4
Cable, satellite or digital television?

Digital television was a relative latecomer to the UK; it was already a reality or scheduled in most other European countries and further afield. Satellite viewers in the USA had, via DirecTV, a digital satellite service as early as 1994. Ahead of the USA, and the rightful title-holder for the world’s first digital pay-TV bouquet, was Orbit, the Middle East system, which started early in 1994 but with a non DVB-compliant system (dubbed MPEG1.5).

Digital via satellite

Digital satellite television broadcasts already cover the globe. These broadcasts fulfil two quite separate objectives:

• transmissions direct-to-home (DTH), by means of a satellite dish and receiver
• transmissions from cable head-ends, re-distributed to subscribers’ homes

Table 4.1 Digital broadcasting start dates

Country	Satellite	Cable	Terrestrial
Australia	1997	1998	2002
Belgium	1996	1999	-
Canada	19941	1998	19992
Netherlands	1996	1998	-
Finland	1997	1998	2000
France	1996	1998	2002
Germany	1997	negl	2001
Hong Kong	1997	negl	-
Italy	1997	negl	-
Japan	1997	negl	20033
Spain	1997	1998	1999
Sweden 1996 1998 1999	1996	1998	1999
United Kingdom	1998	1998/9	1998
USA	1994	1997	1998

¹Canadians are not officially permitted to view satellite digital transmissions from the USA, but it has been estimated that upwards of 250 000 DBS systems have been sold to Canadians.

²Canada’s DTH ExpressVu digital system commenced in late 1997. Canada is adopting the same terrestrial high-definition system as the USA and transmissions were scheduled to start in 1999.

³Japan started testing digital terrestrial during 1998, but has delayed implementation until 2003.

Notes:

A report by Allied Business Intelligence Inc., published in November 1997, stated that by 2001 some 63 per cent or over 80 000 miles of US cable television plant mileage, will be equipped with Hybrid Fiber-Coax networks. Additionally, America’s largest Multiple System Operator (MSO), Tele-Communications Inc., on 17 December 1997 ordered between 6.5 million and 11.9 million digital set-top boxes from General Instrument, to be installed by 2001.

The USA was committed to introduce digital terrestrial television during 1998, with 1 November 1998 as a voluntary date for commencement of transmissions. The Federal Communications Commission has mandated that the top ten largest markets should have completed their transition to digital by 1999. The end of December 2006 has been legislated for as the switch-off date for analogue. Those dates have all slipped.

Originally, communication satellites were designed to achieve two-way traffic between far distant communities for example, the USA and Europe, or Japan and the USA. All the early satellites (from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s) worked to this concept, for example Telstar, Early Bird/INTELSAT 1.

Few observers envisaged that the size or complexity of the huge Earth Stations then required to receive satellite transmissions could be reduced to the 40 cm or 60 cm dish, able to be casually fixed by relatively unskilled technicians to the side of a house. Another indication of the dramatic change in satellite broadcasting is that the Early Bird satellite weighed just 38 kg. The latest Hughes 702 satellite weighs 5200 kg.

Because of these dramatic changes, television today takes by far the largest share of the available satellite capacity. In 1982 there were only about 50 television stations in the whole of Europe, mostly publicly owned. Today there are well over one thousand, the greater proportion delivered by satellite. An authoritative report from Screen Digest (August 1999) states that European television channels have been growing ‘at over 40 per cent per year since 1995’.

The advantage of satellite transmission is straightforward. A satellite signal can be received on a relatively low-cost home receiver – below US$150 in analogue, around US$300-500 currently in unsubsidized digital, depending on specification. The ex-works prices of digital Integrated Receiver Decoders (IRDs) are steadily falling as production volumes increase and component prices fall. In addition, economies are being achieved by the consolidation of internal components, improved design functionality of chip-sets and new suppliers coming into the market helping reduce the cost of such products.

Satellite transmission can also span thousands of miles within its footprint, delivering signals at a lower cost per household passed than any other method. While broadcasters have to deliver their signals to the orbiting satellite (uplinking) and lease transponder space from satellite operators such as Astra or EUTELSAT, the remainder of the investment required to view those signals is generally paid by the subscriber, firstly in the purchase of the receiver and dish, and secondly, in subscription fees which are of more direct benefit to the broadcaster.

There is also another payment model, drawn from experience in the cellular telephone business. Receiver/decoder box prices are increasingly being lowered by broadcasters subsidizing, in one form or another, the direct cost of the box. Examples are Canal+’s lease-payment plan, DirecTV and EchoStar’s established subsidized box schemes and the BSkyB/British Interactive Broadcasting system to directly subsidize box prices.

Moreover, in the same way that some countries have embraced cellular telephone technology as a means of leap-frogging an inadequate hard wire system, so satellite transmission can enable countries to completely by-pass cable, whatever cable’s merits. Such actions can effectively deliver ‘free’ television to huge areas with little or no infrastructure investment needed by local companies, municipalities or governments.

A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers explained how Mongolia has been connected to the US Internet using satellite. A Korean broadcaster is said to be contemplating delivering a television channel to Korean expatriates working in and visiting the Caribbean region. Arab Radio & Television, a broadcasting company operating out of Cairo and Jeddah, is beaming its signals to the USA, South America and Asia, via satellite.

Satellite television broadcasts can also be received via a Satellite Master Antenna system (SMATV), usually by a group of homes or apartment block. The system receives its signals by satellite and redistributes those signals to individual households either in one building or many adjacent buildings through cable.

Satellite television is now beginning to pose real competitive threats to cable. During 1997 the growth of the digital satellite television market considerably affected the stock price of cable companies in the USA, depressing already sluggish system prices downward – a situation not to be reversed until Microsoft invested US$ 1 billion in the US multiple system operator ComCast in June 1997. Companies backing digital satellites are unequivocal about satellite’s potential to change radically the way people in the USA view television. EchoStar’s founder Charlie Ergen recently stated, ‘Our goal is not to be complementary to cable, we want to eliminate cable’.

Much has been stated of cable’s ability to deliver near-limitless data over cable-specific modems. However, satellite is beginning to offer very similar capability. DirecTV has an associated company DirecPC that, via a proprietary system, can deliver Internet services to businesses and home office or small office users. EUTELSAT also introduced a DVB-compliant system in early 1998 which enables all computer users (domestic and commercial) to access Internet services, ‘watch’ real-time full-motion video broadcast over its satellites and access the web, at a planned cost of around US$200 per personal computer. SES/Astra is also enabling Internet-to-PC connectivity through its Astra-Net system, launched in October 1999.

The advantages of satellite over cable are:

• immediate access to a large audience of potential viewers
• very low cost-per-thousand to reach that audience
• larger number of potential channels than cable
• delivery to regions not adequately covered by existing TV signals: mountainous regions, thinly populated areas etc.
• investment in receiving equipment borne generally by the viewer
• instant coverage over a country or region without the need to invest in costly infrastructure
• access to distant markets where the number of viewers, of those who can access the signal, may be low, but country or region-wide coverage can still make economic sense.

Satellite shares the following attributes with cable and digital terrestrial:

• platform owners can encrypt signals to generate income
• platform owners can limit access to signals to limit viewing to language or region-specific transmissions.

Satellite’s weaknesses and risks may be defined as:

• the risk of catastrophic loss either of the satellite upon launch or during orbit, damaging a broadcaster’s business plan
• a potential disadvantage to broadband cable in terms of interactivity.

Digital via cable

In-ground cable represents a future-proof investment in an architecture that is capable of being refined and adapted to whatever technology may throw at it in years to come. Older (in some cases pre-war) coaxial infrastructure – with its limited channel bandwidth – is being upgraded to wide bandwidth (referred to as broadband) fibre-optic linked circuits that can carry multi-media services including video, audio, data/Internet and voice in virtually unlimited quantity; either direct to homes or to ‘nodes’ of 250–1000 homes and then by coaxial into viewers’ homes and business premises.

In some parts of the world, cable is ubiquitous and treated very much as a utility with national penetration levels close to 100 per cent. Some European countries are taking their first steps with cable (Italy, Spain) while others (The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany) are rebuilding their systems with Fibre Optic and Hybrid Fibre-Coax to more efficiently exploit broadcasting and multi-media opportunities.

A much-quoted illustration that is intended to extol the advantages of advanced fixed networks is that one single pair of glass optical fibre, about the thickness of a human hair could carry all of America’s telephone calls on Mother’s Day, allegedly the busiest day of the year for telephone traffic. That may or may not be an exaggeration; but it is a fact that fibre-optic can carry more than 10 terabits of information per second. Such capacity would translate into a half a million simultaneous two-way high-definition television channels – more than enough for even the most avid TV viewer!

Fibre is completely immune to electromagnetic interference, is lightweight (but more fragile than copper) and relatively inexpensive. Telephone and cable companies are using fibre as the backbone of their trunk networks, while keeping copper for what the industry calls ‘the last mile’ to the consumer’s home.

Coaxial cable has two metal conduits separated and sheathed from one another by plastic. A single cable run can carry very high bandwidths of up to 1 GHz (or 1 Gbps), although cable amplifiers are needed to boost the signal every few hundred metres or so. Analogue cable systems can suffer from distortion because of this need to continually re-amplify the signal.

A Hybrid Fibre-Coax (HFC) network uses both fibre-optic and coaxial cable. Fibre is used from the cable company’s head-end or main centre to a fibre-optic node or switch box in a neighbourhood. From this node, coaxial cable will be used to connect to the home. A neighbourhood might be a single apartment block of 100 dwellings or a suburban estate of 500 homes. Cable companies in the UK typically use nodes of 525 homes, while Spain’s new build is using 1000-home nodes. HFC and its technical stable-mate Fibre To The Curb (FTTC), which delivers a fibre-optic connection to within 1000 feet of the premises, tends to eliminate the need for most if not all amplification because only a short coaxial cable run is needed.

It is difficult to be precise as to the cost of establishing cable’s network architecture but PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates the typical investment per site (which can be many dwellings) as US$850 for HFC compared with US$ 1200 for FTTC. Equity research from Bear Stearns places the cost at nearer US$ 500–600 per UK home passed (excluding the cost of the converter/decoder box).

Cable industry research consultancy Paul Kagan Associates estimated that by the end of 1997 only about 1 million USA cable homes had benefited from converting from coaxial to 750 MHz HFC systems. Kagan suggests that this number will rise to around 15 million homes during 1998, 25 million during 1999 and 32 million in 2000.

Tele-Communications Inc., the giant Denver-based cable operator now part of AT&T, announced in mid-December 1997 that it had entered an agreement with General Instrument Corporation to buy between 6.5 million and 11.9 million digital set-top boxes during the 1998–2001 period.

The investment needed to complete this work and the infrastructure projects underway in the UK, mainland Europe, Australia and the Far East is enormous. The UK’s Cable Communications Association places the collective investment figure as more than £6 million per day in the UK alone. Spain’s Cableuropa is investing US$3.5 billion in its cable build.

Cable modems

One important benefit claimed for cable is the improved connection speeds permitted by high-speed cable modems. The industry, particularly companies such as Scientific Atlanta and General Instrument, has developed modems specifically for cable which have speeds said to be up to 1000 times faster than the typical 28.8 Kbps standard in use today. The actual data-rate is measured by the length of time it would take to transfer a 10 Mb file. GI/Next Level’s SURFBoard(r) cable modem products can deliver data at up to 27 Mbps.

Table 4.2 Modem speeds

Modem Type	Transfer Time for 10 Mb file
28.2 kbps phone modem	46 mins
128 kbps ISDN modem	24 mins
1.54 Mbs T-1 device	52 seconds
4 Mbps cable modem	20 seconds
10 Mbps cable modem	8 seconds

Source: Convergence Systems, 1997

There are two potential downsides to this development. The first is one of cost, as depending on specification and volumes ordered, these high-speed devices are relatively expensive. Graham Wallace, at the time chief executive of the UK’s Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), said in October 1997 that such costs ruled out his company placing high-speed modems in all users’ homes. Deployment, at least for Cable & Wireless, would be limited to business users and probably small office/home office applications. Since then, CWC has been absorbed by NTL, which has a different philosophy on the roll-out of high-speed modems.

The second problem concerns the perceived data-speeds of these devices. In essence, high-speed modems are giant ring-mains, similar to an Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) where the available bandwidth is shared by everyone who is accessing the system at any given time. It is likely that a system supporting around 200 users would slow down delivered speeds to 1 or 2 Mbps, although this is still significantly faster than speeds currently experienced.

Cable’s advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

• It is one of the most efficient ways of reaching apartment blocks and other high-density urban populations. This is also true of digital terrestrial transmission.
• It takes signals to viewers in distant regions or areas not adequately covered by existing TV signals. This is especially true of the USA and Canada.
• Its high bandwidth capacity can offer an immense choice of services, marrying telephony with television, interactivity with other multimedia services and higher-speed Internet access.
• New, tightly regionalized services can be created, incorporating local or community television and dedicated cable-exclusive channels.
• Cable companies in some parts of the world are seen as local utility services, often with excellent ties to the local community.
• High-speed cable modems, if deployed, could bring Internet-type services into the home, school or business at spectacular speeds.

Other advantages are also applicable to satellite or digital terrestrial television, or indeed telco-provided ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) services:

• The ability, through encryption, to generate income.
• The ability, through Conditional Access, to limit viewing to paying subscribers only.

Disadvantages

Cable also has some obstacles to overcome:

• high investment and start-up costs;
• usually cable companies have low or minimal expertise in broadcasting;
• cable companies are usually wholly dependent on broadcasters for product;
• competitive pressure from the number and choice of satellite channels available;
• pressure on cable television operating margins;
• frequently cable companies have a poor record in customer service;
• in new-build areas, customer service problems can be aggravated by negative publicity from environmentalists (tree damage, for example);
• continued further investment is necessary if high-speed cable modems are introduced;
• in the USA, with digital satellite getting Federal permission to offer local market signals, cable’s unique selling point will be further eroded.

Digital via microwave

Specialists often use the phrase ‘wireless cable’, which can be divided into two sub-sets. Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) is the term generally used within the industry for wireless delivery systems that use frequencies below 10 GHz. Over 10 GHz, systems tend to be referred to as Local Multipoint Distribution Systems (LMDS) or Microwave Video Distribution Systems (MVDS). The concept and technology, if not the frequencies, are similar in each case. In very simple terms these MMDS/ MVDS systems work like cellular telephony, beaming out dozens of channels to a town or city.

The main difference between sub-10 GHz MMDS installations and LMDS and other technologies operating over 12 GHz is one of broadcast area and broadcast conditions. Essentially, the higher frequencies have a limited radius of operation. Broadcasts in the 27.5–29.25 GHz band typically will have a guaranteed effective range of only about 2 km (although potentially larger in drier regions), and require frequent ‘repeaters’, each operating like a cellular telephony system. Hewlett Packard suggests using a hub broadcast system containing four 90-degree sector antennas to give omnidirectional coverage; even these relatively small cells can quite adequately cover a small town of 4000 to 16 000 homes.

The concept behind microwave delivery is straightforward: a low-power transmitter is erected specifically to target a town or city with television (or other) signals. Its advantage is simplicity: no expensive copper cables, no costly glass-fibre investment, no digging up streets, low maintenance, wide-scale immediate deployment.

Compared with hard-wired cable, MMDS deployment involves considerably less environmental disturbance. Buried cable also involves a slow, street-by-street, roll-out of the video or telephony service. MMDS is immediate. Once the tower is erected, signals can be sent within days, with the whole catchment area open to a sales effort and immediate ‘connections’. MMDS and LMDS can offer telephony/data as well as television, so Internet and interactivity-based revenue streams are perfectly possible.

In some high-density European cities, a case in favour of cable can be made largely because of cable’s greater capacity. When it comes to low-density suburban areas, however, the argument is less clear, and in semi-rural areas, the MMDS case becomes unarguable. This is especially true of the Middle East, where housing density is low, high-rise buildings are rare and terrain generally flat. A wide area can be covered using a mixture of omnidirectional and repeater directional parabolic or cardioid antennas. General Instrument have installed a 40-tower all-digital system in Saudi Arabia.

MMDS systems have one major drawback: they are susceptible to water/rain attenuation (or rain-fade), especially at frequencies above 10 GHz. For this reason, most engineers strongly encourage broadcasters to adopt frequencies in the 2.5–4.5 GHz band range. The Middle East (especially the Gulf areas) tends to be considered as dry for most of the year, but it experiences high humidity, which can seriously interfere with signal coverage. Great care is needed with the installation of the local transmitters and the receiving antenna, at all times observing the ‘line of sight’ rule.

Propagation loss at higher MMDS frequencies can be severe. Detailed studies are now available from many sources, including manufacturers and end-users, which show the sort of broadcast efficiencies possible during different weather conditions. The Saudi Arabian and neighbouring Qatari systems, though, show what can be achieved with MMDS.

For example, Telekom Switzerland has coped with the most complex problems in MMDS deployment, ranging from high mountains, heavy rain and extreme snow cover. The Swiss system uses the 40 GHz band for its MediaSpot MVDS system, carrying 32 television channels to locations not served by broadband cable. Telekom Switzerland says that even low cloud and fog can cause a 0.9 dB/km signal attenuation; and even modest humidity levels can result in losses of around 0.16 dB/km for water vapour measured at 12 g/cubic meter at 15 °C. The end result is that engineers have to build in a safety margin equivalent to 3 to 4 dB per kilometre, or else limit coverage to a range of one to two kilometres only.

Typical MMDS frequencies are:

2.4–2.5 GHz

2.5–2.7 GHz

12Ghz

27.5–28.35 GHz

29.1–29.5 GHz

31.0–31.75 GHz

40.5–42.5 GHz

Table 4.3 Countries where MMDS has been authorized

USA	2 GHz band
Ireland	2 GHz band
Eastern Europe	2 GHz band
Australia	2 GHz band
Hungary	10–12 GHz band
Romania	10–12 GHz band
Sweden	17 GHz band
EEC	40 GHz band

Source: Nokia, 1998

There are certain regions in the world where MMDS is being enthusiastically welcomed; the Middle East has already been mentioned, but Africa represents a real opportunity, largely because the MMDS broadcasting spectrum is still available for use. Most of the African services are currently analogue, and frequently limited to a handful of six channels, although new services are planned.

African countries using MMDS include:

Gabon

Madagascar

Mali

Togo

Benin

Burkina Faso

Cote d’Ivoire

Maurice

Niger

Senegal

Cameroun

Djibouti

Guinea Bissau

Guinea Equitoriale

Mauritania

Nigeria

Chad

Data: PanAfNet, 1997, France (analogue systems)

The (USA) Wireless Cable Association in 1997 claimed 4.5 million MMDS/LMDS subscribers in 59 countries worldwide. One study at that time forecast an installed subscriber base for MMDS of 13 million by 2000. Kagan Associates forecast 4.5 million US subscribers to MMDS by 2000, with a split of one third analogue and two-thirds digital.

One Canadian company (LookTV), building on extensive national experience in analogue MMDS, is planning a 23-tower system for Toronto and southern Ontario, offering 150 digital MMDS channels. LookTV’s business plan forecasts 250 000 subscribers or 8 per cent of the market by 2005.

MMDS advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

MMDS advantages are best summed up as follows:

• immediate service over a tightly defined area with minimal infrastructure investment;
• low cost per home passed;
• telephony can be offered, allowing Internet and interactive services;
• an economic argument for service provision can even be made for rural areas;
• improved picture quality (with digital transmission);
• higher-value pay-television services and encryption can be easily incorporated;
• most digital MMDS systems allow for a wireless ‘return path.’

Disadvantages

MMDS disadvantages are:

• high investment and start-up costs, although they are claimed to be significantly less than hard-wire cable;
• spectrum may not be adequate to offer more than 60 or so channels;
• operators generally have low or minimal expertise of broadcasting, consequently MMDS is very much a re-broadcasting exercise;
• usually wholly dependent on broadcasters for product;
• rural systems can be slow to financially break-even.

Digital television from telephone companies

Now there’s a new kid on the digital broadcasting block, with two opportunities for digital television to be delivered via the telephone. One is for telephone companies themselves, thanks to technological improvements, to start providing entertainment services. The second opportunity depends on further software refinements, which will enable existing web-casters to deliver moving images via the Internet (of which more later).

Telephone companies have developed various engineering methodologies to help them squeeze more data down their wires. Already widely deployed are ISDN-based (Integrated Services Digital Network) services. ISDN digital telephone service was originally designed over existing copper wire, but can also be offered by cable systems and fibre-delivered technology. ISDN (basic rate) provides 2 × 64 Kbps channels, enabling modem speeds up to five times faster than that achieved on a 28.8 Kbps modem and allowing the line to carry a conventional telephone call at the same time.

Even more radical is HDSL/ADSL (High-speed and Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) technology, which allows video transmissions at speeds of 1.5 Mbps to 6 Mbps over copper wires. HDSL is two-way and needs two copper pairs; ADSL is also two-way, needing one pair but with a higher-capacity (up to ten times faster) in one direction.

ADSL: a broadcasting revolution in the making

… where POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) and PANS (Pretty Amazing New Stuff) will change our lives.

Revolution means overthrow, and the normal means of viewing entertainment in the home could be about to change. Consider these two statements from leading UK companies:

The notion that TV and/or the Internet will mean anything to somebody in two years is irrelevant. It is my belief that currently the term television doesn’t even have the same common meaning that it did even two or three years ago. It is totally changing.

Steve Billinger, head of BSkyB’s interactive division, September 1999

IP networks are removing distance from the equation. So I can easily see the Hong Kong community in London having all the Hong Kong channels and services available out there available to them over an IP network of some kind in the London area, or indeed anywhere in the UK. The same would apply to the Japanese or any other ethnic group. The same could apply to Brits who want to hook into the Los Angeles area or elsewhere in the world. It will mean TV is available anywhere, anytime.

Graham Mills, British Telecom’s head of Internet and new media, September 1999

Steve Billinger comes from BSkyB, which currently takes a highly aggressive view of how viewers will use their interactive and home-shopping ‘broadcasts’, but which nevertheless is wedded to a ‘conventional’ pattern of television delivery – mostly via satellite and cable – to consumers in the home. Additionally, BSkyB is preparing for the day when the whole of the UK is viewing digital television, now virtually guaranteed by about 2006.

Graham Mills from BT takes the opposite view, suggesting that most UK homes already have a telephone, and for the majority of them, that telephone line is in reality the ‘fat pipe’. The humble phone line is already a versatile technology, delivering voice, faxes, data and even rudimentary images without much help from the technologists.

ADSL has the potential to convert these sleeping dinosaurs, the telephone companies, into media companies at the push of a button. Forget digging up streets or rigging wires, or having limitations of bandwidth or even economic censorship – of which more in a moment – ADSL is a revolution in the making.

To say ‘ADSL uses digital technology’ is too simplistic, as all the xDSL’s use digital. It is the asymmetrical part which is the important difference, in that while ADSL can carry ordinary voice-based calls at the same time as data, it can cope with massive surges downstream. In the splitting of voice from data, the telephone companies technically divide the line into at least two parts, transmitting voice at a lower frequency (voice is usually in 0–4 KHz band, while data is carried at 50 KHz–1.1 MHz band), although different operators/countries might vary these bandwidths slightly.

ADSL also has two defined methods of transmission: upstream to the exchange or downstream to the user. While the balance between the two might change in the future, it is generally accepted that the downstream link is the more demanding in terms of volume content. In practice, little pressure is placed on the uplink burst, or request for data to be sent. Over time, and with the growth of video conferencing, these elements may become more balanced, more symmetrical, in their use.

ADSL is limited, however, in the customers it can handle. while any number can be served, it is generally accepted that users have to be within 18 000 feet (approximately 5 km) of a telephone exchange. Tests and trials are currently underway to see how far this envelope can be pushed, and the results are encouraging. However, it is not foreseen that rural dwellers will enjoy much by the way of an ADSL service, as ADSL is urban and suburban in its concept.

for those lucky millions of town-dwellers, the results are breathtaking. Speeds of up to 1000 times an ‘ordinary’ modem line are quite possible, without the need to replace or significantly adapt existing telephone lines. In terms of capacity, ADSL can deliver up to 8 Mbps downstream and around 800 Kbps-1 Mbps upstream.

Most operators plan on installing in the home a ‘POTS splitter’; this divides the voice element and sends it to the telephone handset, while the data component can be directed to a personal computer or set-top box for viewing. With ADSL installed, users at home are able to enjoy what has been described as a ‘two-way tidal wave of data’. ADSL is always ‘on’; there is no need to seek a dial tone for data connection, allowing viewers/users (or the increasingly common ‘viewsers’) to access whatever they want. As Graham Mills suggests, it might be they want to tune into webcasts from around the other side of the planet, or watch a sporting event on the same basis, or just to video-chat to friends or family.

Viewsers will no longer be limited to tiny, clunky, windows with slow-to-change images (as is typical today on modem-supported delivery). Instead, they will enjoy full-screen images just as good as those currently ‘broadcast’. However, while we might want to view a transmission from Hong Kong, Los Angeles or Sydney, there are other, non-technical elements, to be considered. The most serious is the ownership, or ‘rights’, to a broadcast. for example, viewing the local 6 p.m. news is not going to cause anyone any anxiety wherever the transmission emanates, be it Hong Kong, Los Angeles or Sydney. The moment we start receiving an episode of Friends or a live soccer match via a webcast from a distant country, however, then we have problems. The sit-com and the sports game will have had their national broadcast rights sold on an exclusive basis, and these rights will be zealously guarded.

There is another problem, more practical than technical, and often referred to as ‘economic censorship’. A satellite broadcaster or cable television company operating in a digital environment have the ability to ‘broadcast’ almost any amount of programming to viewers. In reality, what they offer is a limited bouquet of popularchoices. They might like to offer more, but suggest that to offer minority channels would be a waste of broadcast bandwidth. The key word here is ‘broadcast’. By its very definition, we are talking about a ‘one point to many receivers’ (point to multipoint) economic model. Cable companies can hardly cope with the pressure on them for broadcast bandwidth and choose those channels and services that are more likely than not to be successful commercially. Other, limited interest services have to fall by the wayside, thus effecting an ‘economic censorship’.

With ADSL that limitation vanishes. These are point-to-point services, from one source to one recipient, although the telephone companies also have the ability to ‘broadcast’ services/programming if they so choose. This brings us to the final technical limitation, again relating to distant suppliers. The Hong Kong to London, or Sydney to Los Angeles links each could easily be expected to have to get through half-a-dozen points of presence in the daisy-chain of links to the viewser. If any of these points create a typical web-style bottleneck, the system will fail or at best fall back to a rudimentary on-screen image. In other words the images have to be transferred to a local cache, minimizing the potential for bottlenecks, for guaranteed delivery to the viewser. Only if this happens will images be full screen, broadcast quality. This hurdle might be the most challenging for the telephone companies to overcome, and it will be interesting to see if they can meet not only the technical and pricing challenges of ADSL, but also the delivery obstacles. If they fail on any of these three elements, then viewsers will, at best, be disappointed.

ATM – not getting cash

An ATM may be well-known as an automated (cash) teller machine, but as far as this book is concerned, our ATM stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode. This two-way technology enables many different data types (data, voice or video) to be carried on a common circuit. The information is broken down into packets of just 53 bytes each (five ‘header’ bytes and 48 data bytes), leading to very high capacity. Indeed ATM packets can travel at between 22 and 622 Mbps, permitting full-motion video.

while most large telephone companies have tested variations of over-the-air ‘broadcasting’ on their wires, it is the programming-on-demand and interactive models that have created most interest. Most major telephone companies have been testing interactive delivery for some time. Some of the earlier tests going back to the mid-1990s.

Table 4.4 Programming on-demand trials

PTT/Region	Date	Homes in trial	Technology
British Telecom/Ipswich	1995	2500	ADSL/ATM
France Telecom/Rennes	1996	20 000	ADSL/ATM
Finland/Helsinki Telephone	1995	30	ATM
Israel Telecom/Tel Aviv	1996	100	ADSL/ATM
Swiss PTT/Grenchen	1995	400	ADSL
Telecom Italia/Rome+Milan	1994	1000	ADSL
Telenor/Oslo	1996	200	ADSL/ATM
Nynex, Manhattan, USA	1994	2500	ADSL
Time Warner, Orlando, USA	1994	4000	ADSL
Hong Kong Telecom	1997*	30 000	ADSL/HFC
Singapore Telecom	1996	300	ADSL/ATM

* Commercial implementation, commenced Sept 1997

All these tests are widely accepted to have proved inconclusive. while each met their technical targets, actual programming-on-demand needs have elicited some consumer interest but not on a scale that appears to justify the very considerable investment required to make the service commercially available. Time Warner’s Orlando, Florida Full Service Network, was suspended in May 1997, with Time Warner, according to most reports, not keen to continue funding the experiment (reportedly having spent US$100 million) with such poor take-up rates. Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin stated in 1997 that development of the Internet had ‘overtaken the need for the Time Warner degree of TV sophistication’.

The web – the true telephone delivery revolution

The delivery of real-time audio over ordinary telephone wires (normally referred to as Plain Old Telephony System or POTS) is well-accepted. Dolby Laboratories, the noise reduction specialists, can even enhance the normally mono-signal and create a realtime Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound version for the PC user. Video is moving in the same direction. Today it is perfectly possible to ‘broadcast’ moving images from point to multipoint via the Internet. Even with a rudimentary 28.8 K modem, users can see quite acceptable moving images (remembering the limited bandwidth of the modem).

Perhaps the most important advantage of this method of video delivery is that on the world wide web there are no channel restrictions. while the technologies that enable web-casting may still be considered somewhat embryonic, it is nevertheless true that they are operating to a completely different set of ‘rules’ and standards than their older-established radio and television counterparts. There is no allocation of channels in cyberspace.

No government has to allocate precious bandwidth to would-be broadcasters. Moreover, though this is certainly also seen in a negative light, there are no formal limitations on what these ‘channels’ may or may not ‘transmit’. Government and industry officials often talk about restriction or limitations but generally there are no specifically drafted laws to cover web-casting other than regulations already in national use on decency and content. There are also no formal rules yet relating to the likely age or sensitivity of the viewer. No system has yet emerged which categorizes by age the content of a web site.

Singapore, the USA, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are all examining how access to Internet material can be regulated. The USA has already passed a Communications Decency Act, designed to protect minors from unsavoury broadcasting over the web. The Act is, however, being challenged in the US Supreme Court by a free speech lobby group.

Anyone, whether established conventional broadcaster or rabid anarchist, can provide a site on the web, and while the large broadcaster is likely to place significant resources behind their web site, it is also true that anyone with a rudimentary electronic camera and video-streaming technology can just as easily place a ‘channel’ or programme on to the web and start their own radio or television show. There is no requirement for large capital investment in broadcast towers, no uplinking to satellites, no microwave links or fibre-optic connections.

Many of the so-called digital super-highway forecasts suggested that we would all soon be enjoying a world where 500 channels were commonplace. Then some predictions were made that perhaps a 5000 channel universe was likely to be the norm. Those estimates are both wrong and out of date. Today we have niche ‘channels’ by the hundred, indeed by the thousand, and they exist on the world wide web.

One outfit (www.broadcast.com) has proved to be rocket-like in the way the Dallas-based Internet company has shot to be one of Wall Street’s hottest technology stocks over the past year. In April 1999 Broadcast.com was bought by web portal Yahoo! in a US$5.6 billion acquisition, which was not bad for a fledgling company that in 1998 had revenues of US$ 22.4m and just US$9.1 million in 1997. (Yahoo! is not dissimilar an outfit; its revenues in 1998 were US$203m, but it remains a hot favourite to emerge as the web’s favourite search engine.)

Without doubt, Broadcast.com is now the largest and most sophisticated Internet broadcaster, currently streaming daily audio transmissions from over 300 US radio stations, and 40 television stations directly. Many more use Broadcast.com on an occasional basis, with regular clients including music companies and concert promoters as well as business to business users.

Broadcast.com has also just made its first major venture in sports transmission, by tying up the US Major League baseball clubs to an exclusive deal which allows it to web-stream the League’s baseball games live on to the web. These games, together with the rest of Broadcast.com’s content, have helped deliver more than 1 million users a day to its site, making the company a significant threat to US television screens.

Most conventional multi-channel broadcasters count themselves lucky to capture 250 000 viewers, or even less for some niche channels. Then, suddenly, along comes this web-based upstart and steals away another million pairs of eyeballs. It was Broadcast.com which handled the Victoria’s Secrets lingerie airing in February 1999, and almost brought the whole world wide web to a standstill.

Broadcast.com is not alone. In 1998 RealNetworks, which supplies its RealVideo streaming technology to companies like broadcast.com, was happy to be a systems supplier to broadcasters and users alike. Indeed, its RealVideo is close to becoming the industry standard. One can find dozens of other stations on RealVideo (at www.real.com), and links to similar sites, each streaming television and radio stations to viewsers.

Suddenly it seems there is a convergence of broadcasting technologies. Also available is NBCi, a competitor to broadcast.com (yahoobroadcast).

Highlighting the threat faced by the networks are the laws in the USA which forbid cable subscribers from switching to satellite during a 90-day period after they have cancelled their cable contract! Additionally, satellite broadcasters are not allowed to offer local stations to a wider market.

Yet, via the web, viewsers can more or less watch what they want from hundreds of stations spread over the USA. It’s a crazy business, and one that’s bound to get worse once a larger number of digitally equipped homes, whether satellite or cable, start using high-speed modems to deliver web-based content at speeds sufficient to fill a television screen – and not the somewhat clunky and visually inadequate images that a limited telephone can currently handle.

Many readers will know how important music is to web-based retailers. Launch.com now offers more than 1000 music videos, along with news, reviews and the sales of CDs. Web-streamed content is vital to the company’s business plan. Tunes.com offers a similar service.

One web-based outfit is even beating the studios and traditional networks. It is streaming online video clips (although not yet the complete programmes) of new shows that have yet to air.

Pilots (the name given to an outline first episode) of two shows, Creepy Camera and a show from the public who are invited to make their own video comedy/horror films is being ‘aired’ (at www.cameraplanet.com). These come from Broadcast News Network, another fledgling web-caster (found at www.broadcast-news.com) which already carries Citizencam, another variation on the broadcast theme.

Most of the USA’s leading broadcast networks already web-stream much of their key material. ESPN and CNN are two of the best. CNNfn, its financial news station, already gets a huge number of hits a day (cnnfn.com), and has offered a full-time web-based ‘live’ financial news service since the summer of 1999, and is targeting to double the current 2 billion ‘page-views’ a year.

More humble stations can also reach around the globe. One innovative station (www.wpri.com) is a CBS-affiliate in East Providence, Rhode Island. With a self-admitted staff of just one technician, this friendly station is streaming all its daily newscasts (EST at 6 a.m., 5 p.m./6 p.m./11 p.m.) live and provides links to its big-brother CBS network. As well as local clips it is always neat to see what the weather is like, especially in hurricane season. And WPRI’s page views, an impressive 500 000 a month, according to web-master Tim Reynolds.

To put all this news in context, it is only necessary to remember that most of these broadcasters are businesses keen to capture viewer loyalty. Anyone who suspects that we will not be using/ viewing web-based material in the future is way out of date with reality.

The costs for entrepreneurs to present their own ‘channel’ are minuscule. RealNetworks, formerly known as Progressive Networks, is the company behind RealAudio and RealVideo, probably the market-leader in web-based broadcasting technology. RealNetworks’ own high-end software is available to users for under US$40 and has been bought by millions of users. It can be downloaded over the Internet direct from RealNetworks’ web site and has the ability to use a base-standard 28.8 K modem for delivering what the company calls ‘newscast quality’ video.

RealNetworks pioneered Internet broadcasting when it launched the RealAudio Player in 1995. RealAudio quickly established market leadership and currently maintains a 90 per cent share of the Internet streaming audio market. Thousands of broadcasters, both large and small, have used RealAudio to establish their Internet broadcast presence.

In February 1997, RealNetworks brought Internet video to the mass market with the launch of version 4.0 of its RealVideo file format. RealPlayer has emerged as the leading streaming video application on the web with more than 20 million clients. RealNetworks claim more than 2 million of their web players are downloaded every month. RealNetworks customers include CBS, ABC, MCA, Warner Bros, FOX, ESPN SportsZone, Atlantic Records, MSNBC, MGM, Geffen, Sony, Intel, Merrill Lynch, AudioNet, and Bloomberg.

The ‘broadcasting’ end of the RealVideo operation is provided by Real Broadcasting Networks (RBN). RBN has its broadcast operations centre in Seattle, from where it incorporates the various incoming video streams. RBN and MCI then deliver content along the closest, least congested routes worldwide. These have included live concerts by pop groups the Rolling Stones and U2, as well as hundreds of radio and TV channels.

RealNetworks admit the scale of Internet broadcasting has been restricted by operating costs and technical challenges. These challenges are inherent in owning and operating the software, hardware and managing the Internet connectivity necessary to reach an audience of any appreciable size from a single location. The key factor in these costs is Internet connectivity, which, until now, has limited the growth of the Internet as a large-scale broadcast medium. RBN say they have solved this problem by distributing access to their ‘broadcasts’ throughout the Internet backbone and passing the resulting efficiencies in scale and reach to RBN customers and users.

There are other complications to consider, which in themselves are not very different from running a conventional broadcast operation; they include the technical and broadcasting skills of available staff, including advertisement insertion, managing access authentication and security, experience in content and programming, advertising and advertising sales as well as branding and marketing. However, these can be weighed against the benefits. RealNetworks claims that up to 50 000 users can access a single site at the same time, roughly the same reach as a US big city radio station, but of course these ‘listeners’ and viewers will be scattered across the globe. This technology can be viewed from sites like www.broadcast.com.

Web-casting as a viable business has gained extra credibility now that Microsoft has invested in almost all the available web-streaming software houses. It bought California-based VXtreme in August 1997 and has investments in VDOnet as well as RealNetworks.

Microsoft’s purchase of Vxtreme in August 1997 prompted the US Department of Justice to request information from Microsoft as to its intention within the market sector. Microsoft stated that it was simply seeking to promote compatibility to benefit customers. Microsoft has incorporated RealNetworks audio and video streaming into the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Telephone delivery: advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

The main benefits of telephone-delivered content include:

• no limit on number of channels/themes/interest groups available;
• highly personal ‘narrowcasting’
• considerable opportunities for closed-user groups with significant revenue potential;
• web-delivered information has the possibility to boost sales of some products, with book and music publishing already seeing sales and even everyday items to isolated communities;
• it can be wholly interactive.

Disadvantages

Its disadvantages are:

• potentially expensive for the consumer to ‘view’ on-line because of line costs;
• some web sites have little expertise in broadcasting, although some users consider this to be a positive advantage;
• telecommunication companies have little or no expertise of managing content;
• perceived risks over financial security, credit cards/bank and financial statements (although web-based security is now considered robust by most specialists);
• risks over content, e.g. pornography being viewed by minors;
• considerable risks over copyright issues and illegal distribution.

Digital terrestrial

The progress made in digital compression has proved vital for the emergence of digital terrestrial television. However, other developments have also spurred on this concept, not least the scarcity and consequent high value of the broadcast spectrum itself.

Since the mid-1990s two separate digital terrestrial trends have emerged. While in 1995 Europe established its MPEG-2 DVB broadcasting standards – with the suffix /C for cable, /S for satellite and /T for terrestrial – the USA has followed a different path under the generic term ‘Advanced Television’ using a standard commonly referred to as the ‘Grand Alliance’.

The four regions where plans for digital terrestrial television are most advanced are Europe, Japan, Australia and in particular the USA. In Europe all broadcasters have now adopted the MPEG-2 DVB/T transmission standard. The UK is already broadcasting in MPEG-2 DVB/T (since November 1998) and amongst other European countries Scandinavia and Spain are furthest advanced.In July 1999 India also selected the DVB/T European standard following 18 months of comparative testing. A pilot scheme was promised for Delhi before the end of 1999 followed by a national roll-out.

Europe

• The UK has licensed six DTT multiplexes and broadcasts commenced in late 1998.
• In Germany experimental licenses were granted for the Lower Saxony region in mid-summer 1999. DTT is expected to be gradually introduced from 2001 onwards.
• Finland has created two DTT commercial multiplexes, each with eight channels as well as a multiplex ceded to the public broadcaster. Testing and initial construction was taking place during 1997–8. Broadcasts are scheduled to start in the autumn of 2000. Licences will run for 10 years (from 1 September) and licence-holders are required to guarantee coverage of 70 per cent of Finland’s population by 2001, with the whole country covered by 2006, when analogue is scheduled to be switched off.
• Sweden continued testing DTT during 1997–9 and has given specific approval to DVB/T’s introduction, with a spectrum auction of eight digital terrestrial channels taking place early in 1998. The Swedish government will reserve at least two channels for local programming, and although it set January 1999 ‘at the latest’ as the start dates for DTT, actual implementation was delayed until the summer of 1999. However, the most recent data available (October 1999) states that only 250 subscribers have signed up. In October it emerged that a radical re-think was underway, with services being supplied free to viewers until there are 100 000 ‘subscribers’.
• The French audiovisual authority, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) has expressed support for DTT although a technical deployment is not expected before 2000. Trials have been taking place in the Brittany region and the city of Rennes since June 1999.
• Spain’s Retevision has plans to commence national DTT transmissions during 1999–2000 in the Catalonia and Madrid regions, rolling the system out to other population centres during 2000–2001. The Catalonia regional government sees new digital terrestrial channels being used for region-specific cultural and educational broadcasting as well as entertainment services. The Commercial licence-holder is ONDA and broadcasts started on 15 November 1999.
• The Netherlands is testing DTT. With cable so widely available it is likely that DTT will be implemented more slowly.
• Italy has been conducting a DTT trial in the southern city of Santa Agata since June 1999. The place was chosen because of its difficult local terrain. Telecom Italia says projects will be introduced which provide DTT to all towns by 2006, when analogue is to be switched off.

Japan

Japan is generally considered far ahead of other countries in the region in terms of plans for digital terrestrial television. Certainly it has a head start in having already launched higher definition television and having already built up a wide portfolio of programming. Its hosting of the winter Olympics at Nagano in 1998 also gave digital HDTV a boost. Furthermore, many Japanese viewers are familiar with the advantages of HDTV and there are a growing number of wide-screen sets in their homes.

The Japanese Ministry of Post and Telecommunications stated that it wanted digital terrestrial broadcasting to commence by 2000, although that date has in practice slipped very badly. In mid-1999 the Ministry said it would delay for 30 months the setting of frequencies for DTT, that is nominally until 2003.

At the same time, state broadcaster NHK has moved away from support of the analogue-based HiVision High-Def system. The decision was not altogether voluntary, as NHK’s hand was largely forced by various chip-set makers themselves deciding to withdraw from the HiVision market. In December 1996 Fujitsu said itwas going to switch research and development from HiVision to digital, a move echoing Toshiba and Oki’s earlier announcements that they were to turn their energies into the more lucrative digital market.

Japan’s largest commercial television company, Nippon Television Network (NTV), working with telecommunications company Nippon Tsushinki, is already looking at the opportunities to transmit signals digitally for cable subscribers, taking the technology already available from the two major satellite platforms into viewers’ homes.

Australia

In December 1997 the European DVB/T system was tested in Australia, in its HDTV mode, as part of a 7 MHz channel bandwidth. Australia has already tested the ‘normal’ MPEG-2 DVB compression standards for multiplexed terrestrial television. The earlier tests were designed to provide practical experience of a digital multiplex and occupied the channel 8, normally unused in the Sydney area. Australia decided in 1998 that it will adopt the European paradigm of multiplexed channels, with the possibility of wide screen.

Australia’s DTT-day is 1 January 2001, although the broadcast standards that have now emerged (see www.standards.com.au) show a hybrid system that is compliant with DVB/T but with local modifications which enable a ‘fast track’ for high definition.

USA

The USA is the only country so far to have legislated for a specific closure date for analogue transmission – December 2006. Much of the discussion between government and industry has revolved around the introduction of high definition television (HDTV).

The ‘Grand Alliance’ is a consortium of US broadcasting companies (and certain European companies like Philips and Thomson, both working through their US operations), manufacturers and engineers, who were working initially on various competing HDTV systems. In May 1993 the FCC invited the competing groups tocome together and create a common 1250 line all-digital ‘standard’ for the introduction of HDTV in the USA. The competing groups were:

• AT&T and Zenith
• General Instrument and MIT
• Philips, Thomson and Sarnoff.

These groups went on to work as the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance and, with the David Sarnoff Research Centre as the co-ordinating body, its standard has been approved by the FCC and adopted by the US industry. Although still using MPEG-2 compression, the US standards are slightly different from those developed in Europe – but digital standards conversion equipment will make any such differences marginal.

Yet the US television industry currently faces a dilemma. The FCC exerted pressure on US network broadcasters to adopt not the European multi-channel digital model but a high definition model of – at best – two channels per station and the rapid rollout of high-definition, wide-screen broadcasting. The FCC has set an aggressive timetable to complete the conversion from analogue to digital, with 31 December 2006 as the ‘switch off’ date, now considered by some observers to be far too optimistic.

There is another significant difference between the USA and Europe. The US broadcasts will be free-to-air at no charge to the consumer. Each (terrestrial) network currently transmitting gets a ‘free’ slice of bandwidth for the new HDTV services, which can be a simulcasted existing broadcast or a combination of current and new material. The reaction of American broadcasters to supplying a ‘free’ HDTV channel to viewers has not been philanthropic. However, they are enthusiastic about advertisers exploiting this new technology, offering new services to viewers and thus funding the HDTV channels.

The USA’s road to high definition television has not been easy. In August 1996 the FCC issued its 100-page ‘master plan’ which called for each of the 1600 existing American stations to be givennew digital frequencies, sufficient, using digital compression, to enable each station to broadcast two signals. The FCC stated that stations could use the new frequency allocation for a full wide bandwidth high definition channel, plus a second digital (but not HDTV) channel.

The FCC offered one other option. Television stations could, if they wished, use the bandwidth for a greater number of channels at standard definition, but these would have to be digital and the same timetable would apply. On 24 December 1996 the FCC saw its proposals enacted as law.

In return for the commission’s largesse, the FCC would require the eventual return of the station’s existing – and much wider – slice of valuable bandwidth. Senator Bob Dole, during his election campaign, stated that the returned bandwidth to be worth at least US$34 billion, although the FCC gave the spectrum an even higher value of between US$40–100 billion. President Bill Clinton stated that the first batch of returned frequencies (due to be auctioned off in 2002) will bring in US$14.8 billion. Then, year-by-year, analogue spectrum will be returned until the whole country is, hopefully, fully digital by 2006.

The FCC’s announcement has created a dilemma for most US television stations, forcing them to assess in detail their current equipment levels, to ask how far the new digital transmissions will extend, with many operators worried about audience shrinkage leading to an inevitable reduction in advertising revenue. Early technical tests also showed that digital signals will frequently not achieve the area coverage that a current high-power analogue antenna delivers. In New York, a tightly defined geographical area consisting of the five city and suburban boroughs, digital coverage will be between 97.9 and 99.9 per cent, almost perfectly matching the existing analogue signals (although with vastly improved images). In Los Angeles, however, a sprawling city spreading over a huge and largely ill-defined area, there will be significant coverage problems. According to the FCC the local CBS station in Los Angeles (KCBS) will only achieve about 81.1 per cent of its existing coverage area. With broadcasters having to spend large capitalsums re-equipping their facilities for high definition, the last problem they want to face is to lose up to 20 per cent of an existing audience. One Oregon station (KOTI in Klamath Falls) has discovered that its HDTV signals would only reach some 54 per cent of its existing population.

Nevertheless, it seems the networks, many advertisers and the government are firmly behind the plan to convert all of the USA to digital by 2006. Indeed, the FCC in April 1997 told broadcasters it expected the major cities to be served by HDTV by Christmas 1998 and this target was met. Critics of the FCC’s timetable have said it is foolish to expect viewers to replace all their television sets including those in children’s bedrooms and in kitchens as well as portable sets.

Technology may provide some solutions. Some modern analogue sets might be convertible by means of a replacement card, or a ‘plug-in’ or ‘behind-set’ device placed in-line between roof-top antenna and aerial input. Such PCM/CIA card-type modular options have additional benefits. Set-top boxes today are far larger than they need to be. They contain a tuner and printed- circuit board (increasingly being reduced thanks to silicon-chip efficiencies), but their size is greatly influenced by space requirements for the dissipation of heat from the built-in transformer. If the power were to be drawn from the television set chassis, it would allow for smaller set-top boxes.

Table 4.5 The USA’s original HDTV timetable

Nov 1998	First HDTV stations on air
1999	10 largest cities must have HDTV channels
2003	At least 50% of programmes must be digitally simulcast
2004	At least 75% of programmes must be digitally simulcast
2005	100% digital simulcasting
2006	Analogue frequencies handed back

Manufacturers have welcomed HDTV, and are anticipating a huge volume of sales of television sets. Viewers will benefit not simplyfrom additional programming and improved picture quality but from Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) which will be essential for the consumer to navigate through the dozens of channels and services.

Besides the obvious increase in demand for new transmitters, it is probable that many studios and transmission centres will use HDTV as the springboard for a wholesale studio re-equipping exercise. The expenditure involved is huge. LIN Television, which owns just six stations scattered across the USA, stated recently that it has already spent US$15.4 million, and expects to spend another US$40 million in converting to HDTV. Victor Tawel of the Association for Maximum Service Television predicts the typical costs of conversion per television station to be in the US$7–12 million range.

Wide-screen high-definition images are seen as desirable by the creative community (and this includes the Hollywood studios) as well as some key broadcasters, not least of which are channels like Discovery (who transmit documentary and natural history programming) and Home Box Office (HBO) (which depends on movies for its income).

The US government policies are likely to greatly influence planning by other governments worldwide:

• In December 1997, the Canadian Federal Industry Ministry stated that Canada will adopt the ATSC A/53 standard for HDTV digital television – the same standard that the USA has adopted. The ministry stated that Canadians can expect to see the first digital television broadcasts some time in 1999, but that analogue broadcasting is likely to persist for 10 years or so before being fully replaced by the digital technology.
• In May 1997 the Australian Broadcasting Authority chairman stated that he wanted to see HDTV included in Australia’s digital plans, saying ‘I remain unshaken in my belief that Australian audiences should be given the same opportunity to see network TV in high-definition.’ Nevertheless, Australiaeventually adopted Europe’s DVB/T format but with local provision for the early introduction of HDTV.

While not directly relevant to the DTT position in the USA, satellite operator DirecTV launched its first HFTV channel ‘HBO on HDTV’ in August 1999. This channel promised at least 60% of its output would be HDTV in the 1080 Interlaced (1080i) format. HBO has subsequently added a second HDTV channel.

The challenge

The question now is whether the USA’s adoption of ‘true’ digital high definition means the rest of the world will follow suit. Currently (end of 1999) the situation is clouded by two ‘standards’ emerging.

Abe Peled, CEO of News Corp’s technology arm NDS (since October 1999 part of Tandberg) described the USA’s move into HDTV as ‘a big yawn.’ Peled says:

In North America HDTV is a quiet disaster, and a non-event. Stations continue to introduce HDTV equipment, but many of them are going for the cheapest possible option. They are waiting for something to happen, and as for consumers, they greeted it with a huge yawn. At NAB (Spring 1999) I gave a talk which said that simply broadcasting the same event in HDTV is not going to be enough. And that concept has resonated elsewhere. DirecTV will start showing HDTV but it’s more of a flag-waving exercise.

Peled says the biggest interest they have seen is for data carriage from broadcasters, of value-added services on top of the HDTV signal for which they can charge extra.