[opendtv] Re: NAB: FCC's Wheeler Piles on Praise for Broadcasting | Broadcasting & Cable

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2015 10:52:45 -0400

On Apr 22, 2015, at 9:24 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Craig Birkmaier wrote:

They are not competing with the other OTT sites, to which they
are complementary.

THEY ARE COMPETING WITH FACILITY BASED MVPDs.

They, Sling, compete against MVPDs as much as OTT sites do, Craig. That
"complementary" nonsense is more or less a feel-good comment for those who
resist change. Or for those who need to be cajoled.

You are the one who called OTA reception or basic cable complementary to OTT
services. Both offer channels that deliver linear streams of content featuring
appointment TV schedules. Sling is only different in that it also offers some
VOD access to library content, and TV Everywhere access for your mobile devices.

I would also note that Bert is essentially arguing for the end of
broadcasting as we know it. Broadcasters who fill a channel 24/7
with linear content

I've been saying that OTA broadcasters need to find a proper Internet role,
and can, *and* that MVPDs too need to repurpose their bandwidth away from
broadcast and toward two-way broadband service instead.

It is questionable whether broadcasters have a proper Internet role, or even
care. We will learn much from the broadcast spectrum auction.

The MVPDs are moving aggressively into high speed broadband, but this is about
building out the last mile infrastructure - i.e. reducing the number of homes
per node to be able to support unicasts versus broadcasts. Repurposing
bandwidth from broadcast to broadband does not do much to solve this problem.

What is more important is that the existing linear channels are still where
most TV is consumed. Reclaiming bandwidth by ending analog service is going to
happen first. The digital extended basic bundle is still the money maker for
both the MVPDs and the content owners, and will be for many years to come.

Craig seems to gleefully ping on the OTA aspect only. Bandwidth dedicated to
one-way broadcast, in general, has to be allocated in closer proportion to
the actual use of "live" streams. As time moves on, fewer and fewer luddites
can be expected to insist on by appointment TV, with a few obvious exceptions.

Yes the exceptions I keep pointing out

Absolutely, for sports and for news mostly, BECAUSE the congloms are
resisting putting this live content on the Internet.

Yes, sports, a few big events like the Oscars, and news will continue to drive
demand for live TV. But to congloms ARE NOT resisting putting live content on
the Internet. They are embracing this via TV Everywhere. They are using TV
Everywhere to enhance the value of MVPD bundles to keep people from cutting the
cord. They ARE NOT offering their most valuable content OTT without a MVPD
subscription.

And also, luddites. So there is this viable market, yes. It's not just me
saying it, Craig. The numbers tell the story. Use of OTA has gone up to about
20 percent of households now.

Perhaps. There is significant disparity in the reported numbers depending on
the bias of the source. And there is the more important question of how much TV
viewing occurs via antenna versus alternatives. What we do know is that in most
content categories, broadcast TV ratings are declining.

Wrong on many levels, Craig, and again you aren't moving on. We *just we
through this just yesterday*. Mobile devices prefer VOD except for very few
occasions.

You mean like watching a live sporting event when away from home?

For smartphones most video viewing is short clips, not full length programs,
the exception being live sports.

For Tablets the amount of program length view is much higher, but a very
significant portion of this viewing takes place in homes and hotel rooms. And
yes this is skewed toward VOD.

Wireless to mobile devices requires much more infrastructure and/or much
lower spectral efficiency than wireless to fixed.

That is legacy thinking. The infrastructure for wireless to mobile is growing
rapidly, driven by high levels of demand ( all applications, not just streaming
video). Most of the infrastructure for wireless broadcasting already exists,
thanks to the infrastructure that has been created for wireless voice and data.
The only question is who will use it- TV broadcasters or the telcos.

Therefore, wireless to mobile is best handled by cellcos, who can dynamically
change their configuration from two-way cellular to mobile-optimized
broadcast, as needed at that time. But for the luddites who cut the cable and
still want by appointment TV, OTA broadcast should be optimized for lots of
choice, rather than less choice with mobile robustness. MOVE ON. Why is Craig
circling back to square one again?

Lot's of choice? You have lots of choice with OTA in DC today, but few people
are watching most of these channels. Why?

Because most of the content people want to watch has moved behind pay walls,
including the now popular SVOD services delivered OTT.

A properly designed broadcast LTE infrastructure can deliver traditional TV
content to both fixed and mobile receivers. It does not require
reconfiguration, as it is a broadcast service using spectrum dedicated to TV
broadcasting. The telcos are able to afford the extra cost to be able to
optimize their networks dynamically. Unless broadcasters try to use their
spectrum for unicasts - highly doubtful - they can deploy broadcast LTE by
piggybacking on the existing tower infrastructure.

Not true. Some areas still are terrain blocked or have too
much multi path to assure reliable ATSC reception.

I have no LOS to any tower, Craig. But if terrain is a big problem, which it
certainly can be, EVERY scheme has to install solutions. Repeaters or
translators. All of them, Craig. Even cell systems have to install extra
towers.

Correct. The cell systems have already installed this towers.

Not even close. ATSC created an end to end standard.

Only to the extent that Craig doesn't understand standards. Craig, pick up
A/53, or pick up A/90, and show me where it prevents new packet formats from
being IDed and then fully defined. Show me where these two, or any others,
are written in such a way that makes any future packet formats impossible to
create.

Stop the FUD Bert. The only viable ATSC infrastructure is the transmitters
being operated by the broadcasters and the receivers mandated in new TVs. These
receivers could be upgraded to support the ATSC extensions you cite. But this
has not happened because broadcasters have shown little in the way of support.

As I pointed out, broadcasters could start using h.264 now. But it would
require new receivers and or support from the manufacturers who now have h.264
capable decoders in their smart TVs. Meanwhile the OTT capable devices being
deployed much faster than new TVs, are evolving rapidly.

The ATSC standard has been extended several times - nobody uses the
extensions.

Oh, so it can be extended. Wait, Craig, you just said above it was unable to
be extended. Which is it, Craig?

No Bert, I said nobody is willing to use the extensions.

The big limitation with ATSC, and with DVB as well, is that they are one-way
broadcast standards. Other than some half-baked ideas we have seen here
(backed up with banalities such as "all you need is a backchannel"), it is
difficult to justify using the one-way broadcast path when two-way media
exist. That's the MAIN reason why these so-called innovations to ATSC are
hard to justify.

The big extension for ATSC was supposed to be ATSC M/H. It was stillborn.

Two way has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that consumers are
abandoning appointment TV in favor of VOD for pre produced content. There are
plenty of viable uses for broadcast, especially if it is compatible with the
hundreds of millions of devices now used by consumers. The problem with ATSC
and DVB is that these patent pools DID NOT want to be compatible - they wanted
to keep TV separate, mandated and a source of ongoing royalties.

But for example, could ATSC, as a standard, handle UHDTV? No problem! It's
plenty spectrally efficient enough, and we have proof that new codecs can be
implemented in the standard, because they already have been.

Who cares?

Consider this article:

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/playout/2013/06/survey-pay-tv-cord-cutting-population-rising/

The survey found that demographics of broadcast-only households continue to
skew toward younger adults, minorities and lower-income families.

These people are not the market for UHDTV.


The installed base of TVs? That's a concern. If it were Apple, no problem.
Just make them all obsolete.

They are obsolete with respect to any new OTA DTV standard. But most, at least
those built since the mid 2000's, have HDMI ports that Apple, et al use to
provide up to date capabilities that are broadly supported.

By the way, Apple products tend to have longer useful life expectancies, which
make their value proposition quite good. If there is a role for Apple with
respect to UHDTV, it is likely tied to applications OTHER than watching TV. The
extra pixels are already being used for the applications that run on the new
devices that feature much higher pixel densities.

I wrote extensively about the resolution requirements for TVs with different
screen sizes at various viewing distances. Based on these requirements, the
notion of a 2 Mpixel display with a five inch diagonal seems like overkill. But
these screens have become the "laser printers" of our era, with vastly improved
contrast and graphics capabilities.

I do not expect Apple to introduce a UHDTV - but I expect them to sell a lot of
boxes that will make UHDTVs useful.

Regards
Craig


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