As reported in the Electronic Engineering Times...
The Clinton administration appears to have tempered its earlier unconditional
support for the advanced TV standard now before the Federal Communications
Commission.
In a letter to FCC chairman Reed Hundt, a Commerce Department official
urged the FCC to adopt "only the essential elements of a [digital]
TV standard." Previously, Larry Irving, assistant Commerce secretary
for communications and information, had urged the FCC to quickly adopt
the full Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) spec while promoting
migration to an all-progressive scanning format favored by key elements
of the U.S. computer industry.
Members of the HDTV Grand Alliance, which backs an FCC mandate of the
full ATSC standard, insist it should be approved without further delay.
Once approved, they said, interoperability talks with PC makers can continue.
"It just doesn't make any sense to carve up the spec," said John
Taylor, spokesman for Grand Alliance member Zenith Electronics Corp.
Rather than adopting an "overly prescriptive" government mandate,
Irving urged the FCC to let competing industry factions work out their
differences over the advanced TV spec. "An industry-developed consensus
on these difficult issues would be far preferable to a government-imposed
resolution or no resolution of these issues at all," Irving said.
