My 2 cents here this is all about tech not politics in my post. I would like to upgrade existing equipment from astc 1.0 to 3.0 make it backwards compatibility. so people can still use their existing tv's without internet. keep frequencies the same so people don't have to rescan their tv's.
You're asking for the impossible. There's no way to have a backwards-compatible standard that makes the kinds of efficiency gains that make a change of standard worthwhile. Additionally, stations will be changing channel as a result of the incentive auction anyway, so eliminating rescans is pretty much impossible.
Trip have a good question here for you since the fcc couldn't go after c band to sell that off to the cell companies is that is why they are going after uhf?
C-band downlink is at 3.7-4.2 GHz, which is above the UHF band (300 MHz-3 GHz). The problem the incentive auction is trying to solve is the relative lack of lower UHF spectrum, like that used for UHF TV. There's really not that much else to reallocate in that part of the band besides TV.
Wouldnt it be cheaper and better to just launch or use a satellite and put all the local channels on it or pay Dish/Directv for use of their satellite and offer that to the public? Money raised in the auctions could go to Dish/Direct or the spectrum could be given to them in exchange for using their satellite to broadcast to the public. Would be pretty cool to have FTA tuner built into all the receivers and televisions. Just connect a satellite to the tv and voila.
OTA-exclusive users are about 15% of the market depending on which statistics you believe. 80% or more of OTA viewers use indoor antennas, usually located with the TV in question, meaning that only 3% have an outdoor or even attic antenna. Unless some laws of physics-defying indoor satellite dish has been invented that I'm not aware of, your proposal would kill free TV. People would hear they need a satellite dish and assume they have to go pay DirecTV or Dish and thus go get one of those services. Or they might live in north-facing apartments, condos where they don't own the roof, etc. and cannot use a satellite dish and would be required to pay for cable service. Most people would need professional installation of a new satellite dish, when they can currently pull an indoor antenna out of a box and set it up themselves.
That's leaving aside the billions of dollars in satellites, equipment change-outs, uplink facilities, fiber feeds, lawsuits, etc. It also ignores the disruption to contracts which allow for station X to be the exclusive affiliate of network Y in a DMA. (Because what stops you from tuning the network affiliate from one of four or five different markets served by your spot beam or neighbors?) The networks would likely flee the local stations in favor of national network service, killing the local affiliates entirely and probably killing free TV as we know it. OTA TV also does not have rain fade to the same extent that satellite does and is more likely to be received during emergency weather events.
- Trip
