I too am skeptical about ATSC 3.0.
The issue of interactivity is largely misunderstood. I spent several years
working with those trying to bring interactivity to TV - years spent spinning
our wheels.
Bert's concerns about needing interactivity to support on demand program access
are unfounded. First, it's unlikely that broadcasters will offer on demand
content via the spectrum - there's not enough bandwidth available for on demand
unless you moved to very small cells serving just a few homes. If stations want
to offer on demand the tools already exist via their websites.
The problem with interactivity is "anticipation." You need to know in advance
what people want to interact with. For some content this is obvious, like
sports statistics, or bios on the actors. I've seen demos where you click on
someone's clothing and they tell you where to buy it. None of this stuff has
risen to the level of profitability.
But TV entertainment has always been interactive, at least after the fact - the
water cooler effect. Now it is interactive during the broadcast via social
media. In other words, the tools and devices exist to support what people want
to do. And millions of people are using their tablets and smartphones while
"watching" TV. That's interactivity, but not the kind that generates ad
revenues for broadcasters.
Regards
Craig
On Nov 4, 2016, at 9:55 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Ron Economos wrote:
I'm very skeptical about ATSC 3.0.
1) Interactive services. Nobody wants to interact with their TV.
I agree with all your points, and also Mike's point about mobility being
handled by 4G or 5G, but on this interactivity, I'd say it matters for
on-demand access to work. Not interactivity with the program content per se,
nor the ads either, btw.
And people do want on demand access to TV. On demand viewing is one of the
features supposedly supported by ATSC 3.0, but again, *not* over the public
airwaves. That aspect of ATSC 3.0 only gets mentioned as a goal. I have to
believe the intention is to make the innocent believe that it's all supported
by the detailed specs we've seen, but it ain't. This on demand has nothing to
do with the OTA broadcast standard we've seen, with OFDM, or any of the rest
of it.
Bert
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