We are now a couple of weeks in after the Digital Britain interim report was published, and the best thing to say is that most people, ordinary people, did not really grasp what this report was about and how it could really effect their future entertainment. The report has failed to communicate some of the problems that are going to hit them in the coming four years, some of which I drew out in my quick comments, but would be very usefully drawn out here.
- New services on DTT and DSAT are confusing customers who cannot understand how to set their TVs up and use them effectively. The industry needs to communicate in simpler terms – and stop selling TVs with inbuilt tuners in them and admit that TVs are just LCD monitors with a particular specification.
- The industry needs to focus on the separate Digital Tuner – the STB – and call it that like they do in the US. That is what it is after all, sometimes with other features of course. This will help when viewers have choices of TV from DTT, DSAT, Digital Cable, ADSL IPTV, true Internet IPTV and Fibre IPTV. The viewer will have a multitude of Digital Tuner sources to direct to their LCD monitor.
- The industry needs to focus on the content and not the TV when talking about HD. This is a major problem right now when viewers believe they have HD now because they have HDTVs connected for Freeview, Digital Cable and standard DSAT services. Confusion in content is not going to help easy adoption.
- TV over the Internet is doomed with the current targets that Digital Britain pushes for the lowest common denominator. With the focus on the content, and its move to HD, their is simply not the bandwidth to supply what a basic UK house needs, without thinking about the high strain two adult, two children house actually needs. 20Mbps is the real minimum and the target should be 100Mbps +. Even I have pushed these figures higher after thinking about how my children will be using TV in just four years time, knowing that I max out 5Mbps and download 90MB per month with just me right now being a reasonably active user. The amount of bandwidth is just too low.
So we will follow the actual work more closely, but I suspect that a change of personnel or approach will take place once this becomes clear in one to two years time, and then the real work will begin.
