[opendtv] Re: Twang's Tuesday Tribune (Mark's Monday Memo)

At 10:18 AM -0700 4/29/04, Kon wrote:
>Good point but one little problem - Geocast was satellite-based. As were
>others such as Cyberstar, Astro, ...

>Sorry, but you are incorrect. I know the people who ran the company 
and I can assure you that the business model was to use the 
terrestrial DTV spectrum. They were attempting to develop a receiver 
and to sign up broadcasters to push the bits, but the infrastructure 
was too fragile to make the business model work.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0EIN/2000_April_9/61390745/p1/article.jh
tml

Read it and weep. Same goes for the other two mentioned. The problem was not
the fragile network, it was their 'brick' receiver. A local content cache
that I hit with my web browser, filled with stuff I can get online -- or at
least, I can't really *tell the difference* if I'm just a stupid user.

>The business model is valid. But you cannot launch a product that 
must be sold at retail and installed by consumers, where there is a 
risk that upwards of 25% of the receivers will be returned.

If it is so valid why are they out of business. Oh that's right, they were
delivering web pages to the device. Weather forecasts. News. Silly me.
Everyone wants that - why I'll just run down to the store to buy a $300
device that will get me the same stuff I pay for monthly through my DSL
connection.

Geocast entered the market with their device just as cablemodems and DSL
started to arrive and flood the internet market. That is what killed their
chances (and basically any other type of datacasting I can think of except
for a few).

>It complements these pipes for this application, allowing you to 
update caches in things that are not connected to wires.

Like what? You're waving your hands around but not telling me anything :) I
should remind you that many of the partner companies these datacasting
companies use just give them basic content. So if it's a Gamespot, they make
a webpage and give them some downloads. If its an EA, they give them some
game demos. I have yet to see any place go out of its way to create
something that you cannot get over connected wires like DSL.

>Movies? Nope, got blockbuster down the road, or cable/sat. tv.

>Ever hear of Dotcast...they are using NTSC to deliver movie bits for
Disney.

At 320x240 resolution, with time restricted viewing, and cache expiration.
Oh yes, the way to supplant the local mom and pop video store is to offer a
more restrictive viewing experience with a lower quality and a higher priced
box that is a one-trick pony. I already remarked months ago that this is
doomed unless something changes. I'll be sticking by that statement. Its
limping right now (subs are signing up in droves, right?), but it will
eventually fall over.

>Games? Nope, got Gamespot on the Cable/DSL modem.

>The future of games appears to be on-line gaming. You need a good 
two-way pipe to play in this market.

Thanks for pointing out one of the failures of the Geocast business model
(and whats even more strange is that others have tried this *after* they
failed).

>media. Ther are a number of broadcasters who are also in the 
newspaper business, like Belo, who are anxious to deliver the paper 
electronically, so they can eliminate those presses.

www.msnbc.com. www.cnn.com. www.blabla.com

I need datacasting to get these... why?

>Obviously NOBODY uses the Internet or radio to get their news.

You mentioned in another thread that cnn and other offer online clips and
streaming video. Do you think they would pony up this bandwidth if there was
no demand?

>And you are not buying a newspaper receiver. You are buying an 
information appliance that does MANY other things. The newspaper is 
just one of MANY applications.

Heard that one before :)

>Yup. And they ship the rich media to you on CD and DVDs because it is 
too expensive to stream it, and you many not be connected to the 
Internet when you want to view a class.

So that means they want to datacast? I think not. I can give you prime
examples of this from people that actually make those courses and print that
material - 'we have no need to datacast this because we only print cds once
a year and distribute them quarterly. No-one is going to buy a receiver to
use 4x a year, and there isn't anything else we want to stuff down the pipe
-we're already overworked and without budget to do anything substantial to
recoup those costs'. This from a *statewide* distributor for K-whatever
colleges via DVD/CD.

>They did not fail because of the lack of a viable market. They have 
failed due to the lack of a viable infrastructure. And to a lesser 
extent, they have been waiting for the technology to mature so that 
cheap, reliable receivers can be deployed.

Nonsense. They *all* failed because of lack of a viable market.

>What we are talking about here is working together to enable markets. 
There are more than enough powerful interests who DO NOT want to see 
this stuff happen, who will tell you that there is no market.

I get that all the time. :)

>The only type of datacasting that works is non-consumer oriented i.e.
>professional or government services. Consumers are just too fickle to
please
>in this day and age.

Well then you continue to pipe-dream, and I'll live in reality. I have a
yellow-brick road to sell you, BTW...

Cheers
Kon



 
 
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