Playing the HD Numbers Game: Cable versus DBS & FiOS

Who’s got the biggest and best high definition (HD) TV line-up? The answer is, it depends how you count HD TV choices.

DirecTV’s website lists over 90 HDTV channels, well more than on any cable system. These are carried via DirecTV 10, a recently-launched satellite that transmits over Ka-band spectrum and thereby adds substantial capacity to that of DirecTV’s legacy Ku-band satellites. DirecTV 11, a second Ka-band satellite, is scheduled for launch shortly and will provide even more capacity for HDTV channels. There is a catch: To receive the HD channels, subscribers need new terminals that can receive Ka-band as well as Ku-band.

Verizon has raised the HD bar even higher, claiming that by the end of 2008 FiOS TV will deliver 150 HD linear channels plus 1000 HD choices over VOD. Getting from FiOS’ current ~26 HD linear channels to 150 will be a big jump but the FiOS network is likely to be able to deliver the required capacity. Like many up-to-date cable systems, FiOS employs 860MHz for its TV service. However, unlike cable, FiOS will be able to allocate its entire 860MHz bandwidth for downstream SD and HD TV channels. Compared to cable systems, FiOS already allocates a much smaller portion of its video bandwidth for analog channels and by February 2009, FiOS will re-allocate even this segment of its bandwidth entirely for digital TV. Also, unlike cable, all of FiOS’ 860MHz is available for downstream linear TV since upstream and downstream traffic for VOD and Internet access is carried on different wavelengths over the fiber plant.

For cable operators to beat DirecTV and FiOS in the HD numbers game will be a challenge if MSOs play by the same rules. Each of the multiple techniques to expand effective capacity of cable’s HFC (hybrid fiber coax) networks, including switched digital video (SDV), migrating some channels from analog to digital, and so on, will take time to deploy broadly across cable’s footprint. Although cable engineers are past masters at expanding effective capacity of the cable networks, even they will not be able to tweak the cable networks enough to match DBS or FiOS in delivering 100-150 linear HD channels by the end of 2008.

Hence, HD over VOD! Comcast announced in January that it will offer far more HD than anyone else, “more than 1000 HD movies and TV shows every month” on Comcast’s VOD platform.

Cable HD-over-VOD tosses marketing fairy dust on consumers who ask, “where can I get the most HD programming for my new flat panel HD TV set?” Notably, DBS cannot provide real VOD and Verizon lacks the MSOs’ scale and history as video distributors and is therefore likely to lag several steps behind in lining up HD VOD content.

Eventually consumers will clarify whether they prefer an MSO’s 1000+ HD VOD choices along with 50-60 linear HD channels, versus DBS’ or FiOS’ 100-150 linear HD channels (plus FiOS' HD over VOD), or can even tell the difference. Meanwhile cable engineers will have breathing room to derive more usable capacity on cable networks for linear HD channels, in case HD-over-VOD turns out not to be enough.