[opendtv] Re: Technology years
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:33:47 -0500
At 5:46 PM -0500 1/19/07, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
If they choose not to, even after adequately functioning parts have been
available for a few years for very reasonable rates, then something's
fishy.
The companies that Bert is talking about would logically have built
stand alone STB devices, not integrated tuners for TV sets, although
the Nokia Media screen might have qualified as a receiver and display
- but the power demands still make a product like the Media Screen a
tenuous proposition for any OTA DTV standard.
The reality Bert is that there is not a sufficient consumer market
for OTA STBs in the U.S. No need to go through all the reasons again,
but bottom line the numbers do not add up for most manufacturers. I
suspect what Nokia and others were hoping for, was an initiative by
some broadcaster or entrepreneurial type to commit to a large
production run of boxes to launch a service. TO date the only example
of this has been USDTV, and that has been a dismal failure, with most
of the first generation boxes sold at fire sale prices at Walmart.
Perhaps a better example would be to look at the success of the iPod.
Many people tend to think in terms of the iPod as the center of
Apples music universe. But in reality, the center of that universe is
iTunes and the iTunes store. The iPod is just the portability
element, as the new Apple TV is just the "iPod" for the big screen
TV. The reality of Apple's success is that iTunes allows consumers to
fully exploit their music collection, and to add to that collection
via the iTunes store. Building on the success of that core business,
Apple has been able to build new businesses such as Podcasting, movie
trailers, and now video.
Broadcasters COULD have leveraged their core TV content business to
build other new businesses, if they had taken the initiative to build
and promote a compelling DTV platform, capable of supporting the core
business and new businesses such as "push broadcasting" (to local
cache), data broadcasting, and ...
Instead they have used DTV to prolong the life expectancy of their
analog cash cow, and as Mark, Nat and others have noted, it is
getting tougher to figure out how to make a buck with DTV.
Regards
Craig
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