[opendtv] Re: News: LTE Tempts With Advanced Services
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 07:59:22 -0400
At 4:38 AM -0400 6/7/12, Albert Manfredi wrote:
No, more exactly, this ONLY matters for live sports, pretty much. On
any given week, just how many hours of live sports do you think OTA
broadcasters broadcast? Maybe a couple on Saturday afternoon, most
of the year? HARDLY enough to justify building an efficient
broadcast infrastructure. Oh, and they don't want to anyway! They
are talking LTE!
I will grant you that a large portion of live sports is no longer
broadcast - it has moved to MVPDs because of the huge subscriber fees
that can be collected to help pay for the rights. There are live
sporting events ALL THE TIME, and people DO want to see this stuff on
their mobile platforms. ESPN3 is already capturing a large audience,
BUT...
I just watched a NCAA BAseball Tournament game on ESPN3 last week. In
order to view it I had to enter my Cox Cable user name and password.
The live sports market is going to be mostly a paid service, but this
does not preclude broadcasters from delivering the bits.
And again, mobile users are even less likely to want live broadcast
than your home viewers, because on-the-go means you can't easily set
aside the right time to watch. More reason not to obsess about true
live broadcast. (Although, of course, live broadcast is doable also
over a unicast network. So don't go off on this other tangent,
please. I can watch any number of live and recorded Internet streams
on my TV anytime I please, from all over the world, literally. If I
can, so can anyone on a 3G or "4G" cell phone or tablet, since these
come with web access.)
You make some good points here. Most program length viewing takes
place in homes, or on long airplane rides. People typically don't
want to watch program length content on cell phones, however, tablets
are becoming "second screens" that are used both on the go and in
homes. I think you are underestimating the potential number of
viewers who will use a Broadcast LTE service.
As John points out, there are still more than 20 million people
viewing the networks during prime time. One MAJOR reason that people
are not going to shift to wireless unicast services to view this
content is COST. The telcos are keeping the cost of data bit high;
it's just not practical to watch program length content when you have
a few gigabits per month on your mobile data plan. In time these
costs will come down, but spectrum is still a scarce resource, and as
John points out, it is going to be very difficult to deliver unicasts
to tens of millions of people - that's what broadcasting is for.
If LTE broadcasts can be viewed for free, or for very reasonable
fees, there will be a large audience.
When broadcasters build out, or more likely rent from Verizon or
AT&T, this expensive 2-way infrastructure, why on earth would they
worry about trying to make local storage in end user devices work?
That local storage model ONLY makes sense *if* your infrastructure
is limited to one-way broadcast. But it is ridiculous to think that
wireless download to local storage has a prayer of competing with
content stored in "cloud servers," both in terms of how much content
can be made available, and how fast loads of new content can be
stored. I trust you will resist the urge to argue against such an
obvious point.
You are totally out of touch with reality. Million of people are
using mobile devices to cache content. Just to remind you, the iPod
started a revolution with "A thousand songs in your pocket." I have
never streamed content from iTunes, but i HAVE downloaded TV shows
and Movies to watch on my mobile devices (laptop and smart phone) -
it's difficult to stream content at 40,000 feet when you are on a 4-5
hour flight. The airlines are beginning to offer WiFi, but the cost
is even higher than telco bits.
The real issue is WHERE you are watching. Streaming works great on
you home TV because you are connected to a wired ISP; it even works
with a tablet (or smart phone) in the home, when you add a WiFi
router.
With mobile devices the cost for bits is the real issue, and time to
watch a close second. Short programs - like the Festival video - are
what many people are watching on smart phones. But even here, it is
more likely that the user will try to use a WiFi networks to avoid
burning up wireless bits. The first thing I did with the festival
video was to download it to my phone via iTunes (the app, not the
store), so that I could share it with people anytime anywhere.
The reality is that mobile devices have enough storage to cache
enough content for the day, or a short trip. If broadcasters can
create simple services to deliver these bits to cache, they will
survive, perhaps even thrive. Here's a really short Tweet that says
it all:
In the future, consumers will SUBSCRIBE to the programs they want to see.
The bits will be delivered to "your storage," whether it is a server
in the cloud, the server in your home, or the devices that you use to
watch the program. Consumers will still "search" and stream content
on demand, but the stuff they want to see all the time will be cached
when you hit the subscribe button. The key here is price.
I would dump cable in a nanosecond, if I could spend the >$70/month I
am sending to Cox to subscribe to the few shows I watch (e.g. $5 - 10
for a full season), or a reasonable fee to watch a live event such as
a football game ($1-2). And i would watch free (ad supported)
services to fill in the gaps.
And these servers already exist! All this stuff is already in place.
All we're really talking about here is to change the mindset of TV
networks and broadcasters, to go all-out with Internet unicast
streaming, vs broadcast. And perhaps increasing the capacity of
existing two-way wireless nets, with some TV spectrum. That's about
it.
Yup. cable could move to a unicast model very quickly. They can do
this because they CREATE bandwidth via their wired infrastructure.
Get rid hundreds of channels of 24/7 streams, and reuse the bandwidth
in every neighborhood with a branching tree infrastructure and they
are there.
Unfortunately, this is far more difficult - but not impossible - with
a wireless broadcast infrastructure. It's all about spectral re-use.
You can use a 6 MHz channel to deliver the same bits in a radius of
40 miles from a big stick, or use a cellular network to improve
spectral reuse. In that 6 MHz channel you may deliver several program
streams to every cell, and checkerboard the rest to deliver different
bits to different cells (neighborhoods).
People on handheld devices have become accustomed to VOD from any
number of places, for any amount of content. Without having to make
sure that their hand held device was turned on all of the time to
receive that content, was within good reception range, or any of
that. Never mind the drain on the battery, for all this downloading
while the cell phone is in your pocket. Just doesn't make sense,
when cloud servers are there and the network is 2-way.
What drain is there on the battery when it is plugged into a charger
and downloading bits you have subscribed to overnight?
The real problem is the combination of high cost per bit and power
drain when you use the telco data network to stream.
Oh, I don't believe the broadcast mode of LTE has been actually
developed anyway? No doubt, in large part because service providers
are much more interested in keeping track of bandwidth used by each
subscriber than they are to optimize how their bandwidth gets used,
when they provide two-way networks.
Perhaps you should watch this AGAIN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsmbwQCpxlY
LTE is already being deployed widely. LTE multicasts can easily be
implement TODAY.
The real issue here is how broadcasters build out their portion of
the LTE broadcast infrastructure, using existing TV spectrum.
First, spectrum pooling is critical. Having each broadcaster in a
market operating one 6 MHz multiplex is inefficient. You need a
utility model that manages a large chunk of spectrum across the
multiple cells that define a market geographically.
Next you need infrastructure. The cellular business has already moved
to an infrastructure management model where a third party manages the
cell sites and everyone can attach. This model could easily be
expanded to support Broadcast LTE. Broadcasters could add a
significant number of transmitter sites in urban markets, and use
higher power LTE Broadcast using existing big sticks in rural markets.
And finally you need intelligent management of the utility to
maximize throughput. For a small independent broadcaster - say a
religious channel - it would be far cheaper to pay for a few MB/sec
for their service than to operate a 6 MHz big stick. And for the
broadcasters (like Sinclair?) who understand this opportunity, they
could access more bits as they develop profitable services.
So, I think what this whole switch-over will really mean going from
broadcast to unicast. Assuming TV networks feel this imperative.
Maybe a broadcaster or two, in a market area, will create their own
2-way wireless service. Or maybe the extra spectrum will go to
Verizon and AT&T, and TV networks (and some local broadcasters?)
will piggy back off these wireless ISPs, as they are already doing
anyway.
So in the end, you agree...
;-)
It's going to happen one way or the other. The only question is
whether broadcasters wake up and smell the opportunity, or ride down
the ship with only the tips of a few big sticks remaining above an
ocean of bits controlled by others.
Regards
Craig
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