28 What is the Future for TVRO?
Description
This article is from the TeleVision Receive Only Satellite-TV FAQ, by TVRO Hobbyists drlev@hotmail.com with numerous contributions by others.
28 What is the Future for TVRO?
It seems as though consumer TVRO is at a critical crossroads. In the
mid-1990's, the TVRO scene made (for better or for worse) the often
uncertain transition into digital satellite reception. This was also
the same time period that direct broadcast satellite (DBS) was
introduced and became wildly popular. Your "average Joe" couch potato
TV viewer saw DBS as the answer to "getting hundreds of channels" with
equipment costs lower than those of TVRO, simpler installation, and
better picture quality than that of cable television. Not to mention,
it is "digital", so it HAS to be good, right?
DBS may prove to be a worse adversary to big dish satellite usage than
cable television ever was. Although those who know better know the
technological cons of DBS, such as the perils of the overuse of
digital compression, no choice of programming providers, digital
artifacting, rain fade and proprietary technologies, this has little
or no meaning to "average Joe" couch potato TV viewer. He (or she, of
course! "Jo" for her..) only cares that he gets ESPN, Discovery
Channel, CNN, and other popular cable/satellite networks with easy
channel surfing. Experimentation, wild feeds, different modes of
broadcasting, and programming found nowhere else are foreign concepts
to "Joe". DBS, by being smaller and newer than TVRO, along with
"being digital" as a popular marketing catch-phrase, works hard to
present the image that TVRO is simply "old, outdated satellite
TV". This narrow-minded stereotypical TV viewer is becoming the
majority and therefore speaks the loudest with his dollars. Cable
television is an already entrenched force in influencing what you
watch, and the two American DBS companies are not too far
behind. Worse, the DBS companies are buddying up with some of the
fewer remaining TVRO/C-Band subscription programming suppliers to try
to force TVRO viewers to switch to DBS, often using outrageous
technological and financial claims, not to mention outright lies.
It isn't that large strides haven't been made by the U.S. Government
to encourage choice in the source of one's television (and audio)
programming, it is simply that big dish satellite has become the
unfortunate victim of unfounded notions of being an outdated
technology simply one the premise that if it isn't new, it must be
outdated. One could argue, using an automotive comparison, that this
is like saying that a 2001 Volkswagen Beetle or Chrysler PT Cruiser
are "better cars" than a 1966 Ford Mustang or a 1972 Chevrolet Nova
simply because they are more modern. Like the TVRO versus DBS debate,
this type of oversimplistic comparison does not allow for true
analysis of what each is and is not. TVRO is also the victim of being
a more involved and complicated to use product than the mass-produced,
smaller DBS systems such as DirecTV and DISH Network.
Basically, TVRO is becoming more and more for just those with
technical and experimental persuasions, not unlike the early days of
TVRO. Someday, traditional subscription programming will either
disappear from TVRO or simply become more and more expensive like it
already is with cable TV programming. More and more equipment is also
becoming necessary to get what is still out there, such as 4DTV
receivers or sidecars, DVB/MPEG-2 free-to-air receivers and the
like. In the future, an investment in even more equipment, such as
expensive commercial DVB/MPEG-2 receivers with QPSK, 8PSK, and 16QAM
modulation and 4:2:2 screen ratio will be needed just to maintain the
level of programming choice TVRO viewers are used to. Although these
changes in technology don't discourage diehard TVRO enthusiasts, it
has the unfortunate effect of making TVRO an increasingly less
attractive consumer product.
Luckily, diehard TVRO viewers are a hardy lot and a mostly intelligent
group overall. TVRO viewers know the technical advantages of TVRO and
the superior choice that they have over cable and DBS. TVRO home
theater aficionados couldn't imagine settling for the inferior
technical quality of cable or DBS in their home theater setups. Most
TVRO owners have been in it for the long haul since the beginning and
view their systems as an investment; and with the right information
instead of the anti-TVRO misinformation and lies, their investment in
TVRO will still be viable into the 21st century.
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