Late last month, the Mobile Digital Television Consumer Showcase kicked off in the Washington, D.C. metro area. This four month experiment by local television broadcasters is intended to introduce consumers (as well as federal lawmakers and administration officials) to the benefits and convenience of Mobile Digital Television (Mobile DTV).
Nine metropolitan stations are broadcasting more than [...]
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HDTV Almanac - Mobile DTV Test Launched in D.C.
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alfredpoor
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ralph43
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I loike mobile DTV
I have been waiting to see if this kind of service would make it to my DROID smartphone. I like content on demand, but I also would like local news and sports to be available, and that would not be available unless you carried a portable tv with you all the time. I have a portable and the dtv reception is not always the best and when it does not come in you get nothing. I suspect there are a few others who would like mobile DTV. Ralph
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alfredpoor
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Right for some folks
Ralph, I don't doubt that there are people who will find that Mobile DTV is just what they want. My point is that (1) I don't think that there are enough of them to sustain the system, and (2) not enough of them are going to find out about it anyway.
But as for your desire for "local news and sports", I bet that there are lots of Web sites that you can get on your smart phone that will provide that information faster and probably even with video. I don't think that Mobile DTV will be able to do it enough better than 3G/4G broadband and WiFi can do now.
Alfred
But as for your desire for "local news and sports", I bet that there are lots of Web sites that you can get on your smart phone that will provide that information faster and probably even with video. I don't think that Mobile DTV will be able to do it enough better than 3G/4G broadband and WiFi can do now.
Alfred
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BobDiaz
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According to information I got from NAB, the cost to upgrade an existing DTV Transmitter to M-DTV is around $100,000. For a major broadcaster, this is only a small part of their equipment costs, so it won't break the bank.
Even if the only thing a broadcaster does is to feed their main signal out via M-DTV, in large cities, it would not take a major increase in viewers to justify the increase in costs. An increase in viewers results in an increase in ad income. So in a city of 1 million or more people, even if only 1% (10,000 more viewers) watch, there may be enough ad income increase to justify the costs.
$100,000 equipment / 10 year period / 365 days to a year / 10,000 viewers = about 0.27 cents per additional viewer per day.
It's also possible that many of the additional viewers may be Non-Mobile viewers, like people who use a USB M-DTV device to watch TV on their computer or people who live in poor reception locations that can only get M-DTV.
Bob Diaz
Even if the only thing a broadcaster does is to feed their main signal out via M-DTV, in large cities, it would not take a major increase in viewers to justify the increase in costs. An increase in viewers results in an increase in ad income. So in a city of 1 million or more people, even if only 1% (10,000 more viewers) watch, there may be enough ad income increase to justify the costs.
$100,000 equipment / 10 year period / 365 days to a year / 10,000 viewers = about 0.27 cents per additional viewer per day.
It's also possible that many of the additional viewers may be Non-Mobile viewers, like people who use a USB M-DTV device to watch TV on their computer or people who live in poor reception locations that can only get M-DTV.
Bob Diaz
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alfredpoor
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It's good to have numbers
Thanks for adding some facts to the discussion, Bob. I agree that $100K is not a killer for most broadcasters, and that they should be able to make it up in ad revenues (assuming that someone is watching) without too much trouble.
I may be wrong, but I understood that they wouldn't just be sending out their standard feed. I thought that the content would have to be scaled and reformmatted. I also thought that the Mobile DTV would largely be short-form content, which would require a whole different production stream from the regular OTA content. If that's the case, then the cost of the content would be something larger than zero. Do you have any information on that?
Alfred
I may be wrong, but I understood that they wouldn't just be sending out their standard feed. I thought that the content would have to be scaled and reformmatted. I also thought that the Mobile DTV would largely be short-form content, which would require a whole different production stream from the regular OTA content. If that's the case, then the cost of the content would be something larger than zero. Do you have any information on that?
Alfred
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BobDiaz
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The feeling I got from NAB was it's going to be a mixture of different things. My gut level guess is that they are testing the waters to see what works the best. So, it appears that some stations are just doing a scaled down feed of the main channel, which is the lest expensive way and some are bringing in special programming. Of interest is the following link:
http://www.watchmdtv.com/current-list-of-mdtv-stations/
As you can see from this list, it's a mixture of things from just the regular channel to special programming. Some of it looks a lot like the special programs that are aired on the dash channels already, so whatever the extra cost is, it can't be too bad.
There's an interesting legal issue that is going before the FCC; the TV receivers must still support analog (C.F.R. Section 15.117). There is a push to allow the M-DTV receivers to just receive only the Digital. If the FCC gives them the green light, no problem, but if they are forced to add analog, this will create a speed bump on the road to M-DTV.
http://tvtechnology.com/article/101526
It should be interesting....
Bob Diaz
http://www.watchmdtv.com/current-list-of-mdtv-stations/
As you can see from this list, it's a mixture of things from just the regular channel to special programming. Some of it looks a lot like the special programs that are aired on the dash channels already, so whatever the extra cost is, it can't be too bad.
There's an interesting legal issue that is going before the FCC; the TV receivers must still support analog (C.F.R. Section 15.117). There is a push to allow the M-DTV receivers to just receive only the Digital. If the FCC gives them the green light, no problem, but if they are forced to add analog, this will create a speed bump on the road to M-DTV.
http://tvtechnology.com/article/101526
It should be interesting....
Bob Diaz
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alfredpoor
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Compelling content?
Thanks for the programming list, Bob. I don't see anything on the list that I'd pay $100 for a new device so I could watch it. Ion? Qubo? Oh, be still my heart. Sure, a weather station is handy, but I can get the same or better information faster on any Web enabled smart phone.
"My gut level guess is that they are testing the waters to see what works the best." You make my point. The broadcasters don't know what the consumers want from Mobile DTV, so they're slinging (low quality, almost free content) spaghetti at the wall in hopes that something sticks so that they they don't have to give back (or sell back) radio spectrum bandwidth to the FCC. I think it's a doomed project; I don't see the compelling value proposition in the offering yet.
Alfred
"My gut level guess is that they are testing the waters to see what works the best." You make my point. The broadcasters don't know what the consumers want from Mobile DTV, so they're slinging (low quality, almost free content) spaghetti at the wall in hopes that something sticks so that they they don't have to give back (or sell back) radio spectrum bandwidth to the FCC. I think it's a doomed project; I don't see the compelling value proposition in the offering yet.
Alfred