What Does the FCC Mean When It Says
Digital Television is Here

by Michael Zakula

Ready or not, the broadcasting industry is being prodded by the Federal Communications Commission to take some giant steps that will change the way your programs are seen on TV. The FCC has defined parameters for a digital television system that will gradually be implemented between 1998 and 2006. That's when the government will pull the plug on the NTSC television system. All 240 million of the estimated TV sets in U.S. households will become obsolete unless you invest in a converter box that translates digital signals into analog pictures and sounds, or buy a new digital TV.

You probably already know most of the buzz-words. We first heard about high-definition television (HDTV) around a dozen years ago. It was presented as a panacea which would bring cinema-like TV images and stereo digital sound into our homes.

You probably also heard about Advanced Television (ATV), a.k.a. Digital Television (DTV), but not about Standard Definition Television (SDTV). You might know something about the differences between progressive and interlaced line scanning, but most creative people believe that's an issue for the engineers to understand and decide. Bill Blinn and other Caucus members were among the early supporters of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and Directors Guild of America (DGA) in their efforts to ban panning and scanning on DTV.

Chances are that you have heard that Intel, Microsoft, Compaq and other computer companies want a single transmission standard which ensures the convergence of the computer and TV in U.S. households. Square pixels are important to them because it makes text more readable on a computer monitor or a TV screen.

You can find many fascinating details about the history and evolution of digital television in Defining Vision: The Battle for the Future of Television. The book was written by Joel Brinkley, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for the New York Times. It was recently published by Harcourt, Brace and Company.

The roots of DTV were planted during the 1970s, when NHK, the official TV network of the government and consumer electronics companies in Japan, decided to invest in developing an improved television system. NHK is largely funded by licensing fees paid by the public. Costs for producing programming were rising faster than the licensing fees. Management decided that one solution was to invent a significantly improved TV system that the public was willing to pay higher fees to see.

As progress was made, the Japanese consumer electronics industry recognized they could earn a windfall by successfully introducing a worldwide high-definition TV standard. However, their efforts to introduce an HDTV standard for the world floundered. The only place it was implemented is Japan, where it is less than a moderate success.

Brinkley believes that the broadcasting industry in the U.S. wasn't anxious to implement HDTV because it will take large capital costs for individual stations with little prospect of a return on that investment. There is no evidence that the public will be willing to pay premium prices for HDTV sets in sufficient numbers to create a critical mass that will bring prices down.

By the late 1980s, the HDTV issue was more or less shelved, according to Brinkley. What brought it back to life? Brinkley says that the FCC was on the verge of auctioning spectrum to cell phone companies willing to pay as much as $70 billion dollars. The broadcasting industry regarded that spectrum as their future. Brinkley says that the broadcasters convinced the FCC and Congress they needed the spectrum for HDTV. Their most compelling argument was that this commitment was necessary to save the remnants of the U.S. consumer electronics industry.

The FCC launched a competition to select an HDTV system for the U.S. Around the early 1990s, the word digital began to creep into conversations about HDTV. One of the main proponents was Nicholas Negroponte, who headed The Media Lab, a graduate school program at M.I.T. By then, the FCC had established a broadbased Advisory Committee for an Advanced Television Standard (ACATS). ACATS was headed by Richard Wiley, a former head of the FCC, who encouraged potential vendors to look for a digital solution.

In 1993, General Instruments demonstrated digital transmission technology that was good enough for the FCC to decide they wanted a digital TV system. Seven potential vendors were invited to form a Grand Alliance to develop specifications.

Around that time, a coalition of computer companies, initially led by Apple, lobbied the FCC and Congress to enact a uniform DTV transmission standard based on progressive line scanning and square pixels. They said that would establish a competition between the computer and consumer electronics industries, and ultimately a convergence of those appliances in the home. You would be able to receive programming with interactive options on either your computer or TV, and use both for Internet applications.

Remember all the talk just a few years ago about an information superhighway, a.k.a. National Information Infrastructure, which would bring 500 channels of digital television into every home, school, library and health care facility? That was based on a premise that there would be a convergence of computer and television technologies.

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) also made its recommendations to the FCC for DTV in 1993. They came down on the side of the computer industry, calling for a commitment to progressive scanning and square pixels. The ASC statement said that progressive scanning would significantly improve image quality and also eliminate the need for a 3:2 pull-down during telecine transfer to accommodate for the fact that film is generally exposed at 24 frames a second, while 30 television images are transmitted every second.

ASC also pointed out that digital transmission would allow every movie or telefilm to be seen on television in its original aspect ratio. There are thousands of films in libraries that were produced in wide-screen (2.4:1 aspect ratios). About 30 percent of current features are produced in that wide-screen aspect ratio.

The initial ASC recommendations called for letterboxing all feature and telefilms in their native aspect ratios and for manufacturing TV screens with a 2:1 width-to-height dimension to accommodate the wider screen images. ASC subsequently withdrew that proposal and asked the FCC not to specify any screen dimension and leave it to the marketplace to decide. ASC was subsequently joined by DGA, the International Photographers Guild and various other film industry organizations and individuals.

In 1996, the Grand Alliance made its recommendations, which were received by ACATS and tested by ATCS, an organization mainly funded by the broadcast and consumer electronics industries. The plan calls for the FCC to loan each of the 1600 local broadcasters in the U.S. an extra channel so they can simulcast analog and digital signals of the same programs for a number of years to give the public time to replace its old analog sets. The proposal specifies a menu of 18 different DTV standards, including combinations of several levels of resolution, HDTV, SDTV, and progressive and interlaced scanning. All of the standards call for a 16 by 9 screen, and six channels of stereo digital sound.

Why all of the different formats? Spokespersons for ACATS say they believe that affordable technology for all-progressive scanning isn't readily available. They also point to the need to protect the large library of interlaced video programming by providing a way to transmit it. Ultimately, they say the DTV system will be based on an all-progressive scanning system, but they don't say when that date may come.

The computer industry is wary of that explanation. They say that the ACATS proposal will establish a de facto standard for interlaced scanning and it will unnecessarily delay the convergence of TV and computer technologies.

Brinkley suggests that there are economic imperatives driving the ACATS proposal. He says it will cost the average TV station $15 to 16 million to gear up for DTV. That's equal to four to five years profits for stations not in major markets.

An all-progressive HDTV system would require use of all of the spectrum in the new channel to transmit signals. However, if a substantial proportion of the programming is transmitted digitally at lower resolutions with interlaced scanning, the local stations will have spectrum to spare. This will enable them to use the extra spectrum to sell Internet, telephone paging, electronic banking and other services, or they could add an extra channel or two of programming at inferior resolution, which would produce revenues to offset the cost of DTV.

The FCC took a Solomon-like approach by leaving the contested issues to the marketplace to decide. However, one commissioner wrote a letter to broadcasters urging them to voluntarily comply with the ASC's call for no panning and scanning.

Companies in the computer industry say they will build big screen ÒPC theaters,Ó which feature progressive scanning and square pixels at SDTV resolution. The PC theaters will be suitable for screening DVDs and laser disks as well as DTV programming.

The consumer electronics industry says it will build a new breed of DTV sets with the most expensive ones capable of displaying all 18 proposed formats as they are meant to be seen. Less expensive sets will also be able to display all formats, but an HDTV program on a set limited to SDTV resolution will only be seen at SDTV resolution.

America Online polled some 10,000 subscribers, asking if they planned to purchase a DTV set or a converter box during the next six years. Around 20 percent said they plan to buy a DTV set, and some 70 percent plan to invest in converter boxes. The remaining 10 percent said they will stop watching TV.

Those are the players and the issues. How will DTV affect the future value of the programs already in your library? What steps should you take to ensure that new programs will be compatible with DTV? We are convinced that 35 mm film will give you today's best production values by far, along with future-proof insurance that it will be compatible with the best DTV systems being planned by both the consumer electronics and computer industries. In fact, your film programs will look better than ever on DTV.

That's important, because all of the players agree that sooner or later, DTV will be based solely on progressive scanning. Where does that leave you tomorrow if you produce programs today in any interlaced video format?

(Guest article by Michael Zakula, Hollywood Region, Television Segment Manager, Professional Motion Imaging, Eastman Kodak Company.)