[opendtv] Re: Two-way plug-&-play

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "OpenDTV (E-mail)" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:03:35 -0400

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> Do you seriously believe that OCAP is going to emerge as
> the basis for interactive television?
>
> I see no evidence of this ANYWHERE in the world (i.e. MHP
> is not creating much of a splash in Europe). And DASE is
> a total joke.
>
> It seems that the CE guys (and major content distributors
> like cable MSOs) continue to believe that they can
> overcome the inertia of the software tools that are
> emerging from the Internet and PC platforms.

That's not my reading of this.

As far as I can tell, OCAP (which seems heavily based on
DVB-MHP) incorporates the Internet and PC platform tools.
But adapts these to the broadcast environment in which
they're supposed to operate. I'm not sure how else these
Internet solutions can be made to work over cable or OTA,
without going to the extreme of turning these media into
unicast media. (Which, of course, would be inefficient,
would not scale well, and would therefore be a flop.)

> As consumers (continue) to migrate to progressive
> display technologies, the barriers to real convergence
> are crumbling. It's ludicrous to believe that an industry
> (even one as powerful as the TV industry) can control the
> evolutionary path of digital media technologies,
> especially when they continue to firmly grasp a failing
> (but still profitable) business model.

As often happens, we simply come to completely different
conclusions, even though we are given the same set of
facts. The conclusion I come to is far simpler than yours:
TV viewers don't care so much about interactivity, other
than channel surfing, adjusting the volume, and VOD that
is almost exclusively local, via their own recording
device. When they are watching TV, that is.

Of course HDTV displays can be used as PC displays. In that
event, interactive sessions would be what we have all
gotten accustomed to on the Internet itself, not via
the broadcast medium. They are a different experience from
TV watching.

The simple conclusion is that iTV doesn't seem to light
too many fires.

Bert
 
 
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