Broadcasters are being dragged into digital TV

Electronic News, Jan 5, 1998 by Peter Brown, Carolyn Whelan

San Jose, Calif.--Digital television (DTV) is becoming a reality more quickly than some might have thought or hoped. Numerous semiconductor vendors have announced plans to roll out DTV chips over the next nine months including Philips Semiconductor, Sony Semiconductor, SGS-Thomson, Mitsubishi, Harris, Zenith, and the tag team of Motorola and Sarnoff.

These companies claim to be ready to have volume chips available for TV sets and set-top box (STB) television decoders when they arrive. However, are the broadcasters ready for DTV content and all the investment needed for new equipment? From recent DTV events and the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas the first week of 1998, it might not matter what the broadcasters are ready for, high definition television (HDTV) is approaching quickly.

Evidence of this took place last month when Hitachi and Thomson Consumer Electronics signed a joint development agreement to bring HDTV sets to mass market as early as next fall. Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. (FMI) also is boasting to be able to deliver a 55-inch flat panel HDTV by fall as well.

Digital television allows a digital signal to come into a television via cable, antenna or satellite. This digital signal then can be utilized for three different services that a normal analog television would not be able to do. The first is high definition pictures that is claimed to project the highest resolution pictures available without witnessing events live. The second is utilizing the digital signal to have DTV multicasts--splitting the signal into multiple channels on the same signal--enabling 100s of more commercial broadcast stations. The third aspect is using the digital signal for new services in data communications, video conferencing, or high speed modem access.

FCC Has Set A Timetable

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently laid down mandates to when DTV will become dominant in the United States. Currently, DTV content is being experimented at several stations in the U.S. and by the year 2000, more than 50 percent of the people in U.S. will have the availability to receive DTV content. By 2003 all commercial stations will be broadcasting digital content and by 2006 the FCC will require all commercial stations to stop broadcasting NTSC analog signals. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has also adopted the FCC standard and has made it more detailed for semiconductor and systems vendors to follow.

The new DTV broadcast standard gives TV stations the option of using and switching between any of 18 different television formats that combine different screen ratios (16:9 'wide-screen' or 4:3, analog TVs), numbers of horizontal and vertical lines of resolution, and scanning methods (either 'interlaced' scanning, like analog TV displays, or 'progressive' scanning, like computer monitors).

By the fall of 1998, the 10 major broadcast cities in the U.S. are required by the FCC to have digital content available. These include the Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Francisco areas. According to Bob Stokes, Motorola's director of digital TV operations, this represents more than 35 percent of the entire U.S. By May of 1999, 30 cities will be required to have digital signals. This accounts for more than 50 percent of the coverage in the U.S.

A Broadcasters View

The step to DTV is a giant one for major networks and retailers supplying products for the transition--some of which are still non-existent, even in prototype form--followed by a series of small ones for cable operators, advertising agencies, film production crews, phone companies and anyone else who wants a piece of the action. The agency's time line is apparently taking into account needs which can't be met with products today.

In New York City, CBS has been measuring and testing DTV on an experimental basis. The network conducted bit area measurements, built a field truck to take detailed field measurements, and demonstrated a broadcast in New York from closed circuit TV to a broadcast center. CBS hopes to get full power, weather permitting, by the end of January. No programming is planned until the fall, but they want to air digits and continue making measurements.

However, some problems still exist that require quick solution. Some of the required equipment hasn't even been invented yet. CBS and other major networks are constantly updating their "wish list" of items that don't yet exist.

"We are working with manufacturers and suppliers to help develop what is needed" said Robert J. Ross, VP, Engineering and Operations for CBS TV stations. "Some of the current digital infrastructure is compatible and some isn't. Whenever we purchase equipment we make a great effort to see that it is compatible with a Digital TV future. In some cases we have had to buy analog equipment because we can't go without that item, while at other times we have delayed making purchases because nothing exists."