadcasts.
Early adopters are not a good indication of how markets will evolve. Cliff
knows all about this having just restored a CBS spinning color wheel TV.
And look at personal computers:
Sold! Antique Apple-1 brings a record $671K
Rare 37-year-old computer handily beats pre-sales estimates
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
