USDTV Announces Low-Cost, Localized Digital TV

pagercam2 writes "According to a CNN story, USDTV is about to roll out a new digital TV service, the difference being that it doesn't use cable or a satellite. They stream the DigitalTV signals on currently idle frequencies to standard UHF/VHF antennas. The service includes 35 channels, including local stations as well as many of the basic cable (Disney, Discovery, ESPN, TLC, FOOD...) with more to come. $19.95/mo is the price point for a basic service, though '...customers must buy a $99.95 set-top device to decode the channels.' Initially to be rolled out in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Albuquerque, could USDTV keep prices low and still support local content since they have no cable network to maintain, and no satellites to launch?"

Hmm...

[mgcsinc]

That's just plain old broadcast digital TV, except that it reqires a decoder; I just don't see what is so revoloutionary... Also, the author cites "idle... frequencies" as if broadcasting on these is without enormous cost...

Like On Digital/ITV Digital used to be in the UK?

[farnz]

In the UK, we had a pay TV service, originally called On Digital, and later called ITV Digital, that used standard TV broadcast frequencies for their pay service. It failed for a number of reasons including poor encryption.

We've now got FreeView [freeview.co.uk], a free to air replacement. Same technology sans encryption. There's also a group called Top Up TV [topuptv.com], who are looking to add some pay channels to Freeview, but they look likely to fail due to lack of new equipment to receive pay channels on, and a poor selection of channels (limited due to lack of UHF bandwidth).

Digital TV

[ezs]

Sounds like Digital Terrestrial TV currently rolling out across the UK - Information from the BBC [bbc.co.uk] and here's [digitaltelevision.gov.uk] the UK Govt information.

Re:Hmm...

[ERJ]

I would say that the technology is not so revolutionary. What is neat is that they will be using it to broadcast channels usually only available to cable / dish customers. Nothing new except that, because of no wires to maintain and no satellite to launch, the cost is much cheaper.

Re:Hmm...

[prockcore]

That's just plain old broadcast digital TV, except that it reqires a decoder; I just don't see what is so revoloutionary...

Well, as far as I know, you can't get Discovery, TLC, USA, or ESPN with a regular antenna... but you can with this service.

Re:Encrypted?

[wattersa]

FCC rules for Digital Television mandate that broadcasters must transmit at least one free over-the-air stream in their digital signal to the public just like current TV. However, they can charge for ancillary services [doc.gov] like internet (~19 mbps!), pay-per-view, etc. that are in parallel streams. So if you buy the receiver you'll probably need a descrambler and subscription to access the premium content.

Check this list [fcc.gov] to see what stations are operating in your area. Call them and ask what kinds of services they will be offering. many stations simulcast their regular lineup as part of the FCC transition program.

Re:If this is over public airwaves

[Rick the Red]

You're free to recieve it, just as you're free to recieve satellite signals. You only pay to decode it.

$2 a channel?

[LostCluster]

USDTV only really adds 10 channels that you can't get with a normal digital TV decoder. Namely, Disney Channel, Toon Disney, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, HGTV, Food Network, ESPN, ESPN2, Discovery Channel and TLC.

Everything else they list on this page [usdtv.com] are channels that can be plucked out of the air with a standard digital TV tuner in the Salt Lake City area. So, in effect, viewers are paying $19.95 to get 10 channels... roughly $2 per channel.

Re:Possibly illegal?

[A]

I am the author of the website my buddy here linked to. I just got a letter today from KULC, the non-profit station in question. The respondent did give some decent support for the legality of their choice to lease out part of the digital tv channel. I feel he did not address the ethical issue of selling part of the station to a company without any public input or notification. Here is a column I wrote for my Uni newspaper: http://www.wsusignpost.com/vnews/display.v/ART/200 4/03/10/404ec7769f825 [wsusignpost.com]

Re:sounds familiar

[KingDaveRa]

Yes, we are doing Digital TV over the airwaves like that. I'm not sure if it is DVB based (I don't think it is), but its all broadcasted in spare UHF frequencies. It started off as a pay service called onDigital. They weren't doing very well, as the channel linup was limited, compared to Sky (digital satellite) or ntl and Telewest (cable), they weren't doing too well, so the product was re-branded ITV Digital, in line with the ITV channels. They spent ludicrous sums of cash on rights to football matches nobody really cared about. The company ultimately folded about 18 months ago. What was left was just the free-to-air channels supplied by the BBC. A new service was launched, called Freeview which only carried totally free (as in beer) programming. You just had to spend 100 on a decoder, or you could use your existing ITV Digital decoder (ITV Digital subsidised the STBs, but wrote them off as a loss so everybody could keep them). A new service is now launching in parrallel with Freeview called TopUP TV, which carries some paid programming. Its so far caused problems as its added more channels than some of the latest generation decoders can support!

Freeview [freeview.co.uk]
topup.tv [topup.tv]

Re:Hmm...

[LostCluster]

But so much for passing the savings onto the customer. This service only offers 10 encrypted channels for $19.99. People might think that there's 30 stations coming out of their box, but about 20 of them are free over-the-air digital channels including the digital subchannels that you don't see with an analog tuner, but are decodable by any digital tuner.

Re:sounds familiar

[A]

It is not DVB based, but ATSC. Still mpeg2, but with a few changes. They are renting bandwidth from the local digital tv stations (including pbs) for these 10 or 11 channels.

Re:sounds familiar

[legoburner]

Not only do we use DVB-T in the UK, there is also a cheap PCI card from hauppage which is supported in Linux (after a lot of driver fiddling) and works perfectly with mythtv. It is therefore nice and easy to set up a mythtv box without being a slave to the cable company or satellite company and having full control over everything. New channels get added all the time and they are basically multiplexes over individual channels (ie; what would be one analog channel is a mux of about 8 channels, though most of those are used for crap!) Check out the dvb-t linux docs and mythtv docs if you want to know more. There are a few main muxes all of which are encoded slightly differently (and so some channels do not get as good reception as others, BBC 1/2 are much clearer than ITV2 and Channel 5). The channels are basically MPEG2 streams so if you record them raw, they can be easily converted onto DVD with no analog problems. At its peak the dvb-t service when operated by ITV digital had about 60 channels IIRC. It is a great piece of technology but is not well suited to private companies IMHO.

Re:sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the UK network is DVB, actually the first digital-tv network in the world to go live on a commercial basis in 1998. The downside of that is it uses the less complex 2K carrier mode instead of the more advanced 8K mode now used throughout Europe.

DVB is a bit like GSM, which means most countries use it apart from the US ;)

Re:Antenna troubles?

[stratjakt]

Would work great in Toronto and the surrounding area. Best open air reception in the world.

Broadcasts come from the CN tower (taller than anything else), plus broadcasts from upstate NY come in over Lake Ontario unobstructed.

That's something I miss about TO, the fact that you could completely do away with cable and still have all the major networks with a decent roof antenna, Canadian and American.

Re:YES

[Anonymous Coward]

I have firsthand knowledge of these USDTV boxes and though it may just be another thing to blab about on here, can tell you for a FACT that the entire firmware and interface are both linux-based from the bottom up. I can't tell you how I know that, hence the AC post, but it is.

Maybe that fact will draw some more attention to them, but probably for the wrong reasons. Linux or not, they still suck pretty horribly.

Their boxes and the service are just a little bit too early to market. The firmware is HORRID, though my box grabs a new one every couple of days it seems. The interface is shoddy and not well-laid out. Don't even get me started about the remote control! It is a single-function remote, and poorly made at that. It has to be pointed directly at the box in order to work, and has a poor range. They claim they are working on this, but as of yet I still have the stock one that came with my system. It is the only remote that will talk to the box, so it's irreplaceable.

You need a UHF antenna to get their signal, and it is easily more difficult to maintain a clear consistent signal than it is with a satellite dish or regular antenna.

Their price plans to seem to fill a niche, but they didn't do enough beta testing on the boxes and interfaces themselves to where they are usable. Price lured in a lot of people, but as soon as they found the service sucked so bad, lots of people are dropping back out. Two of my neighbors got refunds from the company for their equipment and service.

The guy who came to set mine up told me that the "brain" of the box is a custom-designed ATI chip, and it has a basic mini-mobo (mini-atx?) inside that everything connects to. There are 2 USB ports on the back of the box (whose functionality is unknown as far as I can tell. Can't see any use for wi-fi access from the HDTV box), and outputs include component, composite, s-video, and digitial optical out. I also think there's Digital coax out for audio, but can't recall. I'd have to look at mine again.

If you're in an area with this service already, give it a miss. They're hoping to (and just may) give cable and satellite providers a big run for their money, but the way they're going they will be bankrupt before it comes to that. Just get DirecTV and be done with it.

Answers to several questions I've seen

[doormat]

1. Yes, the signals are encrypted, and they use a Conditional Access Module in order for you to descramble the content. The scheme works in a similar way as satellite.

2. Yes its on the "public airwaves", just encrypted. The FCC says no encrypting primary network feeds (either SD or HD), but they can do whatever with the extra space they have.

3. Its using the extra space in the digital channel. The 8VSB modulation scheme will allow for 19.4Mbit/s per channel. 1080i HD takes up about that much, 720p uses 14Mb/s or so, 480i/p take up about 3Mb/s. So if I own a digital channel and only transmit in 480i/p then I've got lots of extra bandwidth, and I can sell it to someone else.

4. A *very* important thing to note is that the receiver will output ANYTHING unless you fork over the $20/mo. If you pay the $99 or whatever to buy the receiver and decide you dont like it, you're out the money. You cant use it as a HDTV OTA receiver (to receive channels that are in the air and not encrypted). You must pay USDTV money to keep the box from becoming a really expensive doorstop. Likewise, if USDTV goes out of business, you will probably have a really expensive doorstop.

Content vs. Medium vs. Standards

[billstewart]

Discovery, ESPN, etc. aren't *media* - they're *content*. Nothing about the content insists on being stuck in a copper wire. The medium here is Digital TV, and these guys are just buying airtime and content and selling advertising slots to pay for it, like any old-fashioned analog TV broadcaster does, or any infomercial vendor soaking up late-night UHF or cable TV timeslots.

The difference that digital TV makes is spectrum efficiency - the US HDTV standards can fit a digital HDTV signal in the same space as an analog TV channel, or they can use the same bitstream-over-radio to carry about four lower-resolution TV channels, using protocols that are uglier than you'd expect to multiplex them on the bitstream. The ugliness of the protocols reflects the ugliness of political process that led to the design, with the FCC, the existing broadcast TV license-holders, the big networks, the cable TV companies, and several competing hardware folks in on the deal. They sold it to the public as High Definition TV, but of course there's not too much content where HDTV matters (mostly sports and movies, but not most sitcoms or dramas or news or talk shows), so by the time the standards were mandatory, the broadcast license owners got to convert their analog stations to "Digital TV", which can use the bits for HDTV or lower resolution content, giving them multiple low-res channels instead of the one they used to have, which they can essentialy sublet out to other people if they don't want to package their own content for it.

The US FCC essentially nationalized the public's airwaves back in the 30s, along with the rest of the New Deal power grabs, and rents it back to big media companies or occasionally small well-behaved media companies in return for the ability to bully them around about content. Occasional gaps in the coverage have slipped by, allowing things like WiFi, but most of the spectrum is subject to political control, and that means of course that everybody lobbies the FCC.

Re:wireless Internet over UHF?

[benwaggoner]

Bear in mind that VHF/UHF are spread over a WIDE area. Assuming that they're using 35 full bandwidth 19.2 Mbps ATSC signals, that's only an aggregate 672 Mbps. Over an entire city, that's nothing - 10,000 simultaneous users gets you down almost to modem data rates. Also, these are VERY high power transmissions, and so unidirectional. So there would still need to be some kind of backchannel to request data.