ReRe: FCC - cable dual visability

[Scott Fybush]

Robert F. Sutherland wrote:

>   Scott, If I am ranting too much, please say so.   
> Any other opinions are welcome, but so much has been hashed
> over already  [including the obvious AM IBOC hash].

It's not up to me to say if you're ranting too much - that would be 
Garrett's job, and I don't think there's anything in your post that 
violates the rules of the list.

That said, I do disagree with you on a few points...

The real motivation behind the DTV conversion has very little to do with 
providing improved pictures to viewers or selling more new TV sets. It's 
really all about spectrum management, and about cleaning up a terribly 
inefficient use of UHF spectrum that's become increasingly valuable as 
consumers demand improved cellular telephone and wireless data service.

The same 700 MHz spectrum (channels 52-69) that was considered almost 
useless when analog TV was introduced there 55 years ago is now worth 
billions of dollars to companies like Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint 
and Qualcomm. Those companies have filled up the spectrum higher up the 
dial that's allotted to them, and they're desperate for more.

In order to get channels 52-69 cleared of television service, the whole 
TV dial essentially had to be "repacked" more efficiently, and the only 
way to do that without making stations go off the air was to take 
everyone digital. (Improved pictures for consumers are really only a 
side effect of the transition.)

If the transition goes as planned, most of Robert's concerns should 
prove to be unfounded. Next January or February, viewers who use 
over-the-air analog TV will be able to get $40 coupons that should cover 
most of the cost of the inexpensive ($50-60) converter boxes that will 
hit the market when the coupons come out. That leaves the net cost for 
the box at $10 or $20 per set, which is really a pittance. (Who pays for 
those coupons? That's the payoff to the public from the auction of the 
700 MHz spectrum that's being cleared by analog TV.)

Meanwhile, the TV stations have been building out full-power DTV 
facilities. There's every reason to expect that Albany stations that are 
viewable in analog in a place like New Lebanon will still be viewable in 
digital - and with a much cleaner picture, to boot. (No need to move 
antennas around, either, as all the market's signals will be coming from 
a single shared tall tower in the Helderbergs.)

And in the midst of all this, the flood of dirt-cheap LCD HDTV sets 
coming out of Asia continues, with all of them (since March) now 
mandated to include DTV tuners. Nobody's being forced to buy them, but 
they're flying out of the stores anyway, which should significantly ease 
the burden of providing converter boxes. In retrospect, it probably 
would have made sense to require DTV tuners in all TV sets a year or two 
sooner; there was a flood of LCD sets sold in late 2005-early 2007 that 
didn't include DTV tuners and should have.

If you haven't looked at the TV department of your local Wal-Mart or 
Target in the last year or two, you really should. There is no longer 
any gap between "people who can afford new HDTVs" and "the general 
population," not when you can pick up a 17" HD set (with a DVD player 
built in, even) for $220 or so, as I did recently. Even a drop-dead 
phenomenal wall-size flat panel (we're talking 42"-46" screen) HDTV can 
be had for $1200 or less. Adjusting for inflation, that's far less than 
a state-of-the-art 25" color set would have cost in the early seventies.

Here's the bigger picture: in our era of what is essentially 
software-based technology, it's both unrealistic and inefficient to 
expect any transmission technology to last unchanged for five or six 
decades, as analog TV did. Think about how often we replace things like 
cell phones these days, and how much more a cell phone handset does now 
than it did (or could have been expected to do) even five years ago.

I think the FCC's done (and is doing) a pretty good job of moving this 
particular transition along, and it's probably making the right move by 
continuing the analog mandate for cable systems, inasmuch as they now 
serve something north of 65% of all the TV sets in the country. Pushing 
the "drop-dead" date for the conversion off by a few years seems to me 
like a pretty reasonable compromise.

s