I think not only are multiple sets usually connected to cable in a home but in the future we can have even the cars passing by in the street legally connected, and paying for it. Imagine if cable/FIOS made each customer home a legal broadband wireless provider but you established accounts and paid via USB security dongles or the like.
TV is really wireless broadcasting, sending some content that is desirable enough to invest in making it available at the same time to everybody. That makes it an event everybody can talk about the next morning.
Anything else besides this very prime shared content can be downloaded on demand, or even trickled. The amount of 'broad' in a broadcast will probably be proportional to the demand to share it at the same time.
Increasingly specialized not-quite-so-broadcasts will be available but with increasing delay. But I don't think it is a black and white either/or proposition.
It is hard to imagine how it would feel if we could drive around always connected with a 100+ mbps always-on two way connection, including possible 'walled garden' privileges. But I don't think it is all that far off and it will certainly compete with TV, radio, and copyright monopolies.
Information and media availability will become like water from a faucet, at similar prices, and we will just take it for granted.
The local broadcasters are just milking the current situation (with an obvious sunset) for the time they can. I'm not certain they are wrong but it sure seems they should have other options.
- Tom Craig Birkmaier wrote:
At 4:29 PM -0500 2/27/07, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:Tom Barry wrote:I don't think it is possible to compete with cable if you depend upon them (and sat) for 85%+ of your distribution.Not to be too repetitious here, but that's households, not sets. Big difference.Not really Bert. You are buying into the NAB/MSTV hype that only one or a few of the sets in a home with multichannel service are connected to that service. This is largely untrue. There may be a few old sets in many homes that are not connected, but for the most part they are not viewed either. There have been many studies to support this.What Tom wrote is absolutely true. Broadcasters long ago gave up on competing with cable. Now when they get into a retrans battle they tell customers to hook up with a DBS system.It should be obvious why. The other 15% of homes are NOT paying a monthly fee for their signals.I can see why some think it is hardly worth the electricity to power antennas anymore.To me, that's a bit like saying that restaurants should only serve red meat. After all, "most people" eat red meat, so why bother with anything else? Eat red meat or don't go out to restaurants.You've got it almost perfectly backwards.The broadcasters are in the "Red Meat" business. They are the ones who are targeting the mass audience rather than niches. They are the ones with the deep pockets to pay the huge rights fees for the NFL and other sports franchises. They are the ones who are limiting your choice in programming by hoarding the spectrum.People choose to subscribe to a multichannel service so they can see the entire menu...LITTERALLY! Just hit the menu button on the remote... 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.
-- Tom Barry trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx Find my resume and video filters at www.trbarry.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
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