Craig Birkmaier wrote:
I believe the FCC ruled that cable and BDS system must carry
any data that is directly related to the program they are
carrying, but they do not need to carry any ancillary data
service.
As far as common practice, they carry the program only, as to
this date there are hardly any programs with related data
services.
In fact, there is plenty of ancillary data available for TV programs,
certainly from the OTA networks anyway. All you have to do is go visit
the networks' web sites. And some shows offer clips or what have you,
even from your cell phone service.
What is not available is ancillary data transmitted over the real-time
TV program distribution channel, be it OTA or MVPD. And my question is,
why bother trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, when more
optimized media already exist for this ancillary data?
I think that's the reality here. If some killer app emerges that really
is best done on the broadcast channel, OTA or MVPD, I think we'll see it
happen.
RAI Utile is an example. It might seem really cool to have all this
local info on cultural activities and local govt available in a
dedicated TV channel, using "interactivity" built into your STB (much of
the interactivity is to retrieve phone numbers, however). But when the
majority of households have a more direct medium for this info already,
the Internet, the urge to deploy these less-than-ideal solutions is
greatly diminished.
Bert
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