[opendtv] Re: New transition web site
- From: "Bob Miller" <robmxa@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:53:26 -0500
On 3/10/07, Albert Manfredi <bert22306@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bob Miller wrote:
>If you can receive the signal with simple antennas in your
>car you will be able to receive it easily in your home. No
>reason for any cable company to rebroadcast such signals.
The Dutch DTT transition should teach a lesson. All the hype about making
these new signals easy to receive has to be balanced against costs. When
push comes to shove, easy to receive and high quality images conspire to
make the costs higher than people are willing to pay.
Of course, these new services may offer low res images only, intended for
handheld devices perhaps, in which case you may be right to say cable
wouldn't want to carry them.
Bert
You might be right about the Dutch DTT transition but how would you
know already?
They just shut off analog last December, they now can deploy more
transmitters on that analog spectrum and increase power and just in
the anticipation of this their subscriber growth was 44% last year.
Not bad in a country smaller than Australia with only 7 million
households that are 97% cable. And with satellite added in, 500,000
homes, they go over 100% suggesting an overlap of cable and satellite.
http://www.kayote.com/web/Press/Releases/060125PR_KY_JCC.htm
"The Netherlands is one of the most highly saturated cable
marketplaces, with more than 97% cable penetration in the country."
So this is the perfect test, almost, of your theory of why the US OTA
is dead. You claim it is because we are heavily cabled for one thing.
I say it is because broadcasters are betting on must carry and
multicast must carry and could care less about their OTA plant and its
garbage modulation. Which is the ONLY reason we have this garbage
modulation. And yes even with broadcasters enthusiastic support, 8-VSB
would still be enough, in its own right, to spell disaster. It is that
if broadcasters and retailers were actually on board with the
transition you would be hearing a lot more screaming from the public.
Everything else in the US disaster springs from that. Now we have a
analog turnoff in the Netherlands. We have 100% cable or satellite
coverage and we have a 44% increase in OTA subscribers there to
265,000 in the last year and the first real test will come over the
next two years as they finish their network, ramp up and sell.
I again predict success as I did in the UK from 1998 and again when
they started over in 2003. I predicted wild success in the UK. I
predict wild success here. They will add 650,000 this year and 1.75
million the next to approach 3 million or 42%.
And of course you would predict that they will do no better than we
will. You might even say we have an advantage because every set has to
have a tuner. Not so. Having the tuner and using it are two different
things.
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