[opendtv] Re: 3D TV market to grow 500% in 2011
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 10:10:05 -0400
At 3:13 PM -0500 5/20/11, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
With HD radio, it is still very difficult to get them. Why? My
guess? Because the auto companies (to name one industry) would
rather people got themselves hooked on satellite radio instead. It
makes for an infinite revenue stream.
Ford offers them on all models. Looks Like GM and Toyota have been
fighting making HD radio standard when they install a satellite
radio...
Best Buy sells all kinds of HD radio products including add on tuners
for many brands of car audio heads, etc.
It's not difficult to get HD radio, it is more a question of whether
consumer find it compelling enough to pay for. Having a port for an
iPod is far more important.
With ATSC? Same thing. The CE companies, in *apparent* collusion
with service providers, preferred people got themselves dependent on
MVPDs for greater choice, rather than DTT. And they and did
everything they could to *not* provide the DTT alternative. Even to
the point of waiting from 2003 to 2007 before a single company even
offered a 5th gen STB for sale.
Not exactly.
How many TVs can you find at Best Buy with integrated 2-way cable capability?
Yes, the CE vendors do sell DBS receivers and some have deals with
local cable companies to sell their services, but this is not a CE
industry initiative. The CE industry competes with the MVPDs on the
most important component, the STB, and has had little success
breaking into this business.
On the other hand, the CE industry recognizes that they must build
TVs that integrate easily with MVPD services. Even more important,
the CE industry underwrote most of the costs of developing the ATSC
standard, but turned around and complained when the FCC mandated ATSC
receivers in their products.
Truth is that the broadcasters allowed the CE industry to box them
into a corner by focusing the ATSC standard on fixed antenna
services. There are a handful of CE companies building ATSC Mobile
DTV devices, but these are mostly companies with IP interests in the
standards.
Bottom line, this was not collusion, as much as it was recognition of
where the market was headed, even as early as 1992. The ATSC standard
was simply a way for broadcasters to keep control of spectrum a bit
longer as the audience moved to better alternatives with MUCH better
programming choice.
With 3D? A whole 'nother story. Here the CE companies are perfectly
happy to do what would seem logical. If the marginal cost is low, or
even close to noise level, you offer the extra capability as
standard equipment. But here, the CE industry needed no kick in the
pants. How come? And how come they weren't smart enough to take this
same approach on their own, with ATSC and with HD Radio?
Once again, the appearance of impropriety.
No impropriety here. Simply a reflection of the reality that the
potential market for ATSC tuners and HD radio are so small.
Not that 3D is going to be much bigger, but the success of 3D in
theaters got them excited...
My take is, the MVPDs are planning to offer extra cost 3D tiers, but
this would never fly without ubiquitous 3D capable sets out there.
So they made sweet deals with CE companies to make this happen.
The MVPDs could care less about 3D. They will support networks that
want to ply with it, but recognize that it is a tiny niche market.
Consumer demand for new features or new products is almost always
slow to start, especially if they can't experience the new services
ahead of time. Go to Best Buy and ask how much consumer interest
there is in 3DTV. I have done so, Craig. So the excuse of "low
consumer interest" seems to be irrelevant.
What did you learn?
That when the consumer puts on those goggles and finds out how much
they cost they walk away?
But when marginal costs are as low as they are for ATSC built-in
receivers, HD radio, or perhaps even 3D, what's the down side for
the CE industry? Here is the APPEARANCE of what's going on. You pick
the features that give the biggest kickbacks only, from colluding
industries. You block the features that might reduce the kickbacks
you get from colluding industries.
They had no choice with ATSC. It is mandated.
HD radio is available if you want to pay the premium.
3D is available at a premium, but much of that premium is based on
features that people DO want, like higher screen refresh rates and
LED back lighting. If the consumer is willing to pay for these
enhancements the 3D processing is trivial.
Let's see how many TVs with HD capability come with those add on
glasses to make them work. Could it just be the "potential" for an
after market sale that is driving this?
(Parenthetically, only those with an axe to grind could doubt that
the cost of ATSC receivers built into sets would soon be noise
level. It should have been obvious to anyone in the engineering
profession, even in the 1990s. So I reject the notion that high cost
was the legitimate barrier. And for HD Radio, even more true.)
It was not obvious in the 90's, in fact the CE industry was even
concerned about the cost of a SDTV MPEG-2 decoder (an HDTV decoder
was considered to be exotic and very expensive well into the '90s).
They still thought they could keep CRTs alive for HD...
But you are right, new technologies like LCD screens driven by the
computer industry, and Moore's Law changed many things.
As should be obvious by now Bert, the real barriers are competitive.
Consumers are moving on to a new generation of mobile devices being
driven by competitors to the traditional (Asian) CE industry. They
are leaving 20th century technologies where they belong...in the past
century.
As a result, most of these companies are becoming the manufacturing
arms for Apple and other next generation device makers.
Regards
Craig
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