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No Business Case For HDTV?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Nov 27, 2006 08:27 PM
from the dire-just-means-higher-prices-for-consumers dept.
from the dire-just-means-higher-prices-for-consumers dept.
Lev13than writes "The head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation argues that there is no business model for HDTV. Speaking at a regulatory hearing being held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), CBC president Robert Rabinovitch noted that 'There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD.' In order to cope with infrastructure and programming costs that are roughly 25 per cent higher, Rabinovitch proposes that the CBC start charging cable and satellite companies to carry their signal, and to limit over-the-air transmission. HDTV — good for Best Buy, bad for broadcasters?"
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Hooray for sanity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hooray for sanity (Score:5, Funny)
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No business case for TV (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, as for HD-TV...
I just witnessed a 277-run ashes victory against in full SD Digital TV, and the step up from shadowed fuzzy PAL broadcast was unbelievable.
I can't wait to see us beat the Poms in 1080p full color
I wonder how long it'll take the sports ground owners to start sueing broadcasters for loss of revinue because you get a better view of the game at home than you do with 10x binoculars from front-row seats?
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Re:No business case for TV (Score:5, Funny)
I totally don't know what that means, but I want it.
KFG
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Re:No business case for TV (Score:4, Funny)
The problem is they'll be recording modern porn at 1080p. I want my old grainy, barely color balanced, and sure as hell not a model porn. Back before they could do all those really raunchy camera angles. Or just stuff shot today in that style.
Genital shot after genital shot in perfect color gets old after the first 20 seconds. God help us if medical imaging ever advances to the point they could follow Mr. Happy inside for his little trip through the flesh tunnel.
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Re:No business case for TV (Score:5, Funny)
Now if you'll excuse me I have to stock up on brain bleach.
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Re:No business case for TV (Score:4, Insightful)
The first step in any discussion about laws with respect to corporations is learning to play by the same rules they do.
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B ut in a broad sense the GP is correct (Score:4, Insightful)
And like the gp said, this is where the steal of our culture kick in : all those piece of CULTURE, were supposed to come back to us the PUBLIC after we the public granted them a TEMPORARY monopoly on selling their stuff. Alas for anything done during your lifetime now, it will never come back during your life time as public domain, and maybe not even to your children, to your grand children. Thus a stealing organized by lobyying. The fact that it was m,ade into a law doesn't change the fact that only 1 stackholder was involved and the other stackholder (the public) was taken its goody gainst its will. In my culture we call that stealing.
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no common sense case (Score:5, Interesting)
Good gosh, HDTV would fly by itself if the industry practiced a little common sense about the rollout. I remember in 1998 a sales guy trying to talk me into buying a sexy looking HDTV on demo on the floor. Yeah, I was drooling.
This unit came sans tuner, and the universe as we know it was still pretty much standard definition tv, i.e., if you could find any HD content, it was for eye candy only, nobody was broadcasting HD anywhere on anything remotely regular.
I told him I'd wait for the prices to come down, and the for some content to show up -- he shook his finger at me, "These prices [$10,000 for the unit I was looking at] won't come down and might go up! And, there's more and more new HD content available every day"
Prices went way down (though still way too high) and content eventually showed up. The problem? Way too many ways to set up for HD with way too many ways to find out your setup isn't correct after spending big bucks.
The minefield that is setting up for HD is too confusing, too expensive, and yeah, if I were an advertiser I'd find it a tough sell to pay any extra for an uncertain market.
It's too bad, I eventually settled on a Samsung 50" DLP a 2 years ago, absolutely LOVE it, but no thanks to any help I got from anyone anywhere! Freak, even the Comcast HD cable box is still a piece of garbage that regularly freezes, never behaves, and offers a very limited range of HD (not entirely their fault, come on networks!).
Toss in the confusing choices and still uncertain future of HD on DVD, sheesh, it's a wonder the market is as penetrated as it is.
Hey, and toss in the $50 HDMI cable lots of people have to buy, they didn't even know about it until "after". Yeah, and what about the almost non-existent HD On Demand (another unfulfilled promise... aside from incredibly poor selection, Comcast's On Demand movies have only a few HD, and all of them (HD and standard) are so compressed, it hurts to watch on a good TV). Oh, and don't forget, or don't forget to plan for, DRM. Don't assume what's true today will still be true by the time you set up your system, but assume if it's not the same it's going to be more restrictive.
Shit, the more I prattle, the less I like about HD. I'm in as deep as I want for what the market has offered so far, but am not chomping at the byte for any more investment until the industry sorts itself out.
Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Informative)
Digital either works or it doesn't. A five dollar hdmi cable will work as good as the fifty dollar hdmi cable. Monster may help on analog audio, but doesn't do jack for digital.
This is a myth.
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:There are NO 5$ HDMI cables due to bad HDMI spe (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean this $7.69 HDMI cable [newegg.com] cannot exist? And that this 16 foot HDMI cable [newegg.com] for $29.99 is a figment of my imagination??? Eghads! How in the world was I ever able to get a usable signal from my home theater?
Perhaps that's because you should have spent more time researching, or at least talking to a real expert, and not the pimply-faced sales droid at your local electronics store who will spin more lies in pursuit of that 75% premium cable profit margin than a politician chasing re-election.
And, by the way, comparing HDMI to TCP/IP is like comparing Apples to Stainless Steel Cookware. And TCP/IP does not demand error correction (UDP is best effort). But TCP/IP does run over Ethernet or Token-Ring, either of which can run over 100-Ohm UTP. In fact, TCP/IP over GB-Ethernet on 4-pair 100-Ohm UTP has sufficient bandwidth to carry multiple real-time HDTV feeds up to 100 meters.
Finally, there is nothing magical about making 100 Ohm UTP cable. It's been around for dozens of years and is the most common specification. It is certainly MUCH SUPERIOR FOR CARRYING DIGITAL SIGNALS compared to coaxial cable, which attenuates and degrades the digital waveforms over distance due to its inherent capacitance characteristics.
I will concur that HDMI cables longer than 30 feet are unheard of, and that this is because of the specification. Every network standard has distance limitations. It's a trade-off between performance, convenience and cost. In defense of the standards team I can only say that most people tend to put their TV and tuner/dvd/etc on the same side of their house. Sort of like putting the oven in the kitchen with the fridge. But I'm kind of conservative that way.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My point? HDMI cables cost A LOT, even at the low end. And most stores that I've checked (again, not a complete list) don't care more than one or two brands, usually the $75 to $100 versions.
Re:no common sense case (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Informative)
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Dirty Lies! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dirty Lies! (Score:4, Funny)
I buy only the very best MONSTER Cat5 cable. Otherwise, my tubes go slow. =(
Can I get Monster Air for my WiFi?
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Re:no common sense case (Score:4, Funny)
You're wrong. See, back in the analog world we had to contend with "dirty power." Now in the digital world, we have "dirty bytes." The two ideas are related since they both deal with electricity, but subtley different. See the signal can become corrupted when passing through the box, and you know how dirty it is in there. If you don't know, just crack it open and take a look. Anyway the bytes are made up of bits. Eight bits to be precise. Now as the signal passes through the box it picks up some bits of dirt along with the other bits. And when you put the bits together you get a dirty byte that's EIGHT TIMES DIRTIER. Now when these bytes come out of the box and need to be read. But they need cleaned up before they can be read. Just like how you have to blow the dust off an old book to read it. So you see, the $50 hdmi cable cleans the bytes before their processed. If they weren't cleaned before they get processed by the tv, the tv would have to do that causing it to act slower, just like how it's quicker to read a clean book than a dirty book. Still with me? Okay. I know what you're thinking. The dirt from the bytes has to go somewhere, and you know where that is right? That's right. INSIDE THE TV! That what makes digital equipment so dirty on the inside. And since it's so dirty inside the tv, the bytes inside just keep getting dirtier and dirtier. It would be like trying to dust your house in the middle of a sandstorm. Pretty silly huh? So you see, you're not just cleaning the bytes as the come in, but you're really doing preventive maintence to your tv at the same time. Now you could probabably get by with just buying one $50 hdmi, but if you REALLY want to be safe, you should probably change your HDMI every three months, or whenever you change you're programming package. Whichever comes first.
I know what I'm talking about. I have $100 24k gold plated optical cable, and I can definately see and hear the difference.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pornography is the Driver of Video (Score:5, Funny)
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Zits and t*ts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GOVERNMENT is the Driver of HDTV (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus the original article is correct- there's no business case for it, that's why the FCC mandated it.
Re:GOVERNMENT is the Driver of HDTV (Score:4, Insightful)
Only it has nothing to do with television, and everything to do with the FCC being able to auction off all the old television bandwidth to wireless carriers.
And yes, I do have that in writing.
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Re:GOVERNMENT is the Driver of HDTV (Score:5, Informative)
The reason? Analog broadcast TV takes up a huge chunk of very desirable radio spectrum space. Digital broadcasts can transmit more data in a smaller frequency range.
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Informative)
Think of it another way....do the PC, and use it to tune your HD, to play your DVD's and CD's and everything. You could get rid of settop box and cd/dvd player...hell. put MythTv [mythtv.org] on it, and get rid of the TIVO too. Get a wireless card in it..and download all you want from the net onto it...
Wait for it to power on?? Why would you turn it off? I don't turn off any of my computers around the house.....
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Funny)
History of Radio Shack:
Early Years:
Q: Do you have any 2N222s?
A: Fourth panel, third from the top, second from the left.
Now :
Q: Do you have any 2N222s?
A: Is that the new Razor?
Like all trips, it was good while it lasted.
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Funny)
As you say, it used to be 'You've got questions? We've got answers!'. Now its 'You've got questions? We've got blank stares! And cellphones!'
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Re:no common sense case (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pull your head out of your ass before talking (Score:3, Interesting)
2) All of the HDTV I watch is over the air.
3) I'm still in a bad mood since my local PBS station decided to only broadcast about 4 hours of HD programming each day.
That said, I'm not saying that HD commands higher ad rates - but it should. Too bad HD programming usually has SD commercials.
It's just the beginning... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not going HD would be like cable companies saying "No need for us to build high speed infrastructure - everybody likes dial-up."
Great point (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a marketing book that's worth reading, and it's about this exact situation. Products do not move smoothly from early adopters to early majority. There's a pit in between the two that many products fall into.
The book, "Crossing the Chasm", explains that you have to make the transition to your new product as smooth and slick as teflon on teflon, or normal people will never generate good word of mouth. An example of a brilliant success at this is the Toyota Prius, which spends a significant amount of software simulating the artifacts of a 20th-century car, just to allow buyers to slide right into it without an adjustment.
If the HD industry were poised for success you'd see plug-and-play installations that didn't require setup by a consultant, no obstructive DRM, and standardized cabling.
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there was no business case for TV at all (Score:4, Interesting)
HDTV is the same thing. the manufacturers have an interest. it's a paradigm shift for broadcasters, and it will cannabilize their existing businesses, just like TV did, and color TV was just a gawd-awful money eater for stations in the 1960s.
but the FCC wants to sell those juicy frequencies near the cell phone bands, and congress spent the money a thousand times over, so your present TV system (NTSC, PAL, SECAM, doesn't matter) is headed down the dumper for HDTV versions.
that's how the future works. you can go into your back room and play your edison cylinders now... at least, the ones that aren't all fuzzy black mold by now. most folks eventually fall for pretty pictures and better sounds.
Whinge whinge whinge (Score:3, Interesting)
Do it the way that everyone else does it when they are financially constrained, buy HD when the life cycles end. So the cameras and other stuff that CBC would normally replace every 2 years (Provided they act like the other TV stations I know), go HD then. The video editing suite, that will eventually need to be upgraded (Usually happens every 4 - 5 years), do it then. Most people that do digital content creation pay for themselves (Make a profit) anyway, so just tell them they need to HD and then go back to playing golf.
Yes, there are financial constraints to going HD, but then there are financial constraints to running a business too. Over the next few years everyone else will be replacing kit, and they will be buying HD which means that sooner or later, everything that CBC gets given for broadcast is going to be HD.
25%, quite possibly now, that's fine, but in the future, everything is going to be HD and CBC aren't going to have an option as few people will be providing SD equipment to purchase. IF it's there, it will cost more money and won't be standard with the rest of the kit.
Really, this is a null and void arguement that they make that everyone else is going through.
Upgrading kit and increasing the quality of the standard broadcast costs a LOT of money, I know this all too well. Considering however that a major overhaul like this hasn't gone through the industry for 30 years in most countries, the amount of expenditure up front to move now is scaring people. It's the same with Vista and Office 2007 and everything else.
Idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
Many cable and stellite companies charge extra for HD channels - and people pay up. So if he wants to charge delivery companies extra for HD programming, well there is your friggen business case, on a silver platter.
DOH.
Business Mumbo Jumbo (Score:3, Insightful)
Only impressive under good conditions = failure (Score:3, Insightful)
Color TV was that way, even with all the problems initially. Circa 1960, color TVs were fabulously expensive, persnickety, tricky to set up, had to be set up again if you moved them to a different location within the house, were tricky to tune, tended to shift color from one program to another, etc. But if you had a friend who was rich enough to afford one, you took one look at it and you said "Wow! I wannit I wannit I wannit!" So what if Dinah Shore's face changed from greenish to magentaish as she walked across the stage?
Of course, it didn't really take off until prices came down and they had solid-state circuits that didn't drift and could fudge the colors a bit so that anything close to flesh was displayed as flesh...
Technologies that are only impressive under good conditions usually fail. Right now, that's the state HDTV is in.
I sell HD editing/post-production systems... (Score:5, Interesting)
HD is happening, and the adoption rate both for consumers, content creators, and broadcasters is accelerating. I have seen MUCH acceleration in 2006, and I think 2007 will be the year HD really takes command of the market. Let me put it this way -- perhaps the SUITS at broadcast organizations can't find a case for HD. But I will tell you this -- the engineers, editors, etc. are VERY MUCH ready for HD, and know it is happening, and there's no looking back. This isn't really up for debate, it's the fact of the matter.
What I find a little strange about this guy's comments is that he's basically trying to justify keeping a 50-year-old broadcast standard, well into the 21st century. Let's think about that for a moment -- what would have happened if the computer industry had decided to stay with, say, the standards that were in place for computing in the 1950s, through today. Yeeeaaaah... As bizarre as this scenario sounds, this is the reality that the broadcast market has perpetuated for the last 50 years or so. I would think that consumers would be demanding a much quicker adoption of HD! Oh, so you need to buy a new TeeVee set? Me cry you a river. That's like saying I should be forced to use a building-sized supercomputer that runs on punchcards to handle basic arithmetic problems, just because you don't feel you should need to upgrade your computer. But it's even more ridiculous than that, because we tolerate "needing" to buy a new computer every 5 years or so, but sheesh, needing to upgrade your TV once per fifty years? IT'S A TRAVESTY!
And on another note -- if those idiots can't command higher ad rates for HD advertisements, well, please fire them and hire me to do your HD advertising sales, because your current ad sales team SUCKS and is not worth what you're paying them. I am pretty certain I could do a better job myself. And I'm not just throwing that out there -- again, I make my living largely "selling" video content producers on HD.
Finally, another interesting debate/issue concerns the video/post/broadcast world's move to tapeless workflows, where you are essentially recording video _files_ right onto flash RAM/hard drives/optical discs/SANs/etc. And video tapes go the way of the dodo. This is another HUGE shift in the broadcast market, which is only recently incorporating "IT technologies" into the systems that drive broadcast facilities. A lot of broadcasters are going to go for "two for the price of one" -- let's go tapeless, and let's make sure our upgrades are HD-capable at least.
OK OK, one laaast point -- anyone who doesn't feel HD is a worthwhile upgrade SERIOUSLY needs to get their eyes checked. I recommend doing an A/B comparison between SD and HD, of the same content. HD is only truly profound when you _go back_ to SD, and you ask yourself, how the hell did I deal with this shit for so long? BRING ON MORE HD!!!
Re:I sell HD editing/post-production systems... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've done just that, and I still just don't see the point. Sure you MIGHT be able to see a bit more blades of grass, but big deal. The benefit just isn't there. This IS NOT a black-and-white to color revolution like it's been made out to be. The difference between HD and SD isn't nearly as large as the HD industry, which you are a part of, would have us believe. If such a difference did exist, the why do 50% of HDTV owners think their watching HD content, when they're not? [slashdot.org] I'll tell you. Self delusion. ("I paid $8,000 for super clear tv, and by god it is!")
It's hype. Successful hype mind you, but still just hype. If was as big a deal it's being made out to be, then the corporations wouldn't of needed the power of legislation to coerce the public into an upgrade. The public would be upgrading voluntarily. The fact that HDTV conversion has been so slow, and sales of HD channels lethargic so far is indicitive that there's little to no demand. I'm sure you're seeing a ramp in sales of HD equipment, now, but it's not because of some sort of spontaneous demand. It's the fact that government is banning analog. The deadline is looming, and panic is setting in. If you didn't have Uncle Sam as your salesman, you'd still be trying to move box 1.
The way this HDTV conversion is going down smells. And as a capitalist, it's disturbing. It's command economy meets the oligarchy.
The fact that you make your living selling HD equipment and now you're telling everyone to upgrade makes you're opinion circumspect. That isn't meant to imply that you're being intensionally dishonest. Frankly, I think you merely drank your own kool-aid. Just like those HDTV owners, that can't even tell their not watch HD content.
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Big in Japan (Score:4, Funny)
Damn socialist Canadians, with their sanity. Their country needs bigger TVs, just to make it look full and warm it up. Where else are the black squirrels supposed to hide when American tourists and Japanese hunters come looking for them as the ice melts?
Consider the zero TV households (Score:3, Interesting)
Chicken and egg (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, broadcasters, unlike consumers, are beholden to federal regulators and can be coerced. The FCC saw this chicken-and-egg problem coming and mandated terrestrial broadcast of HD content in the US. The Canadians should do the same. If you broadcast SD, you have to broadcast HD as well.
Anyway, none of this matters anymore. HDTV is finally a done deal. Between the US tuner mandate, HD capable enabled game consoles, and the price trajectory of LCD flat panels, consumer adoption of HDTV is unstoppable. Advertisers and broadcasters will be dragged along soon enough.
I dare the CBC to try it... (Score:5, Interesting)
it lasted one day. Several local channels tried it 5 years ago and bent over instantly when they had their plug pulled with a warning message on the channel. Discovery tried it to comcast 3 years ago as well and gave up 2 days later.
CBC has no chance, if they start charging, they get dropped and then they wither away. Boo hoo that the studios have to upgrade their technology from 20 year old hardware and that the customers think they shouldn't pay more for it.
Translation: CBC doesn't want to pay for it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And what about for the consumer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem is that the television networks are looking for traditional ways to exploit HDTV rather than innovate. It should come as no surprise that advertisers wouldn't pay more for regular commercials during HDTV broadcasts
Broadcasters fail to willingly recognize two driving factors for HDTV:
- The public now demands it, so they don't really have a choice (other than beg the government to force carriers to give the networks kickbacks)
- The technology and vastly improved resolution will allow greater integration of programs with the internet. This would allow viewers to seamlessly interact with game shows via a remote, or to purchase clothing that their favorite soap stars might be wearing. Advertisers are willing to pay HUGE sums of money for interactive content and online purchasing.
Where I do agree with the networks is their argument for dropping traditional HDTV radio wave broadcasts. It's ridiculous for the government to mandate that HDTV be receivable via antenna, let the networks use public demand as a gauge for where and how to best deliver hi-def.Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:CBC better figure out how to lower their costs. (Score:4, Informative)
To give you an idea, you need 1 ATSC modulator per channel per transmittion tower. Each modulator is in the range of $10000. So we're talking hundreds of millions to convert.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would venture to guess, that in the US, the overwhelming majority of people are still watching analog television.
Re:Revealed preferences (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew
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