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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?"
That's just plain old broadcast digital TV, except that it reqires a decoder; I just don't see what is so revoloutionary... Also, the author cites "idle... frequencies" as if broadcasting on these is without enormous cost...
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
They don't have Comedy Central, which is 1/3 to 1/2 of what I watch:
Child Development: South Park
Sociology: Dave Chapelle
News: Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart
There's even optional:
geography: Dave Attel
As I wrote to the CEO of Dish Networks, lack of comedy central will be the deal breaker.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
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.
Great selection for the test markets...
Salt Lake City - only watch the 700 Club
Las Vegas - too busy gambling
Albuquerque - can't afford tv's
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."
What's USDTV? Did the Department of Television replace the Department of Education so soon?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Yes, we are doing Digital TV over the airwaves like that. I'm not sure if it is DVB based (I don't think it is), but its all broadcasted in spare UHF frequencies. It started off as a pay service called onDigital. They weren't doing very well, as the channel linup was limited, compared to Sky (digital satellite) or ntl and Telewest (cable), they weren't doing too well, so the product was re-branded ITV Digital, in line with the ITV channels. They spent ludicrous sums of cash on rights to football matches nobody really cared about. The company ultimately folded about 18 months ago. What was left was just the free-to-air channels supplied by the BBC. A new service was launched, called Freeview which only carried totally free (as in beer) programming. You just had to spend 100 on a decoder, or you could use your existing ITV Digital decoder (ITV Digital subsidised the STBs, but wrote them off as a loss so everybody could keep them). A new service is now launching in parrallel with Freeview called TopUP TV, which carries some paid programming. Its so far caused problems as its added more channels than some of the latest generation decoders can support!
Freeview
topup.tv
Not only do we use DVB-T in the UK, there is also a cheap PCI card from hauppage which is supported in Linux (after a lot of driver fiddling) and works perfectly with mythtv. It is therefore nice and easy to set up a mythtv box without being a slave to the cable company or satellite company and having full control over everything. New channels get added all the time and they are basically multiplexes over individual channels (ie; what would be one analog channel is a mux of about 8 channels, though most of those are used for crap!) Check out the dvb-t linux docs and mythtv docs if you want to know more. There are a few main muxes all of which are encoded slightly differently (and so some channels do not get as good reception as others, BBC 1/2 are much clearer than ITV2 and Channel 5). The channels are basically MPEG2 streams so if you record them raw, they can be easily converted onto DVD with no analog problems. At its peak the dvb-t service when operated by ITV digital had about 60 channels IIRC. It is a great piece of technology but is not well suited to private companies IMHO.
Warhammer forums
1. Yes, the signals are encrypted, and they use a Conditional Access Module in order for you to descramble the content. The scheme works in a similar way as satellite.
2. Yes its on the "public airwaves", just encrypted. The FCC says no encrypting primary network feeds (either SD or HD), but they can do whatever with the extra space they have.
3. Its using the extra space in the digital channel. The 8VSB modulation scheme will allow for 19.4Mbit/s per channel. 1080i HD takes up about that much, 720p uses 14Mb/s or so, 480i/p take up about 3Mb/s. So if I own a digital channel and only transmit in 480i/p then I've got lots of extra bandwidth, and I can sell it to someone else.
4. A *very* important thing to note is that the receiver will output ANYTHING unless you fork over the $20/mo. If you pay the $99 or whatever to buy the receiver and decide you dont like it, you're out the money. You cant use it as a HDTV OTA receiver (to receive channels that are in the air and not encrypted). You must pay USDTV money to keep the box from becoming a really expensive doorstop. Likewise, if USDTV goes out of business, you will probably have a really expensive doorstop.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
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.