INTERVIEW...Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group---October 22, 1999

0000Mr. Aitken has been at the heart of the Sinclair Broadcast Group's recent transmission demonstrations. He was formerly Vice-President of Comark Engineering and came to Sinclair at the behest Nat Ostroff. At that time he was still skeptical about COFDM, believing, as most did, that the 8-VSB system was the right choice for America. After preliminary demonstrations of 8-VSB receivers at Sinclair's Philadelphia facility, and seeing demonstrations of COFDM , Mr. Aitken concluded that there was more to the story of terrestrial transmission in the United States than was meeting the eye. He joined Sinclair and devised much of the famous "tests" done in Baltimore that led Sinclair to submitting a Petition to the FCC two weeks ago asking that COFDM be included in the FCC DTV standard. I talked to Mr. Aitken on the 22nd of October.

 

HDTV NEWS You are now in the second week of the Sinclair petition filed with the FCC. What feed back are you getting?

We are getting a tremendous amount of support from interested groups. We are at a commitment level of four hundred stations at this point, moving quickly towards five hundred. We have stations represented on both an individual basis and through group affiliation.

People are supporting us for a variety of reasons. There are, interestingly enough, groups not supporting us for reasons totally unrelated to what we are doing. Those stations have various pending actions with the FCC which they wish not to have muddled by their siding with Sinclair.

There have been people acting out of very strange interest in certain regards. There is leadership in some groups that also are members of organizations, such as board member in the NAB or other such organizations. Even though they strongly support what we are doing, they have a difficult time being a public voice for the "broadcaster's petition" because of a concern that it would indicate a partial alignment within the organizations that have not come out on either side of the issue.

HDTV NEWS You mentioned that there are a variety of reason for joining with you. Have you identified those reasons?

First, there is a very broad interest generally. Those signing on do believe they deserve the right for flexibility. Many of them view the flexibility we are asking for in the modulation in the same way as they view flexibility given by the Commission with respect to display formats.

Then, there is a whole variety of other reasons they support it. Some feel very strongly that their business model requires the flexibility and some of the options that COFDM may give them. Some believe that in the future it may provide a means to resolve some of the spectrum crowding issues through single frequency networks. There are people who feel that some of the attributes will help support a minimization of transponders, repeaters, transposers, etc., by offering the ability to do gap filling in geographically challenged areas.

It was pointed out in the FCC report that there are sections of the United States which certainly will not come close to achieving a replication of (NTSC) service because of the challenge of terrain based upon 8-VSB modulation.

HDTV NEWS Are there any among your own 59 stations that would benefit from 8-VSB for any of that system's stated advantage?

We have looked across the multiple stations we own. Because of what we have witnessed and published with respect to the coverage of COFDM vs. 8-VSB--not seeing any meaningful difference between the two--we see nothing but advantages for using COFDM modulation as the dominant one for our stations.

HDTV NEWS Considering you do have a variety of geographic conditions 8-VSB does not measure up to the performance of COFDM anywhere?

As I said, the work that we did during the test we performed showed no meaningful difference between the reception capability between COFDM and 8-VSB in the far field. We think that those differences have been drastically overstated, and certainly reflect some numbers in a purest theoretical world, but don't prove themselves in real world conditions.

HDTV NEWS Mark, this petition, and what has led up to it, seems to have created a wedge between a group of broadcasters and CEMA. This is an unusual war occurring between what have been in the past co-dependent partners. Do you see any resolution to that conflict?

Yes, I think if CEMA were to look at the broad interests of their organization and their members, and look at the reality of how DTV is unfolding in the rest of the world, they may see a way clear to offer meaningful products at a realistic value to consumers today, complete with an upgrade path to future services for free over-the-air television.

I think that CEMA has been entirely too focused on high-definition television and have not looked at the business reality of broadcasters and how they could possibly launch today an HDTV service ,and have meaningful penetration with a meaningful return on investment in the near-to-medium term.

I am not stating by any means that over-the-air broadcasting and HDTV are incompatible--quite the opposite. I am saying that today there is not a meaningful cost factor for a broad range of consumers. There is a need for the technology of HDTV-capable presentation devices to mature. But it isn't here today. That is the reason why we have insured in our testing that the requirements for bit rates for HDTV support are inclusive in the modulation standard that we have looked at.

To take that a step further: The present ATSC 8-VSB standard is hard-limited to the capability of supporting 19.39 Mb/s. We have shown to ourselves, and it has certainly been shown and tested inside of the existing COFDM standards, that in 6MHz a bit rate of close to 24Mb/s can be achieved using that standard. That means that in the future the ability to move upwards in data capacity exists in COFDM where it does not in 8-VSB. That flies in the face of anyone stating that COFDM cannot support HDTV.

HDTV NEWS Is it not true, however, that in different multipath environments you may have to have more error correction allocated from the COFDM payload? Might the payload be changed by the conditions you face?

If you look at the commercialized DVB-T, as an example of COFDM technology, the receivers are fully flexible and recognize all of the combinations in terms of guard interval, modulation rate, FEC rates, number of carriers. They have the ability to make note of the mode of operation and do the corresponding interpolation of the information.

There certainly needs to be more data collected. But the data we collected at 18.67 mb/s leaves no question that the first generation of COFDM vs. first generation of 8-VSB provides a 4:1 advantage in receivability (COFDM favored). In the future it may be the case that 8-VSB brings itself up a notch or two and approaches the operating characteristic of this first gneration COFDM product we have already seen..

The fact of the matter is that in geographically challenged areas--take Seattle as one example--one that the FCC pointed out in their OTE report--the use of a larger FEC could lead to more robust service at a slightly diminished useful bit rate payload.

That is a decision we think the broadcasters needs to be in a position to decide upon. And, by the way, the reduction of the bit rate to say 16 mb/s in a geographically challenged area still offers the ability of that broadcaster to support HDTV services.

HDTV NEWS How so at 16 mb/s?

Look at the advancements that have been made in coding. Look at what was acceptable HDTV (images) three years ago at a specific bit rate of 16 Mb/s, the same picture quality today is available in bit rates of 14 mb/s simply because of gains in coding algorithms. Now, that means that the same program offering that was made three years ago and deemed acceptable as HDTV to the broad body of ATSC and its supporters--the same viewable picture quality is available in a reduced bit bandwidth today. And, that is looking at something like 1080i. If you are looking at what many broadcasters are talking about with 720p--both said by CEMA and all other parties to be HDTV--and certainly 720p in 24fps, the ability to provide (this) HDTV in bit rates of 10 mb/s or less is being demonstrated.

HDTV NEWS The market...you mentioned that CEMA has given emphasis to HDTV for the DTV transition. That decision was not made in the dark What would induce anyone to buy DTV if only for a standard resolution picture of what is already available to them in analog, cable, and DBS? As a group broadcaster how do you see the DTV business model, in the most general of terms?

Clearly much differently than CEMA. I don't think Sinclair is prepared to unveil in a public venue its business models. But if you look simply at that one issue you have raised, clearly there is a price-benefit inflection point for every product. The lowest priced ATSC compatible box that I know of today is the RCA box at $649.00. Customers are not going to run out and purchase that box for SDTV, even if that SDTV is, in reality, better than the picture quality they are receiving today by some marginal degree. You know that 480p (or even 480i) digital can be much better than what is received in the average household today.

HDTV NEWS Stan Hubbard used to say, when operating USSB, that 480i in digital is for all intent and purposes HDTV.

If you take the argument that 480 digital (leaving the i and p out of it for now) offers a better picture delivered to the home, the price value point people are seeing today will not cause them to make the investment. You have boxes in the UK retailing now for less than $200 that are offering that (improved quality SDTV) capability. You have a nation that snapped up one half-million or more of these boxes from the same time we launched digital services

HDTV NEWS Is not the adding of choice of more programs the more compelling reason?

There are certainly distinctions in what is driving that particular market. But my point is this. The mass commercialization of that product has led to a consumer price-point that lends itself in the US to offer services which, in some cases, could afford to give away the box in order to implement a specific business model.

HDTV NEWS Like giving away a browser?

Yes, like a cell phone. I paid at one time $480 for my Nokia phone. I get the same phone free today.

HDTV NEWS CEMA's comments to the FCC said that opening the standard will open up an endless debate and delays. Do you agree with that?

We don't. If we thought that was the case we would not likely be heading down the path we are. We think we have identified the basis for how the FCC can move forward with the assignment of an able bodied task force. Any delay depends very much on who wishes to become part of the debate--who the detractors are, and who the supporters are. We believe there exists the ability to provide an aligned group to a business model that could have consumer products in the hands of a newly revitalized digital transition in a period of six months.

HDTV NEWS If you were the senior and most wizened council to the industry, what would you recommend with regards to the now intensifying roll-out of the 8-VSB receivers for this holiday season?

It is clear that the industry has missed the boat at retail for this Holiday season. The products are not available. The worst thing that this industry could do is to continue to provide products to consumers that are less-than-substandard. I am not talking simply about the issue of reception capabilities. That is but one aspect of it. But there are products being brought forward into the marketplace today that do not implement a whole host of capabilities of what this digital standard should be offering to the consumers as a differentiating from the boring, plain-old-television that has been offered for the last 50 years. To put substandard product, which forces consumers to buy still newer products just to do what the product should be capable today, is a great disservice to the consuming public. There are a great many of the ATSC specifications which are not implemented in the receiver today, the more obvious being dual sound transport and copyright protection.

They took the effort in Europe to make sure that the standard was implemented to the extent that it offered all consumers a clear and viable upgrade path to future enhancements. That is not the case with the ATSC product that is being deployed today.

HDTV NEWS What about interpretability today?

Different political climates and decision methods have made for a strong difference in the issue of operability. I don't want to be on-record for recommending DVB-T, but there is a very strong case for the DVB standard because there is a whole layer of supporting standards that are interrelated--DBV satellite, DVB cable, and DVB Terrestial--they all use the same base layer. There is no difference in the transport layer. You can pass cleanly from one to the other without having to do a bunch of bit shuffling, remapping, and re-identification--no need for spitting out something different than came in.

HDTV NEWS Will it still all work together in 6MHz as it does in the 7 or 8MHz systems used in Europe?

The differentiation becomes a matter of bit capability. Bit capability in MHz is less than in 7 or 8MHz.

HDTV NEWS So, DVB is an off-the-shelf solution?

Yes, and I can tell you that the direct-to-home satellite providers, in particular Echostar, would jump at the opportunity of joining in this battle if it were DVB-based because of that issue alone.

A big part of the cable industry is looking to see how they can support what we are doing because they see it as a way of stalling the digital must carry question. If the way to insure penetration is with cable, there is a much larger political drive for digital must carry. Cable would like to stall as long as possible. To have useful receivability out of a terrestrial transmission standard means they get to stall "must carry" until they can afford the digital infrastructure. At one point in time when there is penetration enough with terrestrial you end-up in a position where cable, by the nature of its clients, will be forced to carry local programming.

HDTV NEWS Some have not taken your David Smith seriously when he says he has no intention for delaying the roll-out of digital television. You hear from many that Sinclair's move with the Commission is for delay since the new chips from Motorola and Nxtwave are going to solve the problem anyway. They say that Sinclair's stock is not doing well. Air, they say, is going out of David's balloon and he needs to delay digital as long as he can for economic reasons. Give me a good solid answer to these charges.

That is a lie that is being carried forward by a lot of folks. We clearly are making investments in digital. We have four stations in process right now with transmitters on-order, transmission lines, antennas on order, RF systems on order, sites and tower work being finished up....We will meet our commitment with the FCC even though those first digital stations will be broadcasting in ATSC 8-VSB. That is not holding us back. I will say that if we believed that there was a business from which we can recoup the investments we are making (not marginal investments when you look at close to 60 stations in the group) we would be investing in the highest power maximization that the FCC would allow. In fact, the licenses that we have secured have been based upon maximization because we will fight to insure that COFDM is brought into the marketplace.

HDTV NEWS How do you answer those who say the new chips from Motorola and NxtWave should be given six months to arrive and be tested? Does that make your case less clear or indecisive?

As I said in the beginning, even if there were improvements in the chips that did come to fruition--and I have to ask why haven't they yet? But even if those chips did make some marginal improvements--even spectacular improvements in 8-VSB--it has been admitted by members inside the ATSC organization that COFDM will always be better than 8-VSB. I am referring to the so-call "secrete minutes" of the transmission specialist group (ATSC) that have been out on the internet and been in everyone's hands, and confirmed by Executive Director Craig Tanner as being the truth, and accurate.

[See this link]

This is most incriminating piece I have ever seen come to light.

HDTV NEWS There are those form among the three networks who say even high-speed mobility reception will be solved with 8-VSB. Craig Tanner said in the last analysis it looks like 8-VSB will continue to be improved upon, and even be superior to COFDM in multipath handling.

I have to say that view is not accurate. Talk to Zenith on this. There is an absolute mathematical inconsistency with the ability of high speed mobility to be conveyed through 8-VSB. It is simply not possible.

HDTV NEWS This question of the standard being opened up again. Are there not still many "mad scientist" ready to push their developments in the event the standard is opened? How do you avoid the time-delay any considerations for these proposals will cause?

That certainly would lead to a total upset of a move forward for digital television. We would not at this time be interested in the Japanese system because that "standard" (not yet a full standard) is at least two years away. That would be for the just the first generation.

The cost of lost opportunity is a major driving reason why we believe this has to be a quick, swift exercise on the part of the Federal Government to insure that digital television can be a success.

HDTV NEWS Cannot someone jump up and say, " I am a taxpayer too, and I demand my rights to this act in this process." How do you insure that the government does take a fast track by overlooking any such attempts?

This is a Democratic Republic A Republic has the responsibility to protect the majority from the minority that does not have the majority in its self interest. Always remember that. Anytime anyone tries to throw the democratic thing in my face, I must remind them that this is not a democracy, nor is it an anarchy. It is a Republic.

Thank you Mark.