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.
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.