Rebuilding TV, One Producer at a Time

Submitted by doc on Thu, 02/02/2006 - 17:32.

First, go read Terry Heaton's The Ammunition Business. Terry's been whupping the TV industry with a clue stick for years. I don't know how much effect he having, but I also don't know anybody who's better at it.

So, a big Amen for what Terry is saying.

Now, here are a few more points I don't see many (or, any) people talking about. So I'll lay them out here, because the underlying theme is pure DIY. If I'm wrong about anything, correct me. This is mostly new stuff.

First, if LCD screen price/feature trends continue in their same general down/up directions, by the end of this year, we'll see 1080i and 1080p HD flat screens for under $1k at Costco and the big box electronics stores. (For what it's worth, folks at Sony and Sharp told me at CES that they expect resolution improvement to plateau for awhile at 1080p as a maximum resolution.)

Now, where will the best-looking source video for those screens come from?

Cable? Satellite?

They don't have the bandwidth, because they're wedging too many broadcast channels in a pipeline of finite width. Even at 720 "HD" resolution they're full of artifacts. I was at Circuit City the other day, watching some golf on ESPN-HD or some channel like that. A shot following a golf ball through the sky looked like a tiny black donut moving through a field of shimmering rectangles. Any frame looked like a .jpg saved at "lowest".

Direct over-the-air digital transmission (where all the analog TV stations are moving — all stations will be off the 2-13 VHF band and transmitting in HD on the UHF band) is capable of relatively artifact-free tranmission (because the stations don't have the burden of carrying 500 channels), but who bothers with a TV antenna anymore? HD stations look to me like anachronisms at birth. Expensive ones, too.

No, the best-looking source video will be produced by the same people who own the screens. Sony's HD cameras make very pretty pictures, at 1080i. (Can they do 1080p yet? Need to check.)

I already know of people whose main uses for big flat screens in their homes are personal photos and home movies. That's probably what we'll do too, when we move to our next house.

New standards for DVDs are in dispute, and may end up splitting the baby. Meaning, we're stuck with prettified

Watch Apple. Count on them going all-out with video production enablement for amateurs, and -- count on it -- distribution through uploads and downloads from the great .Mac in the sky.

And, of course, others will follow.

Here's the kicker.

Inevitably, some telco is going to discover that symmetrical broadband is the way to compete with cable. Why cant cable go symmetrical? Between DOCSIS, inertia and an inability to imagine any shape other than an asymmetrical one, the cable companies are sitting ducks for anybody coming along with a symmetrical alternative.

The biggest need for symmetrical broadband will be video upload to offsite storage — another good business for the carriers, or anybody, to be in.

Get that, and the ammo market will get huge, fast.