Through the Pipe:
Are You Being Served By Digital Terrestrial?
By Gerry Kaufhold, Cahners In-Stat Group
from the April 16, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Gerry Kaufhold founded and is a Principal Analyst for Cahners In-Stat Group's Multimedia and Markets for Multimedia Broadband Information Research Services. Before joining In-Stat he was new Business Development Manager for ST Microelectronics (formerly SGS-Thomson Microelectronics) developing MPEG semiconductors.
Somewhere on the way to digital terrestrial broadcasting, everybody's agenda changed. The result is that local TV stations and many major group owners have shelled out millions of dollars each to deploy about 200 DTV transmitters, but nobody is watching.
Gary Arlen's March 19th column in Broadband Week vented about the broadcasters wanting to focus on datacasting. The real meat and potatoes product for any digital television service has to be television programming, because everybody watches TV.
In Europe, Canal+, OnDigital and Quiero TV are delivering successful digital terrestrial services that emphasize TV shows! They aren't bothering with high definition TV, which adds a lot of cost to receivers. They have free-to-air shows, but they also are driving a lot of subscription multicast programming, pay-per-view services and TV commerce.
Cahners In-Stat Group (which is owned by the same parent as Broadband Week) forecasts that more than 33 million households will have a DVB-T digital terrestrial service in Europe by the end of 2005. So far, broadcast groups in the United States have no DTV-specific program services to offer.
Even worse, none of the U. S. broadcasters has plans to fund a subsidized set-top box. Regardless of geographic region, and regardless of technology, ALL successful digital TV networks provide a "nearly free" set-top box as a promotional item to attract new customers to their offerings.
I'd like to propose that we open our borders and invite Canal+, OnDigital, and Quiero TV to lease signal space on our ATSC transmitters, and ramp up some real digital terrestrial viewership by providing DTV-specific programming and subsidized set-top boxes.
One scenario has Quiero TV launching a service in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. These markets have up to 25 percent Spanish-speaking populations. The Univision and Telemundo networks, and their affiliates, could assign their two digital terrestrial signals in each city as starter stations. Then, Quiero TV only would need to negotiate carriage rights on a few more local digital terrestrial transmitters, and it then could duplicate the multiplex it already broadcasts successfully in Spain.
Quiero TV would, of course, provide "nearly free" set-top boxes. These boxes could be DVB-T boxes with an 8-VSB front-end receiver section and an NTSC video output, and no HDTV. Bits are bits, no matter how they get to the receiver. Most of Quiero TV's existing software, applications and conditional access systems still would be able to operate. The Southwestern United States would simply be a market extension of Quiero TV's service from Spain.
The second scenario has Canal+ or OnDigital providing DTV programming services in the rest of the states. They would need to find a major station group owner to sponsor them, but I imagine Sinclair would jump at the chance to help launch a DVB-T service in the United States.
Congress and the FCC might have to tweak some rules to permit multiple local digital TV stations to be used as a unified multiplex, but that just amounts to paper work. It's in the public interest to get something going on these DTV transmitters. Let's invite Canal+, OnDigital and Quiero TV to help open up our market for digital terrestrial broadcast service! It's a good idea.
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