Harris said it successfully tested mobile DTV equipment in Mexico City using LG prototype handheld receivers and programming from Grupo Televisa. “The feedback we received from Televisa was that these results were better than they originally anticipated, as their engineers were able to easily modify its existing … [ATSC] transmitter for mobile DTV, and provide solid reception throughout its broadcast contour -- even in challenging terrain,” said Nahuel Villegas, vice president of Harris Broadcast Communications for the Carribean and Latin American region. Televisa has no immediate plans to introduce a mobile DTV service.
Broadcasters’ efforts to put more of their receivers in mobile devices like cellphones, PDAs and laptops continue, now that the FCC has issued rules on the Commercial Mobile Alert Service this month. Broadcasters lobbied FCC commissioners on the public-safety benefits of putting FM receivers in mobile phones (CD June 20 p7). Those efforts weren’t acknowledged overtly in a July 8 FCC order on the CMAS rules, but broadcasters believe carriers can use the FM system for alerts within the framework laid out by the FCC, Emmis CEO Jeffrey Smulyan said in an interview. “My understanding is that our solution fits within the rules,” he said. Meanwhile, TV broadcasters’ efforts to develop a mobile DTV system are leading them to discussions with mobile carriers as well.
Broadcasters in Latin America agreed to buy mobile DTV equipment from Harris, the company said. Albavision will use the system in its Repretel operations in Costa Rica and at Radio Television Guatemala. Albavision already uses Harris DTV transmission equipment. Harris expects to have mobile DTV equipment available by November. It will be based on the ATSC Mobile/Handheld standard, which is still under development. Albavision said it plans to introduce the system in more Latin American countries later. The agreement follows last month’s announcement that competing proposals for the standard from Harris and LG and Samsung and Rohde & Schwarz would combine.
Direct broadcast satellite system operators should be able to continue to use their own channel placement, program guide, closed captioning and parental control data, instead of passing through Program and Systems Information Protocol data, Dish Networks told the Media Bureau last week. PSIP data is the ATSC standard. “PSIP data remains inaccurate or not as robust in providing program guide data,” said Linda Kinney, Dish vice president of law and regulation. On the issue of downconversion, broadcasters can choose on a channel-by-channel basis “not a program-by-program basis” to have Dish downconvert by either letterbox or center cut, Kinney told the staff, according to an ex parte filing.
U.S. broadcasters using certain Rohde & Schwarz equipment can support the forthcoming ATSC Mobile Handheld standard without new gear, the company said. Rohde customers’ “DTV transmitters using the R&S SX800 exciter are ready to be switched to ATSC M/H without hardware changes,” Program Manager Dave Benco said.
Blame “poor planning” at NTIA for dooming an effort by low-power TV, begun and ended last week, to promote Microprose analog-passthrough converter boxes to consumers whose coupons are about to expire, the Community Broadcasters Association said in response to a reader query on its KeepUsOn.com Web site. But according to our reality check of developments in the Microprose-CBA story, CBA misjudgments figured as much as any other factor in the Microprose “debacle,” as a CBA vice president called it Thursday when his group cut all ties to Microprose and its Web store.
Getting analog-passthrough DTV converters to consumers whose coupons are about to expire is the goal of a tie-in low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association debuted Tuesday with box supplier Microprose. But Microprose was delisted as a certified supplier, apparently because it’s against NTIA rules to redeem coupons for pre-orders, as Microprose was doing, an agency spokesman said.
A report by a broadcasters’ coalition recommending the most viable mobile DTV transmission system among three being reviewed will factor heavily into Advanced TV Systems Committee deliberations on setting a U.S. standard for mobile and handheld DTV broadcasting, ATSC President Mark Richer said in an interview Thursday. “The report makes some significant findings and recommendations that if they're confirmed by our specialist group will have a significant impact on our work on decision making,” he said, declining to discuss details. The report, delivered May 15 to ATSC, is said to have named LG and Harris’ Mobile Pedestrian Handheld system the best, prompting Samsung to offer elements of A- VSB, a competing system it devised with Rohde and Schwarz, to LG (CD May 15 p2) or (CED May 15 p1).
The FCC’s discovery in the past year that many DTV makers “have been selling units that ignore FCC rules requiring V-chip 2.0 compatibility” shows why the agency should consider requiring automatic software update capability in DTV sets and set-top boxes, six consumer, civil rights and disability groups told FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in a letter last week. Consumers “are at risk because the manufacturers are knowingly selling products that are likely to become obsolete long before they should,” the letter said. “If the manufacturers would include an inexpensive automatic software upgrade capability, new DTVs and converter boxes will be more durable and useful for consumers than is the case without that capability,” said the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Consumer Federation of America, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the New America Foundation, the Telecom Research and Action Center and the World Institute on Disability. Martin should launch an immediate inquiry “to shed light on these issues and see “if the industry will behave responsibly or if some stronger action is required to protect consumers,” they said. As yet they aren’t proposing rules like mandatory automatic update capability as part of product certification or “clear labeling” that tells consumers if gear has that capability, they said. House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D- Mass., put the issue “on the table” in November 2006 when they urged NTIA to require automatic update capability in coupon-eligible converter boxes, the letter said. But NTIA decided to make it a permitted rather than required CECB feature in its March 2007 final rules. Automatic software upgrades “could benefit both manufacturers in updating software and the users in upgrading a CECB’s authorized features,” the agency said then. “It is NTIA’s understanding that this automatic software update feature was only recently field-tested and is not currently commercially available, even in expensive television receivers,” NTIA said. “NTIA is reluctant to require that manufacturers include in a CECB this new technology which is just emerging from field tests.” In their letter to Martin, the six groups said NTIA “would have been wise to listen to the Congressmen,” given Microtune claims that tuner chips in most certified CECBs don’t meet ATSC A/74 performance standards. CEA has many concerns “about this effort to impose technology mandates on this robustly competitive marketplace,” a spokesman said. “These proposals come a year after the government gave all parties a full and fair opportunity to participate in the formation of the DTV coupon program,” he said. Imposing them would “undermine” program implementation and imperil the DTV transition, he said.
Based on its belief that Microtune’s is the only tuner chipset for coupon-eligible converter boxes that’s “fully compliant” with ATSC A/74 receiver specifications, “we question how any converter box that didn’t contain an A/74- compliant tuner could pass certification,” Microtune CEO James Fontaine told analysts Monday in a quarterly earnings call. In side-by-side tests of Microtune-based boxes and CECBs with rival chipsets, “we found that certain certified boxes that are currently and widely available in the national retail chains failed at government mandated specification on multiple channels,” Fontaine said. Microtune chips are in 11 of the 70-odd CECBs that have been certified, including EchoStar’s, he said. The issue Microtune raised in the letter it wrote NTIA last month (CD March 27 p17) “is a critical one,” Fontaine said. “We are concerned that U.S. taxpayers may be subsidizing defective products via the converter box coupon program that do not meet the government’s own performance requirements, and which may in fact result in loss of TV signals for unsuspecting consumers.” Microtune thinks the NTIA “has taken the complaint very seriously,” Fontaine said. “It is our understanding that the NTIA is currently conducting a confidential investigation concerning the issue raised by Microtune.”