Datacasting - Local issues Rob Nicholls Gilbert & Tobin 16 October 2001
Issues Digital take-up Dealing with the horizontal market Technical challenges What are the vertical markets doing?
Digital take-up Slow rollout of Thomson set top units Some 16:9 television sets available (from about $3,500) Economic uncertainty as to Christmas retail markets Prices of surround sound dropping DVD penetration exceeding 10%
The Australian market place Television penetration exceeds telephones at 99+% Televisions replaced every eight years (or so) versus computer lifetimes Cost of family televisions Multiple TV households VCR penetration and use DVD issues
Content Receiver Sales SchedulesAdvertisingTransmission Dealing with the horizontal market
Content Decoder Distribution Billing Customer acquisition & retention
The technical challenges [1] MHP - the open standard solution: recent HTML specification (July 2001) no implementation guidelines (due December 2001) commitments from: OpenTV Canal +
The technical challenges [2] Interactivity can be achieved with an HTML virtual machine: no need to wait lower decoder overheads: Linux and low cost licensing less memory And: likely to lead to open and not proprietary implementation
The competitive challenge Internet Broadband: ADSL cable satellite wireless Balance between interaction and entertainment Meeting viewer needs
Datacasting - Local issues Rob Nicholls Gilbert & Tobin 16 October 2001