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End of Satellite title cardAs I walked the exhibit floors of the NAB Show this week, I asked dozens of people the same question: Is IP-based TV delivery shrinking the satellite TV market? Or will it soon? Except for a few satellite folks who ventured that it’ll probably shrink it one of these days, everyone agreed that it has, and that IP is hitting satellite even faster than had been expected.

One case in point is PBS, which announced in late March that it was in the process of switching to IP file-based delivery for its non-real-time programming. And then there’s the demonstration project from the folks at Ryerson University that you can transmit live 1080p, 30 fps HD video from New Zealand to Toronto … as long as you have internet2-quality, university-grade fat data pipes. In what must be an understatement, the Ryerson professors told me, “The television networks are very interested in this.”

The reason for the change is money. Satellites are very, very expensive. It costs millions to launch one, and if it makes it successfully into the right orbit, it’ll only last for an average of a decade or so. During that time, the only way to recoup those millions is to rent slices of transponder time, and that’s why it costs so much to use satellites to distribute programming. Anything IP-based is bound to save distributors a lot of money, as long as it works.

There are several markets for transponder time. One is for program originators such as PBS to distribute to their broadcasters. Another is for companies who send their signals to homes with dishes. (Yet another is for beaming news stories back to stations. I saw a lot of nascent IP-based alternatives promoted at the show, so that’s changing too.)

At the Akamai booth, I was chatting with Pete Condon, a senior service line manager, and I said that the unexpected speed of adoption of over-the-top TV to homes reminded me of the switch from vinyl records to CDs. Pete said this switch would go even faster. “This time,” he said, “everyone already has the player.” It took years for the CD infrastructure to become ubiquitous, but most households already have the internet.

But most is not all. Some folks don’t have any internet access at home, and even more don’t have broadband, and that’s one of the caveats here. In areas such as South America where there is little broadband penetration in homes, satellite remains an attractive option. It’s also still the best way to distribute live programming, such as sports and news, so satellite distribution probably won’t go away completely for a long time. But for now, watch as fewer signals are beamed up to the sky and more are relayed through the cloud.

by ·Comments Off on New LNB just a little better

The new Spitfire Elite LNBAfter long last, here’s a post that’s actually about FTA stuff. Although I am drinking from an ivi.tv coffee mug as I write it. (You can buy yours from CafePress.)

I used to have a dish dedicated to all of the great over-the-air programming of then-Galaxy 10R, so I could switch over to one of those channels in a snap. A couple of months after the old Equity stations winked off, I moved that dish to pick up all the PBS channels on AMC 21.

As of yesterday, this stationary dish had a small Tracker 0.2 dB LNB. Although I’ve never had a truly bad LNB, I keep swapping them out as they improve.

The latest new LNB that I wanted to try was an even smaller Spitfire Elite 0.1 dB from DMS International, via FridgeFTA. What bugs me these days about AMC 21 is Montana PBS, which comes in for me just enough to be detected, but without enough signal strength to watch. Was this new LNB sensitive enough to make a difference?

After a quick swap, I re-peaked the dish while keeping an eye on the signal quality. On the transponder I used for testing, the old Tracker’s quality flickered from 67 to 70. With the Spitfire, it stayed steady at 70, with occasional blips of 71.

Montana PBS still isn’t working for me, and this quality improvement is pretty marginal. But if you’re just now buying your equipment, or if you want to wring every last drop of quality from your dish, the Spitfire is a good choice.

by ·Comments Off on CES: Show’s over, nothing to see here

Overflowing ash tray in Las Vegas CES is over for another year. While exhibitor space hasn’t bounced all the way back yet, attendance returned to its pre-recession levels. Its traffic-paralyzing, restaurant-monopolizing, aisle-choking levels. Attendance wasn’t bad enough to make the show experience miserable, but the lines made everything take more time.

Here are a few quick notes from CES:

* CNet’s Best of Show award winner was the Motorola Xoom, an Android-based tablet that doesn’t actually exist yet. As a lovely lady demonstrated it at the Motorola booth, I learned that it’ll run an OS version that isn’t available, may or may not accept an SD or Micro SD card, and doesn’t have its default app set chosen yet. But when it’s finally ready, the Xoom is supposed to have great features.

There is ample precedent for such pre-production awards. In January 2009, CNet’s Best Home Video product from CES was the Dish Network 922 receiver with Sling technology. The 922 barely made it to market before the end of 2009. Turns out that it really is that good, though, so maybe a real Xoom will eventually be worth the wait?

* One of my blog posts won a contest at CES. No, it wasn’t the previous post about CES. It wasn’t anything from this blog. This was a contest run by the non-profit Internet Innovation Alliance, and those folks judged my post there to be better than anything else written at their booth. Woo hoo! (If you want to read Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas, you can learn how to download a free copy.)

* There was almost nothing about free-to-air satellite TV this year. Tele-Satellite magazine had a booth, although it was unmanned when I stopped by on the show’s last day. (More on that below.) Maybe one or two vendors on the regular show floor showed any equipment. That’s a big change from the days when new FTA set-top boxes would debut at CES.

* Sunday at CES is garbage day. For the first time, I stayed to the final day of the show to see whether exhibitors would dump all of their giveaways to avoid carting them home. Answer: Not very often. The best part was that the lines were short enough to let me see any show at any exhibit. The worst part was that many dealers were closing up early, and most of those remaining were feeling run down after a long show. There was little to suggest the enthusiasm that swirls around the opening of CES.

* I feel sorry for the folks who signed up for CEA’s new Tech Enthusiast program just to visit CES. That program benefit isn’t worth much; readers here know that anyone can get in to see CES for free with only a little work. And worst of all, that admittance is only good on Sunday.

by ·Comments Off on Snowy reminder on dish placement

Satellite dish with a bit of snowHere’s another case where I’ve made a mistake so you don’t have to.

Long ago, when I had to move my primary Dish Network dish because of roof work, I “wisely” picked a spot that I could reach with a broom. That way, when the snows returned to Denver every year, I could brush off the dish and keep the signal alive.

So far, that’s a good idea. But the spot I picked is just barely within broom-swinging range. And that means that to brush off the snow, I need to stand directly under the dish as I clear the snow. Yes, so it falls on my head.

Fortunately (?), another round of roof work is likely in 2011, so I’ll get the opportunity to move the dish to a better spot. Or maybe I’ll just go find a longer broom.

Happy New Year, everyone!