Broadcasters blamed for potential digital 'crisis'
 

Broadcasters blamed for potential digital 'crisis'


A row between broadcasters and high street retailers over how to
promote digital television to British viewers is threatening to derail
government plans to switch off the analogue signal by 2012.

Senior executives from Dixons and Sony today warned broadcasters that
plans to switch off the analogue signal were a "potential crisis in
the making" and that the UK had squandered its international lead in
the area.

The government has charged SwitchCo, a coalition of broadcasters,
retailers and manufacturers, with the job of driving digital take-up
from next year.

But a row over the selection of the chairman of the SwitchCo board and
widespread dissatisfaction among television manufacturers and high
street retailers with the way the BBC is marketing digital TV threaten
to derail the process before it has even begun.

Retailers such as Dixons and television manufacturers including Sony
and Panasonic want an independent chairman. But the broadcasters, who
will dominate the SwitchCo board, have nominated Barry Cox, the deputy
chairman of Channel 4 and current chair of the digital television
stakeholders group, which SwitchCo will replace.

Danny Churchill, the chairman of the group of television retailers
involved in SwitchCo, said today the broadcasters had been "naive" in
the way they had dealt with the supply chain by failing to ally
digital television with the boom in plasma and flat screen sets.

"There had never been a better opportunity for digital technology to
attach itself to new products, and we've failed. Consumers still see
it as a set top box phenomenon," he said at a meeting of the
Westminster Media Forum.

Mr Churchill, a former deputy chairman of Dixons and still a
consultant to the high street chain, blamed the BBC for concentrating
on pushing cheap set top boxes as the only way to upgrade to Freeview.

"We potentially have a crisis in the making. We have to equip the
consumer with 75m digital reception devices to achieve switchover," he
said.

"Only 12.5m have been converted to digital. That leaves around 8m a
year. This year, we'll be very lucky to achieve 3.5m sales, which puts
us 50% behind in the first year," he said.

Steve Dowdle, the managing director of Sony UK, warned that people
were buying new analogue TVs at three times the rate of digital set
top boxes, wiping out any gains that were being made.

In the 12 months to the end of August, 5.4m analogue TVs were sold, as
well as 2.2m video recorders - all of which will have to be converted
following switchover. During the same period, just 270,000 integrated
digital TV sets and 2.5m set top boxes were sold.

"This means we have added an additional 4.8m analogue units into the
market - making matters worse, not better. Consumers are demanding
analogue products at nearly three times the sales rate of the digital
products we are using to convert them," Mr Dowdle said.

He also blamed broadcasters for concentrating their marketing on
persuading viewers to upgrade with a set top box rather than targeting
those buying new televisions.

"This situation is totally unacceptable ... If the government expects
all stakeholders to cooperate and sign memorandums of understanding in
order to achieve switchover, then we need to have an adequate voice
within switchover to represent us," he said.

Andy Townend, BBC controller of distribution and a key member of the
team that launched Freeview following the collapse of ITV Digital in
October 2002, pointed out that there were two representatives of the
supply chain on the SwitchCo board.

(MediaGuardian)

So basically Dixons are wingeing that the BBC aren't helping them
mislead people into thinking that they need to buy a new TV for digital
switchover?

"Ben" wrote in message
...
So basically Dixons are wingeing that the BBC aren't helping them mislead
people into thinking that they need to buy a new TV for digital
switchover?

Says nothing of Sky subscribers of which all new subscriptions are digital.

Stev

In message , Grover
wrote
Broadcasters blamed for potential digital 'crisis'


Translation 1:

Dixons cannot make £M profit by selling unnecessary extended warrantees
on set top boxes that only cost £50.

Translation 2:

The British public are not as thick as the average Dixons' customer.
Most people realise that you don't have to pay hundreds of GBP to
replace a working television to get digital broadcasts. Perhaps this
little outburst has something to do with the recent prediction that
sales of consumer luxury goods is likely to fall next year?

If Dixons and Sony, who both sell overpriced goods, don't want to
participate then perhaps they should leave the marketing of Terrestrial
Digital Television to the market leaders - the supermarkets.
--
Alan

"Grover" wrote in message

But a row over the selection of the chairman of the SwitchCo board and
widespread dissatisfaction among television manufacturers and high
street retailers with the way the BBC is marketing digital TV

Hrm, I wonder why major TV manufacturers would be displeased with the BBC
promoting cheap add-on boxes instead of shiny new sets? ;)



Danny Churchill, the chairman of the group of television retailers
involved in SwitchCo, said today the broadcasters had been "naive" in
the way they had dealt with the supply chain by failing to ally
digital television with the boom in plasma and flat screen sets.

Because the results can be bloody awful in some cases.


Az.

In message
Alan wrote:

... Translation 2:

The British public are not as thick as the average Dixons' customer.
Most people realise that you don't have to pay hundreds of GBP to
replace a working television to get digital broadcasts. ...

Many may even have noticed that in the short time that DTT 'boxes' have
existed there have already been two 'evolutions' that virtually
obsoleted all or most of the earlier ones : 7-day EPG and 'Top-Up'
needing cards.

Not too amusing even for owners of £50-ish boxes: totally
infuriating/disillusioning for those of £1000+ Plasma or TFT sets.

And the digital version of Teletext is 'too clever by half', to a point
as yet nearing unusabilty ...

"Alan" wrote in message

Translation 2:

The British public are not as thick as the average Dixons' customer. Most
people realise that you don't have to pay hundreds of GBP to replace a working
television to get digital broadcasts. Perhaps this little outburst has
something to do with the recent prediction that sales of consumer luxury goods
is likely to fall next year?

If Dixons and Sony, who both sell overpriced goods, don't want to participate
then perhaps they should leave the marketing of Terrestrial Digital Television
to the market leaders - the supermarkets.

The point about low margin STB's is undoubtedly true.

However, if you take commercial squabbles out of the equation and look at the
overall picture there is a sort of "void" in the statistics, of which they're
using as a basis for a potential analogue switch-over, some numbers are
ridiculous, you see figures like over 50% of households are now digital... and
we're nearly there, just give it a couple more years. Unfortunately they've gone
all 50's retro by only considering a single TV per house, they ignore
inconvenient facts like the other 3 analogue TV's and a VCR etc.

You can work out the actual number of digital capable sets out there :-
8m Sky boxes
5.5m DTT boxes
2m cable boxes

So that's just under 16m boxes over 6 years, given a modest figure of 80m
analogue TV's about in the UK (excluding VCR's) that means that penetration is
less than 20%. Of those 16m boxes shipped, over twice as much analogue kit has
been shifted over that length of time, and this disparity still remains with the
'sucesss' of Freeview, at the moment they're not shifting enough DVB to catch
the tail of analogue sales. Over the last year, 5.4m PAL's + 2.2m VCR's v. 2.5m
STB's and IDTV's.

Of course there may come a tipping point where that crosses over, but that's
still a huge mountain they have to climb where in sheer numbers there are a
greater number of devices dependant of analogue signals than when digital
launched. Gross digital sales may only overtake analogue sales by 2007-10, but
that still leaves the legacy of an installed base of 80m TV's, so to talk of a
switch over in 2012 seems hopeful.

On the way you also encounter obstacles like the slowing down in the growth rate
of new Sky installations. And the further you go along the harder it will be to
convert the remaining households to Freeview once all the people who are
interested have bought a box and you're left with a bunch of refuseniks who
aren't bothered, they can only hope the falling cost will solve this, but some
people won't be interested even at below-cost prices. They also have to consider
the 25-30% of the country who can't receive DTT and who aren't interested in
paying for Sky.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c1b58600-3e...00e2511c8.html

If your average home resembled the sort of kit most people in this NG have
installed we'd be sorted, unfortunately you're not average ;)


Az.

"Aztech" wrote:
You can work out the actual number of digital capable sets out there :-
8m Sky boxes
5.5m DTT boxes
2m cable boxes

It's not that easy. Ofcom have given up trying to track "expired" Sky
boxes, mail orders, Lidl sets, cross-channel shopping trip imports and
simply deleted everyone who hasn't got a current FTV card from the
statistics.

OK, your guess is as good as any, but I think the "hidden" digital sets
are getting more common.

Generally, you're right that analogue receivers are here for a long
time to come, though. Coax is a far easier for mortals to set up than
SCART, so it's just as well.

If your average home resembled the sort of kit most people in this NG have
installed we'd be sorted, unfortunately you're not average ;)

Sport fans, movie hunters, foreign channels, ...

Peter Duck wrote:
And the digital version of Teletext is 'too clever by half', to a point
as yet nearing unusabilty ...

Yes, most digital users I know still prefer the old Ceefax-style service.
Why are BBC being allowed to discontinue it? Try finding out if your MP
has ever used teletext and will ask the Culture secretary about it...
surely many MPs will know Ceefax? BBC Parliament is one of the few
channels with a service that doesn't just say "press the red button".

Grover wrote:

"This means we have added an additional 4.8m analogue units into the
market - making matters worse, not better. Consumers are demanding
analogue products at nearly three times the sales rate of the digital
products we are using to convert them," Mr Dowdle said.

And whose fault is that?

He also blamed broadcasters for concentrating their marketing on
persuading viewers to upgrade with a set top box rather than targeting
those buying new televisions.

If they can produce set top boxes at 50 quid, including costs of PSU,
case, remote, transportation, packaging, etc etc, then they could add
digital capability to analogue TVs for half that. If they then gave high
profile to such dual stanaard TVs, the punters would buy them. But at
the moment, IDTVs seem limited to the top end of the market, and they
wonder why people don't buy them!

Stuart
--
Try stuartsmacs at dsl dot pipex dot com to email me.