Networks could offer more channels to local Digital TV

[tvboy]

With the upgrade to digital TV it will end up putting more network owned channels that are now on cable and satellite on to local channels.  With the option of putting up to 99 sub-channels on each individual channel lineup you could end up having local TV compete against the cable and satellite companies for free.  Three stations in town already are doing some of this.  WTMJ has Weather Plus at 4-2, Milwaukee Public TV has 10-1 to 10-8 with PBS programs and WPXE has 55-2 to 55-4 with Ion network channels.  This option of putting more network owned channels on cable and satellite to local TV can happen by having MSNBC, CNBC, ShopNBC, USA, Sci-Fi and Universal HD going into the channel lineup for WTMJ.  Fox Business Channel, Fox News Channel, Fox Sports Net and Big Ten Network go to WITI.  ABC Family, Disney, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes go to WISN.  Also CSTV, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, and VH1 could end up on WDJT.  Its very possible for local stations to do this and give cable and satellite some real competition.

[LoadStar]

With the upgrade to digital TV it will end up putting more network owned channels that are now on cable and satellite on to local channels.  With the option of putting up to 99 sub-channels on each individual channel lineup you could end up having local TV compete against the cable and satellite companies for free.  Three stations in town already are doing some of this.  WTMJ has Weather Plus at 4-2, Milwaukee Public TV has 10-1 to 10-8 with PBS programs and WPXE has 55-2 to 55-4 with Ion network channels.  This option of putting more network owned channels on cable and satellite to local TV can happen by having MSNBC, CNBC, ShopNBC, USA, Sci-Fi and Universal HD going into the channel lineup for WTMJ.  Fox Business Channel, Fox News Channel, Fox Sports Net and Big Ten Network go to WITI.  ABC Family, Disney, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes go to WISN.  Also CSTV, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, and VH1 could end up on WDJT.  Its very possible for local stations to do this and give cable and satellite some real competition.

You have some very odd ideas, I must admit.

Over-the-air broadcasters have a limited amount of bandwidth - 19 megabits/second, I believe. It's not nearly enough bandwidth to do what you're suggesting. If a broadcaster wants to show a high quality HD program, that uses just about all the bandwidth they have available to them.

If they wanted to starve the HD program of bandwidth, they could show an additional standard definition channel... two if they really want to squeeze the HD program... but that's really it.

MPTV's 10-1 through 10-8 is really pushing the absolute boundaries of what they can do with that 19 megabits per second bandwidth... they can get away with this because most of the subchannels require very low bitrate, showing fairly static images all the time. You couldn't really show 8 channels with full motion video and decent sound unless you wanted the video to degrade to the point of being a crappy web stream (or worse).

The rule of thumb for broadcasters who want to multicast is 1 HD + 1 standard defintion stream, or 4 full-quality standard definition streams.

[tvboy]

I understand that with the limitations now it restricts how many audio and video streams can be on a digital channel.  This at least gives local channels the option in the future with advancements in technology to eventually consider adding the family of network stations.  This will still take time to evolve.

[Fr8train]

Disney, who owns ESPN, gets paid for each satellite or cable subscriber who gets that channel in addition to advertising.  What would be their incentive to give the channel away for free OTA and lose this subscriber fee that they are getting?

Sure there is a possibility of more viewers and thus a higher fee for advertising but only ~10% of the people get their TV OTA anyway.  It is not going to happen.

I can see Milwaukee getting RTN on a subchannel sometime in the future but that is about it.

[kevbeck122]

I think there was a company that tried to do this (US Digital maybe?)... not free, but everything was OTA.  They are no longer around.  People don't like the idea of cutting into HD channels bandwidth.

[LuckySe7ens]

I think you're correct about one thing, we may eventually see shopping channels on local digital sub-channels.

But otherwise, yeah, do you know how much ESPN makes per-subscriber each month?  It's not a trivially small amount.

Also, once the standards are set, there really isn't much wiggle room for future technological improvements, as there's too much concern with reverse-compatibility.  Sure, perhaps you'll need a device that supports the new standards to get the additional sub-channels, but they'll be stuck using the same standard for the main channel, because there is no way they'll leave everyone who purchased a brand new HDTV out in the cold, and that means they'll be stuck dedicating a large amount of bandwidth to their primary HD feed.

[John L]

With the upgrade to digital TV it will end up putting more network owned channels that are now on cable and satellite on to local channels.  With the option of putting up to 99 sub-channels on each individual channel lineup you could end up having local TV compete against the cable and satellite companies for free.  Three stations in town already are doing some of this.  WTMJ has Weather Plus at 4-2, Milwaukee Public TV has 10-1 to 10-8 with PBS programs and WPXE has 55-2 to 55-4 with Ion network channels.  This option of putting more network owned channels on cable and satellite to local TV can happen by having MSNBC, CNBC, ShopNBC, USA, Sci-Fi and Universal HD going into the channel lineup for WTMJ.  Fox Business Channel, Fox News Channel, Fox Sports Net and Big Ten Network go to WITI.  ABC Family, Disney, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes go to WISN.  Also CSTV, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, and VH1 could end up on WDJT.  Its very possible for local stations to do this and give cable and satellite some real competition.

Up until last year WCGV-DT was airing Music Videos "The Tube" 24/7 on 24-2.

-John L.

[picopir8]

I understand that with the limitations now it restricts how many audio and video streams can be on a digital channel.  This at least gives local channels the option in the future with advancements in technology to eventually consider adding the family of network stations.  This will still take time to evolve.

It wont evolve that much, though.  There are two things at play here.  Physical channels (the frequency band over which the signal is broadcast) and logical channels (all the channels your TV can see broadcast over the physical channel).  Advancements in technology allow for better coding algorithms and compression algorithms allow for more efficient use of the physical channel but the limiting factor is still the physical channel.  There is only so much information that can be squeezed into a given frequency band.  Analog was very wasteful but modern digital communications are very close to utilizing an entire frequency band while still allowing for adequate error correction and efficient power consumption.

The next big limiting factor is the standard.  Even if an advancement was made that allowed for more logical channels to be squeezed into a physical channel, all existing TVs would not know how to decode the new signal.  So a decoder box would be required for every TV.  People are ticked off enough about having to get decoder boxes for old analog TVs, think of what they would do if they found out they had to get a new box for each HDTV that they just purchased in the past few years.

Who knows what will happen in the future, but it is pretty unlikely that such a system would work until the replacement for HDTV is available and with all the government regulations, that will be a few decades.