USDTV signs with owners of two Milwaukee stations for digital subscription TV

[Tom Snyder]

LATEST NEWS
The Business Journal of Milwaukee - 9:34 AM CDT Monday

USDTV signs with owners of two Milwaukee stations for digital subscription TV

U.S. Digital Television, LLC signed a $25.75 million funding agreement with an investment group that includes Fox Television Stations, Inc., Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc., McGraw-Hill Broadcasting, LIN TV Corp., Morgan-Murphy Stations and Telcom DTV, LLC, to finance its all-digital, "over-the-air" alternative to cable.

Fox Television of New York City owns WITI-TV (Channel 6) in Milwaukee and Hearst-Argyle, also of New York, owns WISN-TV (Channel 12) in Milwaukee.

Salt Lake City-based USDTV touts its service as a low-cost digital alternative to cable televisioin that offers consumers 30 channels for less than $20 per month. USDTV will offer local broadcast stations plus 12 cable networks, including FOX News Channel, ESPN and The Disney Channel. Its signal can be carried on the additional "subchannels" to be available on digital television stations.

No timeline has been set for introducing the service in Milwaukee. The service is being tested in three pilot markets: Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Las Vegas, with other markets expected to launch in the coming months.

The USDTV service, including USDTV compatible set-top boxes, will be available directly from USDTV and through national and local retailers. Consumers receive the USDTV service through a VHF/UHF antenna connected to a proprietary USDTV set-top box.

[kjnorman]

Well that just sucks.

What is to stop WITI and WISN feeding a highly compressed 480i signal over their main channel and then to use the rest of their bandwidth on this PTV (pay to view) service.

I hope TW comes out with a low cost 25 channel package for $20 per month to squash this into a non-starter.

Then perhaps WITI and WISN will go back to allocating 19mbs to HDTV rather than some terrestrial cable alternative.

Kerry

[StarvingForHDTV]

There goes our bandwidth for Milwaukee's 720p stations  :bang:

Will these stations supply the full bandwidth to TWC customers?  If so, TWC might finally get me to subscribe........

[mhz40]

This is a good example why cable companies nationwide have been fighting multicast mustcarry. {fart}

[AndrewP]

:mad:
 :guns:

[foxeng]

This is a good example why cable companies nationwide have been fighting multicast mustcarry. {fart}

USDTV gives cable more competition, of course they are against it. Since USDTV is a pay service, it doesn't qualify for Must Carry anyway.

[John L]

Whats this about bandwidth?  You mean WISN and WITI will transmit other programs or stations thus expanding WITI to 6-1 to 6-10 or WISN 12-1 to 12-10 just like WMVS ch. 10 is doing with 10-1 thru 10-7?

I was hoping someday soon either chs 4, 6, or 12 would offer 24 hour local weather on another channel exactly what WMAQ-Dt in Chicago is doing.

-John L.?

[mhz40]

USDTV gives cable more competition, of course they are against it. Since USDTV is a pay service, it doesn't qualify for Must Carry anyway.

Well then foxeng, you are 'in the know' more than I...
Maybe the broadcasters feel they have lost the must-carry and are now going in another direction.  Their pattern of skimming bandwidth from potential HD quality just goes to show you where their collective heads are at.
Maybe the FCC should have gone down to a 4 MHz wide carrier for 8-VSB.  It seems the broadcasters really don't need all the allocated space for thier primary souce of revenue.  Or better yet, to save on expenses, maybe they could pool one transmitter and put 2 HD feeds in one 19 megabit pipe.  

[foxeng]

Well then foxeng, you are 'in the know' more than I...

Yes, cable is against ANY direct competition. Even the DBS companies are against it. It hurts their bottom line just like any direct competition of any business. That is Econ 101. No Swammi need on that one.

And any pay service originating on a stations digital service are exempt from must carry and any revenue derived from a pay service on a digital staion is taxable separately on a yearly basis so the government makes a usage tax off of any revenue of these pay services. Always has been. Even for analog pay services. Nothing new here.

Must carry isn't dead. It is quite alive, but stations have been running these digital transmitters for a few years now and they have made nothing with them. The FCC's grand experiment of "build it and they will come" has been a huge flop and they have admitted it in public hearings in front of Congress. Yes, HD sets are flying off the shelves, but the number of people actually watching more than 480i on them is still small comparied to the number of sets in the field (5 million verses 16 million sets to date). And don't be fooled, the FCC was WELL aware in 1996 when they wrote the rules allowing stations to lease bandwidth that it might happen and they put in safe guards to protect the FTA signal such as all stations have to have a minimum of one 480i MPEG2 stream FTA and then allows stations to transmit whatever codec for the remainder of the bandwidth and the above mentioned usage tax. Pay services and must carry are only two of the ways stations are allowed to make money with their bandwidth. Opurtunistic datacasting is another, wireless Internet is another, audio services, free and pay and there are many others ways. And stations are going to start experimenting with them. It is business driven, and nothing else.

Now I have no idea what FOX is going to do with USDTV, if anything. We all will just have to stay tuned on that one.

[kjnorman]

Whats this about bandwidth?  You mean WISN and WITI will transmit other programs or stations thus expanding WITI to 6-1 to 6-10 or WISN 12-1 to 12-10 just like WMVS ch. 10 is doing with 10-1 thru 10-7?

I was hoping someday soon either chs 4, 6, or 12 would offer 24 hour local weather on another channel exactly what WMAQ-Dt in Chicago is doing.

-John L.?

I am no expert on this so take what I know with a grain of salt.  But my understanding is that all a station has to do to comply with the FCC direction to go digital is to supply a Mpeg2 l version of their 480i standard definition signal.  Obviously they can do this with about 4mbps, so the rest of the 15mbps bandwidth they can do whatever they want to make money.  Nothing states that they *have* to provide you HDTV.

The USDTV plan is to get two more more stations together to pool their *spare* bandwidth which they would then use for a proprietary terrestrial based pay to view service.  This would be some version of Mpeg4 and would need a USDTV set top box to receive it.  You would not be able to receive it with you DTV OTA tuner.

Now commentators have suggested the following my happen:

• The mandatory FCC DTV signal will be the lowest bandwidth 480i SD signal that the station can get away with, and will then dedicate the rest of its bandwidth to providing 10 or more SD channels in the USDTV package.
• The mandatory FCC DTV signal will be the lowest bandwidth 480i SD signal that the station can get away with.  It will puts its HDTV channels in the USDTV package requiring you to pay USDTV to see its HD output along with (fewer) SD channels.
• The station will broadcast its HDTV signal hightly compressed (so it will look like cr*p) so make room for the USDTV service

I personally like competition and I think that a service like this is good for local stations like PAX or the religious channels that will never broadcast more than a 480i picture anyway and this would give then much needed revenue.  It would provide an alternative to TWC for low income families assuming the service was cheap.

However, the fact that this service has signed with WITI (Fox) and WISN (ABC) is BAD, BAD, BAD.  :mad:

Where do you think they will get the bandwidth to support the USDTV service?  That's right, by taking away you HDTV feed, or by compressing it so much that it will be unwatchable!

The USDTV service is good if it is on a minority channel, it should never be allowed of a major network channel.

What can be done to scrap this plan?

[Mark Strube]

I'm not too worried... I smell another VOOM-like debackle.

[foxeng]

The USDTV plan is to get two more more stations together to pool their *spare* bandwidth which they would then use for a proprietary terrestrial based pay to view service.

It takes more than two stations for USDTV to provide their service even if both stations gave ALL 19 Mbps (36 Mbps) which by law they can't.

USDTV doesn't off ANY HD. You get that free from the local stations MPEG2 HD stream. All USDTV programming is SD. With all of the things that Hearst-Argyle and FOX are into, I doubt seriously you will lose HD. Certainly from the FOX end they have spent too much money to chunk it now. Like I said, we all will have to wait and see what happens. Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. No one knows yet.

[StarvingForHDTV]

I personally like competition and I think that a service like this is good for local stations like PAX or the religious channels that will never broadcast more than a 480i picture anyway and this would give then much needed revenue.

However, the fact that this service has signed with WITI (Fox) and WISN (ABC) is BAD, BAD, BAD.  :mad:

I agree.  It would be a perfect fit for those stations.  If FOX and ABC spend money providing HD content to their stations, will they really be happy if those stations don't pass it through to the viewers?  I hope that is what stops this terrible idea in it's tracks.

Will TWC customers get full bandwidth HD by fiber?  Will Sat. customers get waivers for national HD feeds if our local feeds get bruatalized like this?  If so, goodbye OTA and hello Sat. or Cable for me!

[Drummerboy]

I thought through the typically programming of every major network and have figured there is an average 2 hours of high definition programming in an average day.
So for 2 hours they are using a lot of bandwidth (if not all).  The remaining 22 hours is standard definition leaving extra bandwidth to waste.  Some of you may say show more HD, but I don't care if General Hospital is in HD and it shouldn't be as it would likely be cost prohibitive.  If a reduction in picture qualilty is negligible and it helps the fight against higher prices of other "pay to view" providers like TWC and D* then I support it (not saying anyone else should).
If USDTV can share that bandwidth nicely and reduce their pq when HD is broadcasted on the major network then I see no reason why coexistance can't occur.
Also USDTV plans on supporting WMV9 and MPEG4 leaving more room for HD or more content.
Now I've been trying to find out if a 720p signal really uses all of the bandwidth.  Information suggests there is spare bandwidth but mostly I find negative speculations on avs flaming USDTV.  For me I will have the wait and see if I notice the difference.

[borghe]

as foxeng alluded to, with as much money and effort as Fox has put into rolling out 720p/5.1 not to mention marketing the hell out of it, I can't see them giving it up, or even overcompressing it, to meet with this. Also, USDTV didn't sign contracts with WITI and WISN. They signed them with Fox and Heart-Argyle. Remember that these corporations own many other stations in many other markets. For all we know it won't ever make it anywhere near milwaukee.

We'll see, but right now I'm not very worried about losing Lost and House in uncompressed HD.