[opendtv] Re: News: New Cable Fight at Hand
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 07:14:01 -0400
Kon writes:
"The difference between you and me is that you are a complete Apple
fanboy, incapable of objectively discussing Apple and its competitors.
I don't have that problem (on my desk I have two ipads, three
iphone4s, two n900s, an android tablet and a nokia e7)."
This quote is a brilliant example of what is wrong with our media
distribution technologies!
DAN
Could you elaborate?
I don't understand what you are getting at?
Maybe it's my Apple blinders...
;-)
Are you suggesting that competition is the problem?
If not the marketplace, who chooses our media distribution technologies?
Cliff seems to be looking for media utopia.
The real problem is there is no one single standard embodying the
best of all the technologies.
If there were, everything would 'just' work and every type of device
would be compatible with all the others..
This has been brought home to me solidly by the many postings on
professional lists that deal with the playback, restoration and
conservation of programs on "dead" media; i.e. videotape, audiotape
and
analog disk recordings.
There are so many varieties of formats that finding a working player for
some is impossible.
Apparently the current wars are not much different than those we have
fought in the past.
But this is the marketplace at work. I spent years covering the
transition form videotape to alternative storage media for video
(hard disks, flash memory cards, etc.) Very few industries work
together to create common standards and then compete on the basis of
how well they implement them.
Some that come to mind are:
The telephone industry.
The radio industry.
The TV industry.
And the net result is nearly always the same. The technology stands
still and we wind up with oligopolies and monopolies that are poor at
innovation.
Suppose each country had its own different standard of physical
measurement, or of time and frequency?
What is an imperial gallon anyway?
Look at how badly editing, time code and standards conversion were
screwed up by making 59.94 the "standard" for NTSC video.
This was done in 1953 because RCA was overly concerned about the
appearance of a 920 kHz beat pattern in pictures on early, pre-color
B&W TV sets. Not a color set problem, a B&W set problem!
Editing, timecode and standards conversion would have been much
easier if the color subcarrier frequency had been left at its
initial frequency of 3.583125 mHz because H would still be 15,750
and V would still be 60.
The problem is there are far too many "standards" in the world to
have universal compatibility.
Until there can be universal agreement on how best to accomplish a
given technical process, the world is doomed to having millions of
"standards", none of which is compatible with the others.
A rather grim point of view.
Give the foxes the ability to create the standards (NTSC, ATSC, etc)
and they control the hen house.
But the future is not a grim as Cliff may think.
Quite often companies use control of hardware to lock the customer
in. Look at the current plight of Sony video customers who bought
into Sony's proprietary tape and blu-ray formats. You can bet that
many of these folks are looking at how they can hook those cameras up
to hard disks and solid state drives.
The reality is that is growing easier to support multiple standards.
When formats are just bits, it is possible to support many standards.
This is not going to stop companies from trying to create competitive
advantages; that's where innovation comes from.
The marketplace is where this stuff plays out.
And this is infinitely superior to having a few companies control a
standard, then turning to the force of government to to entrench and
protect that standard.
Regards
Craig
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