Broadcasters and consumer electronics industry had mixed responses Wed. to the FCC request for comment on what to do about the 15% of consumers whose TV sets won’t work after the DTV conversion. The Commission in May sought hard data on who the 15% are, solutions to the transition process and an array of others questions (CD May 13 p1). Under current law, the transition is to occur in 2006 if 85% of the population can receive a digital signal, or when that threshold is met.
The CE industry’s first HDTV set-tops with ATSC tuners, HD PVRs and digital CableCARD readiness will be introduced by Sony in late fall, the company told reporters Thurs. The set-tops will be available in versions with 250-GB and 500-GB PVR capacities at $799 and $999, respectively, Sony said. The 500-GB DHG-HDD500 will pair dual 250-GB hard drives and offer the ability to record at least 30 hours of HDTV content and up to 20 hours of standard-definition programming, while the 250-GB DHG-HDD250 will allow 1/2 as much, Sony said. The models will offer new “iterations” of a TV Guide electronic program guide (EPG) that will support the digital channel map, Sony said. Greg Gudorf, vp in Sony’s Home Products Group, has said such set-tops would typify the innovation the CE industry could bring to unidirectional digital CableCard technology that ordinarily won’t support such features as EPGs and video on demand. The TV Guide EPG would be available subscription-free and delivered by over-the-air broadcast signal, Sony said. The models also will feature “flexible” video formats for meshing with a wide variety of displays. Their targets include the 10 million HD-ready TV households that lack an HD tuner solution and the 30 million digital cable homes with limited choices in HDTV set-tops and limited or no choices of HD PVRs. The Sony set-tops will have USB ports for accommodating future services, and component and HDMI outputs but no IEEE-1394 interfaces, Sony said.
The FCC announced late Wed. it plans to vote at its Aug. 4 meeting on outage reporting requirements for wireless and wireline carriers, as well as a rulemaking and declaratory order on changes to CALEA. All of the items pick up the broader homeland security theme of the meeting. The FCC indicated that despite a last-min. flurry of lobbying it will vote on a report and order from the Office of Engineering & Technology on service disruptions, picking up many of the recommendations in an earlier rulemaking. Wireless carriers in particular have expressed concerns that the reporting requirement would actually make their systems less secure. The FCC will also vote on a rulemaking by OET that’s expected to make a preliminary determination that VoIP should be subject to CALEA requirements. The Commission also has before it a declaratory order expected to hold that push-to- talk phone service is subject to CALEA. The FCC will also consider: (1) An Order on Reconsideration addressing, in part, petitions filed by BellSouth and SureWest for clarification and/or partial reconsideration of the Triennial Review Order. (2) A Fifth Report & Order addressing measures to protect against waste, fraud and abuse in the administration of the schools and libraries universal service support mechanism. (3) A notice of inquiry from the Enforcement Bureau on the effectiveness of the Emergency Alert System (EAS). The Commission had previously said it would address EAS concerns (CD June 24 p7). (4) A report and order from the Media Bureau on the DTV transition and a Media Bureau order responding to certifications received in response to an initial certification window by which digital output protection technologies and recording methods could be authorized for use. The order would give effect to the Redistribution Control Descriptor set forth in the ATSC standard. (5) An order concerning implementation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography & Marketing Act of 2003. Also at the meeting, the Homeland Security Policy Council will present a report concerning this year’s FCC regulatory, outreach and partnership initiatives in support of homeland security.
Major cable companies we spoke with said they believed they were by and large ready to meet the FCC’s July 1 plug-&- play mandate, although they were unsure precisely how many CableCARDs would be needed. But sources on the CE side questioned cable’s commitment to one-way plug-&-play, saying they thought cable would hold off on marketing until the more profitable 2-way plug-&-play is settled. Major cable companies said they had no big promotional plans in the works on one-way plug-&-play, but they also said it was too early to say whether they would make a big marketing push for 2-way either.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) approved voluntary guidelines for digital TV receivers, ATSC executives said Tues. The new recommendations provide performance guidelines for receiver sensitivity, multiple signal overload, phase noise, selectivity and multipath. ATSC suggests the use of the antenna control interface specified by the CEA, which facilitates automatic control of antenna parameters, it said. ATSC also provided guidelines for implementing received signal quality indicators for use by consumers -- www.atsc.org.
HDTV will be checking in at U.S. hotels owing to an LG- LodgeNet system for satellite and terrestrial ATSC reception, the companies said Tues. The system is based on an LG- developed off-air platform that transcodes satellite- delivered HDTV channels such as HDNet, HBO-HD, Showtime HD, ESPN HD and Discovery HD Theater for delivery to guest rooms by a hotel’s coaxial distribution system. The signals will be encrypted to provide digital content protection all the way to the sigNETure TV set-top boxes deployed by LodgeNet, the world’s largest provider of interactive TV and broadband services to the lodging industry.
Several consumer electronic executives joined broadcasters that claimed multicasting, rather than just high definition, is essential to the DTV adoption. “For any new technology like HD, content is king and consumers need to understand their programming options,” said Frank Sadowski, Amazon.com vp-consumer electronics (CE) merchandising, during an audioconference Thurs. sponsored by Communications Daily and Consumer Electronics Daily. In order to sell HDTV to consumers, they must understand they have more options, he said.
Public broadcasters charged the wireless industry with failing to respond to their offer to free up the analog spectrum early in return for the govt. setting up a trust fund from proceeds of the spectrum auction. “We are open- minded to working with the wireless service providers, but I have to say that the outreach by the industry to public television has been virtually nonexistent,” said Assn. of Public TV Stations (APTS) Pres. John Lawson in an interview. With their commercial counterparts all but refusing to play along, public TV was banking on support from the wireless industry and public safety industry to push its concept on the Hill and at the FCC for a trust fund for public broadcasters in return for embracing a “hard date” for analog switch off.
Dolby Digital Plus, an upgrade technology claimed to offer twice the data efficiency of the existing Dolby Digital, will be introduced and demonstrated publicly for the first time at next week’s NAB show in Las Vegas, Dolby Labs told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. “We've been working on Dolby Digital to make it further extendable,” as always was the intent when it was first commercialized almost 10 years ago, Craig Eggers, Dolby Labs dir. of consumer technology mktg., told us. The Advanced TV System Committee already has selected Dolby Digital Plus as a “candidate standard” for next-generation enhanced DTV. The technology, which is about 1-2 years away from being commercialized, could find itself in future applications at least as broad as those of Dolby Digital, which is installed in nearly 40 million homes, Eggers said. In addition to ATSC audio, applications will include cable and satellite delivery and for streaming interactivity in next-generation optical discs. Advanced video codecs such as H.264 and others are designed to address the need for more efficient video data transmission through the limited-bandwidth “pipeline” than currently is possible with MPEG-2, Eggers said. “If there are going to be new efficiencies in video, we have to work on new efficiencies in audio, and we've been doing that.” Dolby Digital Plus will enable broadcasters to transmit 5.1-channel HDTV digital audio at 192 kbps -- half the current data transfer rate of 384 kbps, Eggers said. Over-the-air 2- channel HDTV audio also would transfer data at half the current 192 kbps rate, as would stereo DVD recorders, he said. “The issue with Dolby Digital Plus is we're bringing these new efficiencies to the marketplace,” but at no risk to backward compatibility with legacy Dolby Digital products, Eggers said. “We recognize that there’s 40 million AV receivers out there in the universe” with Dolby Digital, he said. “We recognize we have an obligation to the consumer when we introduce anything new around the Dolby Digital format, as receivers go.” For the consumer, the transition to Dolby Digital Plus will be “seamless,” Eggers said. He said typically, a Dolby Digital Plus signal would be streamed to a set-top box, then outconverted and sent through a SPDIF output to an AV receiver as a standard Dolby Digital signal.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) has approved an enhanced version of Dolby AC-3 for next-generation digital TV audio, a Dolby Labs spokesman confirmed. The system, called “Dolby Digital Plus,” was approved by the ATSC as a “candidate standard,” the spokesman said.