Mobile DTV on the cheap

[Louis Mamakos]

On the other hand, it sure is nice to have 6MHz of free spectrum to deploy your content on. 

If unprofitable broadcasters shut down, then there's more "white spaces" spectrum available for new applications and business models.  Maybe that'll take pressure off amateur radio spectrum allocations down the road.

louie
wa3ymh

On Jan 15, 2011, at 6:19 PM, wb4jfi wrote:

> Remember Chip that the first (primary) DTV stream (which replaces the old analog signal) IS FREE.  It's only any additional channels or services that can use another revenue method.
> 
> Plus, at least in 2006 when I left, any additional revenue that stations received from additional streams/services were subject to federal government "fees", based on a percentage of that revenue.  I think those fees were "off the top" of the income (not net profit), but I'm not as sure about that.  So, if a station made money on an internet data stream for example, using extras bits derived from the DTV spectrum and made money, a portion of any additional income will effectively be "taxed" and sent to the feds.  We used to have to track that additional revenue.  They gets you comin', and they gets you goin'....
> 
> It costs stations much more to purchase, install and often run the new DTV facility, with no additional revenue associated with those costs.  If a station went from a VHF to UHF channel, their MONTHLY electricity bill alone more than quintupled (typically under 10k to over easily 50k).  Plus recurring tube costs, if now UHF.  Typical DTV conversion costs were about $3.5 million, just for the first part, not including a new tower, building, or other costs.  Many stations had to rebuy even more equipment at the end of the transition to make the "hard switch" overnight instead of a month or two.  And, viewership is declining at the same time.  Not a great business model in the long run.
> 
> So much for making more money with DTV...
> Terry
> 
> 
> On 1/15/2011 3:49 PM, Robert Stratton wrote:Pay OTA services aren't all that new, at least in the DC area.
>> Channel 50 here in the the DC market used to sell a nighttime SSAVI-scrambled naughty movie service. Interestingly it happened to be the same type of scrambling (I won't dignify it by calling it "encryption") that Cox used for their local CATV service. My understanding is that when the pay service failed, the market was flooded with descramblers that didn't get returned. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a motivation for Cox to migrate to something a little more robust in the content protection department.It was fascinating to watch them flip the switch from their infomercial-saturated daily schedule. Some nights they would forget for a little while, which may well have been a marketing method. I should probably look to see how many FCC complaints were filed when that happened and people accidentally stumbled across people in flagrante delicto on their TV.--Bob S.
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> So much for FREE OTA TV.
>>> 
>>> --chip
>>> 
>>> On Jan 8, 2011, at 10:19 AM, tacos-request at amrad.org wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Message: 4
>>>> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 20:50:45 -0600 (CST)
>>>> From: Robert Stratton<bob at stratton.net>
>>>> Subject: Re: Mobile DTV on the cheap
>>>> [...]
>>>> One thing of which to be aware - some of the ATSC-M/H streams are
>>>> encrypted. There are two competing ventures of content providers and
>>>> broadcasters to try to develop pay services on top of Mobile DTV.
>>>> It's possible that you'll see streams in the software that it might
>>>> not be able to render because of encryption.
>>>> [...]
>>>> --Bob
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