[opendtv] Re: TV Technology: Netflix Users Watch 10 TV Shows a Week

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 08:36:40 -0500

On Nov 7, 2015, at 8:00 PM, Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Finally something sensible. Yes, a wholesale abolishment of any kind of
broadcasting, and moving to broadband distribution exclusively, would require
first that the lifeline service be updated to broadband, rather than just a
telephone line. This is the extreme scenario, obviously, which is not the
best way of making any transition.

Given the fact that the FCC claims that 17% of U.S. homes lack access to what
they define as broadband, clearly broadcast TV still serves its basic mission.

That's far simpler. Anyone on cable, just about, can subscribe to broadband.
Most people with DBS subscriptions, I have to believe, already have broadband
service. We've already seen that 70% of homes have broadband, and what these
numbers call "broadband" is much more than what's necessary for TV. So the
transition away from MPEG-2 TS broadcast streams is a lot more feasible than
you like to pretend.

We just did the math Bert. The cable industry cannot do it today without nearly
doubling the number of PONs, and then you need to accommodate nearly 40 million
DBS subscribers. Yes, some of the DBS subscribers buy broadband from the cable
systems, but they are included in the 500 homes per PON average. And then there
are nearly 10 million homes like yours that subscribe to DSL, which in most
cases cannot support HDTV at all.

The required infrastructure is not in place and will not be for a number of
years.

More arm-waving BS. We've covered this many times.

It's a fact Bert. Get over it.

Where am I arguing out of both sides of my mouth, Craig? What don't you
understand that gives you that impression? If you give a home, say, 3 or 4
Mb/s, that's plenty adequate for TV streams, even if they won't be true HD.

So you say. I replaced that service with real broadband because it could not
support watching TV without periodic interruptions for rebuffering. And why is
SDTV good enough, after nearly two decades of you extolling the virtues of
HDTV?

What you need to do is offer at a minimum, the quality currently delivered by
the MVPDs and broadcasters if you are going to deliver everything over the
Internet. That is not possible today for everyone, but is possible for those
who want to make the switch.

I showed you the numbers. The cable companies would have little trouble doing
this, and they can put the onus on the subscriber to buy the necessary modem,
if they don't have these deployed yet. (I.e., a modem which may use more 6
MHz channels for DOCSIS than their proprietary ones may be capable of.) The
old proprietary rental equipment the cable companies laboriously deployed,
which was their own decision to do, if it can't handle the expanded DOCSIS
service, oh well, so sad.

No you proved my point. With 500 subscribers per PON the best you could do is
about 11 Mbps, less than half of what is needed.

You'll have a few tough cases, mostly rural, where people have no access to
that much bandwidth from a cabled service. But for that, either satellite
broadband or newer WISP services would be the answer. All of this is
happening, Craig. Your "it would take decades" is simply uninformed.

First I've never said decades. I've said it is not possible today. The reality
is that it may take another decade or longer, because so many people have no
good reason to switch. The MVPDs are managing the transition based on the
demand they see. There's a reason nearly 40 million homes subscribe to a DBS
service...

This old mantra again. I not only championed the built-in ATSC tuner, I also
championed built-in Internet reception, when that became a popular option.
Which it has done. Matter of fact, the reason I use a PC is because I got
tired of waiting for these "on the take" connected TV, or connected BluRay,
or streaming boxes, to put out a product that wasn't unnecessarily crippled.

It was YOUR mantra.

Now you have a new mantra.

So your answer is just shut down broadcast TV in the U.S. - obviously there
is
no good reason for ATSC 3.0 or continuing to waste spectrum on FOTA TV...

What has my repeated position on ATSC 3.0 been?

That they need to compete with the telcos and cable systems and build out a
wireless broadband infrastructure with high cell density.


Regards
Craig

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