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HDTV edge to PCs? PC makers see edge in the HDTV divide By Junko Yoshida, EE Times Montreux, Switzerland -- At least someone may be gaining from the continuing global uncertainty over which video formats will best suit HDTV: the PC industry. It could be winning a much needed edge in its efforts to garner support for the desktop computer as a vehicle for next-generation TV. The confusion over the way to push forward was so intense here last week at the HDTV Workshop, an international symposium for broadcasters and equipment vendors, that some attendees joked that the first two letters of the familiar acronym stand for "hopelessly divided." In the United States, a gulf yawns between CBS and ABC over the choice of a video format for digital TV. As Joe Flaherty, CBS senior vice president of technology, continues to blow the horn for the 1,080 x 1,920 interlaced format, ABC senior executive Tony Uyttendale disclosed here that his network will support 720 x 1,280 progressive scanning. "Even interlaced advocates agree that we should eventually move toward progressive scan," Uyttendale said. "We believe the time to do that is now." PC makers may have finally uncovered some allies among broadcasters. Meanwhile, the Europeans, under increasing pressure to come up with their own HDTV scenario, came to Montreux to offer the first European live demos of Digital Video Broadcast (DVB). Europeans have pulled ahead in implementing standard-definition digital TV, leveraging a spec they have agreed to make the basis of all digital-TV, whether satellite, cable or soon-to-start terrestrial broadcasting. But they have done very little on digital HDTV within the framework of the DVB initiative. DVB is fully capable of handling HDTV, said Jean-Pierre Evain, senior engineer in the technical department at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). However, the details of the specs, including video formats, are still completely open, he said. Meanwhile, taking a cue from a government decision in Tokyo on May 30, the Japanese publicly outlined in Montreux details of planned digital HDTV/SDTV services via satellite in 2000. Japan has already done substantial technical studies on digital HDTV using an MPEG-2 coding scheme together with Trellis Coded 8 phase-shift-keying transmission modulation. Nevertheless, details of the Japanese technical specifications--which are likely to diverge from both Europe's DVB and the U.S. ATSC standard--won't be nailed down until the end of the year, said Junji Kumada, director of vision research in the R&D labs at NHK, Japan's public broadcasting company. Hoping to use the confusion about digital formats to their best advantage, the U.S. PC industry made its maiden appearance at the conference this year, with Microsoft, Compaq and Intel--dubbed the "DTV Team"--sending high-level executives. "There is no FCC, no rules are in place and there's no [CBS vice president] Joe Flaherty in Europe," said Tom McMahon, architect of digital TV at Microsoft. "We think we have a huge market opportunity here." The computer industry's mission in Montreux was "to begin a dialogue [with European broadcasters] and listen to them," said Laurie Frick, vice president of consumer emerging markets at Compaq Computer Corp. The DTV Team will brief European broadcasters and equipment makers on the PC 98 specification, and explain why the computer industry is pumping for optimal video formats to kick start digital TV. Their proposal includes adoption of the 720 x 1,280 progressive-scan format. (Next article.)
[This article comes from EE Times in a joint cooperative effort with the Motley Fool. For more articles like it, please look at Fool's Gold every weekend or simply go to the Fool's Gold Mine and page through our back issues, which all have clever and cool EE Times articles in them.]
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