When the US catches on to FTA

[techno935]

I know there were some previous discussions on how the US is behind on the FTA bandwagon. What should we expect to see in the coming years....say...if more and more people every day decide to get into FTA and the numbers continue to grow?

Lets say theoretically....FTA sales went way up. What should one expect in a market such as that?

Just curious if more channels would go FTA. I doubt it though.

 

[Tron]

I think we'd see many of the channels we watch go encrypted, for legal reasons (DMA market rules concerning local programming staying local, etc.) However, for every channel we'd lose, we'd probably gain three or four "public" FTA channels. We would probably lose many, if not all, of the local nets.

Going to Walley World and buying a FTA HD DVR would be neat though

 

[vj9999]

My guess is that the US will never fully catch on to FTA. It is alot easier in Europe where you have alot more countries in a smaller area. It is kind of hard to have one or two commercial providers for all of Europe.

Here with D* and E* it is alot easier.

My guess is that FTA will stay mostly international/hobby for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if we see less and less "feeds" available too as providers start using other encryptions/modulations which would make it harder for non commercial user to receive.

 

[PSB]

When the pay satellite customers run out we WILL see a true FTA service just like the UK where the BBC and BSKYB ( read DirecTV) have a true FTA service!

But don't hold your breath!

 

[i4tas]

how about if the locals were spotbeamed to the east and west coasts and showed the national programming. Although there is no c or ku sat up there right now that can do this. But would be a cool way to retain some sort of DMA.

 

[dashaund]

My guess is it will never happen. The US is way too commercialized and money hungry. They know now that they can demand big bucks from programming subscription providers for their channel. And they know what people will pay for programming. Sure, it is possible that people could get fed up and resort to alternative methods. But we live in a society where people will pay more money for conveinience (ie: paying $1.25+ for a 20oz Coke when I can get a 2-liter for 99 cents...it's just cold and I don't have to drive to the grocery store for it). I don't call setting up a FTA system a conveinience when I can: A) Call the cable company to pun a piece of coax into my house and plug it in and have all of my programming or B) call D*/E* and they will install for free. I know people that pay $50 a month for cable and all they watch are the local networks. They just don't want the hassle of installing an OTA antenna. And I'm thinking about installing a C-band dish! Sure, I'd LOVE to see it all go FTA. Yes, it happened in Europe, and I think it could happen here. However, it's going to take a major overhaul to do so.

 

[intuitionsys]

I tend to agree. Most people would rather just spend the money and have everything in one neat box so to speak. Personally I couldn't justify ExpressVu or StarChoice when neither my wife or I watch that much TV anyway. We just wanted the news feeds and some of the occasional other stuff available like the retro shows and some of the conservative Christian networks. And Canadians are just as bad as our friends in the south Except that if FTA ever did get popular some government agency like the CRTC would find some way to legislate it out of existence

 

[kymics]

I think there's so many reasons why FTA will never take off here. Here's a few:

• No discounts/rebates, installation offers
• Channels are spread across so many satellites and a motor adds expense/complexity/frustration.
• Line of sight issues will exclude certain channels
• English-speaking only people will see little benefit compared to what's available on a subscription basis.
• Dishes are big and ugly
• No guide data (this one is huge)

Of course, these are small issues for the hobbyist.

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

I agree with Kymics and the others. I am old enough to remember when your TV came through "rabbitt ears" but most people have known nothing but pay TV and it seems normal to them. they don't want to go through the work of setting up a dish etc. themselves.

 

[techno935]

True...good thoughts there.

Hey, I cancelled cable a few months back cause they jacked the line-up around and moved some channels so we cancelled. I was more than happy to go with OTA. It's free, and costs nothing. Same with FTA. Just gotta buy the receiving equipment. After that...no subs. Just Quizno subs and that's it. :

 

[brentb636]

I wonder whether the advent of mpeg-4 FTA receivers will make bandwidth more affordable for stations ( thereby encouraging FTA satellite programming ), or whether something else will "soak up" that bandwidth advantage ?

:-~

Brent

 

[dashaund]

My grandmother went out and about a $3000 rear projection HDTV television about 4 years ago after her television got hit by lightning. At the same time my dad "enlightened" her into getting DirecTV because it looks a lot better than cable in our area (seriously, as bad as D* is). When we went to set it up, first off, she wanted it to be like her old one where she tuned to channel 3 because she doesn't understand changing video sources. Secondly, we had to do some extensive channel lists programming because she didn't like all the channels she had to flip through to find something (pay-per-view, music, all the channels she doesn't receive). Her new TV doesn't look any better than her old one and she can't understand why (!). People in the US think that when you spend more money, you get a better product, which isn't always the rule. I was an active member on the AVSforum boards when the HD OTA signals starting arriving. People were ecstatic because you could receive an awesome HD picture for free with a UHF loop antenna or an existing rooftop antenna. But, of course, many people chose to get digital cable because it's easier...I don't have to put an antenna on my roof or in my attic or adjust rabbit ears to watch the news. ERRR!

 

[techpuppy]

I'm sure the pay satellite services are against FTA generally. I can easily imagine them refusing to carry any channel that became FTA. I also think many people are becoming more frustrated with pay services because of increasing rates and being forced to buy packages of channels just to get one or two they want to see.

The indicator of the future may very well be White Springs TV. Their success or failure could sway other broadcaster's decision about FTA. It's the perfect test case. There's not much on IA7 so you have to make a special effort to watch it (those of us with fixed dishes anyway). They are open to FTA reception and offer systems on their website. They are trying to run the channel with only advertising revenues to support them.

Imagine a FTA national weather channel. With internet access to wx radar and satellite photos a broadcaster could easily create an FTA channel about weather with little equipment cost. Networks of regional interest would be great FTA material. With the FCC freeze on new terrestrial broadcast licenses FTA could be a viable solution.

 

[mastermesh]

FTA will never catch on in the US. Too many darn people like to part with their money for entertainment purposes and too darn many companies like to take that money and run... FTA is like the old time drive-in-movies... some people could see the movies from a distance if they stood outside the movie place and watched and could read lips... that's one reason you don't see so many of those drive-ins so much anymore, along with the fact that more and more people have bought dvd players, vhs machines, tvs, and cable boxes.

As long as there's money to be made, FTA won't catch on. The regional advertising profits are too great... as are the losses companies like Dishnetwork and DirecTV would lose in having no subscribers anymore.

AOL recently let a lot of it's software go free to users of other high speed internet providers - did so because they started losing money in advertising since fewer and fewer people were subscribing to their monthly charges in isp costs... so they made it free to keep the advertising money coming in even though subscription money coming in was going down...
Satellite Providers are sort of in the same place except they are still making boatloads of money in monthly subscriptions... until the number of people subscribing goes way, way, way down a LOT the number of English Speaking FTA channels out there won't go up in the US. Too much money to be made...

 

[mrweather]

I don't think FTA will really take off to any great extent because there's no profit in it.

On FTA you have to pay uplink charges, program rights and hope that your advertising revenue covers it all.

On one of the DTH providers they take care of a lot of that for you. Heck, you can recover some of your costs through subscription fees!

My personal opinion is that it'll remain more for hobbyists and special interest groups.

 

[Jim "Spot" Beam]

Lock Box

If the broadcasters could quantify number of viewers to their advertisers then the American FTA scene would start kickin'.

I somehow got on a list which offers free magazines. I receive two large name brand gamers magazines(one for Play Station and another for PC's), Outdoor Photograper, and three or four for the electronic industry retailer magazines. I'm guessing they did this to pad the subscription base to increase the advertising scale. We now reach this number of people so therefore ad rates are now $X.

When the channels can prove we have X viewers then the advertisers will then go to those outlets. All chanells would need to do, would be to provide a password through email to verify the subscription base and we would have our free broadcast premium channels like Sci-Fi etc.

PC based tuners would have an easier time, set top boxes would need the null modem cable, unless the software for the box allowed code entry from the remote.

 

[mdovell]

Some of this I think really depends as to how people will adjust to when the hdtv switchover is. I think I read somewhere that about 8-9 people domestically in the USA get their tv by analog OTA...so the numbers of that make it seem like not that much...but how many get cable/satellite just to get locals? With my voom box most locals come in quite well and if you were to tell people that for the price of a few months of cable they can get channels for free well...

I think there's fragmentation that could occur with the advant of pvr's and more shows on dvd. Like how much sense does it make to get say HBO just to watch the sopranos (figure at least $10 a month and that's 120 a year) if they cost maybe $80 for a whole season (heck amazon has the first five for $380)

at the way how I see it if you get the major networks, get some educational/relgious ones and then add some international then it isn't so much of a bad thing...and if you get things say a la cart if you have something that can be carded (like a globecast etc) then it can expand...

 

[Stargazer]

I think if more Americans knew about this then it would be more popular. More Americans would know about it if they were available in such stores like Wal-Mart.

 

[kurtsat]

I think if more Americans knew about this then it would be more popular. More Americans would know about it if they were available in such stores like Wal-Mart.

I think so, too!

 

[dashaund]

I'll third that. Most folks I've talked to don't understand C-band. They just think it's a big ugly archaic dish that was around in the 80s and serves no purpose now. I'll be honest; one of my interests when I setup my Ku dish was to get more HD programming...I'm an HD nut! And to imagine watching college football games in even better quality really got me going. I'm reaping the benefits now...wow! I think when people start watching really good HD programming then get forcefead some of this lightweight trash that cable and D*/E* start forcing down their throats, they'll start looking elsewhere. However, a lot of your major PQ guys never left C-band to begin with. I'm definately hooked.