TV Will Have an Internet Based Standard.
Studios-led ATVEF format to standardize world's television transmissionsIn the past, Video Age has often reported three basic facts:
1) The future for broadcast transmission of digital high-definition television (HDTV) has never looked promising.
2) The ATSC (the U.S. terrestrial digital TV transmission standard) was born obsolete. Similarly, the European DVB-T will not fare well.
3) Television of the future will use an Internet-based protocol transmission, like the one proposed by the ATVEF (Advanced Television Enhanced Forum).
ATVEF is a royalty-free license intended to give consumers enhanced (interactive) television programs in the least expensive and most convenient manner possible. To achieve this, ATVEF has developed a baseline specification using existing Internet standards and technologies, and broadcast extensions that content providers can use to develop programming enhanced with other data, such as Internet content.
On October 22, ATVEF will demonstrate its Internet Protocol (IP) in the Italian beach resort of Giulianova, a short distance east of Rome. It will do so in the presence of Italy's deputy minister of Communications, Vincenzo Vita, Italian public and private broadcasters and cable operator Stream.
In the past, ATVEF has demonstrated its open standard to engineers in the U.K., Germany, France and Holland. However, the presentation in Italy marks the first time that ATVEF will be introduced to policy makers and TV executives.
Recalling the issues that brought us to ATVBF, the April 1999 issue of Video Age reported that HDTV only makes sense for expensive big-screen sets, which are unfit to place where most viewers watch their TV: the kitchen or the bedroom.
Last month, Video Age was the first to report that in the U.S., the Sinclair TV station group called on the industry to abandon the ATSC digital-TV format in favor of the European DVB-T standard.
It is now clear that by using line-doubling technology at the receiving end, there is no need to transmit HDTV, which takes up all 6 MHz of TV bandwidth (19.39 Megabits per seconds -- Mbps -- in digital terms). Also, viewers have no incentive to purchase a digital-analog converter, as that will only convert programming that they can already get in analog form. Broadcasters have invested so much money in digital technology that they don't want to pay more for new programming especially designed to encourage consumers to purchase new TV sets or digital-to-analog converters.
At the same time, the U.S. cable-TV industry told broadcasters that it was not going to give a full digital channel to HDTV stations since, in their view, it is not part of the FCC's "must carry" mandate. After some legal maneuvering, cable-TV operators are willing to cede only part of the digital channel (something like five Mbps). This further upset the broadcasters' plans, since their new strategy was to shun high definition in favor of multiplexing up to five digital programs into one HDTV channel (as recently demonstrated by public-TV station WETA). On the other hand, with 67.4 percent of the 99.4 million U.S. TV households subscribing to cable, standard definition DTV multicast will be a necessity for all U.S. broadcasters.
The American broadcasters, in an attempt to protect their interests, so far have managed to step on the toes of the phone companies, then those in the computer sector, the cable-TV industry and even those of the production community. If the broadcasters insist on imposing the ATSC standard onto the viewers, they will crunch the toes of the consumers as well.
Now U.S. broadcasters are facing yet another roadblock.
As shown at NAB '99, the reception of an 8-VS B DTV signal (the single-carrier ATSC standard) still poses problems, especially with multipath (creating loss of signal). In Europe, the DVB-T standard utilizes the so-called COFDM, or multiple carriers per channel, which eliminates ghosts. Within the European digital-TV standard, both audio and video use MPEG compression. In the U.S., the video compression is MPEG, while audio is Dolby.
Ultimately, the European digital plight will not differ from that in the U.S., as indicated by the digital-TV dilemma in Sweden and Norway. For these reasons, in July 1998, a cross-industry alliance of companies representing the broadcast and cable networks, consumer electronics and the PC industry formed the Oregon-based Advanced Television Enhancement Forum to promote an Internet TV standard. Being a universal platform, ATVEF enables a TV signal that is digitized and encoded with the ATVEF specification (an Internet protocol) to be delivered by analog and digital terrestrial broadcast, DTH (satellite), ADSL (large-band telephone lines), cable-TV systems and, in the future, cellular phone circuits. Television programs would be received on any ATVEF-compliant set-top box (a WebTV-type of device), digital-TV set or computer.
In addition, the PC would provide an added viewing block that conventional TV or ATSC television couldn't access. As indicated by telephone giant AT&T (which owns TCI and Media One cable groups), cable-based Internet protocol is just around the corner. Plus, IP might make video-on-demand a reality, as well as the 5-cent-per-minute long distance call.
Most TV stations in the U.S. already provide some sort of Internet service, and a few even simulcast over the Net. Take tiny KCTU from Wichita, Kansas, for instance. It is streaming more than 75 percent of its schedule. For these stations, ATVEF would represent a logical and convenient step.
Among the original 14 companies which founded ATVEF are NBC, Warner Bros., Disney, Discovery, Intel, Microsoft and BBC. Today, the ATVEF membership consists of 75 worldwide founders and adopters, including Citytv and CTV (Canada), Cable Labs, Cable & Wireless (U.K.), DirecTV, The Fantastic Corp. (Switzerland), Deutsche Telekom and Bertelsmann (Germany), Nolia and PBS, among others. The ATVEF Web site is www.atvef.com. ATVEF information in Italian can be found at www.canaleweb.net
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| Author: | SERAFINI, DOM |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Video Age International |
| Article Type: | Brief article |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Nov 1, 1999 |
| Words: | 943 |
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