[opendtv] Re: News: LTE Tempts With Advanced Services
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 16:10:01 -0500
Craig Birkmaier posted:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/lte%C2%A0tempts%C2%A0with%C2%A0advanced%C2%A0services/213573
Sorry, but articles like this one keep missing the point. There's no reason, or
excuse, to focus on LTE. The discussion should instead be, perhaps it's time to
stop broadcasting (I'm using the term in its literal technical sense) and
instead start unicasting.
If you shift to unicast, this immediately imposes a two-way link requirement
for each user device, and THEREFORE the big stick model, the most efficient
configuration for broadcast, becomes unacceptable and irrelevant.
Why switch to unicast? Because that's the only viable alternative, when serving
mobile devices. It gives the users the much larger selection of content that
they have come to want and it frees them from a time schedule. Even in-device
storage of broadcast content cannot match the unicast VOD model, for the sheer
amount of choice. Because that the in-device storage depends on the device
having to dedicate all sorts of time to the downloads, *AND* the broadcast
channel limits the variety of downloads the big stick can provide, on any given
day. Whereas unicast makes use of a much, much higher capacity cabled Internet
infrastructure, and the RF link is just that tiny last mile (or less) interface
to the global Internet infrastructure.
Comments like "LTE is much more efficient than 8-VSB" are not only irrelevant,
they are also FALSE. The spectral efficiency of LTE is always LESS than that of
8T-VSB, even when the cells are extremely close together. But this doesn't
matter, when the link is just a short range unicast link.
And besides all of this, the other point to be made is that the two-way
infrastructure for broadcasters to use is already in place, and broadcasters
and the main networks are already using it. So the real question is, how do
local broadcasters get visibility on this huge Internet choice, without that
visibility being a natural byproduct of the scant choice available over current
broadcast TV channels? (And of course, one answer will be, they don't get the
same visibility. And many won't survive the switch to unicast.)
Bert
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