Licensing group MPEG LA, bowing to broadcaster resistance, has imposed changes in its royalty and license structure to encourage broader implementation of the H.264 video compression system for advanced TV. But initial broadcaster adoption of H.264 has crawled along, mainly because the rank and file know little about it. Moreover, the Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) only recently has begun accepting proposals on next-generation codecs for digital TV (CD March 31 p14).
A common HDTV standard for the entire Western Hemisphere “makes eminent sense,” and the recommendation last week that Mexico adopt the U.S. ATSC standard was a big step in that direction, said Phillip Bond, U.S. Undersecy. of Commerce- Technology. He told the Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) conference this week he hoped the Mexican govt. would finalize that decision soon. The Commerce Dept. has given the ATSC a 3-year, $400,000 grant to promote adoption of the U.S. standard. ATSC has estimated a common hemispheric standard would generate $8 billion of U.S. exports by 2014.
An ATSC standards committee has received about a dozen proposals on new audio and video codecs for advanced TV but thus far has accepted only a plan by Dolby Labs for AAC multichannel audio coding, John Whitaker, ATSC vp-standards development, told his group’s annual meeting Tues. in Washington. The committee, chaired by Bill Miller of ABC, has agreed to put off the MPEG-4-based H.264 and Microsoft Windows Media 9 video codecs for further study, Whitaker said.
To give a boost to its digital transition strategy of embracing a hard date for turning off analog, public TV is planning to develop legislation with sympathetic members of Congress to create a public broadcasting trust fund from proceeds of the analog spectrum auction. The move follows clear signals from public TV stations that setting up a trust fund was a “prerequisite” for early handover of analog spectrum, Assn. of Public TV (APTS) Pres. John Lawson told us. A draft plan for adopting a hard date for digital-only broadcasting (DOB) has been submitted to the APTS board and to member stations, he said, and “we hope in the first half of this year to present our membership and our board with a pretty comprehensive plan for digital-only broadcasting.”
A coalition of consumer groups filed a court challenge of the FCC decision to institute a broadcast flag content protection regime. The suit, filed in U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., named the FCC as defendant. The coalition of petitioners includes Consumer Federation of America (CFA), Consumers Union (CU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge (PK), the American Library Assn., the Assn. of Research Libraries, the American Assn. of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Assn. and the Special Libraries Assn. They say the FCC violated the rights of TV viewers and computer users by unlawfully and arbitrarily requiring that all devices with demodulators comply with the ATSC flag or broadcast flag. The library groups say they use the content for scholarly and other purposes.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) published an update of “The Guide to the Digital Television Standard.” The revision, known as recommended practice A/54A, provides an overview and tutorial of the ATSC digital TV system as defined in standards A/52A and A/53B.
The ATSC Forum highlighted the U.S. DTV standard as “a key tool for hemispheric integration,” in a series of presentations this week in Monterrey, Mexico, to diplomats from throughout the Americas, officials said. The group is promoting adoption of the U.S. standard in the Americas and other parts of the world. The Inter-American Telecom Commission of the Organization of American States recently adopted a resolution encouraging the implementation of DTV using a common standard.
The MPAA asked the FCC to reconsider and clarify its broadcast flag rules, saying the agency’s regulations weren’t strong enough to prevent the mass redistribution of broadcast content over the Internet by “expert” hackers. In a petition filed Fri., MPAA said the agency had failed to adopt a level of “robustness” equivalent to that proposed earlier by a coalition of industry groups that included the MPAA, the 5C companies and the Bcst. Protection Discussion Group (BPDG). “The robustness rule adopted by the Commission establishes a weaker robustness standards than commonly accepted and used in the marketplace for other protected distribution channels,” MPAA said.
European satellite operators have had “serious difficulties” gaining access to the U.S. market based on FCC applications of the DISCO 2 public interest framework and the ORBIT Act, according to a European report on trade barriers. The annual Report on U.S. Barriers to Trade & Investment is intended to “provide an overview of the obstacles that EU exporters and investors encounter in the U.S.,” it said. EU said it had concerns that ORBIT provisions weren’t applied equally and that “if it is used against EU operators’ interests, the EU reserves its right to seek arbitration procedures under the WTO.” The report used Inmarsat, New Skies and SES Global as examples of the difficulties European companies experienced in requesting access. Inmarsat was granted access conditioned on a post-IPO review. New Skies was granted access for 3 years in 1999 and in Jan. its NSS 8 was approved to serve the U.S. fixed satellite service (FSS) industry, the report said. Despite its ITU priority, Eutelsat was required by the U.S. to coordinate with Loral Skynet to use an orbit location for FSS services. While Eutelsat customers did receive FCC authority to access the satellite, the report said, “this case, in which the FCC appears to have leveraged it regulatory clout to the advantage of Loral, raised questions about the compatibility of U.S. domestic procedures with the [General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)] provision on Domestic Regulation.” SES Global was authorized in Aug. provide capacity for direct-to-home services to U.S. FSS facilities, the report said. “These cases show that proceedings by the FCC on spectrum allocation and licensing are not always carried out in an objective, transparent, timely and non- discriminatory manner, and they have raised concerns regarding their compatibility with U.S. WTO commitments,” it said. The report mentioned negotiations on GPS-Galileo coordination briefly, saying both the U.S. and EU understood that a bilateral agreement on coordination must be “within the existing international trade system and consistent with relevant WTO multilateral rules.” The report also mentioned: (1) The lack of available U.S. frequencies allocated for 3G mobile communications systems. While the FCC and NTIA have identified some 3G spectrum, “additional steps are required, in particular existing users must be relocated,” the report said: “In particular it is necessary to ensure that the U.S. market is open to European and foreign country operators that are potential new entrants in the market… [and] to ensure compatibility between the 3G frequency bands in the U.S. and EU so as to facilitate roaming between the U.S. and EU via multimodal terminals.” (2) Digital terrestrial TV compatibility between the U.S. and EU. The report said adoption of the ATSC standard had prevented development of the DVB-T standard in Europe, a “clear contradiction with U.S. government calls for technological neutrality and market-driven approaches in other sectors.” The mandate that TV receivers have digital TV reception capability after July 1, 2007, will strengthen the position of the ATSC standard, the report said.
ATSC elevated its Programming Metadata Communication Protocol (PMCP) standard to candidate status, meaning it now is seeking technical and implementation feedback on the standard. PMCP is aimed at ensuring broadcasters and manufacturers can interconnect systems that process data sent using ATSC’s Program & System Information Protocol (PSIP), MPEGs and other metadata such as traffic and weather reports and program listings. PMCP is based on XML documents that can be read both by humans and machines. ATSC’s T3S1 working group, chaired by Graham Jones of NAB, has been working on PCMP for 18 months, ATSC said.