ATSC SAID TO BE POISED TO VOTE SOON ON E-VSB STANDARD FOR DTV
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) is expected to vote this spring on an enhanced VSB (E-VSB) modulation standard for DTV, nearly a year later than originally planned, Nat Ostroff, Sinclair Bcst. Group vp-new technology told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily at a Kagan seminar in N.Y.C., but key ATSC official said polling of full committee was unlikely before midsummer, at earliest. The committee vote would cap a 2-year process in which the field of 8 proposals for E-VSB was winnowed to 3 and ultimately one -- the version developed jointly by Zenith and NxtWave Communications, he said.
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Ostroff, who has been no friend of ATSC’s 8-VSB from the start and whose company has actively promoted the alternative COFDM technology, said the E-VSB standard proceedings became bogged down politically in an ATSC subcommittee. He suggested the only reason the Zenith-NxtWave proposal survived for referral to the full ATSC for a vote was that subcommittee members lacked the political will to kill all 3. “So they passed it upstairs,” Ostroff said. Attempts to reach Zenith and ATSC Exec. Dir. Mark Richer for comment were unsuccessful.
Attempts to reach Zenith were unsuccessful. ATSC Exec. Dir. Mark Richer declined to identify companies involved in proposed standard, but confirmed agreement had been reached on “one basic technology approach.” E-VSB standards-setting process is elaborate, requiring field testing and review at various ATSC levels, he said. As such, he said, it’s unlikely full ATSC membership will be polled on E-VSB before midsummer.
It’s believed DTV products incorporating E-VSB will reach the market 12-18 months after the standard is set. E- VSB would provide an alternative to, but not replace, the existing 19.4-Mbps VSB standard by slowing the data rate to 14-15 Mbps. Signal-to-noise performance would increase to 15 dB from 9.5-11 dB. Signal-to-noise specifications had been a key differentiation point between competing Zenith and NxtWave proposals before they were merged.
With ATSC, by Ostroff’s account, poised for a vote on E- VSB, he conceded his company had abandoned any hope that COFDM modulation would be adopted for DTV in the U.S. COFDM has “pretty much passed into the history books” in this country, he said, although the technology seems to have a relatively bright future in Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, Kagan panelists dismissed multicasting, a one-time DTV hot button, as having poor commercial prospects because a successful business model hadn’t been developed. “It was a great idea, but what finally stopped it was that you couldn’t receive it,” Washington attorney James Burger said. “At the time we thought we could put rabbit ears on top of the set and receive 4-5 channels of data and we discovered that wasn’t the case.” While multicasting might have worked for one-way streaming of data, it was found to be incapable of operating in mobile applications, he said.
Panelists agreed datacasting began losing steam in 2001 with the shutdown of Geocast and the failure of a datacasting consortium, DTV Applications Software Environment, to get off the ground despite backing by such prominent companies as Harris, NDS, Samsung and others. “The opportunity has been lost and we have to make the best of what we have,” Ostroff said.