[opendtv] Re: News: Cable operators find it tough to swallow HDTV
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:27:01 -0400
"The other leading remedy would hobble new HDTV sets designed with a
slot to work with a slick, credit card-size CableCard instead of a box."
Hobble? That's entirely up to cable operators. If they switch to digital
256-QAM, and shut off analog, there will be more room even with HDTV
than there is now with analog.
No one is forcing cable operators to transmit their digital programming
100 percent encrypted. That's entirely up to them. No need to force all
cable customers to use CableCard or a company-provided digital STB. For
example, the basic or extended basic tiers could be made available
unencrypted, like it is now with NTSC in most(?) cases. That would cover
about 2/3 of all cable customers. Quite a savings for the operators, if
they don't have to provide all those STBs.
"In addition to being an inconvenience and expense, either change would
represent yet another setback for the decade-old federal effort to force
the industry to free consumers from cable boxes.
"But operators seem willing to take the heat. They fear that if they
fail to heed warnings such as Moffett's, they'll lose many of their 65
million subscribers who are hot for HD to satellite and phone company
rivals that already are able to offer lots of HDTV channels and plan
many more."
This is pretty funny. Sounds to me like they have a solution but prefer
to go the non-standard route, and then expect sympathy.
The bottom line is, way back in the early 1990s, a common standard for
digital cable and DTT was available. Cable companies insisted on QAM vs
VSB, and even that became a non-issue, as tuner manufacturers
accommodated both. If readily available STBs and integrated sets that
accept both VSB and QAM don't work in cable digital tiers today, if STBs
are less ubiquitous than they ought to be, and if CableCard
plug-and-play solutions (for integrated sets or STBs) are not promoted
more heavily by the cable operators, guess who is primarily responsible
for this?
Bert
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2006-06-04-cable-hdt
v_x.htm?POE=3DTECISVA
Cable operators find it tough to swallow HDTV
Updated 6/5/2006 6:48 AM ET
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK - After years of dithering and infighting by government
officials and corporate executives, the high-definition TV revolution is
finally here.
This year, for the first time, consumers will buy more HDTV sets than
traditional ones. Morgan Stanley estimates that nearly 26% of households
will enjoy HD's gee-whiz video and theater sound by year's end and that
67.6% will in 2010, thanks to prices falling from today's $1,000 and up.
That's good news for the TV industry, right?
Maybe not for cable operators.
Their wires are so packed with TV channels and new services - including
video on demand (VOD), broadband Internet and phone - that many are
scrambling to find bandwidth for the coming wave of HD channels. "Cable
operators need massive capacity for HDTV, and have to move quickly,"
says Sanford C. Bernstein's Craig Moffett. "HDTV is hot."
Executives say they're on the case. But their favorite plans to fix
their bandwidth problem will, at least in the short-term, create hassles
for millions of subscribers - especially those who hate the idea of
hooking their TVs to a set-top box.
For example, one solution could strip dozens of channels from customers
with cable-ready TVs - forcing them to pay an extra $10 or more a month
for a digital box and service just to keep the channels they get now
without them.
The other leading remedy would hobble new HDTV sets designed with a slot
to work with a slick, credit card-size CableCard instead of a box.
In addition to being an inconvenience and expense, either change would
represent yet another setback for the decade-old federal effort to force
the industry to free consumers from cable boxes.
But operators seem willing to take the heat. They fear that if they fail
to heed warnings such as Moffett's, they'll lose many of their 65
million subscribers who are hot for HD to satellite and phone company
rivals that already are able to offer lots of HDTV channels and plan
many more.
"We think it is a good differentiator for us," says Carl Vogel, vice
chairman of satellite provider EchoStar and former CEO of cable operator
Charter Communications. "Our vision is to be the best video provider
that we can be."
To build on that advantage, DirecTV and EchoStar are preparing to launch
additional satellites and use other means to offer at least 150 national
HD channels, as well as each market's local stations.
"Satellite's going to be constrained not so much by how many channels
they can carry than by how many they can get," says Bob Scherman,
Satellite Business News editor and publisher.
Meanwhile, phone company Verizon is building state-of-the-art,
fiber-optic networks that it says can handle 210 HD services plus all
the conventional TV channels.
No analog baggage
These newer rivals for cable have always been digital, transmitting all
their programming in bits and bytes, so neither of them has to worry
about serving "satellite-ready" or "phone-ready" TV sets. Their
customers are used to needing a box or receiver to convert the signals
into the images of, say, Katie Couric or Taylor Hicks on the analog sets
that still dominate living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens.
More important, being all-digital makes more efficient use of their
capacity: About 10 standard digital channels fit into the bandwidth
required for one analog channel.
By contrast, cable's roots are analog, and they typically still offer
analog transmissions of 70 or more of the most popular channels that the
majority of their customers watch on "cable-ready" analog TV sets -
without a box. Providing those analog signals eats up about two-thirds
of a typical system's bandwidth, even after the industry spent $100
billion over a decade to string fatter lines to handle interactive
services.
Thanks to that analog legacy, most cable operators have room to add only
about a dozen HD channels - roughly half what DirecTV and EchoStar
already offer.
It's a competitive gap likely to widen. Satellite companies "will likely
have a two-to-three-year lead over cable during which they'll be able to
offer a materially higher number of HD channels,"Morgan Stanley's
Richard Bilotti writes.
The imbalance hasn't hurt cable so far. Their local operations can more
easily tailor lineups to offer HD feeds from the markets' popular ABC,
CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations than coast-to-coast satellite
broadcasters. And there isn't much national HD programming yet.
About 30 of the 500-plus national pay-TV networks offer HD, a short list
dominated by premium sports, movie and porn channels.
Some cable operators, trying to come up with a solution to their
bandwidth pinch, have asked other networks "to please wait on launching
new (HD channels) until 2007," Pali Capital's Richard Greenfield writes.
Up to now - for their own reasons - programmers have been content to
leave HD on "pause."
"Going HD is an expensive proposition for content companies, and a lot
of programmers are waiting for enough viewers to jump in" by buying HD
sets, says Bill Goodwyn, president of affiliate sales and marketing at
Discovery Networks U.S.
But that wait seems to be over. In the past few months, HGTV, the Food
Network, National Geographic and A&E unveiled HD plans.
"We're seeing a tipping point," says Gwynne McConkey, Lifetime's senior
vice president for operations, information systems and technology. "We
expect to have an (HD) announcement this year."
Whether smaller channels get in on the HD party is in doubt, however.
They fear that cable's bandwidth problem could cause giants such as
Comcast and Time Warner to save their precious few HD slots for networks
they own.
"The haves will get richer, and the have-nots will get poorer," says
Tracy Dolgin, CEO of the New York Yankees' Yes Network, which is
distributed in HD. "The Sewing Channel isn't going to get an HD channel.
It just isn't going to happen."
Cable's bandwidth Band-Aids
Cable operators looking to accommodate more HD channels have come up
with two basic strategies:
*Drop analog channels (and the idea of "cable-ready" TVs). "The first
thing we'll do when we start putting on more HDTV pictures is to take
one analog channel off the system," says Comcast Chief Technology
Officer David Fellows. "In its place, we can put three HDTV pictures."
The beauty of that solution: It's simple and cheap, and CableCards would
still work.
It's also risky.
By cutting analog service, operators force customers to buy digital
service and a box to keep watching favorite shows they used to get on
their cable-ready TVs. Because the customer now has to get a box anyway,
they might consider switching to satellite or phone video that has more
HD channels.
To try to avert that, "We may choose to ... keep 20 or 30 channels in
analog," Fellows says. "That way, the TV set in your kitchen will still
be cable-ready."
*Keep analog service (and make current CableCards obsolete). Time
Warner, Cox and other operators prefer a solution, called "switched
digital," that lets them offer more HD without hassling analog
customers. It would, though, create problems for folks with digital TVs
and other devices designed to work with CableCards, not a box.
Operators now send all channels through their fat fiber-optic trunk
lines and also through the slimmer coaxial cables running through
neighborhoods and into homes. The cable-ready TV tuner, cable box or
CableCard blocks everything except the channel selected.
With switched digital, operators would send all channels through their
trunk lines. The system then would pass the analog channels through the
neighborhood lines but send a digital channel only when a viewer selects
it on a set-top box.
Instead of also pushing 300 or so digital channels through the coaxial
lines, they would be handling only the 60 or so a neighborhood is likely
to be watching at any one time. That would free capacity for HD
transmissions.
"We're effectively making digital broadcasting the same as video on
demand," says Seth Kenvin of BigBand Networks, a major service provider.
"The subscriber doesn't know what's going on."
Time Warner has deployed switched digital in three cities and plans to
bring it to all its systems. Cox and Cablevision also are drawing up
deployment plans.
"If you're not switching, you're going to run out of spectrum," says
Time Warner Cable Chief Technology Officer Mike LaJoie. "Once I have the
switching fabric in place, I can add as many channels as I want and
never overload."
The system also has appeal for investors who fear the cost of solutions
requiring set-top boxes on every analog TV, which operators might have
to offer free.
"Going all-digital would cost $100 per subscriber. Switched digital
would cost about $5 per subscriber," Moffett says.
Makes CableCards obsolete
The good news for operators and investors is bad news for subscribers
who bought TVs and digital video recorders that unscramble digital
signals with a CableCard - effectively, a set-top box on a card.
The Federal Communications Commission prodded the cable industry to
support the cards as a first step to fulfill a 1996 congressional
mandate to free consumers from having to get a box to watch or record TV
shows. But the cards now in use in about 400 products introduced since
July 2004 - including lots of HDTVs - only receive signals and can't
send a message to a switched system telling it to pass through a
particular channel to the neighborhood.
CableCard users in San Diego found out what that meant last year when
Time Warner deployed a switched-digital system. They lost East Coast
versions of several premium channels. A company letter also warned
owners of HD sets that they might not be able to get HD channels being
added. As compensation, the company said it would give them a digital
set-top box free for a year.
That's a step backward, TV and DVR makers say.
"We see switched digital as another way cable is trying to undermine the
CableCard and discourage its use," says Consumer Electronics Association
spokesman Jeffrey Joseph. Although more than a million CableCard-ready
digital TVs have been sold, he says, operators' half-hearted support has
meant that only about 150,000 CableCards are in use.
An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, citing proceedings
in progress on new CableCard standards that would support interactive TV
and switched digital.
Posted 6/4/2006 10:11 PM ET
HIGH-DEFINITION CABLE TV CHANNELS
Premium services
Cinemax HDTV
HBO HDTV
HDNet
HDNet Movies
INHD & INHD2 from iN DEMAND Networks
Playboy HD
The Movie Channel HD
Showtime HD
Spice HD
STARZ HDTV
Basic services
A&E HD (for September)
Discovery HD Theater
ESPN HD
ESPN2 HD
Food Network-HD (for June 30)
HGTV-HD
The History Channel HD (for early 2007)
NBA TV
NFL Network HD
National Geographic Channel HD
Outdoor Channel 2 HD
TNT in HD
Universal HD (formerly Bravo HD+)
Regional sports networks
Comcast SportsNet HD (Philadelphia, Baltimore/Washington)
FSN HD
MSG Network in HDTV (Madison Square Garden in New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania)
YES-HD (New York Yankees)
Source: National Cable & Telecommunications Association
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