In an ex parte filing at FCC Oct. 8, IBM pitched the Commission staff on a home-grown encryption technology it said could secure terrestrial DTV content under the proposed broadcast flag. IBM touted the Extensible Content Protection (xCP) it said had evolved from Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) and, like CPRM, was relevant to the broadcast flag. The company told the Commission xCP could revoke the “keys” of circumventing devices and “selectively” eliminate them from the home network while not affecting devices that comply with the broadcast flag. The encryption is renewable, virtually unhackable and supports digital rights management, IBM said. Meanwhile, pushing the FCC to hasten a ruling on the broadcast flag, Thomson reiterated earlier claims that time was fleeting for TV makers to incorporate changes in time for product delivery next summer. That’s the deadline for complying with the FCC’s integrated tuner/decoder mandate and more recently approved “Digital Cable Ready” plug-and-play compatibility. If the FCC settles on a broadcast flag in the next 3-4 weeks, sets due next summer could have digital outputs with the necessary software to respond to a broadcast flag in an ATSC bitstream, Thomson said. It also requested a grandfather clause for existing DTV sets that didn’t comply with the prospective broadcast flag.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) said it successfully harmonized its DTV Application Software Environment (DASE) specifications with CableLabs’ Open Cable Application Platform (OCAP) specifications to create the Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP). It said ACAP would provide consumers with advanced interactive services, and content creators, broadcasters, cable operators and CE manufacturers with technical details necessary for the development of interoperable services and products.
In reply comments on receiver performance standards, the CEA said the FCC should maintain its current position, which relies primarily on market incentives and voluntary industry programs. “The marketplace provides the strongest incentive for continued technical improvements to receivers,” CEA Vp- Technology Policy Michael Petricone said. “Government mandates seldom create business incentives or result in product innovations. When it comes to DTV receiver standards, manufacturers already are competing in a highly competitive market that requires products to exceed consumer expectations.” Petricone said that if the FCC really wanted to ensure maximum consumer reception of broadcast HDTV, it should require that all licensed broadcasters transmit a DTV signal at full power as soon as possible. CEA said a majority of the stations on-air with digital signals were on low power. It also contended that changes in the radio frequency environment were much too fast-paced to be subjected to the delays inherent in the regulatory rulemaking process for products such as receivers. “Our goal -- and it should be that of the Commission as well -- is to ensure an environment that fosters research and development in receiver technologies and is conducive to improvements being implemented promptly in consumer receivers on an ongoing basis without regulatory delay,” CEA wrote. It said it was working with other DTV industry leaders through a Specialist Group of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) to develop recommended practices for DTV receivers, to provide the flexibility required for the receiver market that a government mandate could not allow (CD Aug 19 p6).
TV manufacturers and broadcasters hope to complete a draft of a set of voluntary performance guidelines for DTV receivers by next May, said Mark Richer, pres. of the Advanced TV Systems Committee. Simply agreeing to sit down at the negotiating table represents a huge step forward for DTV, he said. Broadcasters and TV manufacturers have been arguing for years over who’s to blame for spotty DTV reception, with broadcasters blaming tuners and manufacturers arguing that broadcast signals are weaker than allowed by the FCC.
The FCC should condition approval of News Corp.’s acquisition of Hughes on DirecTV’s adoption of a set-top box that uses a multimedia home platform (MHP) standard, Sun Microsystems said. “Standards bodies and industry groups including DVB [Digital Video Bcstg.], the Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC)] and CableLabs have agreed on a common platform for execution of applications delivered via a digital TV stream,” the company said, and migration to the standard by DirecTV and News Corp. would be a “significant boost” to the adoption of a “worldwide content platform.” Sun said a single platform would benefit everyone with increasing competition, “lower technology costs and more widespread availability of TV-based services and content.” It said if migration to the standard wasn’t required, the Commission at least should encourage it.
Second-quarter DTV product sales to dealers climbed 69% in units and 43% in dollars, the CEA reported Wed. The quarterly tally included June shipments of 365,210 units worth $524.1 million, CEA said. The figures included integrated DTV sets and monitors capable of at least 480p. Integrated sets must include ATSC decoders. In the 2nd quarter, the CEA said, shipments of standalone set-top decoders climbed 161% in units to 49,928 and 171% in dollars to $22.3 million. Cumulative set-top unit shipments through June reached 397,512, CEA said. It said 304,000 integrated DTV sets with ATSC tuners had been shipped in that period.
Wireless carriers and others cautioned the FCC this week that an inquiry on receiver performance requirements should lead to neither mandatory standards for their industry nor creation of an “interference temperature.” Cingular and BellSouth went so far as to recommend that the Commission suspend the inquiry for now because it didn’t have enough concrete information on the noise floor in different bands. But Microsoft said it favored the FCC’s setting such receiver specifications, saying in comments this week: “If Commission licensees are to continue to enjoy protection from ‘harmful interference,’ then it is in the public interest for the Commission to define the extent of that protection just as explicitly as it defines geographic exclusivity or channel assignments.”
Pappas Telecasting urged the FCC to apply regulatory parity to cable interoperability and over-the-air reception for DTV sets. The Commission should incorporate in its rules minimum performance standards being developed by representatives of the bcst. and CE industries under the Advanced TV Systems Committee, the filing said. Pappas also called on the FCC to adopt the “recommended practices” being developed by the ATSC and incorporate those in the Commission’s rules alongside the rules for “plug-&-play” interoperability. “Precedent has been established for the adoption into the rules of a similar joint effort between our industry and the consumer electronics industry to ensure adequate over-the-air digital reception for the tens of millions of viewers who receive their signals exclusively over the air,” said Peter Pappas, exec. vp-govt., regulatory and business affairs, Pappas. Pappas owns 20 Fox, WB, ABC, CBS, UPN and Azteca America affiliates and operates 3 other stations under local marketing agreements (LMAs).
Voluntary guidelines for digital standards to be built into TV receivers have moved a step closer to reality with an agreement announced Mon. by broadcasters and set manufacturers to let the Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) move forward on their development. The action comes after “months and months” of “historic opposition to standards of any sort for digital receiver performance” by the consumer electronics industry, a broadcasting official claimed.
The contention that there’s a looming “Napster effect” waiting for digital TV is “vastly overstated,” Public Knowledge (PK) said in a filing at the FCC, and the best way for broadcasters to protect their content may be to switch to HDTV, which is difficult to transmit over the Internet. Responding to a filing by MPAA Pres. Jack Valenti on the broadcast flag, Public Knowledge said part of his letter was “deeply misleading from a technical standpoint.” PK said Napster relied on the fact that people could download a song in minutes, rather than the hours or days it would take to download an hour of DTV programming. Even with reduced resolution, downloading still would take ages, it said. “Since HDTV files are particularly large, they are therefore particularly difficult to trade over the Internet (or, for that matter, to store in large numbers on one’s computer’s hard disk),” PK wrote. The broadcast flag doesn’t lend itself to nuanced encoding rules for home use and it would make for difficult enforcement, especially when demodulation of ATSC becomes routine, the group said. Another solution would be encryption at the source, PK said. Meanwhile, in a separate filing, broadcasters dismissed claims that the FCC didn’t have the authority to adopt the broadcast flag. MSTV, NAB, News Corp., Disney and others said in an ex parte filing that the FCC previously had set rules for TV reception equipment without an express statutory mandate, citing the color TV transition, and “there is no reason it should not do so here.” It said Congress authorized implementation of DTV in 1996, but intended that the FCC work out the details. Waiting to see whether programming redistribution becomes a problem before acting is “precisely backwards,” they said.