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Are broadcast networks becoming obsolete 10-20 yrs from now?

michael hagerty said:
Consumer tech prices always fall with volume. First Betamax (1975) was $2,000. VHS' advantage was supposed to be price---$1,200 in 1977. By '85, nobody was paying more than $500 for a VCR and by '87, it was more like $250.
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VCRs are one of the first products I remember causing people to say we were becoming a "throw away society", where consumer electronics especially were becoming a disposable item that you'd buy, use until it broke and then toss it out. Once lower-end VCRs were costing $150 or less in the later 80s, many electronics repair shops, at least where I lived, were telling people that if their machines required more than a head cleaning, adjustment or belt replacement, it wasn't worth it. Toss it out and buy new.
michael hagerty said:
The first flat screen TVs were 25 years ago. 42 inches and $15,000. Today, that size is in the $200-$250 range and you can get 90 inches for half what the first 42-inchers cost.
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Where I was working in the later 90s, they were installing the first flat screens I'd seen. They were 42" plasmas, were outrageously expensive and as recently as 2007 or maybe 2008 it was still more economical to send flat screens of that size off to be benched and fixed than it was to replace them when they failed. Once that changed, the price of new flat screen TVs came down incredibly rapidly.
 
michael hagerty said:
Consumer tech prices always fall with volume. First Betamax (1975) was $2,000. VHS' advantage was supposed to be price---$1,200 in 1977. By '85, nobody was paying more than $500 for a VCR and by '87, it was more like $250.

The first flat screen TVs were 25 years ago. 42 inches and $15,000. Today, that size is in the $200-$250 range and you can get 90 inches for half what the first 42-inchers cost.
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VCRs were as low as $50 by the early 2000's. My last one was $65 and it still works.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Okay, if I can find where I read what I read, we'll see if that's outdated.
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Keep in mind that technological advances happen fairly rapidly, and the speed at which those advances are being made is increasing exponentially. Storage capacity and processing speeds of computers and things like smartphones are constantly getting bigger and faster. As new and better technologies become available and they're mass produced on a large scale, they become affordable. Analog systems were replaced by digital which brought many more capabilities, faster speeds and other benefits.

That in mind, if you read an article, even in a technical publication a few years ago that mentioned the limitations of the current technologies available at that time, if it's so old you're unable to locate it now, it may also be outdated and irrelevant by today's standards. Limitations of CATV systems and bandwidth restrictions that may have been present even a few years ago, for example, may no longer be a concern as newer and better technologies have come into play. And if your particular cable system is limited due to age or even some obsolescence and you require reliable and fast high speed internet, there are lots of other ways in 2022 to accomplish that.
 
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michael hagerty said:
That, too. But being $800 less than Beta in initial outlay was a big factor early on.
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The 6 hour recording speed was a factor as well. Beta could only record 5 hours, IIRC. Not enough for two movies or two football games on one tape.

At least theoretically, Beta had better picture quality. Personally, I never saw a significant difference. Both were far inferior to OTA.
 
michael hagerty said:
That, too. But being $800 less than Beta in initial outlay was a big factor early on.
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Pardon me for coming in on the 15th page. Hopefully, I haven't repeated anything. VHS took an early lead over Beta because it initially offered a two hour speed and Beta stayed with one hour for too long. Everything that happened after that was just a game of catch-up!
 
There were also VHS tapes that would run for up to 8 hours but they worked better in some VCRs than others. I had trouble with them jamming in my VCRs so I didn't use them.
 
Greg Goodfellow said:
Kelly, my son-in-law tells me to get SpaceX Starlink. How much is the up-front cost, and how long did you have to wait to get it?
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It took about a year and $99 deposit, and have been using it for about four months. The wait is much shorter now. They've gone through three versions of dish design. I have the latest rectangular version. I paid $500 for the equipment and it's $149 a month data charges.
I live out in a rural area with no cable, DSL, and only one 4G cell site across the Potomac. When we first moved here I signed up for Directway satellite Internet. It was horrible. Their data caps (Fair Access Policy) meant you were slowed down to dial up speeds after my wife was working from home in about two days. That, and the latency to and from the satellite was brutal. Streaming was out of the question with Directway.
Starlink is every bit as good as cable or Fios. We regularly stream 4K movies and shows with no buffering. Sure it's a little more expensive than hardwired ISP's, but when Directway throttled data, we switched to Verizon 4G wireless. That was costing me over $400 a month. So to me, Starlink has been worth every penny.
 
KeithE4 said:
At least theoretically, Beta had better picture quality.
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True, but Beta 2 (comparable to VHS LP) was the common record/play speed (prerecorded videos were in Beta 2).

One problem with Beta 2 is that the horizontal retrace (a vertical bar of squiggly lines) from the previous or next video field is usually visible on either the left or right side of the image even with the tracking control properly adjusted.

Also, the slower Beta 2 tape speed meant that there was more video noise in the monochrome part of the video, so the frequency response of the video was rolled off to reduce this noise (which also reduced the "sharpness").

(my 1st VCR was a Sony SL-2300 Betamax [1984-12], got an RCA/Hitachi VHS VCR in 1985-05)


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
True, but Beta 2 (comparable to VHS LP) was the common record/play speed (prerecorded videos were in Beta 2).

One problem with Beta 2 is that the horizontal retrace (a vertical bar of squiggly lines) from the previous or next video field is usually visible on either the left or right side of the image even with the tracking control properly adjusted.

Also, the slower Beta 2 tape speed meant that there was more video noise in the monochrome part of the video, so the frequency response of the video was rolled off to reduce this noise (which also reduced the "sharpness").

(my 1st VCR was a Sony SL-2300 Betamax [1984-12], got an RCA/Hitachi VHS VCR in 1985-05)


Kirk Bayne
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All true, but VCR quality was middling at its fastest speed (2 hours). Four hours was worse and six was really pretty hideous---even at the time.
 
Neither consumer VCR format had anything close to broadcast quality pictures. At the fastest speeds, about 300 lines was the best either could do. At the slowest speed, 240 lines was about it. Good enough for home viewing. 6 hour VHS could record two football games, and sometimes 3 movies, depending on the length, on one tape. Worked just fine for me back in the day. :)
 
Due to the recent digital TV repack, the picture quality on some of the DTV subchannels has suffered (MeTV here, for example - occasional momentary picture breakup on scene changes), I record the subchannels using VHS SLP because it smooths over this unique to DTV interference (I generally watch on a 19" CRT TV wo/comb filter).


One unusual thing I found out in recent years, when KC got an Independent TV station in 1969, a lot of the Network programs were preempted here (and appeared on KCIT TV 50), even over 50 years ago, the local stations here didn't seem that attached to their Networks (I don't know how this compares to other TV markets).

KCIT-TV 50, Kansas City, MO: The Little Station That Couldn't

A look back at a too-short-lived independent TV station I once had in the Kansas City area.
www.wtv-zone.com


Kirk Bayne
 

Here is more editorials on Broadcast OTA TV as it reaches the streaming age.

With the recent speculation regarding NBC’s interest in cutting back to two hours in primetime, another long-simmering issue is coming to a boil: Why are the traditional television networks (CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox) still in complete control of the financial and legal relationships between the affiliates and the virtual MVPDs otherwise known as YouTube TV, Hulu, DirectTV Now, Sling and the rest of the gang?

Way back in time, maybe 10 years ago or so, the network affiliates, through their affiliate associations, resolved to negotiate directly with the nascent virtual players in the same manner they had already been doing with the traditional cable and satellite players. To their chagrin and complete frustration, the affiliate associations were rebuffed by both the vMVPDs and the television networks, who had joined forces in order to control the revenue and determine the value they believed the affiliates were worth, using their affiliates as leverage to help clear their slate of programming channels.
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Emily Barr's commentary is absolutely right from the point of view of an affiliate. The affiliates don't want to feel ignored, and the affiliates are dependent upon the network for their programs.

But she seems to think the success of Disney+, Paramount+ and Peacock are dependent on the existing affiliates, which is hogwash. It's a nice yarn to spin yourself when you're CEO of a group of broadcast affiliates, but it is clearly not the state of the world.

Ask yourself: If ABC shut down permanently on December 31, would that cause people to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions? Assume, for the sake of argument, that the ABC programs continue to be produced for Disney+.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Emily Barr's commentary is absolutely right from the point of view of an affiliate. The affiliates don't want to feel ignored, and the affiliates are dependent upon the network for their programs.

But she seems to think the success of Disney+, Paramount+ and Peacock are dependent on the existing affiliates, which is hogwash. It's a nice yarn to spin yourself when you're CEO of a group of broadcast affiliates, but it is clearly not the state of the world.

Ask yourself: If ABC shut down permanently on December 31, would that cause people to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions? Assume, for the sake of argument, that the ABC programs continue to be produced for Disney+.
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No ABC will just exist as a name for it's news division for Disney and it's Local owned stations. Yes it's entertainment divisions are Disney+ and Hulu but this is where we are now.

It's like NBC will mainly exist for it's news and sports divisions or CBS will only exist for it's sports and news divisions.

Well Scripps have been positioning itself by buying and forming subchannel networks in recent years. Parts of this is to offset network shows going to their apps.
 
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