[opendtv] This TV Tuner Cable Box 'Tis a Gift: Is It Sinful?

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 10:52:56 -0400

"All the cable folks have to add is an 8-VSB demodulator. They've got to
have a QAM demodulator anyhow, and there are many chips that combine
8-VSB with QAM. TV set and DTV adapter makers are trying to keep costs
down. Cable folks have already been spending upwards of $300 on some
set-top boxes, so they can afford to go for a really good 8-VSB
demodulator."

Yup.

"So the only question is why they'd want to. They've been fighting
multicast must-carry; why would they invite it into their subscribers'
homes?

"The main answer has got to be those retransmission-consent disputes.
Can't come to an agreement with a broadcaster? Pull it from the system."

Strange to think that OTA broadcasters might be the most upset by this
OTA receiver in the cable STB. And this quote:

"You might see statistics every now and then about how basic cable
programming gets higher ratings than broadcast. What the headlines don't
mention is that they're comparing the cumulative audience of all of the
cable channels to what's on a handful of broadcast networks.

"The greatest audience on a per-channel basis is almost always a
broadcast channel. That's given most broadcasters a lot of leverage in
retransmission-consent disputes--no money roll, no Super Bowl."

Bert

-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0081/t.4976.html

This TV Tuner Cable Box 'Tis a Gift: Is It Sinful?

by Mario Orazio, April 16, 2007

You might not have noticed it's a good idea to beware of geeks making
gifts. This ain't about that ancient wooden horse named for a condom. I
refer, naturally, to cable boxes that can receive off-air digital
broadcasts.

Look, whether you believe it came from Pennsylvania, Oregon, or
elsewhere, cable TV was originally a community antenna for broadcasts,
period. But it wasn't long before cable subscribers got to watch things
that those with their own antennas couldn't: Distant signals, weather
instruments, stock tickers, fish in an aquarium (I am not making this
up), and more stuff like that there.

'COMMUNITY' ANTENNA

By the early 1970s, there were also HBO, regional networks, and
superstations, but I'm getting a little ahead of the story, (which ain't
hard when you've got only one working neuron). The community-antenna
systems were for rural areas where line-of-sight or low signal strength
were the problems. Cities had a different problem--multipath.

You could pick up the world's cleanest signal at the community antenna
and deliver it in mint condition to the antenna terminals of a TV, but
the broadcast signal, bouncing around the urban canyons, would pass
through the TV cabinet and add ghosts. It's a good thing a solution to
the problem was already available.

When the FCC, Our Beloved Commish, authorized UHF TV, sets had only VHF
tuners, so set-top adapter boxes were sold.

They had UHF tuners and VHF outputs. Cable just swapped out the UHF
tuners for well-shielded VHF tuners. Lo and behold (but I still ain't
sure how to lo), the cable box was born.

Now, then, TV sets tuned just Channels 2-13. Above Channel 6 in
over-the-air land is FM radio and below Channel 7 is walkie-talkies and
stuff like that there. But, in shielded cable-TV land, that stretch of
14 channels or so was fallow. Add satellites for nationwide delivery,
and the nonbroadcast-programming industry was born.

These days, cable boxes offer hundreds of channels. Nielsen says the
average U.S. home got 104.2 of them in 2006 (methinks the 0.2 was a
narrowcast channel).

You might see statistics every now and then about how basic cable
programming gets higher ratings than broadcast. What the headlines don't
mention is that they're comparing the cumulative audience of all of the
cable channels to what's on a handful of broadcast networks.

The greatest audience on a per-channel basis is almost always a
broadcast channel. That's given most broadcasters a lot of leverage in
retransmission-consent disputes--no money roll, no Super Bowl.

So CableLabs is coming to the rescue. They're developing specs for cable
boxes with built-in off-air digital-TV reception.

Broadcasters have been complaining for years that Our Beloved Commish,
in demanding digital 'tuners' for TV sets, didn't establish any
specifications for them, so, naturally, makers of cheap TV sets would
use the cheapest components they could get away with, and viewers might
not get any reception.

Well, now, there ain't any such a thing to worry about with these
dual-mode cable boxes. CableLabs is coming up with a super-stringent set
of specs that will probably exceed anything that any broadcaster has
ever asked for. That's on account of the cable folks wanting to make
sure that those boxes pick up digital broadcasts no matter what.

The funny thing is that those really tight specs probably ain't going to
add a lot to the cost of a digital cable box. A TV manufacturer or
anyone planning to offer a digital TV adapter for analog sets needs to
provide a tuner, an 8-VSB demodulator, a transport-stream demultiplexer,
an MPEG-2 decoder, and an AC-3 decoder, at the very least. So, what does
a digital cable box already have in it? There's a tuner, a
transport-stream demultiplexer, an MPEG-2 decoder, and an AC-3 decoder.

All the cable folks have to add is an 8-VSB demodulator. They've got to
have a QAM demodulator anyhow, and there are many chips that combine
8-VSB with QAM. TV set and DTV adapter makers are trying to keep costs
down. Cable folks have already been spending upwards of $300 on some
set-top boxes, so they can afford to go for a really good 8-VSB
demodulator.

How come the digital cable boxes are so expensive? Well, now, you might
start with that tuner. Ever since the first cable boxes, cable tuners
have had to be better shielded, more selective, and better able to deal
with distortion than off-air tuners.

AIN'T NO BIG THING

Then you've got your electronic program guide, your conditional-access
security system, the two-way circuitry to deal with video-on-demand and
impulse pay-per-view, maybe a disk drive, maybe a DVD player (same
decoders again), maybe an infra-red blaster to control a VCR, maybe a
spigot for a phone, maybe a spigot for a cable modem--there are lots of
options. The bottom line is that it ain't a big deal for cable folks to
add top-notch digital-broadcast reception capability to their boxes.

So the only question is why they'd want to. They've been fighting
multicast must-carry; why would they invite it into their subscribers'
homes?

The main answer has got to be those retransmission-consent disputes.
Can't come to an agreement with a broadcaster? Pull it from the system.

The cable subscriber loses nothing. The broadcast-cable combo boxes can
switch seamlessly between broadcast and cable reception. The cable op
immediately frees up the bandwidth used by the broadcast channel and
maybe the additional bandwidth occupied by channels that were part of
the retransmission-consent agreement, like, for instance, ESPN-8 for
ABC, MTV-16 for CBS, Fox News for Toddlers, and MSCNBCU.

Here's another thought (it takes only one neuron). I ain't a lawyer, and
I'm too lazy to look stuff up, but it seems to me that there might not
be any rule preventing cable ops from restricting the tuning capability
of their boxes. In other words, maybe they can let their subscribers
receive the Super Bowl off air but prevent them from getting any
broadcast multicasts, datacasts, or even program guides.

Mario Orazio is the pseudonym of a well-known television engineer who
wishes to remain anonymous.
 
 
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