Having spoken to one of the world’s leading experts in all things 3D (David Wood of the European Broadcasting Union) I am ever more sceptical about the future of 3D as a mainstream product.  My own personal experience which started back in 1971  at the cinema with a film called “The Bubble” (made in 1966), a few IMAX trips whilst in SanDiego and some other Aquarium complexes around the world and on to the the IBC show last year led me to realise that it is just not for me both personally and as a step forward in viewing experience.  An example of distorted or unwanted viewing experience is sometimes seen under the HD Blu-ray format, which is great, however sometimes the movies look like “the making of ” as opposed to the cinematic experience that we all know – The Day the Earth Stood Still is a prime example…It is like a stuccatto theatre play intertwined with special effects….Furthermore the people I have given an insight to 3D here at home on a Blue-ray Player with the Glasses have also realised it is far, far, far from perfect.

David Woods highlighted the physical issues relating to the eyes and therefore the health and safety aspect that we are all ignoring and that my eyes warn me of (Bloodshot, blurring, headache, nausea etc.) Constant strain on the “Eye Muscles” and messing about with our normal vision will eventually lead to eye problems.  Perhaps we will not realise that 3D is bad until a generation goes blind – a little like earphones and the MP3 Players making the youngsters deaf…and nicotine not being addictive…but in this case there is a case for understanding “What you can see – WILL hurt you!

There is a plethora of 3D Forums appearing as the sharks of the “Seminar Industry” capture another slice of revenue from the over indulgent technology world that TV lives in and another “Crystal Ball” projection from In-Stat (see below):  Can In-Stat tell me what the lottery numbers are going to be so I can pay off the mortgage and concentrate on living instead of being subjected to yet another TV technology before the last one has matured?  No they cant because 9 times out of 10 the predictions are wrong!

In-Stat projects: – Worldwide 3D TV shipments will reach 41 million in 2014. – 3D Blu-ray player shipments will track closely with 3D TVs. – Pricing is a major barrier, as survey respondents are not willing to pay much of a premium for 3D TV sets and Blu-ray players. – Many Pay-TV operators will use half resolution 3D as a stepping stone and learning opportunity for full HD 3D in the future. On a regional basis, North America will be the largest market.

Reviewing CES reports is an unnerving affair.  At first you believe that your Competitors have the steal on you and that certain technologies that you are involved in are being taken over but not by your Company…Its a stressful thing to imagine that the commercial world that you are in,  is no longer interested in your stuff,  only the new stuff that CES showcases;  however a deep breath and a realistic assessment tells you one thing and one thing only:  It’s all a lot of hot air.

I loved the Twitter post by someone I know very well at Sun Microsystems who said that Sharp had lost credibility by manning their booth with “models” not TV models that is ladies and gentlemen; beautiful people.  Perhaps you have to be beautiful to work at Sharp, who knows,  but it does turn it all into a bit of a circus for a few TV screens and bit of software doesn’t it?

CES is a Carbon Footprint away from hypocricy as is Las Vegas actually.  All the “Save the Planet” doogooders want me to do a “triage” on my house waste and offset my CF by buying credits at the airline I choose to fly to Vegas on, and then you enter the cauldron of the North and South Halls, Sands et al…How many Megawatts does the Sharp stand use just by itself…and what about the booths that get “trashed” the carpet that gets “binned” and the waste, waste and more waste produced to look at a few gadgets and gizmos that are in general not even market-ready half the time?

CEBIT is the same in Europe as is IBC…There is never a deal done at these events that has not already been legally scrutinised and pre-prepared as if we could all be fooled.  Some of us it seems are as we immediately sign up for next year to “secure the space”,  hoping that our badly spent trade-show cash will bring more deals that we didn’t get this year or last year or the years before.

Nokia announced that it is out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as it has all become hugely packed, noisy and expensive….I remember when British Telecom quit the Telcom 1999 show in Geneva to hire a boat on the lake – more cost effective and no tyre kickers asking you for freebies…better business sense for their top clients and potential new clients by sexy invitation only – respectful, classy and correct when the likes of a stand cost millions of swissies for 10 days.

When will the Carbon Footprint of  Tradeshows be calculated and criticised – soon I imagine or is it sooooo important that we will ignore it and plant a tree or two in an attempt to hide our guilt.

And guess what.  I wasn’t even there this year – due to cost, a Nigerian idiot who spoiled the USA travel (already nightmare) experience and the fact that there is nothing a meeting in our offices or at a client who knows what we do could not achieve…Then again I did miss out on all those Gadgets, Gizmos, BoothBabes, The Cocktails, The Razzamatazz and Gambling, Jetlag and liver damage – Damn!

Welcome to 2010 and the madness that is Digital TV.  It’s merely a fold over from 2009 with nothing more than chaos, chaos and more chaos.  It is only January and literally everybody is purporting to have solved the Interactive, Value Added Services for Broadcast.  So the Internet is a mere “Browser” away from conquering Television.  HbbTV is purportedly shipping into German retail where you can buy a STB that allows you to look at Wikipedia on your TV Screen – WOOHOO!  Well done Germany – I can just see the locals fighting in MediaMarkt for that “angebot”.

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Canvas is going to solve the UKs “interoperability and content repurposing problems” as will DECE  see http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5828356&page=1 – the coming together of YET ANOTHER CONSORTIUM – However within this group it excludes certain DRMs…hang on a minute isn’t that anti-competitive?  I do not see the USA Watchdogs on this one yet!  This probably slipped under the radar as it is another “Acronym” offering a “dream solution” like the OIPF and ATIS/IIF etc.

The USA Consumer Watchdog wants a probe into TV Everywhere claiming it is anti-competitive…We had BBC Trust probe and bizarrely clear the BBC to become a “Specifications Body”…Everyone wants in on the act.  HbbTV claims Pan-European status whilst not having more than 2 countries involved.  The ITU claims it has all the IPTV Standards sewn up and so does the OIPF.  The DVB battles on and is largely ignored in IPTV; in fact it is getting ignored for interactive Middleware as well, which at the end of the day is absolutely paramount to fulfill any interoperable service goals….yet it is left out of the discussions at all Consortia as it is “complicated”.  What will it take to bring order to the chaos?

The European Union claims that Competition is healthy for Consumers and Market Forces need to prevail.  So if that is the case why are we going after IPTV Standards and TV Standards especially if they cannot be enforced only encouraged?  The EC makes the excuse that nothing can be “mandated” because of the installed legacy STBs and TVs whilst none of the legacy boxes or the millions of TVs recently bought are able to support HbbTV or any other Middleware that the Industry might like to introduce?   The mere chaos of this industry is quite staggering if you look deep enough.  As far as Europe and Digital TV is concerned the EC reminds me of  NFWRB (Nero fiddles while Rome burns) or in plain English showing heedless and irresponsible behavior in the midst of a crisis.  They do however believe that they appease me with nice letters from the Head of Cabinet.

I would imagine the DVB, ITU, ETSI-TISPAN, OIPF, ATIs/IIF would all have something to say about this but they all sit remarkably silent…The Standards Fragmentation is apalling as are all the initiatives that are being re-hashed.  This all looks like Job protection and something to give the techies something to do in this convoluted Digital TV landscape…There is no leadership in European Digital TV – Something the European Commission should step in and correct.

I have been saying it for a while but we are swamped with technology and “gadgets.”    There is an over technologisation (yes I know it is not a word…has it ever bothered an American) of the world of entertainment which is leading to massive fragmentation of content and access to the content we once all shared as a “herd”… I read a nice report in the newspaper yesterday about the human capacity to only absorb a certain amount of data (including words per day) until overload.   I believe it is the same in many aspects of our lives.  There is only so much you can do in a day before you want to go and re-charge your personal batteries…and perhaps lean-back and watch TV passively.

Here is an extract from a BBC reported article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8407690.stm):   Although 56% of UK households now have an HD television, 91% still watch standard DVDs and get their television through standard set-top boxes.

However, the survey of 2000 adults showed 81% admitted to not getting the best from any of the hi-tech gadgets around their homes – from mobiles to laptops.

Come to my house…it is the same…and I understand this stuff, but it does not always work as declared on the box…or the time to get it all up and running perfectly is tooooooo long.

After a lot of personal Research amongst my peers and the general public as well as reading many TV Reports, Newsletters and Blogs it is apparent that we have a difference of opinion in the Broadband world or perhaps just a blind refusal to accept fact.  Internet availability, stability and connectivity is not as wonderful as the purveyors of OTT services would have us believe.    Reports show that even the UK, which is supposed to be a highly connected country, there is still 30% of the population that are not connected.   A much larger percentage are badly served in terms of MB/s.    If you read the Blogs there is a huge percentage that spend far too much time battling their ISPs for a decent stable connection just for Internet and Email access.   Connecting the TV is going to be a major challenge due to household infrastructure.  There are major efforts to have the connectivity of TV’s made simple but that generally requires the purchase of Powerline Adapters for Ethernet or the running of Category 5 Coaxial Cable around the house.  Wifi is coming too but it is more expense to the consumer and often proprietary to the CE manufacter.   When things fail who do you call – yet another part of the unmanged infrastructure the TV is betting its future upon.

So we see a mad rush to extend TV services onto a medium that was not designed to handle it.  Furthermore we hear constantly about “Metering” which is again nothing new.  Many years ago I worked for AT&T Europe installing ISPs around the EMEA region.  I worked in France and was one of the 1st Wanadoo ISP clients.  I paid a bill related to my time “on-line” as it was an active modem connection that understood how long you were connected and of course you paid according to the length of time that you were actually connected to the Service Provider.  So now we see that is potentially the way to go in the monetizing of Video Download and to potentially stop or at least deter the pirating of movies in a P2P world.

If the technology hype was turned into reality hype we would probably have a dreadful situation in Europe.  Millions of people would suddenly be unemployed as their would be no work for them.  The EBU Technical department would do what?  If HDTV is completed and Interactivity is Completed, So is MetaData and all the things that make up modern Digital TVworld we would have a lot of people twiddling thumbs in the building in Grand Saconnex as there would be nothing to “invent”.  Ah! I forgot there is 3DTV of course something we all need and want I hear you cry!  The reality is that we see the re-hashing of old ideas with new rhetoric resulting in the  combining of old technologies with new (actually old) in an attempt to try to invent things that apparently have not already been done – My argument is that they have and they have failed on the Internet and they will fail again unless the real root of the matter is addressed – Infrastructure and Business Models are what will fix TV  in the OTT world not making old dogs do new tricks – sorry old tricks because we have done it all before – just in a different way-The technology offers the same functioning mousetrap but the Business Model is really where the focus should be.

There is no doubt that the world of television is becoming very complex.  There is no doubt that there is very little technology that has not been discovered for Digital Television especially in Interactive Services or Value added Services.  If only the powers that be (European Commission) were to step up to the plate and create a platform so that business could push ahead I believe I could sleep well at night.

The European Broadcasting Union has created confusion by backing HbbTV then backing off and adjusting the backing to HBB whilst citing HbbTV, MHP, CTV and Canvas in the mix of competing standards for that illustrious marriage of Broadcast and Internet.  As the Internet (or Back-Channel) is the only frontier that is not actually owned by anyone then there is only one place to go – Down an Internet route.  HDTV has been done – 3D-TV is on its way so what is left for all those engineers to do?  Play with the open frontier of Internat and marry that to the TV.  Well we have done that but it was not liked so it has to be done again because the flavour of the technology wasn’t what the Internet gurus understood.  Corporate Politics, Not Invented Here Syndrome and a whole host of competitive issues came into play at the same time.

DTT can offer the following: (In green you do not actually need a Back Channel – In Red you do).

1. Linear TV
2. Linear TV + Bound Applications (Play-along quizzes, voting etc. that is tied to the show)
   
3. Stand Alone Applications (News, Weather, Stock Tickers etc.)
   
4. PVR and Push VOD to the PVR
5. Streaming VOD over the Back Channel (PPV)
   
6. Linear TV and Applications that ties-in Associated Back-Channel Video
7. Access to Widgets & 3rd Party Applications
   

The “fly in the ointment” to what looks like a beautiful mix of advanced services in DTT  is that the owner of the Back-Channel (Internet Pipe) is not the owner per-se and this is the battleground and final frontier that many companies have seen as their market-place to implement.

• The Broadcasters want to use it for their offering.
• The CE manufacturers want to use it for their offering thus circumnavigating the Broadcasters.
• Other “On-Line Companies” want to own it as well leading to a very complex market-place.
• IPTV companies want to own it entirely.

Quite frankly there will be no success as wished by the EBU for a Broadcast – Broadband wished just because someone invented a new technical way (HbbTV) to offer those services that I have listed above…there has already been a full technical solution (DVB-MHP) but that has not found favour in DTT – Not because of the technology inadequacies but simply in a wild frontier like TV and Intenet the battle for supremacy is still ongoing and those who support their flavour will fight at all costs to see their company as the winner.  The EBU needs to get to grips with “business models” and standardisation at EC level – rather than support a particular flavours of a technolgy and talk about further harmonisation as in there ” Common Core” statement.

Above and beyond the EBU Technical Committee:  Broadcasters in the main cannot see a way to monnetize the offerings above unless they become “VERTIZONTAL” (Both Free to Air – Horizontal and PAYTV – Vertical) and  it and that will be no different in any HBB world.  Their costs will increase in order to build the services they have to offer…they need to become a PayTV operator (this is not feasible for all).  The Public Service Broadcasters are confused as to how far they can or should go – look at the BBC…The Advertising driven revenue Broadcasters are seeing dilution of revenue and that is another fact of this dilution and OTT services…

Perhaps the European Commission will eventually wake up and tackle the issues of  Digital Terrestrial TV and all its Problemeatic Areas & Boundaries.  Open Internet is one thing but it has thrown a huge spanner in the spokes of all the wheels of  Digital Terrestrial Television.

I welcome Neely Kroes into the battle…will her armour be as deflective as Viviane Redings?

According to the DigiTimes (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20091201PD202.html)  The Taiwanese Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA) and the government-sponsored Taiwan Digital Television Committee (DTVC), all under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), have announced the formation of an Internet TV Alliance  aiming to tap into the Internet TV service and hardware market in China.

Members of the alliance include makers of LCD TVs, IP (Internet protocol) STBs (set-top boxes), network/communication equipment as well as Chunghwa Telecom (IPTV service), TV broadcasters such as Taiwan Television Enterprise and digital content providers, DTVC indicated…

Companies are so intently focused on the potential new-frontier of InternetTV that they are being blinded by the realities and weaknesses of the delivery system.    The   average ISP does not stay connected 24/7 and the speeds that can be delivered vary enormously.  The connectivity of devices to the ADSL modem is also a complex affair.  There are subscriptions to pay and content streaming restrictions in some cases.  It is a much more awkward technology than say a Digital Terrestrial STB or Satellite Dish set-up.  Cable operators have a pipe to the home and handle the system to maximise delivery and ensure quality of service….The Internet has multiple owners and various stages of the value chain and that makes it inherently weak.

At the weekend whilst on a jaunt in London I learnt that ChannelBee the InternetTV Channel started by Ex Sky Soccer AM host Tim Lovejoy and Simon Fuller (Pop idol etc.) has ceased operations as of the 20th of November 2009.  Ironically Fuller stated this less than a year before : “Everyone is excited to see what Tim and his former Soccer AM team will do next. Channel Bee will surpass their expectations and change the face of what can be achieved online”.

It is plainly clear what can be achieved TECHNICALLY on-line in terms of video and audio and yes you can create “On-line TV Channels”,  HOWEVER can you create a following, make them connect, pay subs and generally attract advertising and all the other aspects that make a BUSINESS run?

I also read that Sony is calling their new attack on this brave new world “Sony Online Systems” (SOS) and therefore ladies and gentleman it finally comes to pass that the marketeers  have finally come clean;  SOS =  “Save our Souls” –  Which if I remember my days in the military as a radio engineer it is an acronym that is “A Desperate Cry for Help When the Ship is Sinking”…. —- ….

The Hype and the Reality need to be in synch for this to be a credible move for Television.  No we will not stop the tidal wave towards the Internet as a delivery mechanism for Television – HOWEVER it will create many more victims along the way.