Letters to the Editor

January 2002

Pace set top - waste of subsidy?

Below is a duplicate of a letter sent by William Poel, Executive Chairman, EnfoCast, to UK newspaper The Daily Mail, following its article on the Pace analogue converter box (received by advanced-television.com 21/01/02).

Dear Editor,

I read the story about the 'low cost' set top box for ITV digital, allegedly developed with the help of subsidy money. There are a couple of background issues that might be useful to bear in mind.

1) The average number of TVs per household is around three in this country. And you can buy a perfectly viable portable analogue colour TV for less money than one Pace decoder.

2) The core picture standard for terrestrial digital TV is based on a 12 year old technology (MPEG2). Consider what personal computers were like 12 years ago, and then ponder on the advisability of using 12 year old technology. With only around 1.5 million ITV digital boxes installed, now is perhaps the best time to make the jump to a rather more modern solution for the remaining 50 million or so analogue TVs in the country, before it's too late.

3) Since our technology is up to the minute, and remains that way, the compression technology we use for our EnfoCast network (www.enfocast.com) results in broadcast TV (delivered by satellite and viewable on a standard Windows PC) that uses 10 to 20 times less bandwidth than the system used by ITV digital. That means there would be enough bandwidth for truly local community TV services to be made available, serving town-sized areas - not just the usual collection of tacky TV shopping channels, repeats galore, pop videos and sports.

4) Digital TV is about much more than just the picture - a very critical element is the programme guide to help navigate an interactive multichannel world. Again, the standard locked-in with ITV digital is barely more sophisticated than 30 year-old Teletext. In the EnfoCast system, the program schedule scheme and general interactive support may use all the up-to-second tricks of the web designer's art.

5) The signal level for digital terrestrial is still inadequate over a large area of the country. The effects caused by co-channel interference during periods of high pressure can be totally disruptive, not just a few wavy patterns on the screen.

6) Some time ago, we looked at the issue of providing a low cost adaptor for existing TVs to the ITV Digital standard and would be pleased to sell a reference design to a manufacturer who could make and market it for about £50 in volume. However, we felt that it would be better to produce a box that provided the potential of three separately tuneable simultaneous feeds for a "normal household" with more than one set - and that would probably cost about £100 in volume. But we ended up channelling the effort into EnfoCast instead.

7) The EnfoCast system allows any number of viewers on a local network to watch any one of around 100 broadcast channels per EnfoCast 'box' - and a larger number of 'on-demand' services. It doesn't require one box per channel per screen.

8) The likelihood of the present subscription payment scheme surviving for long in the realm of digital TV is questionable anyway, with virtually all content being bought ad-hoc 'as required on demand' in the not distant future. Is it worth struggling with this transitional solution anyway?

9) Why this passion for Terrestrial broadcasting anyway? From the transmission perspective, it's VASTLY more expensive and less reliable than satellite delivery; vastly less versatile, and covers a tiny fraction of the potential number of channels. Perhaps this is because satellite TV seems to have become synonymous with Sky, but it really doesn't have to be. There are plenty of satellite options that don't involve paying Murdoch's ransom. The only possible use is for a portable TV set with a portable antenna -although many campers seem to erect their portable satellite dish before the tent these days.

10) Most telling of all, perhaps, are the figures for viewing last year that show total time per viewer dropped; although there are now a zillion channels to watch. So maybe the TV screen isn't where the future action should be concentrated, anyway?

In the past three years, the prime consumer audience demonstrably now spends far more time in front of a PC workstation than a TV set - in fact, the rate at which even consumers at home have migrated to PCs has exceeded all expectations.

Consumer TV platforms have traditionally been a Tower of Babel when it comes to standards: different RF frequencies; different display frequencies; different transmission standards, different colour systems, different regulatory environments. Consumer digital broadcast missed the opportunity to adopt a world standard, and even added additional fragmentation in terms of multiple user access encryption schemes and user management solutions!

The ubiquity of the Windows PC, however, means that there is a de-facto global standard to address for interactive broadcast business TV. This does not necessarily suit the 'divide and conquer' tactics of the incumbent broadcast TV and regulatory industries, but it certainly suits the rest of us.

That said, we are not naive enough to expect that if we build a network, the users will come: we understand that a strong content proposition is essential in order to focus marketing and establish bridgeheads in thetarget organisations. And so the "EnfoCast Business Media Network" has been extensively researched and a comprehensive content plan covering general broadcast news to industry-specific training, is already in place.

So it would be nice if HMG paused and gave as much attention and encouragement to a digital broadcasting project that is designed to give British industry a valuable new information service, as it seems to spend on finding more and better ways to pour East-Enders, Crossroads, football and Ruby Wax into the living room.

Moreover, we have not received any government or licence payer subsidies, and we haven't spent a tiny fraction of what ITV has thus far flushed away.

So all in all, maybe that research money on the £99 set top box could have
been better spent?

Yours

William Poel
Executive Chairman,
EnfoCast

Editors Note: Andrew Wallace, Marketing Director of Pace Micro Technology confirmed to advanced-television.com that Pace did not receive any subsidy for its set top boxes.

September 2001

An anonymous letter (below) has been going the rounds of the advanced television industry, suggesting problems with Microsoft's set top box at TV Cabo in Portual. Advanced-television spoke to Mark Le Goy, Marketing Director for Microsoft TV in EMEA to get his response to the allegations made.

tv_grass@hotmail.com wrote:

Hello,
I thought you would like to hear about the problems that Microsoft is having with its interactive TV service on the TV Cabo network in Portugal.

TV Cabo launched its interactive TV service on June 7 2001, with all the usual hype. It seems that Microsoft's PC industry heritage of marketing hype matched by failure to deliver and technical problems is being continued into its interactive TV business.

TV Cabo rushed its launch, under pressure from Microsoft, which desperately needed a customer to talk about.

The current situation is that the services do not work, the set-top boxes have lots of software problems, and there are simply not enough boxes available on the market. Not even the developers have the new development boxes.

Despite what Microsoft claims, there are far less than 2,000 boxes in the market, and TV Cabo is trying to sell subscriptions now with the promise to install the box "no later than Xmas this year".

TV Cabo also announced a new release of services in October, kind of "now this is the real thing"...., but insiders do not believe the problems will be fixed by then.

Thought you'd be interested to follow-up on this. Hope it's useful.

Cheers,

TV Grass

ATV: First - did you rush TV Cabo to launch?

Le Goy: "It wasn't anything of the sort. It was TV Cabo's timetable - they set the date. Deployment of set tops is always set by the operator. They wanted to do a six month trial - which they began in December 2000, and when the 6 month trial finished, the date for deployment arrived."

ATV: We've not spoken to TV Cabo - but what about the services? In any trial there will be problems that need to be overcome - what were these and were they overcome?

Le Goy: "We are satisfied with the performance of the software, and more importantly, so is TV Cabo. They are also satisfied with the ongoing relationship. Its laughable to suggest they are not.

"I'm sure that during the trial period there would be things that needed to be resolved - which is why they had a full length 6 month trial which is quite long. I was not close enough personally to know what those issues were, but I know both sides are satisfied with the performance since launch. Any subsequent teething problems will have been very minor. Any problems with content providers would be no more than what would be expected with new content providers."

ATV: So how about the availability of boxes. Who is supplying them, and are you delivering less than originally claimed? Do the developers all have access to boxes?

Le Goy: "The boxes are manufactured by Octal of Portugal, a subsidiary of Nova Base - initially the only supplier. Pace will shortly be supplying boxes for TV Cabo running Microsoft TV advanced as welll. Lack of availability? That's laughable too. My understanding is that all content developers that TV Cabo is working with have the boxes they need - though not necessarily every developer that wants one has one.

"We have never made any claims about the number of boxes delivered."

UPC dropped its exclusive deal with Microsoft and went to Liberty for its middleware, then earlier this year, NTL dropped the Microsoft enabled box. ATV asked Le Goy , "UPC was due to deploy Microsoft enabled boxes in Holland this month - is that now going ahead? And why did NTL decide not to launch a Microsoft enabled box? "

Le Goy: "Deployment is dictated by the operator so you'll have to ask UPC, but there has been a field trial since late May in Amsterdam, and Haarlem. The NTL issue was one of them putting their digital terrestrial plans on the back burner."

I am happy to publish your correction and regret any inaccuracy we may have inadvertently published. I should also point out that Mickey Kalifa, UK MD of OpenTV did not want to guess at a rival's figures, but responded when pushed (gently) by advanced-television.com to make an educated guess, so that his own new figures could be put into perspective.

Best regards,

Tony Morbin.

UPDATE: Latest figures for digital Set Top boxes porting with Canal+ Technologies' systems is 10.5 millon as at August 31 2001.