The PBS emergency alert system pilot project using mobile DTV (CD June 6 p11) has been expanded to include a commercial TV station (KOMO-TV in Seattle), and organizers said they intend to bring the project to the ATSC for standards approval in May. The alerts developed by the four broadcasters involved in the pilot were shown at CES last month. This month, the partners begin a road show, with plans to bring the technology to WGBH-TV Boston, Alabama Public TV in Birmingham and Montgomery, Seattle and possibly Washington, D.C., said Jay Adrick, vice president of broadcast technology at Harris Corp., one of the partners in the pilot with LG, Roundbox and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Then, an improved demonstration will be brought to NAB in April, with additional use cases and functionality.
Lobbying for and against letting cable operators scramble basic programming continued last week, filings in FCC docket 11-169 show. Hauppauge Computer Works doesn’t want encryption because it would end clear quadrature amplitude modulation digital cable, while RCN said scrambling is necessary to protect the company from having its video stolen by people who don’t subscribe. “After the over-the-air transition to ATSC digital TV in 2009 and the reclamation of analog cable TV over the last year, eliminating clear QAM TV would be yet another change to the way consumers receive television in less than three years,” Hauppauge CEO Ken Plotkin reported telling a front-office Media Bureau staffer. The bureau is working out details of rules allowing scrambling, which cable operators say will cut down on the need to send out technicians, and their vehicles that use energy and emit carbon dioxide, to turn on and off service (CD Jan 25 p3). Whole-home systems that pay-TV companies are developing, when used with new generations of smart sets, “would reduce the power consumption of cable TV equipment in the home, which today is a big problem,” Plotkin wrote (http://xrl.us/bmpy4r). “These new whole home TV distribution systems being designed by Comcast and Verizon are much more energy efficient than multiple cable TV boxes currently being used. But until these new systems become widely deployed, using clear QAM to directly connect digital cable TV to clear QAM enabled TV sets without requiring a cable TV box is the best way to lower the power consumption of cable TV in the home.” Ending clear QAM means more set-top boxes will be deployed, boosting the energy usage of U.S. homes, the CEO said. “This is certainly contrary to our national interests to reduce power consumption.” RCN has no “feasible and cost-effective alternative to prevent service theft” other than scrambling the signals of TV stations and cable channels on the basic tier, the operator said. A lawyer for the company reported telling a bureau official and aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that the bureau should “act quickly on RCN’s waiver (which covers two of RCN’s systems).” The order “removing the ban on basic tier encryption also [should] be adopted quickly,” the lawyer continued (http://xrl.us/bmpy5f).
No parties opposed requests by two separate groups of engineers for the FCC to look into allowing Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) Remote Pickup Stations (RPUs) to operate narrowband digital channels. The Society of Broadcast Engineers in November asked the commission to waive portions of the Part 74 rules that prohibit RPUs from using some digital voice and data emissions. A month earlier, the Engineers for the Integrity of Broadcast Auxiliary Services Spectrum (EIBASS) petitioned the FCC to start a rulemaking revising some of those same rules. EIBASS, SBE and NAB all filed comments in response to a public notice on the petitions, and they all asked the commission to proceed. “In the 108 days since EIBASS filed its Petition for Rulemaking, nothing has changed regarding the need to revise the allowable center frequencies for RPU stations, allow RPU stations to use digital modulation and allow the ‘watermark’ method of station identification defined in the ATSC A/82 DRL standard,” EIBASS said. NAB might prefer SBE’s approach over EIBASS’s because “it appears simpler” and “would allow the commission to retain existing channel frequency centers… rather than creating a new table of channel frequency centers with varying bandwidths,” it said: “We urge the Commission to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to consider their requests, and to consider, in the interim,” SBE’s waiver request.
LAS VEGAS -- With 2012 widely seen as a make or break year for mobile DTV, the Mobile 500 Alliance and Mobile Content Venture (MCV) are expected to continue discussions at CES this week on a potential merger, industry officials said.
Allowing pay-TV distributors to encrypt their basic service tier would damage the market for innovative set-top boxes such as Boxee’s, CEO Avner Ronen told FCC officials in teleconferences this week, an ex parte notice shows. Boxee will begin selling an add-on to its box that allows customers to watch live TV through an ATSC and QAM tuner. “We expect that many of our users will choose to connect the product to QAM, as reception via antennas may be inconsistent or unavailable in some areas,” the notice said. “The market for our product will therefore be significantly reduced if cable providers are permitted to encrypt basic tier cable programming,” it said. And the interim relief proposed in the rulemaking notice is inadequate “because it provides for relief only to a group of consumers that is far more narrowly defined than Boxee’s target market,” the notice said. Consumers will be less likely to buy Boxee’s product if they also need to pay for a converter box to access their cable operator’s encrypted basic service tier, it said. “Boxee’s competitiveness in the market will be hurt unless these consumers are guaranteed free access to a device that will decrypt basic tier cable and provide a QAM output,” it said.
Companies and industry groups continued to push for some changes to a draft order implementing a law restricting the noise levels of TV ads, ex parte notices show. The discussions came just before the FCC scheduled a vote on a report and order implementing the CALM Act at its Dec. 13 open meeting. Broadcast, cable, phone and TV programming executives met with FCC staff early this week to discuss possible changes to the order, which is reported to already give industry groups some of what they want (CD Dec 5 p9).
New FCC ex parte rules were violated at least 11 times since taking effect June 1, a Communications Daily review of all filings and the agency’s own checks found. Some filings were made late -- from a day in many instances to a few weeks -- and others didn’t contain enough information on what was discussed during lobbying meetings. The filings were made by companies and associations big and small. They covered proceedings ranging from changing the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband deployment to retransmission consent, ISP speeds, disabilities access legislation passed in 2010 and getting low-power TV stations to fully vacate the 700 MHz band for wireless broadband in the small portion they occupy.
As some broadcasters gear up for a mobile emergency alert system pilot project, they said they expect the EAS project to complement the current system and lead to further use of mobile DTV. With three public TV operations as test markets for the project, it will reassert the role of broadcasters as initial informers during emergencies and disasters, some executives said.
Many broadcasters and all wireless companies are sitting out a plan (CD Oct 21 p2) by some stations to act as Internet backhaul providers for carriers, our survey of those industries found. No carrier has agreed to join the efforts of the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, though several have expressed an interest in the technology, members said. They said the coalition has been adding some broadcasters, including the owner of five stations in North Carolina, and the operator of another 36 outlets is likely to join. Other executives and engineers who consult for the TV industry said the technology changes needed for stations to become ISPs of a sort would be expensive. They're skeptical that what they called an initiative undertaken at a late date will pick up enough momentum to either delay the auction of TV stations’ channels the FCC wants to hold or gain carrier backing.
Multichannel video programming distributors and TV stations keep seeking narrow FCC rules on what they each must do to comply with the CALM Act, filings posted Friday in docket 11-93 show (http://xrl.us/bmgwqz). The Rural Independent Competitive Alliance said small MVPDs can’t adjust the “dialnorm” settings for TV ads, which the legislation seeks to keep at about the same sound level as regular programming, “in real time.” The commission should offer an “expedited waiver process” for such companies, said a slide from an alliance meeting with Chief Bill Lake and other front-office Media Bureau staffers (http://xrl.us/bmgwq5). Members of the group include the NTCA and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecom Companies. TV stations need to rely on the act’s safe harbor provisions for all commercials they show, the NAB said executives told Lake and other top bureau officials (http://xrl.us/bmgwrd). The association sought “flexibility” for small TV stations and a “blanket waiver” of the effective date of the rules for those broadcasters that are small businesses. “Stations can and do rely on certifications from program providers that they control the loudness level of commercials and program content in conformance with practices in ATSC A/85 (and communicate that level to stations so that it can be properly set),” the NAB said. “We urged the FCC to recognize that reliance on such certifications was appropriate and consistent with commercially reasonable practices.” Stations don’t routinely measure the loudness level of all audio from “upstream providers” when it’s encoded into an AC-3 digital stream, and it’s “not practical to do so for all programs,” the association said in a follow-up meeting with some bureau officials: “Stations therefore do not know in real time if there is a deviation in terms of measured loudness."