[opendtv] Re: Twang's Tuesday Tribune (Mark's Monday Memo)
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 11:49:34 -0400
At 10:41 AM -0700 4/30/04, Kon Wilms wrote:
>http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0EIN/2000_April_9/61390745/p1/article.jh
>tml
Backhaul.
Read it again:
With headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Geocast Network Systems,
Inc. is building a new national distribution network that leverages
digital broadcast infrastructure to deliver personalized rich-media
information and programming to the PC desktop. Geocast has developed
agreements with leaders in the broadcast, programming and consumer
electronics industries. These partnerships include Hearst-Argyle
Television, Inc., Electronic Arts, Belo Corp., Liberty Media Group,
THOMSON multimedia, Allbritton Communications and Royal Philips
Electronics For more information, visit the Geocast website at
http://www.geocast.com.
>
>Read it and weep. Same goes for the other two mentioned. The problem was not
>the fragile network, it was their 'brick' receiver. A local content cache
>that I hit with my web browser, filled with stuff I can get online -- or at
>least, I can't really *tell the difference* if I'm just a stupid user.
You clearly do not know what happened. Geocast was failing before
they ever deployed a receiver. As I said, the infrastructure was too
fragile to support the business. No doubt there may have been
problems with the early definition of a receiver. One of these is
that many vendors felt that they needed to offer a full ATSC receiver
implementation, encumbering what would other wise have been a
relatively inexpensive demod and transport stream parser.
But I digress.
>
>>The business model is valid. But you cannot launch a product that
>must be sold at retail and installed by consumers, where there is a
>risk that upwards of 25% of the receivers will be returned.
>
>If it is so valid why are they out of business. Oh that's right, they were
>delivering web pages to the device. Weather forecasts. News. Silly me.
>Everyone wants that - why I'll just run down to the store to buy a $300
>device that will get me the same stuff I pay for monthly through my DSL
>connection.
Huh. Can't you read?
Do you remember when the PC industry had to deal with the early
Multimedia PC disaster? I'm talking about the early '90s when nearly
25% of Multimedia PC upgrades were being returned because the
out-of-the-box experience was such a disaster. These upgrades
involved little more than a CD drive and a sound card. But the PC
environment was so uncontrolled, and so much content was created to
specific hardware implementations, that a huge percentage of these
upgrades did not work, resulting in a return rate above 25% for both
the hardware upgrades and new multimedia CD content titles. The
industry had to retrench and create standards to address the
incompatibilities...but the ultimate solution was to wait for
hundreds of millions of PCs to trashed and upgraded with more
powerful systems with proper integration.
GeoCast did the studies and found that the difficulty in establishing
reliable reception invalidated the entire business model .
>
>Geocast entered the market with their device just as cablemodems and DSL
>started to arrive and flood the internet market. That is what killed their
>chances (and basically any other type of datacasting I can think of except
>for a few).
Apples and oranges. Geocast was not representing its business model
as competition for broadband. Perhaps this is where you are getting
confused. These service are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
>
>>It complements these pipes for this application, allowing you to
>update caches in things that are not connected to wires.
>
>Like what? You're waving your hands around but not telling me anything :) I
>should remind you that many of the partner companies these datacasting
>companies use just give them basic content. So if it's a Gamespot, they make
>a webpage and give them some downloads. If its an EA, they give them some
>game demos. I have yet to see any place go out of its way to create
>something that you cannot get over connected wires like DSL.
Go back and read the previous messages in this thread. Or similar
threads in the annals of OpenDTV. I am not hand waving...
You are not paying attention.
>
>>Movies? Nope, got blockbuster down the road, or cable/sat. tv.
>
>>Ever hear of Dotcast...they are using NTSC to deliver movie bits for
>Disney.
>
>At 320x240 resolution, with time restricted viewing, and cache expiration.
>Oh yes, the way to supplant the local mom and pop video store is to offer a
>more restrictive viewing experience with a lower quality and a higher priced
>box that is a one-trick pony. I already remarked months ago that this is
>doomed unless something changes. I'll be sticking by that statement. Its
>limping right now (subs are signing up in droves, right?), but it will
>eventually fall over.
Huh?
Better take a closer look at what they are doing.
I'm not saying that the service is viable. But it is clearly possible.
What I am proposing is an infrastructure that delivers MANY bit rate
intensive applications to the masses. Movies, and everything else you
listed are simply applications.
>
>>Games? Nope, got Gamespot on the Cable/DSL modem.
>
>>The future of games appears to be on-line gaming. You need a good
>two-way pipe to play in this market.
>
>Thanks for pointing out one of the failures of the Geocast business model
>(and whats even more strange is that others have tried this *after* they
>failed).
Geocast was not "playing games." iBlast did launch a game application
in the LA market. Needless to say if failed.
>
>So that means they want to datacast?
This was your example, not mine. This is NOT to say, however, that
there are not HUGE applications for the distribution of educational
content to local caches (classrooms in schools) via a ubiquitous DTV
infrastructure. My spectrum utility would reserve a portion of the
available bandwidth for public services including the distribution of
content to schools.
And by the way, many school districts are using broadcast
technologies to do this today.
> I think not. I can give you prime
>examples of this from people that actually make those courses and print that
>material - 'we have no need to datacast this because we only print cds once
>a year and distribute them quarterly. No-one is going to buy a receiver to
>use 4x a year, and there isn't anything else we want to stuff down the pipe
>-we're already overworked and without budget to do anything substantial to
>recoup those costs'. This from a *statewide* distributor for K-whatever
>colleges via DVD/CD.
They must conform their business models to what is possible today.
And they are in the business of selling "atoms," not bits. They gain
considerable control over the use of their content by locking it to a
physical medium. It is, of course, possible to broadcasts bits and
have a similar level of control. But it takes infrastructure. You
need to think about the distribution of K-12 courseware and real time
updates from teachers to local caches, both in the schools and in the
homes of students. I sure would have loved to be able to pull up the
courses my kids were taking, to see what the real homework
assignments were, or to receive an e-mail from a teacher when my kids
screwed up.
Yes, I said an e-mail. But not in the traditional sense. If every
receiver has a distinct IP address, and you give that address to
someone, they can send you a message via a one-way data broadcast
system. So imagine that a teacher has the address for every student
in the class, be it a traditional 2-way e-mail address or a 1-way
message delivery system. The teacher can blast messages to every
student, or send personal messages to individual students. This can
all be done by subscribing a STB to a data broadcast service that is
updated once a day during off-peak hours.
>
>>They did not fail because of the lack of a viable market. They have
>failed due to the lack of a viable infrastructure. And to a lesser
>extent, they have been waiting for the technology to mature so that
>cheap, reliable receivers can be deployed.
>
>Nonsense. They *all* failed because of lack of a viable market.
There would be a viable market for alternative energy sources -
biomass, solar, hydrogen powered cars, etc. - if gas prices soared to
$3-4 per gallon. As always, markets form around current realities,
and the current reality is that the owners of the Beach-front
spectrum property do not want to see it used for competitive
application or new incumbents that might put a dent in their current
cash cow.
>
>>What we are talking about here is working together to enable markets.
>There are more than enough powerful interests who DO NOT want to see
>this stuff happen, who will tell you that there is no market.
>
>I get that all the time. :)
You get this because it is true. Now the public is beginning to
understand this reality and they are beginning to put pressure on the
politicians to do something about it. Even the broadcasters
themselves are waking up and asking the politicians to do something
about consolidation and the abuse of the power enjoyed by the media
conglomerates.
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts: