[opendtv] Re: TV Technology: Sinclair Broadcast, One Media to Deploy Next Gen TV
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2017 09:06:33 -0500
On Nov 17, 2017, at 1:04 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Still curious about what other station groups are interested and whether the
CE manufacturers are interested, other than perhaps LG. Time will tell, now
that the FCC has given the green light.
Does it matter if the CE manufacturers support the standard? Sinclair has
already said it is considering selling stand alone tuners for ATSC 3.0.
This is a much different situation than that which existed when ATSC was rolled
out. Today we have perhaps as many as 200 million HDTV sets in use in the U.S.
with HDMI ports - and at least half of these sets have inexpensive connected TV
devices accessing content from the Internet.
The new transmission standard employs highly developed technologies that are in
use around the world for TV and cellular devices. if the TV manufacturers do
not support the standard, Roku, Apple, Google, Amazon or some rich college kid
could create a viable ATSC 3.0 tuner.
Or Sinclair could do it. The reality is that the cost to develop stand alone
tuners is trivial compared to the cost of creating content that will appeal to
the masses. Sinclair, Tribune, and One Media will need to invest far more in
content if they are to become the threat to the content oligopoly that the
Democrats are trying to make us believe.
20th Century Fox spent billions just buying access to the cable MVPD bundles,
before they became popular enough to demand subscriber fees.
Really bothers me that it is being sold on false pretenses, exploiting
people's ignorance and lack of inquisitiveness. Somewhere along the line, I
would not be surprised if people begin asking what the big ruckus is all
about. Same old TV broadcast, in practice.
The issue is not how many people ask about ATSC 3.0. The issue is how many
would even care. There has been a slight uptick in the use of antennas again
because of cord cutting. I even use an antenna on occasion now to watch college
football games. But this is noise level stuff, certainly not something that
will cause either broadcasters or viewers to go though the agony of another
transition.
Let's see if ads or promos will even appear on TV. If it's anything like ATSC
1.0, no one will even know it exists, and you'll be lucky to find anything
related to ATSC 3.0 on store shelves. ATSC 1.0 had the advantage that NTSC
went off the air, so at the 11th hour, OTA users were forced to pay
attention. This time? There isn't even that 11th hour imperative.
Yup. The 11th hour for broadcasting was almost a decade ago. But the
transmitters still serve a very important purpose - the second revenue stream
from retrans consent. There are still 90 million homes paying for MVPD carriage
of broadcast signals...
It is far from clear what benefit there is to another broadcast standard...
And one more thing...
There is much consternation about local news competition as a result of the
ownership limit changes now working through the FCC. Here in Gainesville we
lived for decades with only one local commercial news operation - the
University also has a newscast on the PBS affiliate, but it has never attracted
much of an audience.
So we had the choice of local news on the ABC affiliate, or news from the other
network affiliates imported from Jacksonville and Orlando. Then we finally got
local CBS and NBC affiliates; the CBS affiliation agreement required that they
get into the local news business within two years. Who made this happen?
Sinclair. They purchased three stations here in Gainesville in 2013, and now
compete in the local news business.
Regards
Craig
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