[opendtv] Re: New Thread: What becomes of Legacy Analog Equipment

At 6:57 PM -0500 11/22/07, Stephen W. Long wrote:

So what is the impact of 100 million (or so) obsolete VCRs after the
transition?  It may fill the landfills across the land.
I suspect that these dinosaurs will linger in their owners homes for a number of years. Not that they will be used all that much, but the people who own them typically own a significant number of pre-recorded movies, and are likely to hang onto these analog hardware codecs in case they ever want to watch them in the future. 



Are there ATSC VCRs for sale?  I have never seen one, but I will start
looking this shopping season.
The closest you may find are some old W-VHS recorders. I doubt that we will ever see a new tape based consumer format again. Bert likes optical media, but even he is using a DVD recorder with a hard disk front end for capture. Hard disks are where the action is, with millions and millions being deployed in the STBs offered by the multi-channel system operators. 

The reason is obvious - cheap random access storage.
Wallmart is selling external 500GB drives (in enclosures with a USB 2.0 interface for $144. 

That's more than 55 hours of HD at 9 GB per hour.
What Bert does not acknowledge, perhaps because he is dependent on the broadcasters for PSIP and program guide info, is that the real driver behind the DVR is the program guide, not the ability to record. Bert may be able to look out 24 hours at PSIP data, or rely on a program always being aired on a specific channel at a specific time, to program is DVD-R recorder; but the rest of us multi-channel subscribers get a one week window for potentially hundreds of chanels of content.
IMHO, the biggest reason that we are not seeing ATSC DVRs is the poor support for PSIP and program guides by broadcasters, followed closely by the small potential market size for ATSC DVRs. I would note that Media Center PCs get around this by using Internet based program guides to drive the DVR function.
And then there is another reality that Bert often conveniently ignores. The cable industry, and to a lesser extent the DBS industry, have very tight control over their STBs. Despite many attempts by the politicians to open up this market, it has not happened. IF and when these industries cooperate with the CE industry to support third party boxes, we may see an increase in the availability of DVRs that support both the multi-channel services and FTA broadcasts.
I doubt that we will see ATSC only DVRs any time soon, unless the broadcasters decide that they need a real "platform" and that they can compete with the multi-channel services. It could happen in the form of a Moviebeam type service that uses the broadcast spectrum to update the local DVRs... 

Regards
Craig





Stephen Long



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