Spin: While I certainly share your disdain for the past overly optimistic PR's from Wave and agree the fall-out from that practice haunts us still--Wave Express is a completely different animal.
IMO, WXP was a forward-looking technology that was about to join forces with digital broadcasting as it came into being nationwide. But Geocast, one of the first movers in the datacasting field got croaked, partially because they were so far ahead of the pack and partially because they got caught up in the tech crash.
When Geocast went south, many in the space said a Hail Mary and virtually the whole sector went dormant. Hundreds of millions were lost in this fiasco.
Something else happened too. The FCC had mandated a date for all TV stations to be digital broadcast and it just was not happening, for a variety of reasons. There were lawsuits over the standards not being right; there were format wars; and there were huge costs for the broadcasters who were not sure there would be a payoff for all those millions they had to put up in cold cash. (They are still not sure).
To make a long story short, digital broadcasts are spotty, infrequent and are not nationwide by any means. Some network programming is digital, but most is still analog. Many local stations are straddling the line--by taking an analog signal (with a 4:3 ratio) and manipulating it, by stretching it into a 16:9 ratio image and broadcasting that on their allotted digital channels.
For a TV station to have true digital, they have to buy new cameras (think $40K@ up) new edit rooms, (think $100K@ up), new playback machines (big bucks!) in short, replacing all the equipment they have now. Many stations have just transitioned from BetaSP to DVCam or a like format, investing all that money in new equipment. There are likely to wait before doing it all over again, especially in a time of declining market share and revenues and increasing competition.
So where does Wave fit into all of this? If the digital channels are not there on which to ride, there is no data casting.
The latest date I have heard for mandatory switching (no more analog TV) is 2010 and no guarantee that date will be met. If another better technology comes along, there could certainly be even more delays.
The bottom line is, what happened in the data casting field was not Wave's fault in the least. They were poised, and I assume, still are for whenever this thing lumbers forward in whatever direction. My guess would be somewhere closer to 2008 or even later.
Let me ask you a question. How many of us have the new digital high def. TV receivers at between $2K and $10K? Not many that I know of. It's coming, but very slowly, IMO.
There is also a shift away from VHS to DVD and hard drive digital recording, so that may affect broadcasters too. One quick reason is no one will watch the commericals, if they don't have to. They can zap them.
In my mind, the future of TV is video on demand--no more free TV. It will be like i-Tunes, Music Match, etc. You want a program, you call it up and it is sent to your machine and you are billed for it, a la carte. News programs are a different animal, of course.
I think Wave's best shot is the current bet--security and Trusted Computing and all that that portends. Datacasting could be gravy, but IMO, it is very futuristic gravy.
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