Digital TV Facts: The Latest

After tomorrow, subscribers to plain-old cable service may finally be assured of continued access to local stations. Cable carriage of local channels after completion of the digital TV transition will be addressed at the FCC’s public meeting on Tuesday, and commissioners might just approve a proposal from Chairman Kevin Martin to require cable operators to set aside enough channel slots to provide stations in both digital and analog form. If such a measure moves forward, customers without digital cable service would still be able to watch local stations on conventional television sets without needing to add a digital cable box.

After the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009, cable customers are likely to continue receiving most or all of the local stations they receive today, one way or another. The details remain uncertain, however, despite a reported $200 million advertising campaign launched by the cable TV industry last week intended to assure cable subscribers that everything will be fine.

I would not like to see cable customers saddled with digital cable set-top boxes that they would not otherwise need—a senseless waste of energy that would probably also stick consumers with additional monthly fees.

But a solution imposed by the FCC may also harm consumers. Read the rest of this entry »

A cable company scheme to make hay from the digital TV transition has entered a new phase. An Ohio cable operator, as you may recall, floated a plan to offer local channels for free via cable TV in lieu of government-discounted DTV converter boxes. Two other small cable companies are now on board, TWICE reports, and a web site has been launched under the banner of the “Save Our Sets Coalition” (SOS).

As I’ve said before, this is an innovative plan. But the air of disingenuousness about it is just getting thicker. Read the rest of this entry »

Local TV stations will be shifting to different channels, in many cases, because of the transition to digital television. The FCC has spent years trying to painstakingly determine which stations will go where. Now a prominent broadcast technology consultant suggests it’s time to start over.

That daring suggestion, from Charles W. Rhodes of TV Technology, arises from concern that over-the-air digital TV reception is threatened by interference. Read the rest of this entry »

News roundup time, video rangers:

• Spectrum wars: The broadcasting lobby isn’t so powerful after all, Drew Clark maintains. Oh, and forget about “white spaces.” What would it take to make them vacate the airwaves?

• DTV communications job: Powerful or not, the National Association of Broadcasters seeks a communications coordinator for the digital television transition.

• Must-carry-go-round: At Multichannel News, Todd Spangler on dual must-carry and Tom Steinert-Threlkeld on multicast must-carry.

• EU pushes mobile DTV: The European Commission adopts a mobile TV strategy encouraging the use of DVB-H as a single European standard.

• Goin’ all-digital in Kentucky: WLJC-TV of Beattybille, Ky., will cease broadcasting on analog channel 65 and operate WLJC-DT as a single channel, digital-only station on DTV channel 7 [pdf].

As momentum builds for the digital TV transition, Motorola has been notably absent from the DTV converter box party. Consumer electronics firms that have announced digital-to-analog converter boxes include LG, Thomson/RCA, Samsung and Jasco/GE. The devices, sometimes called digital TV adapters, will allow conventional television sets to continue taking in over-the-air broadcasts after the analog TV shutdown on February 17, 2009.

Motorola announced today that it will combine its TV set-top box business with its network equipment business, according to Reuters. The company, along with Scientific Atlanta, is a leading maker of cable boxes. Motorola demonstrated a prototype cable box with built-in digital broadcast tuner at the 2007 Cable Show in May.

But what about DTV converter boxes for antenna-only viewers?
Read the rest of this entry »

ABC plans to transform its low-profile broadband news channel into a full-blown cable network, according to TVNewsday. In its latest vision for ABC News Now, the network would partner with affiliates to offer local segments every half-hour. Station owners might love the idea, but it’s a raw deal for the public.

When ABC News Now launched on a test basis in 2004, it was available free over the air for several months on local multicast DTV channels. We won’t see that again, apparently—and it gets worse:

In addition to supplying the local news segments, the ABC affiliates would be expected to integrate the local and national feeds and distribute the package to local cable operators via a fiber or microwave link or by broadcasting it in encrypted form over a digital channel.

Because of the encryption, viewers with digital TVs would not be able to receive the service off the air.

That would be an outrage.
Read the rest of this entry »

Local digital TV broadcasts would be available on mobile phones and handhelds, including free and paid services, according to a mobile TV roadmap from the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

Ad-supported television programming, video on demand and datacasting are among the services envisioned for the ATSC M/H standard, the ATSC’s Jerry Whitaker writes in TV Technology.

The standards group wants to ensure that new mobile TV services use spectrum efficiently enough not to crowd out existing HDTV telecasts. DTV receivers in use today probably would not be able to display the mobile DTV services. But any new services must operate on broadcasters’ DTV channels “without adverse impact on existing receiving equipment.”

The ATSC M/H standard is “a major priority in the ATSC strategic plan,” Whitaker writes, which “recognizes a growing consensus that mobile and handheld capability is essential to the future of local broadcasting.” Rather than starting from scratch, the new standard may incorporate mobile TV technologies already in development. The ATSC M/H timeline sounds pretty ambitious: Station owners hope to announce mobile DTV services before the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009.

• Link: TV Technology

A small cable operator wants the federal DTV coupon program to change—in a big way. Under the proposal,

a broadcast-only home that obtained a $40 coupon to buy a digital-to-analog converter box under the federal subsidy program would receive free analog-basic cable for seven years on every TV set in the home, with free installation.

Providing free cable, instead of inexpensive DTV converter boxes, would constitute a radical overhaul of the coupon program. The plan, from Massillon Cable TV of Massillon, Ohio, is utterly thought-provoking. It merits serious discussion, I would argue, ignoring for the moment the small fact that it is doomed.

If you just want to participate in the coupon program, it almost certainly won’t change because of this proposal. Have a look at our DTV coupon section instead:

• DTV converter box coupons

But if you care to reimagine the future of local television, read on. Read the rest of this entry »

Future uses for analog TV spectrum (in the 700 MHz band) are the topic of a Senate hearing tomorrow. Missing from the agenda, according to David S. Isenberg: Anyone “representing the public’s interest” in allocating a channel or two to unlicensed spectrum.

“Avowed free-market capitalist” Andy Kessler made the case a while back for why a just-sell-it-to-Verizon approach serves neither the public nor open markets.

…auctioning off this 700-MHz block is so last century. The lower the frequency, the further signals can travel without degrading, better to penetrate homes and offices. This is a desirable chunk of spectrum. But why not just make it an unlicensed band? Entrepreneurs will come up with more interesting services than cellphone operators who think text messaging is somehow worth 10 cents a pop.

Broadcasters worry, with some justification, that opening up spectrum to everyone puts TV reception at risk from interference. That issue needs to be resolved, and the transition to digital TV in 2009 needs to be protected. But Washington needs to look at the long term, from every side, before they go and auction off beachfront spectrum forever. If broadcasters can’t co-exist with free uses, then we need to examine the possibility that too much spectrum is devoted to broadcasting.

Those airwaves belong to the public, and some well-informed members thereof are clamoring for more access. To do what? We don’t exactly know. We didn’t know we needed Wi-Fi, which uses unlicensed spectrum, until someone invented it. The public at large is unaware of the debate—which creates ideal conditions for spectrum monopolists to add to their holdings and extract rents from a captive public.

• Links: isen.blog, Kessler

A novel alternative to the converter-box coupon subsidy, from Nolan Bowie at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government:

A better solution would be for Congress to provide subsidies in the form of means-tested “digital TV credits” to enable low-income families to purchase basic digital TV-video offerings from a multi-channel video service provider, whether that be a phone company or cable TV or satellite TV service. Congress could then make better and more efficient uses of the public airwaves by reallocating much of the television broadcasting spectrum for unlicensed broadband. This would help ensure universal access to high-speed broadband connectivity to the Internet and alternative forms of information, news, and entertainment.

Pay TV subsidies? I don’t think so. At $80, two digital TV adapter coupons enable a viewing household to receive several more years of broadcast programming. The same amount buys perhaps a month or two of cable or DirecTV (assuming you can wangle a free-installation deal).

He muffs the coupon program’s details and the distinctions between HDTV and SDTV. Nonetheless, Bowie’s proposal, while tardy and, let’s face it, dead on arrival, raises relevant issues. A drive to assure fast, cheap, network-neutral broadband access for all Americans would benefit the nation more than outdated federal policies (including mandated cable carriage) that indirectly subsidize TV broadcasters.

Bowie frets that DTV multicasting will exacerbate media-ownership concentration:

Once the transition into digital is completed, a single firm like Clear Channel or General Electric could, by maximizing the number of radio and TV channels ultimately have as many as 58-100 broadcast voices in the same community by compressing their digital frequencies.

Media concentration remains a huge problem, but multicasting doesn’t necessarily make it any worse (especially if it merely subdivides an already concentrated audience—which would amount to a small improvement, actually). But if Kevin Martin succeeds in greasing the wheels for multicast must-carry, smaller stations with fewer resources could lose audience share to stronger competitors who can program multicast channels more efficiently.

In the unlikely event that broadcasters find a way to offer multicast fare compelling enough to capture a meaningful audience, they might even win back some of the pay-TV audience. The way things are going now, however, I don’t think we’re heading into a new era of broadcast dominance. The more likely scenario is an acceleration of audience splintering, continued erosion of broadcast audiences, and eventual pleas from station owners for fresh forms of government help as smaller stations struggle for survival in an overchanneled era. The amount of spectrum dedicated to over-the-air television in the U.S. may actually be excessive, as Bowie contends.

Rather than concocting new schemes for bolstering broadcast hegemony, the FCC must come to terms with the changing communications landscape. Martin should put broadcasters on notice: they face a reinvent-or-die scenario, and now is the time—if it is not, in fact, already too late—to reimagine their future.

More on the future of TV:
• The system is broken
• What’s wrong with the FCC?
• Will TV’s new rules serve big players or public?

• Link: Boston Globe

Samsung today announced a new digital TV chip that is said to offer substantially improved over-the-air reception. The technology behind its S5H1411 chip “boasts a 30 percent higher reception success rate than the company’s previous generation digital TV receiver chip released in 2005,” according to Samsung. That claim echoes the 30 percent improvement in receiver performance cited by another Korean manufacturer, LG Electronics, when it unveiled its sixth-generation DTV chip last December.

With the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts throughout the U.S. scheduled for Feb. 18, 2009, the prospect of increasingly robust digital reception may just save the day. As recently as 2005, Sinclair Broadcasting warned that deficiencies inherent in the digital broadcasting standard approved by the FCC would imperil the future of over-the-air TV. Many viewers who had long been satisfied with the reception available through a basic indoor antenna were disappointed to learn that a rooftop model was necessary to watch digital stations. A significant problem for DTV viewers in urban areas was “multipath” interference.

But multipath no longer is a worry, according to LG and Samsung, whose chipsets will also be available to other digital TV manufacturers. If Americans can get crystal-clear HDTV channels over the air for free, it might—just might—be a game-changer for broadcasters.

Because digital TV uses spectrum more efficiently than analog, each local station could offer five or six channels if it wanted to (at the expense of HD broadcasts, by the way); the additional channels are known as multicasts. Just imagine having 30-plus channels of free TV available in metropolitan areas—better yet, don’t imagine it; just go to Britain, where that scenario is already a reality. People like Andrew D. Cotlar have said that the U.S. should follow Britain’s Freeview model, bringing an expanded selection of cable-style channels to antenna households. Until recently I’ve been a skeptic, given the problems that threatened the viability of digital broadcasting in the U.S.

But if more Americans will be able to count on reliable digital broadcasts, local broadcasters may see a chance to win back some market share from cable and direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) television services.

Several hurdles remain, however. The increasing popularity of HD broadcasts in the U.S. leaves less spectrum available for adding new channels. Digital broadcast penetration in the U.S., while growing, is still nowhere near the level of Britain, where, thanks to the multiplicity of channels, more viewers watch digital TV broadcasts than analog. Antenna viewers in the U.S. will be forced to switch to digital within the next two years, of course. But 85 percent of domestic television households subscribe to cable or satellite systems, which are unlikely to add local multicast channels to their lineups unless the government makes them or, perhaps, broadcasters pay them. (Mandatory cable carriage would probably do more than anything else to promote multicasting, though I am still not really sold on that approach.)

Where does that leaves us? Well, I doubt that broadcasters will offer large numbers of cable-style channels until more viewers are actually capable of receiving them. But as digital TVs and converter boxes equipped with decent tuners find a place in more American households, more multicast channels may reach the airwaves. If broadcast networks would provide additional programming feeds to their affiliates, packed with shows that viewers might actually watch, that could start the ball rolling. (I wouldn’t expect the locals to produce much in the way of new programming, given the costs.) Some of the new channels might even be aimed at mobile TV viewers, given recent advances in ATSC’s potential for mobile reception.

Does large-scale multicasting have any chance of grabbing a meaningful slice of the audience at the expense of pay-TV providers? Perhaps not, at this late date. But if broadcasters can find some way to make multicasts profitable, well—it might just save their hides.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is moving forward his surprising proposal to mandate cable carriage for leased multicast channels:

According to FCC aides and published reports, Martin’s plan calls for allowing TV stations to lease surplus digital-TV spectrum to FCC-approved entities — most likely small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Lessees would have mandatory cable-carriage rights.

While the idea of giving even more cable channels to broadcasters has never made much sense to me, any proposal that would increase the diversity of programming in a meaningful way is worth giving a closer look. We won’t really be able to evaluate Martin’s plan until its details are known, but it certainly sounds better than the more straightforward giveaway to broadcasters he tried to ram through before.

Martin has managed to revive the moribund issue of multicast must-carry with a politically astute move that may appeal to Democratic commissioners. Is it an unlikely strategy for a Bush-appointed FCC commissioner? Perhaps not, given that the ostensibly conservative Bush administration, which has expanded government while presiding over fiscal recklessness, has a record of rewarding political friends at the expense of its professed free-market principles. Those friends, in this instance, would include faith-based groups that have long advocated multicast carriage mandates as a means of protecting or expanding religious programming.

The must-carry regime, I still maintain, is fundamentally broken. If must-carry privileges are extended under the theory of promoting media access, we can expect broadcasters to ultimately demand carriage rights for their own multicast programming as they increasingly face financial peril in years to come.

The FCC’s expansion of low-power television (LPTV) service, beginning in the 1980s, was supposed to promote minority ownership and community programming. (The FCC has never granted blanket must-carry rights to LPTV.) LPTV has never quite lived up to its promise, however, given minimal minority ownership, low viewership and a lack of ownership caps. Home to religious programming, infomercials and even some genuine community-produced programming, LPTV is now an afterthought in the digital TV transition. Its future looks less than promising.

Would prospects for leased multicast channels be any brighter? With cable carriage, perhaps. If Martin’s plan includes strong safeguards to ensure true programming diversity, I might actually favor it. Of course, antenna-equipped viewers who have purchased HDTVs might not appreciate the squeeze on high-definition signals (due to finite bandwidth) that might be necessitated by multicast expansion.

• Link: Multichannel News