Back in 2012, this blog had just relaunched. I didn’t know exactly what kind of content was going to really work. So all year I worked to bring tutorials, support articles, and occasional laughter to my audience. It wasn’t a very big audience back then but you have to start somewhere. The blog had been largely ignored for about two years and people moved on.
In December I had the idea to recap the year, something I’ve done at the end of every year. I called the first one, “The Year in Signals.” You can check it out if you want, I’ll wait.
Something that’s stayed with us: sports fees
The first ever regional sports fee was levied by DIRECTV in 2012, when the company agreed to pick up “The Lakers Channel” (TWC SportsNet, as it was known then.) Although many folks in Southern California didn’t care, every DIRECTV subscriber paid $3 a month to have the channel.
That’s become common now, sadly. If anything, it’s just gotten worse as many large cities now have several different local sports networks. At least Sportsnet is available on DIRECTV, which is wasn’t for several years.
Something that’s left: MDTV
I was pretty bullish on mobile digital television back in 2012, and now I have to eat crow and admit that I was wrong. I thought people would want to carry around a portable TV and watch it in the car or RV. Turns out they didn’t. Turns out that data speeds got faster, cell phone plans got cheaper, and everyone wanted to use their phones. In 2013 there were plans for phones and tablets with MDTV hardware built in, but they never happened.
MDTV died sometime in late 2013 and no one noticed. If the new ATSC 3.0 standard gets approved, it will bring full-resolution mobile TV back to the USA. However, it’s hard to know if that’s ever going to happen. There have been a lot of headwinds. Check out these articles to learn more.
How the world’s changed
I guess, if you look back at that article, you realize that what’s changed is streaming. Smartphones were still pretty new in 2012, cell data speeds were really poor, and even at home you were lucky if you got 10Mbps. Today speeds are so fast it almost isn’t an issue and there are plenty of things to stream in HD and 4K.
Today we think nothing of starting a program on one device and finishing it on another. Unlike in 2012, we hardly ever download content to our devices since it’s so easy to stream it from virtually anywhere.
I only wonder if this year’s “year in review” articles will look so horsey in a decade or so. I have a sinking feeling that it will. Imagine laughing at people who “only” had 5G or who still had to look at monitors instead of simply using sleek VR glasses. It’s all on the horizon, I suppose. I’ll reach out to you in 2036 and we’ll see where we’re at.
