by
Dale Cripps
December 17, 2000
0000The other day in my forum a gentleman asked me, "What about cable"" He wanted to know if his cable system might be his best source of signals for his new HDTV. I blurted out the following, which expresses my deepest belief on the subject of HDTV. Of course, it is not the only belief to have. I think it is, at least for me, the best belief to have, except when it comes to getting the gang together to accomplish it. _Dale Cripps
What About Cable HD?
by
Dale E. Cripps
HDTV is little more than a blip on the screen of most of the cable operators I have talked to with one notable exception--that being Time Warner. While they are vocally aggressive and have most of their plants built out to 750MHz, the headquarters and executives in charge do not know what is happening in the satellite systems. The gentleman in charge of Time-Warner's HDTV effort told me he only found out about the Houston T-W cable adding HDTV through news reports! CableVision does have aaaaaaa little more focus since they have some of their affiliate companies feeding them HDTV signals (Madison Square Gardens and Radio City Music
Hall).
Satellite is the 'national' way to roll out HDTV, and the cost of it is just the price of entry to reliable HDTV programing. Neither Showtime nor HBO show any indication of pulling back from their HD commitments, though do now talk about 'market realities' rather than faith in the market.
Cable has been an issue for some time due to the lack of HD decoding in the OpenCable box. The 'cable-ready' TV receiver is still not a fact, and the copy protection issue is still a stumbling block to passing premium HDTV content through unencrypted cables. The idea of 'must carry' has been laughingly set aside as a joke by cable, and of all the 'services' it is most driven by economic road maps rather than from public service or a pioneering spirit. Satellite is still pioneering their markets and are not so deathly afraid of using unoccupied transponder space to gain some reputation as being a technical leader. But we must all beware that there is no guarantee for having any HDTV signals the instant other more profitable uses are presented for the available bandwidth. That holds true for 100% of the bandwidth no matter where it comes from. We are not dealing with charities here, but hard driven businesses who have seen enormous consequences accrue in their 'market' evaluations for being just slightly wrong.
What we need now more than anything is a new body of people who are financially and otherwise able to form a cooperative for-profit business that is first centered upon delivering 24/7 premium HDTV programming. That entity should be owned jointly by all of the stakeholders in the future of digital television--the manufacturers, the content providers, the signal providers, the retail services, and the eager public...and from satellite create one, two, or three outstanding channels with new movies, events. and sports. This NEW business, like the dot.coms, is from scratch and every single step forward is good news to its stockholders. This is not the case now with everyone trying to protect the bottom line of existing businesses while tip toeing into the new one which, if it gains a toehold, is sure to eat its parent alive during the transition. A new business has good news until it no longer is growing. That is what we need--a new business where adding of one of anything is meaningful to growth. Anyone who has seen HDTV KNOWS in their heart it is the wave of the future, but anyone with an once of sense can see that the wave also swamps the existing boats. If a merger as large as the AOL/Time-Warner is not big enough to swallow the pioneering cost of HDTV without pain in their stock market evaluations--and their chief council sitting right next to Steve Case was CBS's chief council, and a member of the ATSC, and he knows everything there is to know about HDTV--then who is? If you don't see AOL leading, who among the giants can? Only a new organization with HDTV as its core business can, period. It's the only means for creating stockholder patience. The tremendously good news is, any company that successfully pioneers HDTV is the next CBS-NBC-ABC-BBC and any other xxC there is. Then it truly is the next generation of television from top-to-bottom and side-to-side. No more compromises will be needed and the product can move forward rather than sliding back to accommodate the current 800 lb gorilla.
