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.
The FCC published its final broadcast flag rule in the Federal Register Wed. The rule takes effect Jan. 2, with the exception of some reporting requirements, whose effective dates won’t be published until approved by the Office of Management & Budget. Also Wed., the FCC published proposed rules governing its mechanisms and standards for approving broadcast flag hardware and recording equipment. Comments on the rulemaking are due Jan. 14. The Commission is seeking comments on whether cable systems should be allowed to encrypt their digital basic tier to comply with the flag requirement. It also is asking for comment on the interplay between an ATSC flag system and the development of open- source software applications for DTV.
Sony supports making the Active Format Descriptor (AFD) feature of the ATSC’s A/53B standard mandatory for DTV broadcasting in the U.S., the company told the FCC Mon. in an ex parte filing. AFD, which is optional under ATSC specifications, enables a DTV receiver to adapt its screen contours automatically to suit the dimensions of an incoming digital video signal. Sony said that without AFD, viewers often were confronted with situations in which DTV broadcast content was “displayed inappropriately” with “pillar bars” on the left and right of the screen and “letterbox” bands across the top and bottom. It said the resulting smaller “postage stamp” image in the middle of the screen had caused viewer confusion and was “a detriment to the DTV service.” Sony said consumers often knew that “something’s wrong” with their DTV picture, but they didn’t know how to fix it. Mandating AFD also would be beneficial to DTV set makers because it would allow manufacturers to “mitigate the effects of uneven screen aging,” Sony said. It said Commission action to make AFD mandatory for broadcasters would “ensure that the framework is put into place to alleviate this problem and remove a potential obstacle to the digital TV transition.” Sony said the FCC should determine an appropriate phase-in period to “minimize the burden” on broadcasters, which typically could incorporate AFD functionality into existing digital broadcast equipment through software upgrades and modifications. CEA and other CE makers also support making AFD functionality mandatory, but the NAB and MSTV don’t think a mandate is necessary. Broadcast groups in past filings at the FCC have praised AFD as “a valuable enhancement to the DTV standard,” but said “market forces” would be adequate to assure that broadcasters used AFD in “appropriate circumstances.”
Based on the know-how gleaned from operating WRAL-DT Raleigh, the transmission of accurate PSIP (Program System Information & Protocol) data is “vital to the consumer’s digital experience,” Capitol Bcstg. told the FCC in an ex parte filing. Filing on cable carriage rules, it urged the Commission to adopt rules “ensuring that our cable viewers get real-time programming and programming information that can be provided to them seamlessly through PSIP.”
Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) members are expected to vote this spring on adopting a new enhanced VSB extension (E-VSB), said a Zenith spokesman, whose company developed the original 8-VSB technology. The ATSC’s 178 members originally had been expected to vote via paper ballot this year, but the process was delayed to study how E-VSB would work with MPEG-4 video compression. E-VSB was designed to be more robust than the original 8-VSB, boosting signal strength so it was received more easily by indoor antennas. The ATSC had been expected to set an E-VSB standard in spring 2002, but the process slowed as Zenith and NxtWave Communications moved to combine competing VSB technologies. If ATSC membership votes to adopt E-VSB in the spring, the first products containing it aren’t likely to hit the market until 2006, the Zenith spokesman said. E-VSB alters, but doesn’t replace, VSB by slowing the data rate to 14-15 Mbps so the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) decreases to the 9.5-11 dB range from 15 dB.
It’s generally agreed that the FCC’s adoption of a flurry of regulations, most recently on the broadcast flag and cable-DTV plug-&-play compatibility, will provided a much-needed boost for DTV. But issues abound on the transmission side, most notably with the compatibility of HDTV broadcast equipment and the ability of fiber lines to handle the backhaul of HDTV content to the broadcast networks during live events, industry officials told the recent Satellite Application Technology conference in N.Y.C.
With News Corp.’s acquisition of Hughes Electronics and DirecTV expected to close by the end of the year, work is under way to create a common hardware platform that could be implemented across multiple satellite services by late 2004, DirecTV CEO Eddy Hartenstein told us in an interview Thurs. at the SkyForum in N.Y.C.
Cablevision’s Rainbow DBS operation is “just days” away from hitting 1,000 installations of its new Voom satellite service and is working to resolve software glitches in its set-top receiver, Exec. Sales & Mktg. Vp William Casamo told us in an interview Thurs. at the SkyForum conference in N.Y.C.