OTA forever!
Aug 6, 2006 8:00 AM
Many have heralded the death of terrestrial, over-the-air broadcasting. Although the number of viewers has been dropping, it is still here. From another perspective, with cable and DBS carriage, local OTA channels are available over every distribution channel.
By July 2007, all DTVs with screens larger that 13in must contain an ATSC tuner making it easier to receive OTA anywhere — in the backyard, in a car, at the beach or in a stadium. For those who carry a cell phone or PDA, efforts are underway to deliver broadcast TV to these and other handheld devices.
The multicast enigma
Many broadcasters have yet to figure out what to do with their 6MHz of DTV spectrum when broadcasting only one SD channel. An initial attempt in 2000 was the iBlast venture. Excess OT channel spectrum was going to be used for delivery of subscription data services. Many broadcast groups, such as Tribune, Meredith and Cox, got on board. To far ahead of technology and consumer needs, the remnants of the vision can be explored at the iBlast Web site.
In a recent attempt at maximizing OTA use, USDTV offered popular cable services, such as ESPN and Discovery, over the air to consumers. The first systems were deployed in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Dallas/Fort Worth and Las Vegas. Consumers purchased a USDTV decoder and paid a flat rate of $19.95. USDTV planned a network-wide conversion to MPEG-4 AVC compression. The vision ended in July with bankruptcy proceedings.
To date, no organization has discovered a viable business model for leasing unused, multicast spectrum from OTA broadcasters. Several companies are trying a different approach, using a full 6MHz channel to deliver DTV services to handheld devices.
The channel 55 approach
A venture by Qualcomm, MediaFLO is facilitated by the purchase of UHF channel 55 across the US for delivery of TV content to cell phones and other handheld devices. A proprietary media distribution system (MDS) has been designed to deliver high-quality video to handsets as a background transfer in an opportunistic manner. The technique is called clipcasting.
Video is delivered using MPEG-4 in QICF display resolution and occupies about 1MB of storage for each minute. Audio is AAC coded. The DRM implementation separates content from licensing and includes program expiration enforcement. Currently, 3G CDMA cellular packet networks are supported.
The Media Program Guide (MPG) presents what programming is available and when it can be watched. Hence, the MPG is both a status-reporting and content navigation interface. The viewing and delivery experiences are separated. There are no download progress bars.
The 700MHz approach
Aloha Partners is based in Providence, RI, and was the largest buyer of spectrum in the FCC auctions of 700MHz radio frequencies in 2001 and 2003. Aloha currently owns 12MHz of spectrum covering 60 percent of the United States, including all of the top 10 markets and 84 percent of the population in the top 40 markets.
Hiwire, a subsidiary company, will test its mobile TV offering in Las Vegas using UHF channels 54 and 59. DVB-H. H.264/MPEG-4 encoded content will be delivered to wireless devices at up to 30fps.
Mobile TV content will be aggregated, processed and prepared in MPEG-4 format and originate from SES AMERICOM's IP-PRIME IPTV Broadcast Center in Vernon Valley, NJ. The reformatted DVB-H content will then be delivered over the SES AMERICOM satellite-based distribution network to Hiwire's broadcast distribution towers.
But there’s a fly in the ointment. At this time, only about one in four of Aloha's licenses can be used for broadband because UHF broadcasters are currently transmitting on these frequencies.
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