USDTV going away for good

[arnoldevns]

It seems the experiement in over-the-air "wireless" cable has come to an end.
USDTV lost its financial backing and is closing up shop.
There's a letter to subscribers detailing the shut down on their website: http://www.usdtv.com/
There are two news articles here:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660200866,00.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/03/05/daily13.html?b=1173070800^1427400

It's not as though this is a huge deal for millions of people since USDTV only had about 7,000 subscribers - most of them in the DFW market.
However, it does free up a ton of space on DTV transmitters in several markets.

I have mixed emotions about this. I think more competition is always better. Had USDTV's business model been more consumer friendly, I think they could have succeeded in getting some people to switch to their minimalist service. There are a lot of people out there who don't want 400 channels, they only want about a dozen. I think USDTV could have had a lot of those people if their equipment wasn't so expensive.

 

[clichemoth]

Agreed. With simpler and less expensive scrambling/descrambling technology, USDTV wouldn't have been a bad idea in major markets with lots of stations and empty DTV subchannels. I don't think it could work in a market with less than a complete set of full-power full-market English network signals, though.

Nothing is ever going to be done with most of those subchannels anyway because programming isn't free and there are only so many infomercial producers and Pastor Pass-The-Plates looking to buy time. Cool feature, but it's as useless as an udder on a bull to commercial broadcast stations.