Technology360

LG's 5G Digital TV Receiver to Debut in US This Year

Korea's LG Electronics plans to commercially launch the latest digital TV reception technology in the United States beginning the fourth quarter of this year. ¶ LG Electronics said Wednesday it forged a business partnership with U.S. Digital Television (USDTV), an over-the-air terrestrial digital subscription TV service. ¶ Under the alliance, LG will supply its fifth-generation (5G) vestigial sideband (VSB) chips to the Utah-based firm, which operates in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Las Vegas, late this year. ... KoreaTimes link

Chiariglione pushes for a moral digital media framework

Leonardo Chiariglione and Thomas Curran, two of the digital media industry's top technical wizards, have formed a not-for-profit industry group called the Digital Media Project (DMP) whose goal is the development of an industry standard that will enable the interoperability of different digital rights management (DRM) schemes. ¶ The group wants to prevent the kind of incompatibility that is already emerging in digital media, such as that between iTunes and non-iPod-based handheld media players. ... Digital Media Europe link

Group Warns DVRs Endangered

Television fans who like to choose when and where they watch their favorite programs are in for a rude awakening next year when new copy controls encoded in digital television streams will limit such freedoms. ... ¶ ... "There are a lot of things that are still going to be allowed under the broadcast flag. It's not panic time," countered Brad Hunt, chief technology officer for the Motion Picture Association of America. "Consumers will be able to buy devices that will allow them to make secure copies on to DVD and that secure media can be shared with other people." He said that consumers will also retain the right to time shift and send secure digital media over a home network, but not electronically re-distribute the content. ... Wired News link

New Single-Chip AM/FM and HD Radio Baseband

Depending on their design approach, designers can choose either of the new digital basebands from TI to provide them with the industry´s lowest cost solution for building an HD Radio receiver. The new digital basebands integrate TI´s expertise in DSP technology with software developed by iBiquity Digital Corporation to provide all of the digital functions required to build an AM/FM and HD Radio receiver, in addition to allowing for audio post processing and MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) CD support. ... PhysOrg link

Broadband MSN TV Device Slated

Microsoft and Thomson have reached an agreement to develop a broadband and home network-enabled version of the MSN TV Internet receiver, the companies announced. ... ¶ The terminal will directly stream video and audio programming from the Internet for playback on a home TV or entertainment center, but it is said to have only limited built-in downloading and storage capabilities to prevent vulnerability to virus attacks and to keep unit pricing affordable. ... TWICE link

Broadband: Why policies must change

... In a month dominated by news ranging from the Iraqi handover to rising interest rates, [Kerry's and Bush's] remarks underscored the growing importance of broadband Internet policy this election year. Aside from some practical differences, such as Kerry's more activist approach, the positions taken by the two men were notable for their similarities. ...CNET News.com link. Nice overview of broadband policy issues. --Dennis

DTV comments

I'd like to call your attention to interesting comments posted by Bob Miller of Viacel under "Mark's Monday Memo, 7/26/2004" and under "GAO Issues Report on German DTV Transition" below. --Dennis

Congress debates setting DTV transition date

Should Congress set a date certain for turning off analog television? If so, what should the federal government do to ease the transition for over-the-air viewers? ¶ At a House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet hearing last week, it was clear — after years of perceived foot dragging on DTV by terrestrial broadcasters — there is growing support in Congress to set a hard deadline. ... BroadcastEngineering link

Forget à la carte cable idea; the future is in Internet TV

... Anyone searching for relief from high cable rates in Washington is stuck on the wrong coast. Silicon Valley will ultimately provide a much better solution: broadcast-quality television delivered through the Internet, completely independent of the bloated cable industry. ¶ Akimbo, a start-up company in San Mateo, says it's no more than six weeks away from launching a digital video recorder (DVR) that gets TV shows through a high-speed Internet connection rather than a cable, satellite dish or roof antenna. San Jose-based TiVo, which pioneered the DVR category, plans to add Internet delivery next year. ... MercuryNews.com link

Poll shows tough road for broadband

Presidential campaign proposals to build a national broadband network may be difficult to sell to the American public, according to a survey conducted jointly by CNET News.com and Harris Interactive. The nationwide poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 people with Internet access, found that 72 percent of respondents support government efforts to make high-speed Internet access universally available. But backing for the activist policy has stalled on the question of who pays--and how much. ¶ ... At the same time, by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, they opposed any government plan to directly subsidize the extension of broadband access to rural areas or for low-income citizens. Similarly, nearly 70 percent was against paying higher access fees to fund the expansion of broadband to those areas. ... ¶ CNET News.com link