AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 39

There is no way a truly voluntary approach will work in the the major markets. In the the major markets there simply isn't enough TV Band spectrum and its value is as huge to the TV broadcasters as it is to the iPhone pron downloaders. Unless someone finds a way to move the TV Band spectrum from Glendive, Montana to the greater New York City area there is already a shortage. Hopefully we'll have another FCC Chairman that cares more about the public than his potential future employers before this rape of the airwaves takes place.

If the auction is truly voluntary why would any major market broadcaster give up their prime UHF licensed spectrum for anything less than a king's ransom? Don't forget if they lose their broadcast license they also lose their right to elect must carry. IOW they're out of business.

It depends on the station and system. Some systems get a high quality feed direct from the broadcaster, others rely on OTA ATSC reception. In most cases, it is a mix of OTA and direct feeds. (The LPs in South Bend, Indiana, fed a HD signal to the local cable company before they even had a permit to build their LD ATSC facilities and I recall one full power station staying on the air on cable during a transmission line failure long before digital broadcasting.)

It would take separate infrastructure, but stations could provide a HD feed to cable/satellite and a SD feed OTA. Getting carriers to carry the HD feed is one of the issues in the current NPRM. Currently if it isn't OTA cable/satellite can refuse to carry the signal.

Broadcasters are not going to lose their license due to consolidation. Each station will remain individually licensed, with all the rights and responsibilities a license involves. All they will share is transmission facilities.

If the auction is truly voluntary most major market stations will not willingly consolidate. If you rented a three bedroom house in a very good neighborhood and someone offered you $1000 in cash to exchange it for a one bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood but you would still have to pay the same rent would you take the deal?

It would come from retransmission consent negotiations (cable and satellite subscribers actually pay for those) for many stations but stations that elect must carry would have to come up with the money themselves.

My sister only has DVDs and online viewing at her house. She came over today while I was watching the NFL playoffs and after 5 seconds of looking at the clear screen she said she wanted OTA at her house. She first thought I had cable but then I showed her my antenna. She only has an old SD tube TV at her house so I recommended her this converter box. It has 388 reviews at the site and a lot of them are from the past few months.


http://www.amazon.com/Zinwell-ZAT-97..._bxgy_e_text_b

I still have to wonder how that would play out in court. And, who would decide who becomes "the next broadcaster" in a market? Could the FCC grant "programmer licenses" without regard to whether there is a channel to program them on? Could existing "stations" block other programmers from entering the market, by simply not splitting off enough bandwidth for them to exist?
Using these types of powers (forcing sharing of bandwidth), could the FCC eventually get in the way of the programming rights of "stations"? Maybe they could force a station to eliminate a popular sub-channel because a potential minority broadcaster needs the space.

Does the term "Can of Worms" come to mind?

That isn't what I was talking about ... I was talking about the rights and responsibilities afforded to broadcast stations ... rights that they won't lose by consolidating under the proposal.

The station would remain an individually licensed station regardless of if it had its own private channel or shared one with another station (or five other stations). Must carry and consent to carry would work the same way.

As far as the "deal" you hypothesise, perhaps broadcasters would not take $1000 to move to a smaller space in a bad neighborhood an pay the same rent ... but the next step is to raise the rent on "private" channels, and raise the rent on "out-of-band" channels that the FCC would like cleared. There is some savings for a consolidated station sharing transmission costs with another station (or five other stations). A premium fee for "private" or "out-of-band" channels would make the "voluntary" deal more enticing.

The basic "they are still a individually licensed station" still applies. A station could combine with up to five others to share facilities and still individually choose must carry or consent to carry. But "the rest of the story" is a can of worms.

The FCC writes the rules, with the direction of Congress. Broadcasters could lobby (via the NPRM procedures or Congress) to fix what consolidation breaks. Personally I believe they need to lobby to stop consolidation in the first place.

My biggest concern is new entrants. Currently (if the process wasn't frozen) a potential broadcaster hires an engineer who finds them a channel and frequency that will work in a community and petitions the FCC to modify the table of allotments to add that channel. Once added to the table of allotments everyone who wants to broadcast to that community jumps in and the original petitioner can easily get lost in the shuffle. Decades ago the FCC decided on a merit system who of the many would get that station ... now it is all money ... auctioned to the highest bidder. It isn't a perfect system, but it is a system ... and it is based on something physical, a frequency found by an engineer.

The digital conversion opened up a lot of bandwidth ... if the FCC would allow applications my rural area could see a doubling of full power stations. All one would have to do is ask. This is one area where I expect current broadcasters (present company excepted) to be a real pain in the ass. Do the existing local broadcasters really want do compete against potentially five new stations? Twice as many stations carving up their advertising dollars? LP stations converting to full power stations with comparable signals to the big stations? Do the want this? Probably not.

With the FCC desiring less frequencies in use not more where does one find a new frequency? One doesn't ... and the plan for my market suggests EVERY existing station needs to double up to meet the 120 Mhz goal ... so instead of seeing twice as many stations, complete with sub channels, the goal is that I'd see my stations cut in half. So zero new stations for my market ... and no room for new sub channels.

Digital TV is starting to get interesting ... hi-def is cool but the alternate feeds of subcarriers is where a station can really shine. Viewers who complain about their favorite station not airing enough old movies can see them on a sub carrier. One nearby market uses a sub channel for alternate sports games when both of the national feeds are desired. The boxcars are filling up ... but the commissioner would rather shorten the train.

I love the comment about the boxcars.

One of my thoughts waaaay back in the early days of DTV was, why not encourage the adoption of Digital, by allowing stations to share an additional "alternate" channel or two, if the market was "digital ready" earlier than required? Sort of a "finish your dinner, THEN you can go out an play" incentive.
A couple of channels that could pick up the slack with alternate sports feeds (even in HD), a place for some community affairs or high school/college part time programming. Maybe even, with Directed Channel Change (DCC), a place to get bandwidth to do alternate feeds of news, weather and community-related program segments for nearby towns or adjacent DMAs.

But, the new thinking seems to be "shorten the train".

Replace the word "shine" with the word "stink", and I'd agree.

Personally, I think it's disgraceful that a bunch of subchannel-loving-at-any-costs freaks from over on the "DTV USA Forum" have been allowed to come over here to this HD section of AVS Forum and infiltrate it with their agenda.

I don't know what caused them to change their structure around here and start allowing this kind of thing - at least in this area of the forum. Perhaps they just aren't aware of where many of the main participants in this thread migrated over from and their cause.

Are you attacking me or referring to other posters as freaks?

Properly engineered a station CAN have quality HD and SD feeds.
Poorly engineered a station CAN fail despite having one full bandwidth feed.

Just because a station transmits one HD feed and nothing else does not make it better than a station that properly engineers a respectable mix of channels.

Unfortunately, the FCC and the CEA have redefined the rules in the middle of the game, with their "boxcar analogy". And, the "fact" that a TV channel "only needs 3 MBps" (CEA Guy's words, not mine, IIRC).

Now excuse me while I go throttle the HD Encoder down to 2.6 MBps or so.

You would've been considered that in the old days around here - meaning "abnormal" (the literal meaning of the word - not meant as an outright insulting term).

I said "subchannels-at-any-cost", meaning "excessive to the detriment of the main, HD one's quality". HD quality is pretty low on the priority list of a lot of those of "DTV USA'ers", at least from what I've seen when reading over there.

I believe almost all major network programming is distributed nationwide by satellite or fiber in HD (encrypted DigiCypher-II). Most, if not all, cable companies receive their network feeds from the four majors (and even some spanish language networks) this way as well as HBO, ESPN, etc. Only the locally originated programs (news, public affairs, etc.) would need to be acquired OTA and even then the larger cable operators often get fiber optic feeds from the locals in HD. I doubt that will change even if the independents and O&Os need to down-res their broadcast signal to squeeze it into a shared channel.

And it's really the CEA, CTIA, and their lap dogs at the FCC that are pushing for a lot of sub-par sub-channels. I'd much rather have one good solid HD channel and one solid SD channel, or several solid SD channels on an independent channel than a whole bunch of low resolution channels. But, with the trade associations and FCC messing around I'm expecting to see a lot more fuzzy subs. Got to fill those "boxcars" you know.

My opinion is that boxcars come in different sizes. The super large double deck model for HD and the smaller box cars for multiple SD.

I really like HD programming for sports, movies, documentaries, music concerts (PBS), have looked great. Multicasting a cooking or Create channel on x.4 is Ok with me providing it doesn't overly impact the primary HD channel.

Reading between the lines the FCCs repurposing UHF agenda is to only have SD (EDTV) quality.....lets push DTV back to analog quality to help friends of Julius Genachowski from the competition OTA is having on the cable and telcos.

I just heard the first wimpy NAB commercial on a local AM radio station from NYC yesterday. It made only an oblique reference to the FCC spectrum grab by bemoaning "excessive government regulation". It made no attempt to inform the public of this impending threat to free OTA broadcasts and was generally worthless in getting the message across to the public. Just compare that to the "full court press" commercials the local NY & Philly Fox stations put on when they were negotiating their carriage consent agreements with a cable company last fall, "If you are watching this program on cable you may not be able to enjoy the MLB-NLC playoffs, the World Series, NFL football, your favorite shows etc. due to contractual issues with your local cable provider... call now".
I guess in the end it really is all about the money. The corporate conglomerate owned networks have no real concern for the public interest, it's the short-sighted bottom line mentality that rules in the board rooms of GE , Disney, Time Warner, National Amusements. They're not likely to lose much sleep (or money) over this spectrum squeeze, in fact they will probably profit from the auction proceeds and the shared costs of transmission. It's beginning to look like the networks, telcos, and cablecos are all sharing the same bed on this one.

I have no problem with that - in fact, I actually watch Create more than most main broadcast channels here (a cooking channel that actually teaches you how to cook - imagine that! What a novelty!).

Sports, on the other hand, should stay off of subchannels altogether, IMO. Universal Sports here is just totally unwatchable. There's a sub (of CBS) in Milwaukee which shows Brewer's games on some Saturdays. It's probably the worst-looking sports sub I've ever seen. Not so much with artifacts (US is worse), but it's so goddarned blurry you can't even watch it without getting a headache.

The problem is, look at Southern California. 8 - 12 subs to a frequency is not uncommon. That's a harbinger of what's to come, and what they "believe" is an acceptable standard for the rest of the US.

8 to 10 sub channels!!! Now that is madness. 4 is a stretch IMHO if you want to have at least DVD quality. Sports or anything with a lot of movement needs high bit rate.

What are you watching...OTA or Cable? I don't know of any OTA stations, besides a few ethnic re-broadcasters, that are running near that many sub-channels. Are you looking at Cable TV sub-channels? Those CAN run a dozen or so SDTV channels in a 6 MHz RF channel, since they are running QAM.

Sounds like the AM radio version is the same as the TV version I've been seeing. If anything, one comes away with the impression that the "Future of Broadcast TV" is bright. The reference to regulation is not explained at all and seems out of place in the commercial.

I doubt the average person seeing this commercial realizes that Broadcast TV as used here is referring to Antenna TV and not cable/satellite.

I'm talking about OTA, as that is the topic of this thread. I'm not in SoCal, but I am in Chicago, IL. So not really all that different, as far as the whole metro area, and actually all of Northern Illinois now.

There are quite a few, non-English language subchannels here and in surrounding markets that belong to English-language mains, and contribute to the degradation of them, which don't even have the decency to put English subtitles, or even an English SAP on any of their programming.

I have no issues with ethnic channels per se (I watch a couple of them frequently - one OTA and one on satellite - but they both have English subtitling), and they can do anything they want with them when they're all contained to their own frequencies as far as I'm concerned, but those types especially get my goat.

Up north of me in Milwaukee, one PBS channel runs 8 subs (all English except V-me), and their HD, CBS main has at least 4 other, 480i subs. And WCIU here, which also has a main, HD channel, and which shows sports, is now running (into the ground, I might add) 4 more, 480i, English-language subs. So they're not all necessarily ethnic, and they're getting there.

I think in some ways the current ad campaign is simply sabor rattling. The NAB saying to Congress, we could start a real advertising campaign at anytime, so watch what you do. Gary Shapiro of CEA went on C-SPAN saying that the NAB was terrorizing Congress with its power to demonize legislators.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/art...egislators.php