[opendtv] Re: Digital Trends: ESPN may pull its finger out of the Internet-TV dam, unleash a flood of change

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 02:05:34 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> You have provided no evidence to support your contention that LTE
> broadcast is too expensive for broadcasters to implement.

I did, showing you the reference, but it didn't stick. A couple of years go by, 
and you're back to your original song. Did you invest some effort to answer the 
question on the relationship between tower spacing and spectral efficiency? 
Without that, you're just blowin' smoke, Craig.

> And it is obvious that the cellular approach offers a significant
> gain in spectral reuse over high powered big sticks.

By the way, you can implement a true cellular broadcast approach even with 
ATSC, as I have already described to you. True cellular, i.e with different 
freqs for adjacent cells and automatic switching between cells. No real 
problem, except again, much more expensive than the one big stick. And it would 
not have the spectral efficiency limitations of LTE broadcast.

> You are correct, if you are comparing what is available FOTA now
> versus 20 years ago.
>
> Does this add up to improved ratings for broadcasters...
> NO.

That's almost totally irrelevant. We're talking about new competing sources of 
content.

TV sets virtually saturate the market. I think we can agree. So if this 
ubiquitous TV system offers three channels only, and each is equally popular, 
you'd expect a huge viewership for each one. Say, 33 percent audience share 
per. With greater competition, duh, you'll get a smaller viewership for any 
incumbents. The objective is to increase competition, Craig. The total audience 
share is already as close to 100 percent as it's going to get!

No question, OTA, we have increased the sources of content available to 
viewers. (And I assume all the OTA subchannels are also available over MVPDs.) 
So the question you should have asked is, are different local stations more 
successful than others, with their choice of subchannels? I don't know the 
answer quantitatively, but undoubtedly, qualitatively, the answer is yes. A 
clever choice of multicasts will bring in more viewership. One example: our 
local Univision station just recently added an English language Get TV 
multicast. Do you think that will increase or decrease its market share??

> The IETF is developing the HTML5 standard, yet you persist in
> claiming that Flash, a proprietary technology that struggled for
> years before the web gave it some purpose, should be treated as a
> standard by manufacturers who are helping to develop HTML5.

You sound incredibly obtuse, or maybe it's a put-on. Anyway, note how the IETF 
isn't just adopting some existing standard, as you claim.

> The stuff that is "currently airing" is almost all from the broadcast
> networks. The vast majority of what Hulu carries is programs that are
> in syndication, which are available to ANY service.

Yes, some of the stuff is also available from the networks directly, but 
clearly you didn't look hard enough. They have a *ton* of movies, for one. They 
also have some cable-only shows, e.g. the Daily Show, delayed 4 days now (for 
free access). They also have a whole slew of cable-only networks, although for 
much of that content, they push you over to Hulu Plus. Still, this is content 
previously available only within a walled garden. (Yes, some looks to be 
delayed by a couple of years, but not all by any means.)

> The cable industry has been dragging its feet on this for more than
> a decade to maximize the ROI on those boxes.

Thank you. And OTA is the same thing, except it's the viewers' own ROI the 
broadcasters and FCC need to worry about. The point that you seem to miss is, 
it's a trivial stroke of the pen, to include H.264 and H.265 in ATSC. It's 
really, really simple, Craig. The standard is just as layered as any used in 
the Internet. And receivers would be much cheaper than tablets and PCs.

And by the way, FYI, most of my TV watching, from local broadcasters or from 
congloms, *is* with H.264. So I'm really puzzled about you're complaining 
about. My $800 Dell STB has no problem receiving TV over H.264. And your $500 
tablet playing the STB role can do likewise, except of course crippled by the 
lack of Flash Player. Too bad. So sad.

Bert

 
 
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