[opendtv] Re: Spectrum is too valuable

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 01:53:06 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

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

The problem is that you think this is a problem. I can understand if the MVPDs
think of this as a "problem," if they are not yet convinced that they will
ultimately benefit from progress. But human history is chock full of just such
transitions.

Hey Craig. Internet streaming also killed the Blockbuster DVD rental model. Are
you seriously going to bemoan that change? If you were personally invested in
the Blockbuster DVD rental model, I might understand your chagrin. Otherwise,
it makes no sense.

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.

Yes, Craig, this has been your mantra for years and years. But it's beside the
point. We were LONG overdue for an upgrade to TV image quality especially, less
so audio quality, as TV audio had been fairly convincingly improved over the
years (first network HiFi in the 1970s and then stereo in the 1980s). But image
quality was ante-deluvian. I couldn't care less what ulterior motives the
broadcasters may or may not have had. Same as now with broadband capacity, TV
had to progress beyond the dark ages.

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.

I claimed this? You are again confused. The image compression protocol is
H.263. Look it up, Craig. H.263 was the original protocol for constrained
pipes. And check out the dates, and the compression algorithm:

http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263/en

Either H.263, or an equivalent protocol, was used early on in multimedia
streams over the Internet, Craig. Long, long before 2010, for pete's sake.
Where were you in those years, Craig?

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

Which they are already doing, but without taking it out of the legacy bundle
for the luddites.

This is a huge waste of capacity, going into every household
of every PON, that could instead be applied to broadband.

Agreed! That real estate is very valuable, and very profitable.
Even IF the capacity existed to make the switch, and that is
questionable,

What's questionable about it? Is there something difficult about deploying
DOCSIS 3.0 today? Is there something difficult about expecting cable
subscribers to use standards-based IP client systems? Is there something
infeasible about letting consumers buy their own DOCSIS modems, so the cable
company doesn't have to invest a huge amount on them? The transition can happen
starting immediately, a few channels at a time. Edge server capacity seems like
the biggest change required. The cabling doesn't need to change at all.

why tear down the shopping centers that are thriving, to
increase the broadband capacity?

You tear down the aging shopping center to replace it with what people want
today. Happens all the time. The hilarious part of this is that Craig thinks
increasing broadband capacity is a problem, and that retaining walled garden
nets is preferable.

After you've increased broadband capacity, the cabled infrastructure will be
able to carry even TV content, for the masses. This will then lead to unwalling
of TV content delivery, as the MVPDs figure, why not sell outside my old garden
walls? This is progress, Craig. It's not a problem.

I don' know which is primary and which is secondary.

Really, Craig? If a cable net dedicates 1 Gb/s aggregate for every PON (if
you're lucky), and walls off maybe 120, 130, 150 channels, equivalent capacity
~ 4 to 5+ Gb/s for legacy linear streams, you really don't know what they
consider primary and secondary?

Bert



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