Welcome to The Top Ten Broadcasting stories of the decade.
Dailywireless.org, has recorded achievements in broadband wireless for the last 8 years (since March 2002).
We are making a Top Ten of the Decade list in 10 categories.
- Cellular
- Wi-Fi
- Municipal Wireless
- Wimax & LTE
- Bluetooth/UWB/Zigbee
- Digital Broadcasting
- Satellites
- Infrastructure
- Regulations
- Devices and Applications
Here are the
Terrestrial broadcasting may only be one-way, but one channel can reach ten million people. Free. It penetrates indoors. It’s digital and mobile.
Broadcast radio and television as well as newspapers and magazines had a huge influence thoughout the 20th Century. Today they’re getting a digital makeover. While most global advertising revenue still goes to print and broadcasting, advertisers are finding they can target messages more cost/effectively using AdWords or social media on the internet.
One-way broadcasting, using megawatt towers, may be on the way out. People are now surrounded by high capacity 2-way clouds. Datacasting using broadcast and cellular channels is on the way in.
The television industry ended 2009 with revenues of $15.6 billion, off 22.4 percent from 2008. Newspapers are doing even worse. The world total population of TV sets was 1.5 Billion, in 2008, but more people saw ads that year on their phone, says Juniper Research.
Megawatt broadcasting may be surplanted with Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS), a broadcasting service using existing GSM and UMTS cellular networks. It will be available in 2010, providing the opportunity to broadcast TV, magazines and newspapers to receive free overnight downloads of digital media.
Multicasting to a million people does not require a million channels.
What’s not to like?
1. Digital Television (1999-2009):
By 2003, more people were watching cable than broadcast networks. Cable, DVD, Netflix, iTunes and mobile platforms took a big chunk out of broadcast radio and television. Newspapers and magazines, too. Television broadcasting began experimentally from 1925, and commercially from the 1930s. Television’s golden years were the 50s and 60s. Some wonder if traditional broadcast television is dead. The answer is yes.
Today the business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks’ programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.
Broadcast television is also getting its free spectrum whittled down to size.
Originally some 83 television channels were assigned to broadcast television in the United States, explains Steve Stroh. Channels 70-83 became the original (analog) cellular telephone band and the 800 MHz public safety band. In 2008, channels 52-69 were auctioned off for cellular providers. It’s just a matter of time, says Stroh, before a further consolidation of television broadcasting “frees up”, say, channels 31-50 – a further 120 MHz.
The switch to Digital television (DTV), may the been the biggest broadcast story of the decade. Broadcasters can transmit multiple channels with clear, high resolution pictures. DTV allows tv channels to be right next to each other, without interference, freeing up more spectrum for other uses. The first country to make a wholesale switch to digital broadcasting was Luxembourg, in 2006, followed by the Netherlands, then Finland, Andorra, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in 2007. The United States, Denmark, South Africa and Kenya switched in 2009.
Half the world’s TV households will receive digital signals by 2013, up from 24% at end-2007 and 29% at end-2008. North American penetration will reach 99% by 2013. By end-2007, the UK had the highest digital penetration rate, at 87%.
The US ATSC standard calls for 8VSB modulation, which has similar characteristics to the vestigial sideband modulation used for analog television. The European DVB-T system is based on COFDM. They are not compatible because rights organizations didn’t want to share royalties.
The US government’s DTV set top converter box coupon program officially ended on July 31, 2009 with a total of 34,757,982 households approved to receive coupons during the program’s lifetime.
ISDB-T is used in Japan, with a variation of it used in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile and most recently Venezuela. DVB-T is the most prevalent in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Uruguay and some countries of Africa. DMB-T/H is China’s own standard.
The global Digital Television winner may be DVB-T, which uses COFDM with either 64 or 16 state Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM).
The UK’s Freeview digital settop, launched in 2002, became an immediate hit. It offers more than 30 channels of over-the-air television and dozens of FM stations — absolutely free. Freeview is now the first choice for TV in 10 million of the UK’s 25 million households.
High Definition content on the Freeview platform began December, 2009. Freeview HD settops will go on sale early in 2010 with the BBC HD and ITV 1 HD channel joined by Channel 4 HD in time for the World Cup next summer.
2. Digital Radio (2005-2009):
Radio broadcasting began on Christmas Eve in 1906, say some historians, and was made by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian, with AM broadcasting going national in the 1920s.
Analog radio stations became Digital Radio Stations this decade, following their television bretheren. Two different approaches to digital radio were taken. The In-band on-channel (IBOC) approach was taken by iBiquity Digital, the developer and licenser of HD Radio. It transmits digital radio and analog radio signals simultaneously on the same frequency. No new spectrum was necessary. The FCC liked that approach and mandated that system in October 2002 for digital AM and FM broadcasting in the United States. A small amount of data capacity can also carry textual data such as station ID and artist information. AM IBOC is incompatible with analog stereo (which is now history). As of June 2008, 83 percent of Americans have access to HD Radio stations.
A competing In Band system in the United States is VuCast FMeXtra, using FM sub-carriers (SCA). It can deliver 128k bits/second in stereo configurations.
Ford’s Sync currently uses Microsoft’s Spot service over FM subcarriers, which is being discontinued.
Microsoft’s DirectBand uses the 67.65 kHz subcarrier leased by Microsoft from commercial radio broadcasters. DirectBand does not use the RBDS (Radio Broadcast Data System) subcarrier. RDS/RBDS is a different and lower bandwidth (~730bit/s) subcarrier, primarily used for radio station information, music identification, and traffic.
Bill Gates showed off the first consumer SPOT watches at the January, 2004 CES in Las Vegas. At the same time, Gates announced the launch of Microsoft’s MSN Direct broadcasting service to transmit content to the watches.
“HD Radio” is the proprietary trademark for iBiquity’s in-band on-channel (IBOC) technology, which was selected by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2002 as a digital audio broadcasting method for the United States. FM stations have 150 kilobits per second (kps) of bandwidth available with HD Radio, of which 96 kps is typically used for digital audio. This 96 kps “bit rate” can also be carved into separate program streams (e.g., 93.7-HD2, 93.7-HD3, etc.) allowing FM broadcasters to expand their content offerings without requiring additional frequencies or spectrum. Datacasting metadata typically provides song titles or artist information.
An extensive study by NPR Labs indicates a trade-off between the audience reach of digital HD Radio and the amount of interference to analog FM.
Clear Channel Radio’s Total Traffic Network (CCTTN) can use portable navigation devices with their real-time traffic info. Clear Channel’s digital HD Radio (wikipedia), is now being adopted by broadcasters. It can carry ancillary services — like traffic info — over terrestrial radio stations.
Bridge Ratings projected subscribers to satellite radio should reach 34 million by 2010 and 60 million by 2020, with HD Radio’s growth improving to 26 million by 2020.
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), is used in several countries, particularly in Europe. As of 2006, approximately 1,000 stations worldwide broadcast in the DAB format. DAB+ is approximately twice as efficient as DAB due to the adoption of the AAC+ audio codec, and DAB+ can provide high quality audio with as low as 64kbit/s with reception quality more robust on DAB+.
Commercial DAB receivers began to be sold in 1999 and over 50 commercial and BBC services were available in London by 2001. DAB uses a wide-bandwidth broadcast technology and required dedicated spectrum, unlike Ibuiqity’s HD Radio in the United States. DAB transmits in Band III (174–240 MHz) and L band (1452–1492 MHz), although the scheme allows for operation almost anywhere above 30 MHz.
3. Mobile TV (2005-2009):
Mobile television is television which is watched on a small handheld device. It can use broadcast television, cellular channels or dedicated spectrum. In 2005, South Korea became the first country to have mobile TV when it started satellite DMB (S-DMB) and terrestrial DMB (T-DMB) service on May 1 and December 1, respectively. In Europe, on the DVB-H (Handheld) standard was developed, a spin off of their DVB-T (Terrestrial) system. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) in 2007, received 10 responses to a request for proposals for its mobile and handheld standard (ATSC-M/H) for Mobile/Handheld over-the-air digital TV reception.
More than half a dozen systems competed for mobile television between in the first decade of the 21st Century. They included:
- Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) is a digital radio transmission system for sending multimedia. It comes in two favors; S-DMB (for Satellite) and T-DMB (for Terrestrial). It was deployed successfully in South Korea and Japan, and also used in Europe, using dedicated “digital radio” channels. Spectrum is available across Europe in the L-Band (1452–1492 MHz) and Band III (174–240 MHz). T-DMB can often provide mobile TV faster than DVB-H, which must wait for UHF spectrum to become available.
DVB-T (Europe’s Terrestrial DTV). The DVB Project is the demonstrating a scheme that allows a DVB-T multiplex to contain one or more DVB-H services alongside a high-definition DVB-T service in the same 6 MHz channel. The co-existence of a 13.8 Mbps high-definition television signal and a 5.5 Mbps DVB-H signal within a 19.3 Mbps stream. It uses Hierarchical Modulation, embedded as a High Priority service within a Low Priority DVB-T stream.
- DVB-H was formally adopted as ETSI standard in November 2004. European broadcasters as well as US-backed Modeo and Aloha Partners backed it (probably to stall its 700 MHz spectrum investment – a good move as it turns out).
- DVB-SH, published by ETSI in March 2008, the specification is designed to enable the delivery of mobile TV services in S-band over hybrid satellite/terrestrial networks. Satellite operator ICO in the United States, announced a nationwide deployment of an hybrid satellite/terrestrial network using DVB-SH, in 2008, but has kept a very low profile. Very mysterious.
- Qualcomm’s MediaFLO uses dedicated frequency spectrum at 716-722 MHz, previously UHF TV channel 55. On December 1, 2005 Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm announced partnership for the MediaFLO network. AT&T Mobility launched MediaFlo mobile tv service in February 2007 and Verizon launched the service commercially as part of its VCAST offering on March 1, 2007. Verizon’s V-Cast is largely branding, incorporating both the cellular and broadcast (MediaFLO) technologies. Needs a special tuner on a phone.
- MobiTV (Sprint & AT&T). It uses cell channels not dedicated frequencies like MediaFLO, but unicasts (to individuals) rather that multicasts (to multiple parties).
- IP Wireless TDtv uses 5 or 10 MHz of spectrum for Mobile TV. IPWireless works in unused TDD spectrum and is based on the 3GPP Release 8 IMB standard. It provides for up to 28, 300kbps in 10MHz of TDD spectrum.
- Mobile WiMAX TV (using modified MobiTV). Made an announcement. No products (yet), but some form of it may be inevitable with Comcast and Time Warner Cable into WiMAX big-time, with their TV anywhere promotion.
- ATSC M/H is the US approved mobile TV standard by the ATSC. It incorporates all the multipath problems of 8-VSB, but keeps royalities coming to the gang of four. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) is an alliance of U.S. commercial and public broadcasters formed to accelerate the development and rollout of mobile DTV
Will mobile television be a hit? It hasn’t happened yet. Japan shut down their huge mobile tv satellite. ICO has been quiet and MediaFLO has not been a hit. But the success of You Tube, social networking, camphones and tablets may trigger a new era of mobile tv. US broadcasters hope consumers will sit down and shut up while watching their ATSC M/H mobile TV. Good luck with that.
4. Tablets and Magazines (2005-2009):
Why put computer tablets and magazines into a broadcasting Top Ten list? Datacasting. Newspapers and magazines will need to download megabytes of content daily. That’s more than cellular networks can handle. Datacasting may become an important new tool to enable the resurgence of the newspaper and magazine industry. Five major publishers announced a new digital publishing venture in December, 2009, to develop open standards for cross-platform e-reader technology, advertising and digital sales. Time Inc and four other competing publishers; Condé Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corp will be equity partners in the Joint Venture.
Printing and distribution account for “almost half of expenses” at many newspapers, but “few — if any — publishers have a game plan or timeline for transitioning a majority of their print readers to online delivery,” says a new study (pdf). Recent surveys of media usage indicate that readers are re-organizing their lives around the new technology — and leaving print behind.”
Amazon’s Kindle used the Sprint cellular network to deliver their content, then switched to AT&T. Why? Perhaps it was the capability of AT&T to deliver Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS). It will be available in 2010, providing the opportunity to broadcast TV, magazines and newspapers to receive free overnight downloads of digital media. Multicasting to all. More than 100 channels of TV could be delivered in areas with a high population at night when cellphone transmitters are underused.
The NY Times says 2010 is the year of the tablet. The Apple tablet will be followed by Android devices for half the cost. But video demand on cellular networks could be a big problem. Datacasting could keep broadcasters in the game.
Television, radio, cellular and WiMAX networks will all be in this game.
Besides data delivery by multicasting cellular networks, mobile tv using ATSC-M/H and FM with VuCast FMeXtra and Digital Radio data channels may be utilized in ways not yet imagined.
Forrester puts the size of the U.S. book market at around $25 billion, and over time a good chunk of that is going to move to electronic formats. Though newspapers now enjoy a 10.9 percent lead over the internet for share of ad dollars, the lead is expected to slim to just 3.8 percent by 2012, when the internet will take 16.2 percent of all spending.
By the end of 2010, Forrester Research estimates that 10 million e-readers will be sold in the U.S., and that eBook content sales will top $500 million in 2010. According to ComScore, there will be over 50 million smartphones in the U.S. by the end of 2010.
5. Digital Signage (2005-2009):
Digital signs (such as LCD, LED, plasma displays, or projected images) can be found in public and private environments, such as retail stores and corporate buildings. Digital signage networks can be updated remotely and streamed data from other Internet sources (such as RSS feeds) can be incorporated using wireless and broadband networks.
Digital Signage got its start this decade, and already large companies like Cisco are moving in.
While it may be a nitch market today, cheaper displays and an explosion in new applications indicate that this segment may become a force to recon with. China currently leads the world in the number of digital signage displays. The country’s biggest digital signage firm, Focus Media Holding, alone operating more than 120,000 screens.
Digital signage is utilized in many ways. Anywhere there is a group of people. The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 via an update to iTunes. By November 4, 2009, there are over 100,000 third-party applications officially available for the iPhone and iPod Touch on the App Store, with over 2 billion total downloads. By the end of 2009, the number of applications had nearly doubled. The Android Market has created a similar phenomena
Philadelphia became the first city to launch electronic news stands this year, complete with live monitors and scrolling reader bars. Perhaps a large format table, with a companion App Store, will create a paradigm shift. Digital Signage is not just for advertising anymore. It’s a network. Anyone can join. Free WiFi. The news stand as media hub.
Google’s vision of the future of journalism includes Google Wave, a browser-based tool that can be used for real-time collaborative journalism, Google News and Google Spotlight, highlighting feature stories, and Fast Flip, with magazine-like browsing.
6. Free Vrs Subscription (2008-2009):
Broadcast networks might ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years, warn some observers. Instead, they could operate as pay-tv channels; a move that could spell the end of free TV as Americans have known it since the 1940s.
In 1998, cable channels drew roughly $9.1 billion, or 24 percent of total TV ad spending, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising. By 2008, they were getting $21.6 billion, or 39 percent.
Comcast bought NBC in 2009. Jeff Zucker, who runs NBC and its sister cable channels such as CNBC and Bravo, told investors this month that “the cable model is just superior to the broadcast model. That’s because cable operators have revenue streams from three different, advertising, fees from pay-TV providers, and fees from subscribers. Broadcast television gets all its revenue from advertising – and that share is shrinking.
Meanwhile, free internet content is blooming. Advertisers love the internet — they don’t waste a dime with AdWords. YouTube is an enormous draw – and now includes advertising. The Hulu venture was announced in March 2007. Hulu offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, ABC and many other networks and studios.
Boxee is a cross-platform freeware media center software with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. Boxee supports a wide range of multimedia formats and includes features such as playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, weather forecasts reporting, and an expanding array of third-party plugins. The social networking component of Boxee is its major differentiator. It can export a user’s media activity feed to other social networking services such as FriendFeed, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Then there’s free WiFi networks. McDonalds is now offering free wireless Internet access at its U.S. restaurants. Barnes & Noble, the largest book chain in the United States, provides free WiFi for patrons, in a deal with AT&T, while Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States (after Barnes & Noble), has free wireless Internet access in about 500 of its U.S. stores. All U.S. Starbucks hot spots are free for AT&T customers while a $5 or more Starbucks Card, will get you two free consecutive hours daily. Verizon is partnering with Boingo to deliver free WiFi access – IF you’re a Verizon FiOS or DSL broadband subscriber.
What’s it all mean? Free broadcast tv is dead. Long life free tv!
7. White Spaces (2009):
White spaces are unused television frequencies. They have been freed up by the shift to digital television. Analog television required broadcasters to leave blank televison channels between nearby transmitters to prevent cross channel interference. Digital television created much more “free space” in the television band.
Google supports the white space concept, as does Microsoft, Dell, and other consumer electronics companies. Broadcasters have consistently opposed “white space” legislation, claiming they may cause harmful interference to television reception.
A study commissioned by Microsoft estimates that the unlicensed “white spaces” spectrum could be worth more than $100 billion over the next 15 years.
A November 2008 FCC decision opened up white spaces in the broadcast televison band, from 512MHz to 698MHz. TV white spaces can cover larger areas areas than WiFi, although their power is limted to 1 watt (100mW mobile).
Is this a mass medium? Probably not. One watt is not going to travel far. Still, White Spaces could help rural users who need a simple method to get internet access. It could crack open the morbund municipal wireless network thrust, making it more practical. It’s unlicensed and promises to be inexpensive.
For advertising supported media those are the key words – cheap and unlicensed.
8. Shortwave Radio (2009):
Shortwave broadcasting (3–30 MHz) travels further than higher frequency FM broadcasting (87.5 to 108 MHz) or medium wave AM broadcasting (520 kHz–1.610 MHz) because it uses narrower channels with powerful transmitters that bounce signals off the ionosphere. Shortwave can be received over continents. A new digital audio broadcasting format, Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) can uses the existing AM and shortwave frequency bands, based on signals of 9 kHz or 10 kHz bandwidth. It also has modes requiring only 4.5 kHz or 5 kHz bandwidth, and modes that can take advantage of wider bandwidths – 18 kHz or 20 kHz – allowing DRM to operate alongside AM transmissions in every market of the world.
The principle of Digital Radio Mondiale (mondiale being French for “worldwide”), is that processing power is cheap, so audio compression enables more efficient use of available bandwidth. It improves the quality of shortwave audio from very poor to comparable to FM broadcasts.
As a digital medium, DRM can transmit other data besides the audio (datacasting) — as well as RDS-type metadata or program-associated data as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) does. Unlike most other DAB systems, DRM uses in-band on-channel technology and can operate in a hybrid mode called Single Channel Simulcast, simulcasting both analog signal and digital signal. DRM+ provides bit rates from 35 kbps to 185 kbps and, like DRM, permits up to four services.
Digital Radio Mondiale is being considered by Ofcom for introduction in Britain in 2012 on the present AM medium wave band.
Media saturated urban environments ignore Shortwave Radio, but it could emerge in the teens with new digital life. Digital Radio Mondiale, with a range of hundreds or thousands of miles, digital sound and datacasting could make Shortwave cool again. With apps and everything.
9. Personal Broadcasting (2009):
Ustream released its Broadcaster app, which allows you to stream video footage live from your phone to the web and launched its Ustream Viewer for Android, on the Android Market, free of charge.
Ustream launched the iPhone version of the viewing app last January, when it was downloaded 113,000 times in 24 hours. The iPhone doesn’t have a Broadcaster app, because Apple won’t approve them, notes TechCrunch. Qik and a handful of others have been kept off the iPhone because of this.
Qik, Kyte, Flixwagon, Ustream and others offer mobile video broadcasting, on your iPhone or Android phone. Qik is pre-installed on all Nokia S60-based phones and recently added Samsung to their tent.
The $99 Roku Player, a tiny WiFi box that hooks to your television and streams videos from Netflix as well as Amazon Video On Demand, can also show netcasts you love from people you trust. The Roku Channel Store allows users to add additional “channels” of streaming content, some of which may be free, some which may require a subscription or other payment.
Leo Laporte (above) believes this will open up podcasting to the general public.
10. 3D Television – and Beyond (2009):
3D-capable TV sets have been offered by manufacturers such as Mitsubishi for several years. Now Sony and Panasonic are jumping in along with Texas Instruments. Sony expects 3D TVs to account for up to 50% of its total TV shipments in 2013, up from zero percent this year. The theatrical success of 3D movies like Monsters vs. Aliens and Avatar has programmers excited about bringing 3D to the living room, though doing so within the existing pay-TV infrastructure will be challenging.
Last month, 3D HD got a big boost when the Blu-ray Disc Association finalized a technical specification for recording 3D HD content onto Blu-ray discs. 3D Blu-ray players, which will be backward-compatible with 2D discs and work with any 3D-compatible TV, will be displayed at CES and are expected to hit the market this year.
RealD’s immersive stereoscopic format, along with 3-D eyewear and technology related to it, will be licensed by Sony. Samsung also announced a partnership with RealD in its TVs.
Satellite-television provider DirecTV plans to introduce a 3D channel in 2010. Their new satellite will begin operations early in the second quarter of 2010.
Shutter eyewear is used to enable stereo 3D viewing when synchronized to a compatible display. RealD was founded in 2003. Avatar was initially offered in 2D, RealD, Imax 3D, and Dolby 3D, and the RealD version garnered more than 50% of the domestic gross of the film
Recently the British Sky Broadcasting company, better known as Sky UK, has announced that they will be launching a Sky 3D channel in 2010. This will bring content such as sports, entertainment events, and other three-dimensional programming to its subscribers. The system will require a special “3D ready” television and Sky+HD DVR box.
On 1st January 2010, the world’s first 3D channel, SKY 3D, started broadcasting nationwide in South Korea by Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting. The channel’s slogan is “World No.1 3D Channel”. This 24/7 channel uses the Side by Side technology at a resolution of 1920x1080i.
Only about half of U.S. households have purchased their first high-definition TV. And makers of TVs and Blu-ray players are trying to convince consumers who already have a single HDTV set in the home to upgrade to newer, more expensive models. Research firm DisplaySearch forecast the 3D TV market to reach $1.1 billion in 2010 and grow sharply to $15.8 billion by 2015.
What’s next? Supercomputer App Stores might provide live mapping of your face onto a variety of avatars, merging broadcasting with the internet. Be your own movie.
nVidia’s RealityServer (below) brings complex 3D graphics to virtually any tablet or smartphone by crunching numbers on a server.
RealityServer moves the heavy lifting to a back-end, and streams results to you in real-time. Web services software uses Nvidia’s Tesla, a high-power GPU that contains 240 cores, which are programmed using the CUDA software toolkit.
OpenSimulator, often referred to as OpenSim, is an open source server platform for hosting virtual worlds and is compatibile with Second Life. It is also capable of hosting alternative worlds with differing feature sets with multiple protocols, and was talked up by Intel’s Justin Ratner at SC09.
Okay, those are my picks for the Top Broadcasting Stories of the Decade. What are yours?
We are making a Top Ten of the Decade list in 10 categories.
- Cellular
- Wi-Fi
- Municipal Wireless
- Wimax & LTE
- Bluetooth/UWB/Zigbee
- Digital Broadcasting
- Satellites
- Infrastructure
- Regulations
- Devices and Applications
