DirecTV Makes Case Against Multicasting

[Gregg Lengling]

Concerned that the DTV carriage discussions being batted around Washington have concentrated more on cable than DBS, DirecTV recently visited the FCC to make its voice heard. "[The] focus has been on carriage requirements for cable systems," DirecTV said in its FCC presentation Oct 8. There is "only a brief mention" of DBS in the FCC's notice of proposed rulemaking, it added.


The Commission is expected to issue a final decision on dual must carry and multicasting by year-end. Broadcasters are pushing hard for a multicasting requirement, announcing plans to launch local weather and news services with their extra digital space. Cable doesn't want to be forced to carry the streams. Neither does DirecTV.


In an FCC filing last week, DirecTV stressed its plans to launch 500 local HD channels next year and another 1K in '07 depend on being able to use compression and carriage of the primary video signal only. DirecTV argued HD carriage actually would decrease bandwidth requirements for cable systems. A 6Mhz over-the-air (OTA) analog channel takes up 6 MHz on an analog system. An HD OTA signal uses only 3-4 MHz on a typical digital system. "Thus, digital conversion saves 1/3 to 1/2 the capacity currently required for retransmission of local stations," DirecTV said. But for DBS ops, it said, conversion for HD requires 6 times as much capacity for local broadcast carriage. "Any HD carriage requirement prior to launch of all 4 satellites would severely limit DirecTV's ability to serve local markets."


Broadcasters have been vocal in their opposition to compression, but DirecTV says without it, capacity even after the 4 birds launched would allow for carriage of only 40-350 uncompressed HD local channels. This marks the 1st filing by DirecTV on the issue since March '03. EchoStar has been quiet, too; its last filing on digital carriage was in Feb '03.


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