[opendtv] Re: News: Those licenses will soon be worthless...

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "OpenDTV (E-mail)" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:45:52 -0400

John Shutt wrote:

> But according to Bert, as soon as a hard cutoff date is
> announced LG will open up this huge vault somewhere in
> South Korea and flood the U.S. market with millions of
> STBs priced at under $50.
>
> Until a hard cutoff date is announced, however, the
> vault stays locked and the U.S. gets nothing, not at
> any price.

No vault involved, John. You aren't getting the dynamics.

Without a hard cutoff date, LG (and others) don't see any
market. So they produce nothing new at all. They figure
there's already an OTA scheme that works fine for
broadcasters and for most OTA users, and it's called NTSC.

With a cutoff date, there will be demand no matter whether
broadcasters make their DTT offerings more attractive than
their analog stuff or not. Just keep on keeping on, and a
date certain will create a huge demand for STBs.

I mean, even if only 15 percent of households each buys a
single STB to keep using their old sets, that's still
what? About 22 million STBs? A huge market at the stroke
of a pen. Much as it was with UHF.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that COFDM would
change this in any way. Create a US version of COFDM STB,
and change the exciters in all DTT transmitters, and
nothing would change. People don't care about modulation.
They just want their TV service to continue. And mostly,
that has nothing to do with OTA anyway. And broadcasters
are still going to worry more about cable carriage than
any neat-o OTA plan, because they are convinced that
people want more choice than OTA can offer anyway.

Oh, I forgot. There might be an impact. Possibly the
Schubin apartment building would have to follow those
rigorous MATV installation guidelines to permit residents
to receive DTT. Indoor reception of COFDM at that site is
still "unproven" (therefore presumably impossible).
Luckily, following those guidelines will also permit use
of 8-VSB first generation receivers.

Bert
 
 
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