[opendtv] Re: Spectrum is too valuable

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2015 08:30:32 -0500

On Nov 21, 2015, at 7:41 PM, Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Craig wrote:

“I don't think the cable industry thought then, or thinks today that their
proprietary STBs are a problem.”

Well then, why do I constantly see the HUGE investment in STBs as becoming an
obstacle to progress? If it’s an obstacle to progress, it is an obstacle that
they created.

When does a "cash cow" get turned out to pasture, or into hamburger?

Certainly not when it is still producing huge profits.

The problem is that your definition of "progress" is killing the existing
business model.

The public also had a HUGE investment in NTSC receivers, but that did not
prevent the OTA broadcasters *or* the cable/DBS companies long before OTA,
from essentially obsoleting that standard in due course.

Only after one of the longest product life cycles in consumer electronics
history. By the late '70s there was vastly better technology that could have
replaced NTSC. I led a team that developed an analog component video mixer in
1983. The Japanese started demonstrating analog HD about the same time.

Actually, NTSC is not obsolete. Many cable systems STILL deliver an NTSC tier
Bert.

It is important to remember that the HD transition began in the late '80s at
the behest of the broadcasters, as a ploy to protect "their spectrum" from land
mobile. It was only after General Instruments demonstrated the digital
compression technology they were developing for DBS that the DTV transition got
legs. Even then, it still took nearly two decades to complete the transition.
What's more, to address the huge consumer investment in NTSC, the government
spent billions on convertor boxes.

And to complete this story, you claim to have started streaming TV programs to
your PC using a compression technology more advanced that the one we were
required to buy in new HDTVs, before NTSC was turned off.

Who is going to compensate us for the ATSC technology that only a small
percentage of consumers have ever used?

Cable companies can easily sunset all analog and digital broadcast streams,
go all-IP instead, and expect their customers to buy the necessary equipment,
if they haven’t already done so, including the modem itself.

And CBS and ESPN could pull their content from the bundles and sell it direct.

You are clueless about the money that is in play here and why your vision of
the future may never be realized. The content and distribution oligopolies are
feasting on the existing business model, and controlling the migration to
Internet delivery. And The FCC just assured the cabled MVPDs that they will
become the broadband oligopoly, regulated under Title II.

While you want the MVPDs to kill the cash cow and open up their business model,
you complain about the very companies and devices that may replace the cable
STBs, accusing them of collusion with the content owners.

No reason to think that the existing STB base should be an insurmountable
problem. If cable companies drag their feet in such a change, it is only
because they continue to rake in revenues from the old technology. Let’s not
kid ourselves.

No kidding!

From the point of view of the consumer, such as myself, H.264 was introduced
when the TV network sites, and other such, began streaming H.264. These
appeared over ISP nets. The significant point being, the ISP did not hesitate
to relay these streams, because my PC was mine, not theirs. If I had to buy a
new PC, they didn’t need to care. Same could apply now, to cable companies
that go all IP. It is the proprietary STB, an investment made by the service
provider, that creates the obstacle to progress.

What obstacle? You claim to have everything you need.

Why are you still using DSL, when Verizon can give you REAL broadband?

The reality is the Internet provided the necessary infrastructure to bypass the
legacy oligopolies. Yet you are still dependent on a subset of their content,
just delivered via this new infrastructure. The infrastructure they are slowly
migrating to, as they learn how to control it.

This is a huge waste of capacity, going into every household of every PON,
that could instead be applied to broadband. Makes no difference how many
households are fed by a single PON. These channels take up a lot of valuable
real estate.

Agreed! That real estate is very valuable, and very profitable. Even IF the
capacity existed to make the switch, and that is questionable, why tear down
the shopping centers that are thriving, to increase the broadband capacity? The
systems you want to re-engineer are not having a problem keeping up with the
demand for broadband; they are delivering 100 Mbps today and will be offering
gigabit by 2017.

This is the way cable evolved into broadband ISPs. Still today, the broadband
ISP role is considered secondary to the broadcast TV provider role. This can
change, though, as fast as they decide.

I don' know which is primary and which is secondary. The reality is that they
are doing very well selling BOTH. I place greater value on the broadband
service, but not for TV, and the cost of each is close to the same.

They will change as fast as they need to.


Regards
Craig

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