[opendtv] Re: TVE definition
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2015 21:44:32 -0400
On Aug 1, 2015, at 8:06 PM, Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
No need to belabor this, Craig. Like I said, pay Dish a consultation fee, and
they will explain how it's done. These are silly excuses you're making up. If
these MVPDs wanted to unwall themselves, they'd have no trouble at all doing
so. Not sure why you feel this compulsion to make up excuses for them.
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.
If Dish and DirecTV can have a national footprint, why should we care if the
entire cable industry merges under the Comcast banner? Sony is already in the
game; now it looks like Apple will jump in sometime in the next year. And all
your OTT favorites can sell to anyone.
Of course that would mean that Cable Inc. would have the upper hand in the now
regulated broadband business. DBS can't do that, and the telcos have a long way
to go before they can sell you unmetered wireless broadband @ 25 Mbps, the new
FCC standard.
If I were Comcast I would just announce a national VMVPD service and let the
regulators and the content owners sue me. That's kinda what Verizon did with
ESPN.
The state trooper writing a ticket for 150 in a 70 MPH zone does not want to
hear excuses. The regulators only bend so far when one of their monopolists
starts to bend the rules.
You are correct that the MVPDs and content owners are tying the
TVE Internet sites to the sale of the rights for the linear channels,
The only problem is that Craig doesn't get the motivation.
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. And they love the fact
that the MVPDs handle all the messy stuff and just send the big checks.
So they will continue operating as an oligopoly and make their best stuff
available in bundles of 20 or more channels. They may let us start picking and
choosing, but that's risky if you don't get picked.
Here's a thought. If enough households opt out of the MPEG-2 TS broadcast
streams altogether, giving the ISP/MVPD that much more spectrum to use for
2-way service, would those capacity caps ease? Or instead, do you think
there's nothing in there for the MVPD, to push for such a change? That's what
I think.
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.
You believe the infrastructure is in place today for the switchover you posit
above. But the reality it is not. Too many people are still using the MPEG-TS
side of the plant. AT&T expects that they will be able to use those satellites
to deliver linear TV content -via MPEG-TS, or some kind of IP Multicast for
many years to come. And I mean that in the technical sense of IP multicasting.
It's a bit like one of the ATSC 3.0 requirements. The broadcasters and content
owners want to know who is watching what. 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. As you know, DSL is adequate for one stream of an OTT
service. Not so good if four family members want to watch four different HD
programs.
Sounds like a feeble excuse. Franchise agreements don't bind a content OWNER
from selling his product in new ways. The cabled MVPDs, who have a clear role
to play in the future regardless, have no big incentive YET to try to get
agreements allowing them to branch out. Staying walled up suits them just
fine still, so they don't even need to try. The DBS companies have lots of
incentive to make drastic changes. Dish took this unwalled Sling TV tack, and
DirecTV instead is retrenching into the old formula.
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.
The DBS companies have plenty of incentive to keep doing what they are doing.
They have about 35% of all MVPD households and are still taking share away from
cable.
Dish was well positioned to be the industry guinea pig with a low cost, reduced
fat bundle. And AT&T was already selling DirecTV in their bundles.
When someone is well supported on a welfare program, his incentive to go and
compete in the workforce is understandably diminished, or even annihilated.
This is why TVE is modeled as it is, Craig. No need to drum up these "license
terms" excuses. Licensing terms get changed in a heartbeat, when the owners
have an incentive to do so.
Well at least you understand why things are not changing very rapidly.
Regards
Craig
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