[opendtv] Re: News: DIRECTV Sued Over HDTV Picture Quality
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:32:54 -0400
Mark Schubin wrote:
> Nielsen just reported 2.73 TV sets per U.S. TV household and
> 111,400,000 U.S. TV households. That's about 304 million U.S.
> TV sets, the vast majority of them without DTT-reception
> capability.
Nice to have real numbers.
Okay, so the best estimate we've seen is that 85 percent of these
households subscribe to cable or DBS (or both), and 15 percent use only
OTA. Furthermore, I'll SWAG that in cable/DBS households, 1.5 of the
2.73 sets are connected to the cable or DBS feed.
So let's estimate the total number of OTA TV sets that may need to
migrate to DTT.
We have OTA-only households, 15 percent of 111,400,000 = 16,710
households, and 45,618,300 sets. That number assumes that OTA-only
households own as many sets as other households.
Then we have 94,690,000 subscription households, with 1.2 sets needing
an OTA signal. So in principle, that's another 116,468,700 sets that
could use OTA. The grand total is 162,087,000 sets that might need OTA
input.
But before people cry foul, cut that to one third, since we know many of
those sets are unused, and it still leaves more than 54 million sets
that need an OTA input. Which means, either to be replaced by a new set,
or to have an STB connected to them. Whatever the real numbers are, they
are in the 10s of millions.
> CEA reported sales of ALL types of TVs in 2005 as 29,881,000
> units. So, assuming that number holds (it has been falling),
> and every owner of a non-DTT-capable TV buys one that's capable,
> it will take more than ten years to replace all the analog sets.
In THEORY, if the 30M new sets all went to replace those which use OTA
input, starting on 1 March 2007, it would take maybe less than two years
to update everyone. In practice, we know that in subscription
households, new sets don't go to OTA use. They typically get connected
to the cable or DBS. And if lower income households tend to be
disproportionally connected to OTA, they would perhaps not be buying as
many of the new sets. (Although I doubt this last bit. It's the refrain
of the politicans after votes.)
So there's a market for STBs that numbers in the 10s of millions, up to
~54M initially. If everyone started buying STBs today, would the CE
vendors be able to manufacture that many in the two years we supposedly
have left?
Whatever the answer to that question, if people wait until analog is
shut off, the market for STBs will be enormous for a very short time,
and then will drop. Because no one will sit and wait for years and years
for an STB. They'll scream to their congessman, then buy a new set or
subscribe to basic cable. The STB market will probably go on for some
time beyond analog shutoff, after the initial rush, as people resurrect
their older and unused sets after the fact.
The Germans did it right. To get people off their collective butts,
where "people" includes broadcasters, CE vendors, and consumers, start
shutting off analog channels, in phases.
Bert
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