<renamed subject>
Inline response...
On 4/28/2011 8:49 AM, Craig Birkmaier wrote:
At 8:59 AM -0400 4/27/11, Mark Schubin wrote:
I think Craig correctly uses the term "their networks" to
describe the telcos. No one expects, say, a CDMA phone to work
on a GSM network.
When it comes to broadcasting, however, broadcasters don't have
control over "their" spectrum; there are hundreds of millions of
TV sets in consumer homes that are supposed to work with what
gets broadcast. Some of those consumers were recently forced to
either change TVs or get "adaptors" for them; are they now to do
so again for some new mandated efficiency?
FYI, I'm a cable subscriber, so I usually don't use OTA TV, but
when a cable outage or dispute with a broadcaster removes
service I want to see, even I connect an antenna.
Looks like Mark Aitken answered this quite nicely with the post
about the next generation ATSC standards efforts.
Who was it that said good things sometimes take a while to get?
IMHO, the most interesting aspect of that article was this:
Whenever it comes, next-gen TV will not be backward compatible
with DTV as color TV was with the original black-and-white TV in
the 1950s. This will mean another traumatic transition similar to
one leading up to the final June 2009 switch from analog to
digital.
"Sometimes to build a better mousetrap, you have to start over,"
said Richer. "That's what we are going to do.
Frankly, I am not sure that the last transition was all that
traumatic. It is hard to say something was traumatic when 85% of
the population barely noticed.
Clearly more than 85% of the population were aware.
It may have been traumatic for the broadcasters, but it is hard to
feel sorry about self inflicted wounds.
You should have lived it in the shoes of a Broadcaster who knew that
better options had been and were available...
In reality, the real transition was the one that took place with
displays. ATSC was not the driving force, but the knowledge that
broadcasters would deliver HD services helped many people justify
buying a new wide screen TV. The MAIN driving force was actually
DVD, which provided widescreen content for those new screens (and
this wans not even HD).
It is likely that had Broadcasting NOT converted to digital
(remember when DTV was about what Broadcasters were doing?) that
HDTV/wide-screen displays would have continued to dribble in growth
for a decade (or more) longer. It was the availability of HQ
content, largely driven through availability made possible by the
Network/Affiliate model (now somewhat more broken), that drove
consumer adoption.
Yes there are millions of old tube TVs out there, but most are
not being used that much as flat TVs are so much better and now
relatively affordable. Yes most of the flat panels have an ATSC
tuner, but most of these are not being used. And ALL of these TVs
have multiple ways to get content onto the screen. IF there is any
demand for the next DTV standard to be viewed on these screens,
and I expect there will be if an appropriate standard is chosen, a
simple box with an HDMI connector will solve the transition
problem.
Of course, this is what we told the broadcasters 15 years ago.
HDMI was not even around 15 years ago, but I think I get (and have
expounded) your point...make it easy!
Interoperable, scalable, extensible.
This time broadcasters need to plan for evolutionary change, and
create a business model that is compelling enough to get consumers
to support the standard.
Our view of the world has actually always been rather simple. Make
our product readily available (with minimum of fuss), ensure that it
is compelling (subjective for sure), and make it affordable (part of
that says "FREE" is a pretty good price point). From the article, I
extracted the following...
“We need more bit capacity, we need more reliable
service and we need the ability to seamlessly stitch together
markets with a quality service that would support virtually any
business model.”
Regards
Craig
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