Technology360

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