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USDTV Announces Low-Cost, Localized Digital TV
pagercam2 writes "According to a CNN story, USDTV is about to roll out a new digital TV service, the difference being that it doesn't use cable or a satellite. They stream the DigitalTV signals on currently idle frequencies to standard UHF/VHF antennas. The service includes 35 channels, including local stations as well as many of the basic cable (Disney, Discovery, ESPN, TLC, FOOD...) with more to come. $19.95/mo is the price point for a basic service, though '...customers must buy a $99.95 set-top device to decode the channels.' Initially to be rolled out in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Albuquerque, could USDTV keep prices low and still support local content since they have no cable network to maintain, and no satellites to launch?"
Now if only they could do broadband over the same frequency range...for the same price.
Is this encrypted like satellite TV? Or can I buy a receiver and not pay for the signal? Are these people going to sue all purchasers of smart card IO devices?
My other car is first.
The UK have has a DigitalTV service that broadcasts to standard antenni for a little while now. FreeView
I live in BFE, where there is no cable and I'm too cheap for a dish (plus no Internet from a dish out here). I wonder since this is going thru the UHF/VHF frequencies, if it will be available farther out of town than cable is in most places. Also, most channels thru my standard antenna don't come in very well. I think 2 of the 6 channels I get are clear. I wonder if this will have the same problems for those of us stuck out in the country?
Indeed, the service is a little cheaper than the common cable system, but brings about one major disadvantage: You will need a receiver and subscription for every receiver you own. So if you have 2 TV's and a VCR, you need 3 subscriptions, and this setup is more expensive than cable plus an amplifier and indoor coax cabling.
However, the service can be used on the road, allowing good quality TV reception in vehicles and on, for example, campsites.
I've seen the displays in our local Wal-Marts (Orem ,UT ~30 miles from SLC). The features look really good, but they just didn't have any options for adding other channels that they do NOT mention.
I prefer a lot of channels so I can skip the trash and find the good shows... I just don't see that as an option for this service. The HDTV aspect is attractive, but I don't have the money for the TV! (I know, I know, I am a bad bad bad geek)
With thier $19 price structure it looks like they are going after customers that want basic with some premium channels but not the high price, I think that is the same market that does NOT have HDTV's.
My brother is thinking about signing up so to add HDTV to his big screen, but he will still keep his dish.
~Z
Also, .50/channel :)
I want a system where I can pick each and every channel individually. I'd only want about 12-15 of them and I'd be willing to pay
A friend of mine found out about this awhile back and has been documenting his research into the matter. You can read what he has found here. Basically: "While surfing the web I have found out that USDTV is renting space for 3 of its 11 channels from KULC. While I am no lawyer I think that this is illegal as KULC is licenesed as an educational station."
In a previous comment I wondered about how they would go about protecting the digital stream from piracy.
I went ahead and did some reading and it seems that when you purchase the unit, you have to call customer service and read them the UID number and the serial number from the receiver.
I'm sort of disappointed in their engineering department. I give it 3 months of mass market exposure before you see a hack (perhaps opening the unit and being able to serial into it?) that will let you change the UID and Serial Number to perhaps an existing subscription. or even a universal unlock code (like region 0), who knows.
One day, we will all have a big fat fucking fiber pipe (fffp technology) right up to the door, and all this silly old technology for media delivery will die out, as it should. But, for the time being, this looks marginally interesting, as long as the consumer does not have to foot the bill for some box that will only become junk a year or so later (WebTV...).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Why is there a monthly fee to recieve it?
"equipment rental" my ass.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What??? Using public airwaves to send for-pay content??? That is not right. These broadcasters pay NOTHING to lease very VALUABLE public resource (air-waves). The arrangement has always been that for leasing for free, they MUST broadcast open and clear signals. This kind of encrypted services is clear violation of that agreement. I have no problem if this company pays for the unused spectrum, but to use public resources to make profit seems like a very bad land grab by very greedy people. Where the hell is FCC??? Oh, I forgot, they are in the pockets of the broadcasters...
Too expensive, competition from existing sat and cable made it poor value and finally went bankrupt paying over the odds for the right to air minor league football matches that nobody wanted to watch.
In fact the only success was the funny knitted mascot toy they made famous which was used in the advertisements these sometimes fetching crazy prices on ebay at the time.
Its what we've been doing in the EU for several years now. And as the previous post says it is not without cost or limitations (less bandwith than satellite for example).
In fact our big pay-to-view digital terrestrial tv company went spectacularly boom and nearly took out half of the soccer world with it, so that we had only free-to-air digital for a while, although a new player is now attempting to make pay to view digital terrestrial work again.
And if they hit the target for analogue switch over (unlikely as lots of voters have analogue only tv's still) then there will be lots more room to grow the digital tv space.
Hardly. Many traditional Christians refuse to acknowledge Mormons as being Christian, leaving them to watch BYU-TV instead of CBN and the 700 Club.
Some research has been about USDTV's operation in Utah and they appear to be using channels that have been allocated to the "Utah State Board of Regents", which is the state board responsible for overseeing education in Utah.
IANAL, but according to FCC regulations (47CFR73) "noncommercial educational broadcast stations will be licensed only to nonprofit educational organizations upon a showing that the proposed stations will be used primarily to serve the educational needs of the community; for the advancement of educational programs; and to furnish a nonprofit and noncommercial television broadcast service."
We feel USDTV might be in violation of these regulations and we've been searching for answers as to the nature of the agreement between the two entities. So far our efforts to contact them have not yeilded results. Does anyone have any understanding of how they are able to license this "non-commercial" bandwidth?
Credit for most of the research goes to Luke Jenkins. There's a complete history of the research he's been doing to get to the bottom of this matter here: http://a.zzq.org/kulc/
I don't normally bitch about modding, but give me a friggin break! Flamebait?
The point is - there's such a thing as too many set-top boxes. I've got enough already. When someone starts to integrate features rather than selling me another box for each, I'll buy another. In the meantime, forget it.
Why? When I read the post, I first wondered if he was describing the situation in Germany, which though not exactly that way is similar in many regards. Then I saw the author was Alan Cox - oops.
Anyway, a prominent example of this being done in Germany is the area around Berlin, where they have in fact performed a mandatory switch to digital, hundreds of thousands of analogue receivers notwithstanding. The public was not amused, but I guess they resigned to fate and got their decoders - those who weren't already using cable or sat, that is.
It's not just Berlin, though, Berlin and the surrounding area is just the only case where analogue has been turned off. There's service in most areas of Germany, especially the populated ones - I'm fairly certain I could get DVB-T if we weren't already on Sat. Incidently, if DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial, I assume) had arrived a couple of years earlier, we probably wouldn't have gotten sat. (Note that you don't need a subscription for DVB-T around here - it's free, or rather, paid for by taxes.)
Technically, this is fairly cool, from what I hear. I distinctly recall receiving only 5 channels, two of them very badly and the actual shock of seeing them in brilliant quality (as far as TV goes, anyway) on sat for the first time. With DVB-T we'd get all the channels we're interested in, at the same quality. On the other hand, I'm sure people using this have their own horror tales to tell.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
There was something like this here in Rochester, NY, some time ago. It failed horribly and the company has long since disappeared.
Plus, their channel lineup SUCKS. Really, you only get six channels you didn't get before. Disney, Lifetime, ESPN, Discovery, HGTV, and Food. Just because you get two channels of the same shit doesn't make it different.
Then again, now that I look back on it.. this is actually a perfect channel lineup for Utah, where every family is like some stereotype out of a 50's sitcom - you're unamerican if you're a woman and you're not a stay-at-home wife, or a man that doesn't care about sports, because that means you're a fag...
So we get all our tv transmitted in unencrypted, 6Mbit (or there abouts) MPEG, widescreen. Each channel has about 21-25 Mbit of bandwidth so most stations also transmit a HD signal as well. Currently I think one of them transmit at 1080i, and the rest at either 720p or 576p as the high definition channel.
Also the leading cable/sat tv provider has just started transmitting their cable pay service using DVB-C.
The land down under. It's not just Steve Irwin anymore.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
The service is not using "idle frequencies", it is using active frequencies but spare bandwidth. I.e., it is including its scrambled signal in with the standard digital broadcast signal of one or more other stations.
If these stations have the spare bandwidth, this is a win/win for both the station and USDTV, since they get the cost of a tower and transmitter underwritten by USDTV, and USDTV gets a medium they don't have to worry about licenses for.
This will be a benefit to those areas where the local stations are hard-pressed to come up with the funds to go digital (even though they must). It will also be a big help in areas currently served by translators, since those are sometimes operated by small groups within the community they serve. They can still translate, and sell the excess space to USDTV, who pays for the hardware.
Not sure why this is being labeled as 'news'. They've been selling the equipment & services at the local WalMart for about a year... (yes, for the USDTV brand service)