Digital TV (HDTV): Threat or
Menace
Here we are in the 21st century and we don't have
personal hovercraft, rocket packs, teleportation, or faster-than-light interstellar space
travel -- all manifestations of the future my youthful self was convinced I'd witness
within my lifetime. I'm not holding my breath.
Heck, these days I have my doubts about digital television
(DTV), which has been "right around the corner" for about five years now.
To recap: DTV is the next generation of television.
Currently, our standard televisions receive analog signals (here in the US we use the NTSC
transmission standard); DTV will (actually, existing ones do) employ an
over-the-air transmission protocol called Table 3 of the Advanced Television Standards
Committee (ATSC). Televisions that receive and decode ATSC Table 3 transmissions are
generally called High Definition Televisions (HDTVs). Among the characteristics of HDTV
are the ability to: receive ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions and decode all ATSC
Table 3 video formats; display vertical scanning lines of 720 progressive (720p), 1080
interlaced (1080i), or higher; display an image in a 16:9 (width:height) aspect ratio; and
receive and reproduce/output Dolby Digital audio.
If you're an avid videophile, you already know all this,
but I wouldn't write about the advances in teleportation without reviewing our progress --
and, with all the finger-pointing and "you go first" bravado of all of the
interested parties, it looks like matter-transmission will get here first.
Technically, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has
mandated a changeover from NTSC to ATSC by the end of 2006, provided that the technology
has achieved 85% market penetration by then. Of course, we have no idea how close we are
to meeting that deadline because, in its infinite wisdom, the Commission hasn't defined
what "85% market penetration" means. (Has your head started to throb yet?
No? Well, we're not finished.)
Last May, all 1240 full-power US-based television stations
were supposed to begin transmitting digital signals, according to an FCC deadline.
A scant handful made it. Six months later, fewer than 500 have begun digital transmission
and most of those are in the top 30 markets.
At the same time, fewer than 5% of all US households have
DTV components.
Who's to blame? Ahh, that's the interesting part. All of
the interested parties have reached a consensus: It's the other guy.
The stations don't want to pay for expensive digital
transmission equipment until they're guaranteed viewers; electronics manufacturers point
out that there's little demand for generally expensive digital sets when there's so little
high-definition programming.
Enter the FCC, which voted three to one requiring
over-the-air DTV tuners on almost all new TV sets by 2007. The Commission's five-year
rollout schedule starts with large, expensive TV sets. This plan, it claims, minimizes the
costs for equipment manufacturers and consumers alike. The exact requirement is that all
TVs with screens larger than 13" and all television-receiving devices (VCRs and DVD
players/recorders) will be required to include DTV reception capability after 1 July 2007.
(The hard numbers: 50% of screens measuring 36" or greater must include DTV tuners by
1 July 2004, 100% by 1 July 2005; 50% of screens 25" to 35" must comply by 1
July 2005, 100% by 1 July 2006; 100% of all screens 13" to 24" must comply by 1
July 2007; and all TV interface devices, VCRs, and DVD players/recorders that receive
broadcast television signals must incorporate digital reception by 1 July 2007.)
The FCC reasons that digital receivers are essential
elements of broadcast television service, just as analog tuners were at the dawn of
television. The FCC cites the 1962 All Channel Receiver Act (ACRA) as providing its
"authority to require" that television sets "be capable of adequately
receiving all frequencies" authorized by the FCC for TV transmission.
Now, if you think that's settled that, you just
haven't been paying attention. Not so dad-blamed fast, protested the Consumer
Electronics Association (CEA), an organization promoting the interests of electronics
manufacturers. The CEA claims that only 13% of US households receive their primary signals
over-the-air (OTA). Rather, most households use cable and satellite services -- which
already carry digital programming. The costs for the redundant digital tuners will be paid
by everyone who buys a television, the CEA maintains, while being of real benefit only to
a small subset of consumers. CEA spokesperson Jenny Miller said the mandate would
"really sock it to" the elderly and low-income families. (I'm eagerly awaiting
the statistics supporting the claim that the elderly and poor have bought significant
numbers of screens measuring 36" or more.)
Much more reasonable is the CEA's assertion that cable
television delivers programming to around 70% of US consumers. That's the reason
commissioner Kevin Martin dissented, maintaining that digital over-the-air tuners
"confer a real benefit only on the relatively small percentage of consumers who do
not rely on cable or satellite for broadcast reception."
But, while cable can transmit DTV, it has not been
all that fast out of the gate in offering it. Part of the answer, as with OTA
broadcasting, lies in the expense of the changeover -- especially when weighed against the
relatively small number of consumers clamoring for cable-delivered DTV.
Many cable subscribers are frustrated by the necessity of
using cable-company-provided set-top boxes, which they see as expensive and redundant --
and frequently of lower quality than the digital tuners they can buy separately or which
came in their sets. Furthermore, the FCC has never gotten around to mandating any
connection standards, so a sizable number of consumers are reluctant to invest in a
television that might not meet such a standard if one is ever established.
Something about this doesn't quite add up. Obviously, the
electronics industry stands to make a tremendous fortune from this transition and the
sooner it reaches critical mass, the sooner the economies of scale kick in. Equally
apparent, broadcasters and cable companies stand to gain larger audiences -- on HDTV, it's
almost impossible to avert your gaze, even during the ads. It's Hollywood that's dragging
its feet.
Just as record companies are violently opposed to
delivering high-resolution audio to consumers now that they can store and format-shift the
data without degradation, the movie industry is hysterically paranoid about facing the
same situation. DVD is the fastest-growing entertainment format that has ever been
released -- it’s the legendary 500-pound gorilla.
If the average consumer has any qualms about
discarding the clunky, low-res videocassette, it's because you can't record or time-shift
television programming with DVD. That's DVD's killer app. Yet DVD recorders aren't
hard to make; Apple even includes them in their G4 computers. So why can't the public buy
DVD recorders as long as it's stocking up on DVD players?
It's because Hollywood, Inc. and the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA) have intimidated manufacturers with threats of lawsuits and
legislation. The very idea of what the MPAA dubs "pure and pristine" copies
circulating is enough to give the industry the fantods. This is despite the fact that the
MPAA acknowledges on its website that its biggest intellectual property threat is pirates
who take camcorders into movie theaters and then flood the foreign markets with low-res
Video Compact Discs (VCDs) of the blurred, shaky, bad-sounding results prior to the theatrical
release of the films in those regions. (Doesn't it seem as though the real answer would be
simultaneous worldwide theatrical releases?)
The movie industry may well have cause for concern about
high-resolution broadcasting, but content protection (at least content protection
sufficient to prevent casual piracy -- real piracy, as we've seen, isn't concerned
with enhanced resolution) is certainly not an insurmountable problem. Hollywood's
opposition to HDTV, on the other hand, is beginning to look like one.
If the FCC really wants to ensure a rapid rollout of HDTV,
I suggest it take a long, hard look at the rich, powerful, politically connected (I did
say I was naïve) fantasy factories of southern California. Yeah -- like that will
happen.
Damn!
I want my DTV.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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