[opendtv] Re: Spectrum Repacking Looms for TV Broadcasters
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 10:25:59 -0400
At 3:45 PM -0500 4/2/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
They were given VERY AFFORDABLE DTV receiver boxes that have
served their purpose well.
So were the ATSC STBs very affordable, once the CE vendors quit the
freeze on them. All of the noise about affordabilty and power
requirements was just that -- noise. The problems we had here
getting these blasted boxes had nothing to do with the standard and
everything to do with "business models." If 65-75 percent of our
population insisted on FOTA TV, as is the case in other countries,
you can bet that the 5th gen boxes and the sub $50 boxes would have
been available here in 2003, or earlier, as well. Don't forget how
many years it took before the newest chips were offered in STBs.
Don't forget LG's position wrt their 5th gen chip and its use in
STBs.
Only the government cheese boxes were affordable and they were
subsidized to the tune of $30 billion.
There are a wide range of receivers available for DVB-T, many with
advanced features like DVRs. Other than a few left over boxes from
the NTIA program, it is still VERY DIFFICULT to find ATSC set-top
boxes in the U.S., and there are few if any with advanced features.
Perhaps one reason it took so long to get affordable ATSC boxes that
actually worked here in the U.S. is related to the complexity of the
receivers? The DVB-T boxes did not need the complex equalizers that
had to be built to make ATSC work. Once again Moore's Law came to the
rescue of vendors who waited long enough for the chip technology to
make them affordable.
Now that HD is a viable industry Euro consumers have the option
to buy new displays and receivers that are still backward compatible
with the DVB-T system.
What? There is nothing backward compatible about DVB-T2 that
wouldn't also be backward compatible if we introduced DVB-T2 here.
As I said MANY times over the years, and as we have seen with the
growth of media computing devices, the old standards do not need to
be retired, you just add new layers and keep supporting the old ones.
So new DVB-T2 receivers will also support the earlier DVB-T modes.
The point is, we got our HD from the start, without needing an
upgrade to introduce three or four HD channels. It's beyond me how
that is construed as being a bad thing.
It took a decade for HD to take off here; it was sports that finally
made it happen, followed by the rapid growth of HD channels on cable
and DBS. We got the less than exciting privilege of helping the CE
industry work through the development of affordable HD displays,
starting with analog projection, while the lithographed panel display
technologies we predicted would emerge from the computer industry
developed.
The Europeans got near HD quality that was affordable; we got the
same thing via SD-DVD, which was the real driver of HD display
technology in the U.S.
The world is now ready for HD.
We subsidized the development.
Regards
Craig
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