[opendtv] Re: TVE definition
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 00:11:54 +0000
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
So why did Comcast call off the merger with Time Warner if a national
footprint is no problem, they should have stayed the course. Just
because the Justice Department was saying they were about to block
the deal, and FCC staff recommended blocking it, doesn't mean Comcast
could not have prevailed in the court system.
This is an entirely different topic, and you answered your own question. What
you suggest there is to exacerbate an already bad problem, with local
monopolies gaining even more footprint. What I'm talking about is the opposite.
Compete nationally, yes, but without local monopoly. Compete on an equal basis
with any other OTT site.
If Dish and DirecTV can have a national footprint, why should we care
if the entire cable industry merges under the Comcast banner?
That's obvious, Craig. Why waste time on the obvious? The DBS companies care
because they cannot physically provide their own broadband service. Their days
of being successful old-school MVPD competition are numbered. People need
broadband. The guy who can entice all the luddites with TV plus broadband has
the upper hand. And millennials don't want old-school MVPD service at all. So
"national footprint" is hardly the whole story. A national footprint, offering
an obsolescent service, won't revive that service.
If I were Comcast I would just announce a national VMVPD service and
let the regulators and the content owners sue me.
No problem! Go ahead and try such a scheme. What used to work when you were the
only game in town does not work when you have to compete head to head. There
are any number of very successful OTT sites with national footprint, Craig.
None of them simply copy-cat the old MVPD model. Even the old-school MVPDs are
working hard to slim that old model down. Maybe, just maybe, one OTT site can
try this and be successful at it, but that would only work if all the
old-school facilities-based MVPDs were gone.
The motivation is obvious Bert. The content oligopoly wants you to
have access to all their stuff, and they want you to pay for it.
This is your old saw, Craig, and it's HARDLY the whole story. The simple facts
are, as even your new post on Starz points out, content owners are busy
re-evaluating how they do business. They bypass the MVPD when they see an
advantage, and they've been starting to do so for this past year. I'll repeat,
TVE is a "Hail Mary."
I can't predict what the monopolists will do other than to say they
expect us to spend what we are spending now and a bit more each year,
no matter how the bits are delivered.
That's funny, because I have no problem at all predicting what the content
owners or the MVPDs will do. Because they've been doing it, one step at a time.
I also have no problem predicting that just because these content owners might
want people to spend more, people are not simply saluting and saying "aye aye."
Doesn't matter what the supply side wants, when neutral distribution pipe
competition exists. It has to be a balance now.
You believe the infrastructure is in place today for the switchover
you posit above. But the reality it is not.
Old subject, discussed ad nauseam. You can, however, substantiate your claims,
if you expect that point to stick.
So using your AT&T crappy DSL service to send the request to join
the multicast, and the satellites to deliver the bits makes some
sense.
Try to define completely what you're suggesting. Tell us where the IGMP report
would go to, to tune your DBS box to a broadcast channel. Then explain why this
is any different from just having an old-fashioned telephone line to every DBS
STB, to transmit the channel choices to the MVPD. Or even a slow two-way IP
unicast, for this purpose. Kludging up IP multicast, for something as simple as
this, is what I would call "pretense."
I'll concede that the cabled MVPDs have little reason to change,
especially now that the content owners are working with them to
promote TVE to enable new screens and anytime, anywhere access
to the walled up content.
Well, we did see an article many months ago now, which explained how things
will be unravelling. Remember? The answer was, in short, greed. The article
explained that all it takes is for a few content OWNERS to see an advantage of
breaking out of this old mold, and others would be sure to follow.
We have seen ESPN, HBO, maybe Starz, Showtime, and others, shaking things up,
going direct to consumer, or via much slimmer bundles, in spite of what this
does to the old MVPD model. And we have seen that MVPDs are also starting to
make changes, not just with slimmer bundles, but also operating like
competitive OTT sites. Verizon, for example, doing something slightly similar
to Sling TV, bundle-wise, although stilled walled in.
TVE does not play in any of this. TVE is the old formula, adding only access to
devices other than TV sets. That's why I don't get the fascination for such a
throw-back.
Bert
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