Technology360

R.I.P., HD DVD

Back in the early 80s, I bought a Betamax VCR and replaced that with another Betamax VCR before that format bit the dust and VHS won.  I can really pick 'em.  Just over a year ago, I bought a Toshiba HD DVD when Costco dropped the price to $300.  It's now a pretty good upscaling DVD player, but you can buy them for under $100.

Cliff Edwards writes:

... while Toshiba lies vanquished, the Blu-ray camp now faces a slew of technical, business, and marketing challenges in driving consumer adoption of their victorious standard. To an extent, those issues have been just as much to blame as the format war for slowing the adoption of the high-definition successor to the standard DVD format. "Now that the format war is over, it's just dawning on everybody that our work is just beginning," says Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and a senior vice-president at Pioneer. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Farewell to the Great CRT

Television engineering legend Charlie Rhodes has a wonderful history of television displays in an article of this name in TV Technology.  Thanks to Cliff Benham for the tip.  --Dennis

Why Low Def Is the New HD

Daniel Eran Dilger takes a while to get to his point (though along the way you get a very good education about consumer video), but that point is a very interesting one about the video marketplace today.  He writes:

... Apple happens to be positioned to ride the sweet spot of LD/SD content right now, and has the infrastructure and hardware to deliver HD content using the same iTunes ecosystem with Apple TV in the future. Apple has bet on the mainstream 720p HD format as the best balance between high quality content and downloadable file sizes.  ¶  That will enable the company to transition to offering HD programming from iTunes as consumer’s bandwidth availability increases and the demand for HD expands. Until that happens on a large scale, Apple will continues to sell the most content because it has targeted what consumers want–convenient downloads–not what other vendors are all trying to sell: high end, high priced HD. ...

... Estimates suggest that by the end of the year, there will be an installed base of about a million standalone HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc players, besides the 7-8 million PlayStation 3 consoles that can also play Blu-Ray discs. That makes less than ten million HD players in total, compared to around 40 million video playing iPods, and hundreds of millions of iTunes installations capable of playing back iTunes content directly from a computer or through an Apple TV. ...

Link:  RoughlyDrafted Magazine.  Highly recommended article.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier for the tip.  --Dennis

Innovation at the Met

The Metropolitan Opera, of all organizations, has been doing a very innovative thing by transmitting its performances in HDTV to movie theaters around the country as well as other innovations.  Non-profit fundraising guru Bob Stein writes:

... [CEO Peter Gelb] has taken opera to the streets--free large-screen broadcasts in Times Square (opening night of Madame Butterfly), introduced $20 rush orchestra tickets and broadcast live performances to movie screens around the world. He's brought directors from the theater world to stage operas, and he even recruited design celeb Isaac Mizrahi to create the costumes for Orfeo ed Euridice.  ¶  What has resulted is a revitalized Met. According to Bloomberg.com,

Sales during the 2006-07 season rose 7.1 percent to 810,225, said Gelb, who succeeded Joseph Volpe in August. In all, the Met sold 83.9 percent of tickets offered for its 3,800- seat opera house at Manhattan's Lincoln Center compared with 76.8 percent last season.

Link:  Major Giving.

The legendary Mark Schubin gave a talk about the Met's Live HD opera-to-theater broadcasts at October's Iowa DTV Symposium.  The talk (The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD: global cinemacasts, robotic cameras, and more) is available both as a PowerPoint (click here and scroll down to the Content Track's Tuesday at 2:30 session) and as an MP3 file.

Just went to the Met web site and see that one of their theaters is about a 75-mile drive from me, so I'm going to buy a ticket and check it out.  --Dennis

In-Stat: U.S. households with little or no interest in HDTV on the rise

Broadcast Engineering reports:

The percentage of U.S. households that said they were interested in HDTVs fell this year compared to those who expressed an interest last year, and the number or those reporting to have little or no interest has grown, according to a series of studies from market research firm In-Stat.  ¶  At the same time, worldwide interest in HDTV among consumers is rising, with particularly strong interest in France and South Korea, the research firm said. The reports also showed that consumers are choosing LCD TVs over their plasma display equivalents in good number, which will be responsible for LCD televisions claiming 75 percent of the market by 2011 and the plasma market share dwindling to below 15 percent. ...

--Dennis

Blu-ray outpaces HD DVD in U.S.

Reuters is reporting that Blu-ray HD discs outsold HD DVD discs in the U.S. by two-to-one in the first half of 2007.  I, of course, bought an HD DVD player when it dropped below $300 at Costco (context: I bought two Beta VCRs before I bought my first VHS one).  Blockbuster announced it's going to stock Blu-ray, but on the other hand Wal-Mart announced it's building a zillion HD DVD players in Asia for the holidays.  So maybe the jury is still out.

Two observations about HD DVDs:  The discs seem to be more sensitive to scratches than standard DVDs.  One we received from Netflix was unplayable for more than about 15 minutes at a time, then one had to start over and hope it skipped the scratch the next time.  Also, while the video quality is great, it's not hugely better on my 50-inch monitor than video from an upscaling standard DVD player.  Those now sell for under $100 and do a great job.  --Dennis

Link:  c|net News.com.

HD Internet streaming video

The NAB reports:

...  On July 24, ABC became the first network to launch Internet streaming of full-length programming in high definition, with a player providing full-screen 16:9 images at significantly higher quality than previously available. The service was launched in beta form, with episodes of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, and Ugly Betty, with more programs to follow in the new season later in the year. The ABC HD service is available free of charge to consumers at: http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming/landing. ...

Link:  NAB TV TechCheck (pdf).  Thanks to Ralph Hogan.  --Dennis

Hype cycle for consumer technologies

Gartner has published its 2007 hype cycle chart for a large number of consumer technologies.   Click on image for larger version.  Note the relative positions of digital terrestrial radio (HD Radio) on the far left and digital terrestrial television (DTV) on the far right.  Via Bobbie Johnson at The Guardian Technology blog.  --Dennis

Bob Cringely: When is a TV not a TV? -- also, Neokast

Says Cringely:

When it is an Apple TV - the High Definition DVD-killer ...

... Apple TV will be the spoiler of many a Blu-ray or HD DVD sale because Apple TV is cheaper and easier, has no expensive consumable media, and HD movies will probably cost a little less to buy through iTunes than at Target. ...

But most of this column is about Neokast, a very interesting video distribution technology based on multicasting with which he suggests Apple hook up.  Unlike broadcasting, where multicasting means sending multiple program channels over one broadcast RF channel, the term multicasting here is used in the Internet sense, where it refers to a technology that enable multiple users to access a program without the origination point having to simultaneous send out multiple copies of that program -- one to each user.

Link: PBS.org.  See also Bob's NeoKast QuicKast entered beta this morning.  Link:  Technology Evangelist.  And Paul Kapustka's Neokast, Emerging from the shell.  Link: NewTeeVee.  --Dennis

TV advertising will grow, but who will eat the cake?

Senaka Balasuriya writes:

According to the USA Today, a recent report published by PWC is forecasting that traditional TV advertising sales will grow 4.5% a year to $46.3 billion in 2011. When you consider product placement revenue and fees that cable, satellite and phone services pay to carry a channel, network TV revenues could grow of 6.5% a year to $85.4 billion in 2011. ...

... So what’s going increase TV viewing? The Internet is becoming a bigger source of videos, but the following will increase TV viewership and even shift Internet Video viewing from the Computer to the TV screen.

1. HDTV – With the high resolution and quality of HDTV, users will not just watch more TV, but also will shift to using the HDTV for watching Internet Video as well. PWC predicts that nearly 59% of homes will have HDTVs in 2011, up from 12.7% at the end of 2006. HDTV uptake will be propped up by falling prices and the FCC mandate to transmit all TV programs in high-def by 2009.
2. DVR - DVR growth is expected to rise to 39% in 2011, up from 11.8% in 2006. With Slingbox and other DVRs, people have already started to record and watch TV, albeit with time-shifting or place-shifting (e.g. watch on mobile).
3. Integration of Internet and TV and the Separation of the Set top Box – With Joost and Apple TV coming to a TV near you, the Internet Videos will be conveniently available on the TV. ...

Link:  Technology Untangled.

New Media News Digest, 6/12-6/19/2007

Sondra Russell works for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and writes the following News Digest on a weekly basis.  I think it's a very nice piece of work, but it's distributed by email only.  So she's given me permission to quote it here so it can get RSS distribution and also be seen by people outside of public broadcasting.  Her email address is srussell [at] cpb [dot] org.  --Dennis

SONDRA’S SUMMARY

> The top story this week is that CNN and YouTube are co-sponsoring presidential debates.  As reported in the New York Times last week, CNN will host a debate between presidential candidates with questions culled from YouTube.  This highly hyped event may serve as inspiration for public broadcasters who are experimenting with new ways of engaging audiences during the 2008 elections.  Some are already wondering if the hype will match up to the reality – the YouTube clips are still going to be curated by the CNN team and host Andersen Cooper will provide follow-up questions, thus mitigating some of the populist nature of the Web.   

> The key theme this week is that cellphones are more important than televisions to the 26 and under crowd.  An infographic supporting a New York Times story about various networks’ ambitious cellphone initiatives indicates that both cellphones and computers are more important to younger generations than television. And this is before the iPhone is even released. 

 > The think piece this week is that NBC announced an online educational venture.  By leveraging its vast news archives, iCue (“Immerse, Compete, Understand, and Excel”) will serve as a supplement to Advanced Placement high school courses in American History, Government, and English.  Cost?  $10M.  Business model?  Subscription fees from schools and advertising on the site.  As pubcasters consider exploring the online space, there may be some lessons learned (both positive and negative) from NBC’s foray.

New Media News Digest, June 12th – June 19th, 2007

TELEVISION

Fox Entertainment Signs Internet TV Distributor Brightcove

From PaidContent: "Fox has tapped online TV distributor Brightcove to provide its networks and studio with ad-supported internet video channels. The pact will also give Fox the ability to target its broadband video directly to specific demos."

Sony Offers Web-Streaming Device As Option on HDTVs
From the WSJ: "The fight is intensifying in the battle to bring the Internet -- and all the video available on it -- to a television near you. Sony will include its Internet streaming device as an option in all of its new HD television models this year."

HD programming wars: Comcast says 800 HD channels by 2009
From ArsTechnica: "At a press conference I attended at CES early this year, DIRECTV proudly announced that it would have 100 HD channels available by year end. Comcast is trying to trump its competitor by saying that it will have over 800 HD channels by that time."

INTERNET

YouTube Passes Debates to a New Generation
From the NYT: "YouTube, which is owned by Google, and CNN are co-sponsoring a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates on July 23 in South Carolina, an event that could define the next phase of what has already been called the YouTube election."

Cellphones and Computers Rank Higher Than Televisions in the 18-to-26 Age Group
From the NYT -- an infographic in support of a story about broadcasters creating mobile content indicates that younger generations prefer their computers and cellphones more than their televisions.

Yes, the Screen Is Tiny, but the Plans Are Big
ESPN isn't alone. Other companies, like CBS and MTV, as well as news organizations like The Associated Press and magazine concerns like the Hearst Corporation, are investing in original cellphone content.

Canadian New Media Fund Gets $27.3M from Government
From CBC: "Administered by Telefilm , the Canada New Media Fund was created in 2001 to support the development, production, marketing and distribution of original Canadian new media projects in both official languages."

Ad Revenues -- Up 16% Online, Down 0.3% For Radio

From TNS Media Intelligence: "Internet display advertising is projected to lead the market with 16.0 percent growth in 2007. Network TV expenditures are expected to increase by just 1.3 percent. Small declines are also projected for Radio (-0.3 percent)."

RADIO

Big Radio Makes a Grab for Internet Listeners 
From the NYT: "Confronted by a slow erosion of listeners who are turning to iPods, podcasts and other sources for entertainment, the radio corporations are trying to merge their over-the-air music and D.J. chatter with the Web."

EDUCATION

NBC Developing Educational Site for Students
From the NYT: "The network is to announce an online venture intended as a supplement to Advanced Placement high school courses in three subjects: American history, government and English. The effort draws heavily on its exhaustive film and video archives."

Converters Signal a New Era for TVs

Jacques Steinberg writes:

... the National Association of Broadcasters, the powerful trade lobby representing the nation’s television networks and stations, lifted the curtain on two prototypes for those basic digital converters — one made by LG, the other by Thomson, which is distributed under the RCA brand — that will start appearing in electronic and department stores in January, at an expected cost of about $50 to $70. ...

Link:  New York Times. 

As if this whole conversion thing wasn't confusing enough to consumers (and to us broadcasters as well), buyers now need to be aware that these basic converter boxes are designed to make your old analog set work with the new digital standard.  It does not convert your old analog set into an HDTV receiver nor does it enable you to receive HD on even an HD monitor.  For that you will need a somewhat more sophisticated box that supports HD.  Another alternative is the emerging category of VCR replacements; that is, DVD recorders that have built-in ATSC tuners.  I saw a Panasonic version the other day at Costco for $300 (includes HDMI interface).  It has 1080i upscaling for DVD playback, but I can't tell from printed specs if the ATSC converter supports HD.  And Wal-Mart is selling two Magnavox units with built-in digital tuners for $190 and $145 (thanks, Ralph Hogan).  That's less than I paid for my stand-alone Samsung ATSC set-top box, but beware, like the new cheap converters, both are Standard Definition only tuners.  Here are some comments about the more expensive Magnavox on the AVS Forum.   --Dennis

Digital TV Facts

Readers who are about to acquire one of the new digital sets or who might be broadcasters who need to educate viewers about their options should check out the Digital TV Facts (or RSS feed) run by Steven Sande.  I've not read everything, but it has a lot of good consumer information.  --Dennis

ABC to Stream HD Shows Online

Todd Spangler writes:

Disney-ABC Television Group claimed to be the first major television programmer to stream HD video online, at 1280-by-720 resolution. In a test the broadcaster expects to launch in early July, ABC.com’s HD channel will feature a limited amount of content... When ABC launches its new season in September, the site will offer a “more robust” HD lineup. ...

Link:  Multichannel News.

Best HD Bargain? Antennas Rule

Jackson West writes:

Which types of HDTV connections provide the best possible HDTV quality — online downloads, cable, satellite or broadcast?  You might be surprised to hear that of the four choices, broadcast is often the best and online downloads usually the worst, with cable often better than satellite. ...

Link:  NewTeeVee.

A visit to "translator-land"

I'm attending the last day and a half of the National Translator Association annual meeting in Colorado, a group to which my organization has belonged for several years (we have two television translators and a dozen FM ones)  but I've never attended a meeting.  I missed the NAB and the PBS Technology Conference for the second year in a row, so I decided to tack this onto the return from another meeting and have discovered this a remarkably good substitute for them, at least for the topics which interest me.

The NTA is presided over by the craggy and western-garbed Byron St. Clair, a physics PhD and founder of translator manufacturer TTC (now part of LARCAN) who, if he's not the father of the translator and LPTV indusntries, would have a credible case in a paternity dispute.  It may be an index of the low visibility and unhipness of the translator/LPTV world that one finds only two relevant hits when one searches Google for his legendary (within this circle) name.

Translators are small boxes that receive a TV or FM signal on one frequency and transmit it at low power on different frequency to (usually) small communities that are otherwise blocked from reception by the main station.  They are relatively scarce in the East, but are hugely popular in western communities.  Some 30 years ago, I did a translator survey of the state of Idaho and even found somethat were, shall we say, not in the FCC database serving an isolated ranch or two.  One was installed in an old refrigerator half-buried in a hillside.  This was before DBS, of course, but translators still play an important role in serving rural communities.

Translator operation is usually a shoestring affair, but these intrepid believers in over-the-air services are making plans to digitize their transmissions (even radio -- an FCC rep said yesterday that a forthcoming FCC release would "address" FM translator IBOC operation, though he didn't say how).  Some already have.  They are also worrying about interference from unlicensed devices in the so-called "white channels."  And they're making plans to assist their viewers in making proper antenna installations.  I also learned that the NTIA now has $62M to subsidize this conversion (applications begin 10/2008), which will be administered by the same folks who administer the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program.

If you scan this list I put together a few months back (massaged from Nielsen Media survey data) of over-the-air viewers by DMA, you will conclude that there are two categories of DMAs where over-the-air is particularly important:  markets in which there are high numbers of recent immigrants and markets in which there are a significant number of translators.  Sometimes they're the same markets.  Don't be too quick to write off OTA.  --Dennis

The futility of DRM

A code to unlock the HD-DVD DRM was just released into the wild, as Andy Carvin writes:

... The runaway social news site Digg found itself under siege by its own members, as they rose up in revolt against the site owners. A couple of days ago, Kevin Rose and his team had decided to remove a digg story containing the encryption key required to crack HD-DVDs after receiving a take-down notice.  ...

... Faster than you can stand and shout, "I'm Spartacus! I'm Spartacus!," countless digg members were posting stories with the HD-DVD encryption key. Digg simply couldn't keep up with the revolt as it spread like wildfire. Someone even started making the key available on a t-shirt. Eventually, Digg founder Kevin Rose decided to back down in a blog post that actually included the encryption key in its title, despite the potential legal backlash. ...

Link:  Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth.

Of course this provided fodder for countless blog posts this week, including the following from which I borrowed the title for this post.  Bill St. Arnaud writes:

Once again we are seeing an open rebellion against the attempts by the MPAA and RIAA, under the DMCA act, to censor and control the publication of keys for HD-DVD discs. When will these guys ever learn that DRM will never work in a large scale distribution of content. They continue to want to protect a failed business model through flawed DRM technologies, lawyers and take down orders, rather than develop new innovative marketing strategies. ...

Link:  Bill St. Arnaud.  Thanks to Gens Johnson for the tip.  --Dennis

What happened to Mark Schubin's Monday Memos?

Production engineer extraordinaire Mark Schubin's Monday Memos on digital television, a labor of love for him, an important source of information for his readers, and fodder for many a post on this blog, have been MIA since late last summer.  One of the many who has missed them asked about it on the OpenD TV list.  One of his principal gigs has been the Met Opera, and it's been feeding live performances to theaters around the country.  Here's his interesting response in its entirety.  --Dennis

[opendtv] Re: Whatever happened to...

• From: Mark Schubin <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: Open DTV Forum <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 11:19:31 -0400 (EDT)

The multiplication of media at the Metropolitan Opera happened.  If you're at 
the PBS Technology Conference next week, come to my Friday presentation, 
subtitled "My Life Since September."

In brief, we are transmitting live HD cinemacasts to sold-out movie theaters 
around the world.  How sold out?  The live transmission of "Barber of Seville" 
on March 24 ranked well within the top-20 in U.S. weekend grosses, despite the 
fact that it was shown only once.

Why is it taking so much of my time?  Here are a few highlights from "Barber" 
(just one of the series):
- 16 transponders on 13 satellites as well as three transoceanic fiber cables
- multiple motion-compensating HD frame-rate converters
- one-hour HD delays to compensate for the different starts of Summer Time in 
North America and Europe
- 14 HD cameras and 30 recorders
- five robotic mounts, including two extendable towers and a track, all of 
which had to be deployed in minutes
- a 600-foot live, backwards Steadicam move (ending at a live burro)
- shooting multicamera live in the control room itself (one intermission was 
shot live in five different venues)
- live subtitling in multiple languages
- stereo, 5.1, and LT/RT sound, discrete and encoded
- coordinating live commercial U.S. radio, non-commercial U.S. radio, global 
radio, and the HD cinemacasts, all of which sometimes share and sometimes use 
different production elements
- coordinating the parking of production vehicles on three Manhattan blocks 
with the fire department, the police, and local security

Wheeee!

But I'll try to get something out.

Sorry.

TTFN,
Mark

Managing our DTV bandwidth

Two very good related articles by David Liroff and David Felland have now (finally) been posted to the web site of the public broadcasting newspaper, Current.  Liroff's article, DTV channel options: How much to mux?, was published on 12 Feb. 2007 and provides analysis about the trade-offs relating to how we manage our 19.39 mbps ATSC DTV streams.  Felland's article, We've got to clean up our act in high-definition, was published on 12 March and argues that we would gain capacity for additional services if all our HD programming offerings were produced in HD rather than upconverted film or analog formats.  Check them out.  --Dennis

Interpreting the Transition to Digital TV as a Business Opportunity

While browsing the TeamSoper web site yesterday, I found a link to a PDF of a recent (Fall/Winter 2006) white paper with this title by David Tice of Knowledge Networks/SRI.  The paper is also available in HTML format at the Knowledge Networks site.  Although it doesn't go into specific business recommendations, it's a good overview document to share with boards of directors.

Broadcasters will find Chart 2 useful also (requires clicking a link in the HTML version).  Using data from their Home Technology Monitor survey, the chart displays how consumers expect to make analog sets compatible with the new digital standard.  Just over half plan to subscribe to a multichannel cable or DBS provider which, while maintaining access, nevertheless will diminish the audience of any one broadcaster now enjoying the benefits of limited channel availability in an over-the-air situation.  --Dennis

Counting Down To the Digital Deadline

Rob Pegoraro has a column which contains some positives about over-the-air DTV and transition options that are more accessible than the livingroom HD behemouths.  Link:  Washington Post.  --Dennis

HD as the first step beyond TV

The always-thoughtful Doc Searls writes about HD television:

... Compared to SD, HD is pure deliverance. More than one friend has called the difference "life-changing". Some forms of programming — notably sports, music videos and nature footage — are so good, relatively speaking, that they're hard not to watch. ...

Link:  Linux Journal.

1080p Does Matter...

... writes Carlton Bale:

... I want to set the record straight once and for all: if you are serious about properly setting up your viewing room, you will definitely benefit from 1080p (and even 1440p.) Why? Because the 1080p resolution is the first to deliver enough detail to your eyeball when you are seated at the proper distance from the screen.  But don't just take my word for it: read on for the proof. ...

Link: CarltonBale.com.

Also see his Commentary on the CNet "1080p Isn't Important" Article.  Link: CarltonBale.com.

High-Definition Opera Hits Movie Theaters

As I recall, it was 20 years ago this last fall when we dropped the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts from our radio service.  We did so because the Met required stations in the "lower 48" to carry the broadcasts live, unlike stations in Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.  For those of us in the Pacific Time Zone, that meant prime real estate on Saturday mornings.  At the time, we replaced it with classical music on Saturdays and non-Met opera on Sunday evenings.  Those classical listeners on the next pledge drive contributed an order of magnitude more than the opera listeners ever had in the same time period -- though all 250 opera listeners apparently owned typewriters and used them in what was (and still stands) our the greatest protest over a programming decision.  I thought the Met displayed stunning arrogance in this ("It's like a sporting event," I was told).  But then they probably thought the same of us, who, after all, were obviously rural philistines depriving our listeners of opera from this great institution.

All that history is that is to key on the "sporting event" remark.  The Met has hit on a great idea for opera, which after all is as much a visual event as it is an aural one -- and, arguably, it's as much of a social event as it is an artistic one.  They're beaming live opera performances in high definition video to movie theaters.  NPR carried a story on this on the 31st, to which you can listen here.  Good luck to them. 

Update 3 Jan. 2007:
The Los Angeles Times reports there were technical difficulties at some theaters.  Link:  TVPredictions.  --Dennis