[opendtv] Re: Apple, TV Networks Clash Over Size and Makeup of Web TV Bundle | Re/code

From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 09:28:19 -0500

On Dec 16, 2015, at 9:51 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Yes. DTT began in 1998. It wasn't until 2006 that steaming of TV programs
began. So you, and like-minded, opposed from the beginning to any tuner
mandate, were perfectly happy to force everyone on MVPDs exclusively. It's
not like you even knew about streaming, Craig, so you can't use that as an
excuse now. It took forever to convince you that streaming had even begun,
back in 2006.

DTV broadcasts were few and far between until the FCC market mandates forced
broadcasters to build their new transmission facilities. Analog broadcasts did
not end until 2009. Nobody was forced to subscribe to a MVPD service.

The DTV transition was scheduled to end December 31, 2006, but was delayed to
June 12, 2009. We started getting DTV broadcasts in Gainesville in 2001,
although there were hardly any HDTV programs. Cox Cable offered digital cable
somewhat earlier.

Early HD set sales were driven by DVD, as HD programming was scarce. Sales of
HD sets took off in 2003 with the launch of ESPN HD.

The CEA was still trying to delay or ditch the tuner mandate as late as 2005.

The fact remains that the vast majority of U.S. homes have never used the
mandated ATSC tuners, and broadcasters have never promoted the availability of
DTV broadcasts (other than a few isolated cases when a station pulled its
signal from a MVPD during a retrans consent battle). They much prefer that
people subscribe to a MVPD service for obvious reasons.

Not that using a separate STB would have been bad. It's just that the special
interests also kept those off the market.

No Bert. The FCC kept them off the market by mandating that an ATSC tuner be
included in every new TV. The cable industry provided the bridge from analog
to digital for most homes. Without the mandate, it is likely that ATSC tuners
would have been optional, or a simple plug in module, and there would have been
a market for stand alone boxes.

By the way. It's hard to give away a CRT based TV these days - even the
charitable organizations won't accept them. The driving force was not HD, but
flat lightweight screens you could hang on a wall.

The analog tier on Cox here in Gainesville is nearly indistinguishable from HD
on sets smaller than 38 inch. The main reason is that Cox now creates
letterboxed analog feeds (360 P that are then interlaced) from the digital HDTV
feeds.

But it looks like that will end in a few months. While looking for the info
above I stumbled upon a Cox site that lists dates when they will upgrade
existing analog customers to digital. It looks like they will end analog
service by the end of 2016 in almost every market. No doubt this is related to
their current Gigablast broadband promotions.

Or at least, any STB close to state of the art. I remember Circuit City would
only stock 3 ATSC STBs per month, old tech at that, and promptly run out. The
very first 5th gen STB didn't appear until 2007! Right along with the tuner
mandate. How ludicrous.

It was ludicrous that it took so long to develop tuners that worked. But your
dates are off as usual. Here are the actual dates that were mandated:

By July 1, 2005 all televisions with screen sizes over 36 inches (91 cm) must
include a built-in ATSC DTV tuner
By March 1, 2006 all televisions with screen sizes over 25 inches (64 cm) must
include a built-in ATSC DTV tuner
By March 1, 2007 all televisions regardless of screen size, and all interface
devices that include a tuner (VCR, DVD player/recorder, DVR) must include a
built-in ATSC DTV tuner.

This was just the normal machinations of a government driven transition where
market forces are screwed with. There was little demand for the early boxes,
due in large part to the fact they did not work well and there was a high
return rate.

When the government cheese boxes did appear at Circuit City and Best Buy they
sat around for months and months, as nobody wanted them here. The government
issued 64.1 million converter coupons; only 54% were redeemed.

That's strange. I watch ABC too, online, without being shackled as you are.

Whatever. You cannot access live streams online and must wait 8 days to watch
the shows they do offer online. Both ABC.com and Hulu require authentication to
watch shows the next day.

And I could care less, as the only content I watch from ABC is football, and
you can't watch those games online. The fact remains that Most Disney content
remains behind pay walls and they have been aggressive about deploying TV
Everywhere.

First, I'm not here to defend Android or even Windows, for that matter. But I
can watch whatever is out there on the web, Flash or anything else, on my
Windows PC. And I can use any number of peripheral devices, with my PC.

Just as I can with my Mac.

You cannot do this from your AppleTV box (or even from your Mac, wrt
peripherals).

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong.

Yes Apple TV is limited...

By design. It is NOT a PC; it is a peripheral for a TV that works with the iOS
ecosystem.

As for Macs, Apple moved to industry standard ports and peripherals more than a
decade ago. To be honest, ports are mostly meaningless for most users today
(the MacBook introduced earlier this year has only one port).

With Bluetooth and WiFi, the only wire needed anymore is for power. Our Epson
printer is accessible from our Macs, iPADs and iPhones, and pretty much
anything a guest might want to use. I have a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard that I
can use with my Mac, iPad and iPhone (they do offer versions with appropriate
function keys for Mac and Windows, but both versions work on any machine).

Apple has introduced some ports that are not typically found on PCs over the
years. They invented FireWire and it became the "industry standard" for
connecting video cameras to Macs and PCs for more than a decade. FireWire was
replaced by Thunderbolt, a high speed bus technology developed by Intel. And
now it looks like PCs will start using Thunderbolt 3, as it supports a range of
port technologies including USB-C.

I explained what I had just been doing on my TV set. Your reply was that you
could the same things "on the Apple ecosystem." But I didn't need an
"ecosystem." I just used one box. AppleTV and Roku cannot do what I was doing.

Which begs the real question. Why would we want to?

I do not expect or want one platform to do everything. I have no need to surf
the web on my TV, as I have a vastly superior way to browse on my lap. And if I
want to share a website, I can touch the AirPlay button and its on the TV
screen.

PCs no longer cost $2000 - 3000, as they did three decades ago. You love to
point out that you can buy a PC for a few hundred bucks. You might ask why the
same is not true for Macs?

The answer is simple. Apple does not build crap; if you need a desktop or
laptop for productivity they offer quality products that offer real long term
value. IBM has found that Macs are cheaper to support and have better
residual, value saving nearly $300 per machine.

Apple offers low cost devices that eliminate the need for a PC. My iPAD costs
about what a cheap PC costs, but is far more versatile for the tasks I want it
to do. And my iPhone fits in my pocket.

Obviously not everyone can afford multiple devices, although our total
investment is not significantly different than what I spent for my first Mac.
That's why Apple offers products that bridge the categories - in Asia many
customers are buying the iPhone 6+ models rather than a separate phone and
tablet. And the MacBook Air products compete effectively against the new
hybrids like the Microsoft Surface.

And likewise, Microsoft no longer recommends hooking a PC up to a TV. They
would much prefer that you buy an X-Box 360.

Problem is, Craig, that you're an evangelist for Apple. This makes you an
easy target. Instead, if I evangelize, it's just for open systems. Which you
always try to wall up and box in.

Was. I suffered for years and did evangelize for Apple - not surprising, as I
did consulting work for Apple back in the dark days.

Now I don't need to evangelize, as they have become the dominant computing
platform. And they did this by supporting open system standards. They just
released Swift as Open Source.

Do you even know what Swift is?

Better than that, I can run Linux. Mac OS is just a bastardized,
proprietarized, form of Unix anyway, Craig. And all of these run on the x86
architecture. So yes, I have a lot more options with a PC than you do with
your closed ecosystem. No contest.

You can boot a Mac with OSX, Linux or Windows - you do not even need to run a
virtual machine, although I prefer the Virtual machine approach as I can run OS
X and Windows simultaneously.

You have less options.

No, Craig, as I explained. Net neutrality rules apply to the network
provider, not to the owners of content. The owners of content were already
making their stuff available. They are entitled to prevent any one middleman
from taking control of their product distribution. It's their right to do so.

Sorry. Goggle was not taking any more control of that content than Microsoft or
the manufacturer of your PC. The bits were being freely offered to any device
that could support a browser and the necessary video decoder (typically Flash
or h.264). Sony and others built support for Google TV into their TVs, just as
many PC manufacturers built PCs with Windows media support.

Google was not doing anything to the content that would have caused concerns;
they were not inserting ads or blocking ads like the Dish Hopper, that caused
numerous lawsuits. They were doing exactly what your PC does and the content
owners blocked it.

That was a major violation of net neutrality tenets.

Since there is no single standard for a WAN connection, but rather many
different types of modem, this is also not a net neutrality issue.

Sorry, but there is a standard. It's called DOCSIS, and it has evolved with
backwards support for earlier versions. The MVPDs lease or sell these modems,
or you can buy one from a CE retailer. The same is true for DSL modems - I have
purchased both.

It might be, if the ISP forced you to use their own proprietary IP-like
appliances, though.

Fortunately, the cable industry made DOCSIS an open standard and allows market
competition for the modems.

Dell and HP were both intelligent enough to support the same standards the
congloms, and the rest of the WWW, were already using, including any number
of search engines. Had Dell or HP forced everyone to use the very same,
single, mandatory search engine, that too would have raised eyebrows.

And Google TV was no different.

And the content owners are also free to not honor non-standard protocols.

True. But there was nothing non standard about Google TV. The congloms just
looked at the device type when the browser requested a program and blocked
Google TV devices.

That is different than a device not supporting a non-standard protocol. iOS
devices could not support the non-standard Flash protocols and codecs. Web
sites that used these media types did not render on iOS devices. But within a
year or two, most web sites added standards based support for h.264 and HTML5,
and when an iOS device requested a video stream the site would deliver the
correct version for that device.

That's the marketplace working, Bert. Blocking specific devices because they
might become a competitive threat is just the opposite!

You continue to be utterly confused on this subject of net neutrality. Who
said these limited use boxes, borne out of collusion, designed to promote
collusion, were violating any net neutrality rules? They don't. Net
neutrality applies to the network. Not the appliances.

You are confused.

Yes, it is certainly possible to offer purpose built devices that get bits from
Internet servers. I disagree about the collusion you claim, but that's not
important WRT this discussion. But blocking bits to specific devices for
competitive reasons, whether at the server or and ISP is a net neutrality
violation.

Again, you are totally confused. The content owners do need to be happy with
Apple attempting to monopolize distribution of their wares. Your reply is
ridiculous.

Apple is not trying to monopolize anything. They are not asking the content
owners to stop selling content to the MVPDs or Netflix. They are asking to buy
content from the content owners WITHOUT having to buy bundles of networks that
they - and potential customers - do not want to pay for.

In any other industry this form of tying is considered to be an anti-trust
violation.

If THEY decide to sell to Apple, fine. If Apple decides to horn in on their
distribution plans, with the potential in the future for having negotiation
leverage, not fine. The neutral Internet is intended to do away with those
shenanigans.

This is just a company trying (and failing) to get the marketplace to work
Bert. The neutrality of the Internet does make it possible for Netflix, Apple,
et al to bypass the monopoly umbilicals that the MVPDs use to deliver their
content bundles. But the content oligopoly trumps net neutrality, since the
government supports their illegal trust and monopoly pricing practices.

Confused again. Netflix is device neutral, and it uses the neutral Internet.
I don't need to be wired to a special Netflix ISP, Craig. You're not making
any sense.

Can you watch Netflix on your PC...

Without paying for it?

This is no different than Apple or Roku or Amazon negotiating with content
owners to support OTT services on their TV peripherals.

No, Craig. Wrong again. It's AppleTV's business to support existing
standards, not for the content owners to have to make special accommodations.
You got it backwards again.

Hulu can offer the free version on Apple TV anytime they want. Apple is not
blocking it. Hulu just chooses to promote Hulu Plus on Apple TV.

And again you're confused. First, you try to convince us that we're "decades"
away from being able to stream TV.

Never happened.

Next, I show you that more than 80% of network capacity today is being wasted
on one-way broadcast streams that are mostly unused.

Not true. This capacity still delivers about 75% of the TV U.S. households
consume. And the cable FIOS pipes support most of the streaming; it is a
complete non-sequitur to say that the dedicated video capacity is wasted when
the demand for broadband is being met.

The only remaining issue with broadband is the lack of service in areas where
cable/FIOS and DSL are not available. And guess what? In these areas DBS
supplies most of the TV bits.

Regards
Craig

References:
- [opendtv] Re: Apple, TV Networks Clash Over Size and Makeup of Web TV Bundle | Re/code
  - From: Manfredi, Albert E

[opendtv] Re: Apple, TV Networks Clash Over Size and Makeup of Web TV Bundle | Re/code

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