[opendtv] Re: OTA

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:55:03 -0500

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

[ATSC to WiFi box]

> 2. Codec efficiency - MPEG-2 is simply not efficient enough for mobile
> applications, especially over wireless broadband networks;

The part of the path in which you need the highest possible coding efficiency 
is the broadband pipe. In this instance, the "broadband pipe" is the ATSC 
channel, so there's NO PROBLEM with coding efficiency. You have plenty of 
bandwidth within the WiFi network, assuming a reasonably up to date WiFi.

Now, the box itself MAY recode the stream to H.264, if there are whatever 
licensing reasons to do this. But even if the indoor stream retains MPEG-2 
compression, you can still fit maybe 6 ATSC multiplexes, at least, in a typical 
802.11n WiFi.

> 3. Hardware acceleration - again, licensing costs make it expensive to
> support MPEG-2.

I'd be surprised if MPEG-2 isn't already supported in accelerators, because 
that's all there was for a long time.

http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/future-net/digital-video/mpeg2-dec.html

In any event, once again, the box can always transcode to H.264, if that's 
really necessary.

> NO BERT. It is because ATSC does not work for mobile and ATSC M/H is
> too inefficient.

Nope. Define "too inefficient," and provide a point of comparison. It isn't 
hard to do, Craig. Work it out, so maybe you'll convince yourself.

>> The crucial point being, it's just another MVPD.
>
> Nope. It's just a carriage utility. The broadcaster still controls
> the content of the bits they deliver to the utility.

You missed it, Craig. What "broadcaster"? Let's say Sinclair builds out this 
LTE infrastructure for the Baltimore market area. They may be the only 
"broadcaster" transmitting OTA TV signals in Baltimore, or perhaps there may be 
one other LTE TV net in that market.

So, my guess is, the other content owners, now no longer "broadcasters," would 
either pay Sinclair for carriage (using ad revenues?), or Sinclair would pay 
them to carry their signals, and keep the ad revenue? Or some combination of 
this.

This new utility is more labor intensive than the previous big sticks, though. 
So unless the ad revenues go up somehow, that extra cost will be covered by a 
subscription fee. *Very much* like the original CATV systems. And we all know 
what they morphed into.

At this point, you HAVE to ask, what do CBS, Fox, ABC, etc. do to get their 
content on the air in Baltimore? If Sinclair owns the transmission 
infrastructure, then why would these congloms go to anyone other than Sinclair? 
So, the other "broadcasters" will be competing only for local news, weather, 
and whatever community events they cover.

Bert

 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at 
FreeLists.org 

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts: