At 7:28 PM -0500 12/2/07, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
Craig Birkmaier wrote: One has to assume that this is only the case because in Europe, broadcasters are not compensated more for using any medium OTHER THAN their OTA option, whereas here they are. Clearly, especially in places like your home town, broadcasters obviously prefer to get you folks addicted to your monthly cable bills. I don't see how you can possibly stick that on politicians. It's just business doing what business always does. Maximize profits.
It's EASY to stick this on the politicians at every level of government, from the cities that gave out the cable franchises to Congress, which gave broadcasters (actually the media conglomerates) the ability to take over the content side of the cable/DBS business (this was all made possible by the 1992 Cable act). If theses companies are doing what companies do - maximizing profits - why don't these companies do the same thing when they sell their content outside of the U.S.?
> Over time - and when analog spectrum is recovered - theywill build out their DTV networks to provide better coverage with MUCH HIGHER spectral efficiency that what we are building in the U.S.Again, this seems like your dream, not reality. You've seen the Ofcom comments on this. The recovery of TV spectrum will go to other services than TV, most likely. And what modulation schemes these other services use, or will use, is anyone's guess. I'll bet you a huge sum that it WILL NOT be associated with the COFDM channels used by DVB-T.
You completely misundestood this...as usual.I am not talking about giving broadcasters more spectrum. I am talking about completing the build out of the existing DTV networks. There are MANY areas where this will not be possible until the analog shut-off, because the needed frequencies are still being used for the analog service. In the UK the goal for the percentage of homes "passed" by the terrestrial TV service is very high - above 95%. This requires lots of gap fillers in remote areas. It took decades to build out the analog service to its current high level of service availability - and it will take a number of years after the analog shut-off to complete the UK terrestrial DTV network.
Adding more channels via recovered spectrum is a separate issue.The Europeans care about improved spectral efficiency because of the close proximity of so many countries - they cannot afford the luxury of using big high powered sticks that interfere with other markets and limit the ability of their neighbors to utilize the same spectrum resources.
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