Why Citizens Should Support a Federal Digital Television Standard: The Case for HDTV Adoption

Just Say "Yes"
To A Digital Television Standard

After years of progress in the private sector, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been presented with a complete and flexible standard for digital television. Acceptance of this technology would open up vast opportunities for further investment and put the United States clearly ahead of the world in its implementation of digital broadcast technology. The FCC, after a decade of work with its industry advisory committee (ACATS*), is finally in the position of simply having to say "yes." But an eleventh hour action on the part of some in the computer industry may cause the FCC to back away from this opportunity at the last minute. This would be a mistake of historic proportions.

What is Digital TV?

The centerpiece application of Digital Television (DTV), known as High Definition Television (HDTV), is a common picture format and transmission standard for bringing broadcast television into the digital age.

A Better Picture

The new picture format offered by DTV allows for both a highresolution and a wide-screen presentation. (In existing TVs, the ratio of picture width to height is only 4:3, or 12:9. DTV allows a ratio of 16:9). The combination of wide screen and photographic quality resolution ultimately will allow for the presentation of an entire football game with a single camera, showing the viewer all of the field as it can be seen from seats on the 50-yard line, with no fuzziness or blurring of the images, no matter how close one sits to the screen.

Access to n Wide Range of Digital Services

The move to digital broadcasting, in addition to supporting the superiority of the DTV signal, allows new services to be created. The broadcaster can choose multiple channels of television in lower resolution and screen width and provide data, information, and interactive services, bringing all consumers into the digital age.

What Are the Goals for DTV?

Unlike Europe and Japan, the United States is committed to free and local terrestrial television broadcasting. This means that no matter how many other media are available, Americans expect to be able to move anywhere in the country and receive local TV signals without buying a new receiver or adapter for each region or each station! DTV is simply a standard for preserving this freedom and assurance for consumers, at a level of much higher quality and flexibility, in the digital age.

DTV broadcasting, to be phased in while the existing analog system is phased out, will require new frequencies and new investments in equipment. But the number of consumers in the marketplace and the nature of television programming will remain relatively constant. For DTV to attract the necessary investment, broadcast television must remain a national market that is compatible with other media (such as cable television) that carry signals into homes. It must also provide a platform for the new digital services that will help support new i nvestment.

Thus, the goals of DTV are:

• Offer better picture and sound quality Transmit in a wide-screen format through multiple channels
• Provide free over-the-air transmission in every locality, on a national basis
• Give consumers a range of receivers to chose from - all with compatibility to operate in every community across the country Allow the introduction of new digital services provided by the broadcaster

Why is Any Standard Necessary?

It has been suggested that the goals and benefits of DTV can be achieved without a government standard, or without the adoption of the full standard recommended by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), a private-sector advisor to the FCC. This is a recipe for disaster.

The massive investment in broadcast television in the United States, and the phenomenal consumer value represented by TV media and receivers, are a result of a standard-based service system. This is true for radio broadcasts, as well. The certainty provided by a governmentendorsed standard ensures consumer and service-provider investment and maintains the systems viability. For example, broadcast television, color television, and FM-radio stereo are all based on standards devised by private sector advisory committees and accepted or adopted by the FCC. By contrast, the FCC reviewed four potential standards for AM stereo and, rather than endorse one, left the selection "to the marketplace." The result was predictable: neither broadcasters or consumers made the necessary investment in any one standard and the market value of AM stations collapsed. When the FCC finally reversed itself and chose a standard, it was too late.

Other electronics products that do not require the national and local investment and support structure of broadcasting have survived without a standard. When it comes to television, however, consumers must know that the TV they buy in Illinois will work in Iowa, and broadcasters - if they are to invest sufficiently in DTV must know that consumers all over the country will be able to receive their programming.

Is DTV Sufficiently Flexible?

In this era of computers, multi-media and new broadcast digital services, is the ATSC standard for DTV technically flexible enough? Yes, because a thorough and cooperative advisory process has assured that it is.

Originally, the FCC's private sector advisory committee solicited competing proposals for DTV transmission methods. Ultimately, it recommended that the best aspects of competing digital systems be combined. In the formulation of the resulting "Grand Alliance" system, parallel advisory committees covering every aspect of the system, and drawing on every potentially concerned industry, were established and participated in every stage of the development process.

One key decision was to adopt the worldwide MPEG-2 standard for compression of digital signals. In this process, representatives of the computer industry were active participants. They also contributed to further determinations to adopt "square pixels" and multiple modes of progressive scanning, so that both the transmission method and the picture format of the standard are interoperable with computer techniques. To the extent future technological advances and their acceptance in the marketplace allow, progressive scan techniques favored by the computer industry can be adopted universally within the framework of the current standard.

What are the Main Objections to the Standard?

The most vigorous concerns over the ATSC standard for DTV have come from some in the computer industry and some movie directors and cinematographers who argue with particular advisory committee decisions.

Progressive v. Interlace Scanning

"Interlaced" scanning is a display technique universally used in the broadcast industry that halves the bandwidth relied upon, allowing the effective lines of resolution to be doubled. "Progressive" scanning is commonly used in computer displays; the lines of resolution are sequentially displayed, requiring twice the signal bandwidth.

As a result of the thorough consultations and attempts at maximum flexibility inherent in the ATSC process, the DTV standard relies on progressive scan wherever possible - five out of the six HDTV formats in the DTV standard employ progressive scanning, while one uses interlaced scanning.

While attacking the DTV standard as supposedly inflexible, some elements of the computer industry are trying to REMOVE a key element of choice, flexibility and interoperability - the option for use of interlaced" scanning techniques.

The DTV Standard is a transmission standard, not a display standard. Neither program producers, broadcasters, nor consumers will be forced to use an interlaced display just because it exists in the standard. Computers (or televisions) can use conversions to display the signal in any format they wish. Even material that is transmitted using the lone interlaced HDTV format may be displayed in a progressive format.

Aspect Ratio

Some cinematographers and movie directors assert that the DTV standard does not go far enough toward a broadband, highresolution presentation of DTV that would allow their work to be seen in its original format. They insist that the wide screen format, or aspect ratio, should be 2:1 or 18:9, rather than 16:9. But:

The 16:9 format reflects a broad consensus as to the best balance among resolution, bandwidth, receiver cost, and compatibility with the existing format;

Accommodating an 18:9 broadcast in a 16:9 transmission would require only very marginal "letter-boxing" to present the whole picture; and, The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was a party to the consensus on the 16:9 presentation and continues to support it;

If the much publicized computer industry "alternative" were adopted, there would likely be no wide-screen DTV, ever.

What Is At Stake?

The FCC has the opportunity to embrace the superb achievement of U.S. industry in creating the world's leading HDTV standard. If the FCC hesitates, investment will languish in the United States, while it continues in Europe and Japan. The clear leadership the United States has established will be squandered if the FCC does not act quickly to adopt the standard, and a mix of inferior foreigndeveloped systems, put to provisional U.S. use, will be inconsistent with any future standard.

October 1996