[opendtv] Serivces and Applications
- From: "John Willkie" <jmwillkie@xxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 09:15:42 -0700
In recent posts on this list on several topics, Kon and I have "converged"
on services and applications.
Services are of course transmitted collections of packet streams.
Applications travel over and use these streams to provide (hopefully) useful
services to consumers.
What tend to be opposed to these concepts is talking about bits. That makes
as much sense as talking about the last 50 years of television but confining
the discussion to ionized atoms. Sure, ionized atoms are essential to
transmission, but people tune in to programs, channels and networks.
There is much technology out there. Some of it has no "useful purpose."
Mostly, it fails.
One of the keys is figuring out how to get from here to a a "rich media
services" model. We can rail about broadcasters defending "the NTSC
franchise" and their "business model." The truth is that the broadcast
business model, in the U.S. and elsewhere, evolved as people tried to figure
out how to run a transmitter as a business or non-profit service.
Dissing broadcasters won't help: they will have much free bandwidth to
offer new services, and will have the incentive to try to make new services
profitable and useable.
Talking about the "lack" of a return channel is not helpful. There are
multiple return channels, for mobile and fixed users, provided one has some
type of an Internet connection. The truth is that these are not likely to
be used much in the next ten or twenty years: most people still use
broadcasting to be entertained or informed, not to interact.
And, there are plenty of complimentary ways to interact, using devices more
suitable to interaction than a button-laden remote control. Like, for
example, a telephone.
John Willkie
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