Carnes named 'Citizen of the Year'

Mercer Business, Feb 01, 1996 by Delany, Don

The center, which has a staff of 750, is primarily involved in electronic imaging, including cameras, transmission of imaged data over broadcast, satellite and fiber, Carnes said. "We are also involved in processing of images, recognizing images by computers, displayed images," he explained.

Carnes waxes eloquent when he discusses high definition television, which has been in the news for some time, most recently because it has been caught up in the budget debate before Congress,

HDTV has been a major project at the Sarnoff Center for the past nine years. The new System represents a radical modernsion of digital instead of analog signals, which means you can carry many different kinds of payloads over the signal. So instead of just high definition television, broadcasters will be able to send five times the information as your current television picture, five times as many pixels, or spots of light, five times as much information."

The high definition television picture is 33 percent wider than the present picture. "It is much more like a movie screen," Carnes said. "It's much sharper, and it is capable of five-channel surround sound. It's a theater in the home."

The new system makes practical a much larger TV screen, like the current rear projection screen, in the home, Carnes said. "Today you don't mind rear projection TV in a bar, but it's not good enough to sit close to in the living room. It's like you over-enlarged a photograph. But with the new system there are so many more lines on the screen you can have twice as big a picture with no loss of definition."

How soon will HDTV be in our homes? A lot depends on Congress, Carnes said.

Last November, an advisory committee appointed by the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved the Sarnoff designed system. Then Congress got into the act.

It was originally planned, Carnes said, that all TV broadcasters would be given a second channel on which they would bring up the new signal while continuing to send the old signal on the second channel. This was so viewers would not have to throw away their present TV sets, but could slowly work their way onto the new system.

Congress is balking at giving away the new channels and wants to auction them off to the broadcasters, Carnes said. "Somebody told them they could raise $50 billion," he said, "which I don't believe is true. "They say they could use this money to balance the budget. So this is hung up in the budget debate."

Carnes does not believe broadcasters will want to buy their way into the new system, and he fears it could die as a result of Congress' stand. "Senator Dole said last week he was not going to approve the telecommunications bill until they fixed it so the broadcasters didn't get this free spectrum, which he called a corporate giveaway." Carnes made it clear he does not believe Dole understands the technical issues involved.

The high definition television set initially will cost between $3,000 and $5,000, Carnes estimates, adding, "but it should come down into the teens not long afterward." He does not think the price will drop to the $500 range because the screen will be so much larger than the present one.