Digital TV Facts: The Latest

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 A drive to assure fast, cheap, network-neutral broadband access for all Americans would benefit the nation more than outdated federal policies (including mandated cable carriage) that indirectly subsidize TV broadcasters.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

Speaking of converter boxes and unveilings, I’ll mention our new Converter Box section that went up this week. I hope it will have everything you want to know about those little boxes that will give your old analog TV a new lease on life after February 17, 2009.

Today’s New York Times article on converter boxes was a good piece, by the way. Blogger Chris’s take:

It’s the first article I’ve seen in a major publication that actually gets the details of the transition right.

Coverage of the DTV conversion by most newspapers has improved, I believe. Jaques Steinberg deserves bonus points for his nuanced, if brief, mention of satellite and cable customers: they are, he wrote, “not expected to have much disruption.” That’s essentially true. For the rest of the story, see these articles:

• Digital TV Facts for cable subscribers

• Digital TV Facts for satellite subscribers

So, all praise for The New York Times. (I frankly don’t know what we would do without it, and I don’t ever want to find out.) But allow me, if you will, to make one tiny observation about that article, a thoroughly objective one.

It didn’t mention this site.

Well, it’s no surprise that he sends people to the DTV sites put up by the FCC and the broadcasters who lobby them. Those sites are worth looking at, certainly. (What’s more, people know they exist.) They each give you part of the story of the digital TV conversion, from the point of view of a government bureaucracy and the industry it regulates. They will help you through the digital transition.

DTV Facts isn’t as pretty as the broadcasters’ site or as noisy as the FCC’s (which actually scares me every time I go there, even after I switched to the green tea). We’re your unofficial digital TV site, by no means the only one, and I hope we touch on all relevant sides of the story. The move to digital TV has fascinated me from the beginning, so I decided to write about it. That’s my television background. (Well, that and a brief stint as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 intern.) So I am connected neither to the industry nor to what passes for our government, and, you know, my heart is pretty pure for our times.

Finally, I believe you’ll find more about digital-to-analog converter boxes here than at those other two sites. I’ll be adding to the new section as we go. If it doesn’t give you everything you want to know, please get in touch and tell me what’s missing.

Related:
• Our Converter Box section

These posts are now available by email. So why miss a single moment of the digital TV transition?

• Digital TV Facts free email subscriptions

When it comes to the digital TV transition, over-the-air TV viewers are acting like couch potatoes.

The rabbit-ears set is apparently in no hurry to buy digital TV sets or subscribe to cable or satellite TV, according to a study from the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS):

In the past three years over-the- air households purchased new TV sets at about a 12 percent to 13 percent rate each year. In comparison, cable and satellite homes bought new TVs at an 18 percent rate per year. For example, the number of cable/satellite households that owned a digital television grew from 4.49 percent in the first quarter of 2005 to 23.45 percent in the first quarter of 2007. However, the percentage of over-the-air households that owned a digital television only grew from 1.96 percent to 7.12 percent over that same period.

Of the 22 million U.S. households that get their television exclusively free and over-the-air, only 7 percent own a digital television, compared to 23 percent of those who subscribe to cable or satellite.

The study is the latest alarm bell from APTS, which revealed in January that 61 percent of over-the-air households were entirely unaware of the DTV transition, according to a survey it commissioned.

“Our study confirms that the government grossly under-funded consumer education when it mandated the end of television as most people know it by February 2009,” said APTS President and CEO John Lawson. “We need a Y2K-level effort to ensure that people are aware that their older TV sets will go dark in 21 months if they don’t acquire a digital converter, buy a new set or incur the monthly cost of a cable or satellite bill.”

• Google proposes real-time auction for analog TV spectrum

• DirecTV sues Comcast over HDTV quality claims

• Canada will end analog TV broadcasts on August 31, 2011

• Mitsubishi introduces all-1080p line of HDTVs

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.

Digital TV transition assistance, in the form of government-provided $40 coupons, will be available to every American household beginning in 2008. The federal subsidy will reduce the cost to U.S. consumers who purchase a set-top converter box, which will allow conventional analog TVs to continue receiving over-the-air broadcasts following the transition to digital television. Analog broadcasts cease after Feb. 17, 2009.

Today’s announcement from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is much in keeping with its earlier proposals, with one significant exception: Households that subscribe to cable or satellite TV service will also be eligible for the coupon program in its $990 million initial phase. If demand for coupons exhausts first-phase funding, the NTIA will allocate an additional $510 million to the program, but subsidies for phase two will be limited to over-the-air households. The federal funding won’t cover every existing antenna-equipped analog TV set, according to some estimates, though many traditional TVs have already been replaced with high-definition models equipped with built-in digital tuners. But once the government money is spent, consumers will be on their own—so it might pay to apply early.

Cable or satellite subscribers will not generally need a box of this type, however, except for use with a “spare” television set that is not connected to the pay-TV service.

Coupon program essentials:

• Households must request coupons from NTIA between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009.

• Consumer coupon requests will be taken via a toll-free customer support center, a Web site, fax, and through the mail.

• Upon request, a maximum of up to two coupons will be sent to households via the United States Postal Service and will expire three months after they are mailed.

Details are available in this NTIA fact sheet [pdf]. And you can expect further updates on the converter box coupon program, of course, right here at Digital TV Facts.

Local stations, aware of the increasing value of their HDTV programming, are withholding their HD signals from cable systems in some markets. Phillip Swann thinks the FCC should step in to settle such disputes between stations and cable or satellite companies:

If it doesn’t, high-def set sales will begin to decline and the nation’s plan to switch to Digital TV signals on February 17, 2009 could be imperiled.

Give me a break. The federal government’s job is not to sell high-priced TV sets. Moreover, in focusing on HD signals, he’s missing the point. There isn’t one little thing that’s broken about local carriage disputes. The whole system is broken.

Television station owners are free to demand payments (or other consideration) for carriage of their analog programming, under a set of rules known as retransmission consent. An ownership group with sufficient leverage will want such payments, and demand for high-definition programming increases their leverage. As I’ve long noted, the rules most directly protect stations, not viewers.

But let’s step back from the present disputes and ask a more fundamental question: Why should owning a broadcast tower be the key to controlling prime channel slots on a local cable system? Please don’t say, “Because we’ve always done it that way”—I’m not interested in lazy answers, thank you. The original intent, you’ll recall, was to promote local programming. Local television programming was supposed to be essential to the functioning of a vibrant democracy, informing the citizenry, all that kind of stuff, back in the day. (It was, I’m totally serious!) Decades ago, when subscription television was in its infancy, few sources of locally produced content were available, and producing it was expensive. Protecting the privileged role of the stations that license the public airwaves made a kind of sense.

Today, however, you and I and the neighbors can all produce and distribute content—a very fine place to do that is the internet, incidentally—with a minimal investment. If we want local content on cable and satellite systems, why not set aside a certain number of channel slots and let broadcasters compete with citizens, public access providers, local newspapers and others for those channels.

If what people are worried about is network programming, I don’t understand their concern. If the producers of network programming have a valuable product, cable and satellite systems (and, of course, their customers) will pay for it. Network programming doesn’t have to be distributed through an antiquated system of local affiliates—in fact, major networks are already distributing their shows directly to viewers through the internet and other platforms.

If you don’t want to pay for the programming on local channels, then yank that cable out from the back of your set and dust off your old antenna. News flash: HD programming is available for free, right over the air! If we’re going to continue devoting very valuable broadcast spectrum to local television stations, somebody should probably watch the actual broadcasts. If we stop forcing subscription TV services to carry local stations, broadcasters might even offer more and better programming on the additional channels granted to them through the switch to digital television. Across the Atlantic, free digital TV is already giving British pay-TV services a run for their money.

• Link: TV Predictions

Public TV stations are urging Congress to mandate digital carriage on satellite TV services for all their programming—including HD productions and multicasts.

The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) scored a multicast victory in 2005, securing additional channel slots on major cable systems. But deals with DirecTV and EchoStar’s Dish Network remain out of reach, according to the association.

• Link: press release

Mobile digital TV transmissions using A-VSB technology, demonstrated by Samsung at the Consumer Electronics Show, won mostly favorable press coverage last week. The proposed A-VSB standard shows real promise for delivering ATSC digital TV broadcasts—over the public airwaves—to mobile devices. Here’s a big question, though, about A-VSB:

What about HDTV?

While A-VSB really isn’t envisioned for HD broadcasts, a station using the technology might be in a position to shortchange its high-definition programming for home viewers. Doug Lung, in another indispensable “RF Report” post, quantifies the problem:

For broadcasters, the cost in terms of bandwidth for transmitting a signal like the one transmitted on Channel 22 by KVMY for the demonstration may be more than they can afford. The demonstration used quarter rate coding, which meant 3 Mbps were needed to transmit a 750 Kbps media stream. In addition to that, an additional 2.8 Mbps was used by the supplemental reference signal (SRS). This barely leaves enough room to transmit one HDTV program.

To support mobile TV, a station that multicasts could choose to degrade its HD broadcasts. Lung notes, however, that the Advanced Television Systems Committee

will be conducting tests of the proposed A-VSB standard, and acceptable reception may be possible with less error correction and less data devoted to the SRS.

HDTV enthusiasts are already on guard against cable and satellite firms, and broadcasters, too, who shortchange the HD signal. As for me, I welcome A-VSB. Free, on-the-go TV via your cell phone or laptop is a deal I simply wouldn’t want to pass up.

Earlier:
• Samsung to demo A-VSB mobile TV at CES
• Local channels on mobile TV: Test shows promise
• Mobile TV signals for free? Maybe, with A-VSB

• Link: TV Technology

More HDTV programming is in the works for DirecTV subscribers, according to John Malone, who promises “an explosion of high-definition services that cable is going to have a hard time matching.”

Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, will gain control of the satellite service in a deal announced last month. A merger with Dish Network parent EchoStar is far from imminent, but Malone suggests the satellite rivals could join forces in the high-deaf realm:

“You know, if the government wouldn’t let us put the businesses together today, we can at least save a lot of cost and capital by cooperating in certain areas,” Malone said…. “We could form an alliance with EchoStar and share a high-definition platform, which would either double the capacity or cut the costs in half or some combination. We could develop content jointly with EchoStar for that high-definition platform, which would be very interesting.”

Dish Network offers more high-definition channels than DirecTV currently. But DirecTV’s HD capacity is set to dramatically overtake Dish later this year, according to Multichannel News, which also describes two lawsuits targeting DirecTV’s HDTV quality claims.

• Links: Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News

If News Corp. sells its DirecTV stake to John Malone, the satellite TV marketplace could see big changes, according to some observers. Among the possibilities:

• a new try at a merger with EchoStar’s Dish Network;

• a deal with AT&T (giving the phone giant more HD television capacity and DirecTV a broadband internet pipe to offer its subscribers) or another telco.

• Links: BetaNews, BusinessWeek