Quick Jump Menu to this Month’s Articles Twenty eight days and counting ..! I Can See Clearly Now, HDTV Is Here – Or Is It? NSTW Party – Sunday in the Park, You’d Think It Was the Fourth of July Telecom ’03 Exhibition Preview: Conferences – It’s a Tough Life, But Someone Has Got to Do It Questions, StreamingTV, Dave Hood Follow-up, Privacy
I Can See Clearly Now, HDTV Is Here – Or Is It?
by Ken Pyle
September, 2003 Issue
My sister Terri is my bellwether for determining whether a technology has made it past the early adopter stage and into the mainstream. Her purchase of an “HDTV-ready” television set was a clue, that after all of the hype and waiting, HDTV is here. Another hint that HDTV is becoming a reality was the announcement from the Consumer Electronics Association that, for the first time, the dollar volume of HDTV televisions outpaced that of standard televisions last year. And last week’s “Plug n’ Play” decision by the FCC is an indication that the technical and political issues that have slowed deployment of various forms of digital television may no longer be an issue.
Every day, it seems like there is a new announcement concerning a programmer or cable MSO that is offering HDTV in one form or another. For instance, CableVision is offering High Definition VOD programming. Of course, the early adopters have been willing to pay a premium for HD televisions, but the prices have been dropping fast as evidenced by the sub-$1,000 HD-ready, television sets offered by Samsung and Philips.
So, what does all of this mean for independent telephone companies?
Well, it could mean any number of new challenges and opportunities. For telcos with Hybrid Fiber Coaxial systems, can HDTV channels be added cost-effectively? For telcos that are deploying video over xDSL will the compression and consumer electronics be compatible with the networks they are deploying? The big question is when will we reach the point where HDTV becomes a must-have offering for independent telcos? And, when we reach that point, will independent telcos and their networks be ready?
And that is why Peter Lowten is leading a session at the Independent Telco Video Content Conference regarding HDTV. Peter and I have been discussing what this means. He has been doing a great deal of research and is currently in Europe at the IBC on a fact-finding mission [is that spelled junket?] Seriously, he and Doug Mielke Director of Operations for Technicolor Media Asset Management group are putting together a panel that will address the business and technical issues surrounding HDTV.
Mielke has been doing a great deal of investigation into various HD encoding methods. Technicolor provides High Definition encoding for InDemand’s HD offering. Additionally, Mielke has been implementing HD compression using Microsoft Inc.’s Windows Media 9. What makes this approach interesting, at least from an independent telco perspective, is that Windows Media 9 promises HD quality at rates as low as 8 Mbits per second. And the vendor community is starting to embrace alternative encoding methods, as evidenced by the ongoing adoption of both RealNetworks, Inc. and Windows Media 9 encoding and decoding methods in various hardware encoders, VOD servers and consumer set-tops.
The technical aspects are just one part of this session. Lowten will be providing a high-level view of the state of the industry, marketing challenges and consumer concerns. One of the challenges is teaching consumers what HDTV is. Is the quality improvement from HDTV great enough that the majority of consumers will pay a premium for the service?
To this point, for weeks after they purchased their television, I debated my brother-in-law and nephew that the programming they were watching was not HDTV, but just simply 16:9 aspect with the better quality coming from the built-in line doubling. Eleven months later and they still haven’t paid the extra fee required to get an HDTV, cable television set-top. Interestingly, Lowten reports from the IBC that HDTV is not yet a big deal in Europe. Similar to my brother-in-law’s experience, a little bit better quality (PAL with extended definition) along with televisions that have 16:9 aspect ratios seems to be enough.
Then, there are the questions of content; where will it come from; how much will it cost, what are the regulatory impacts? Peter convinced me that those questions are too much for a 45 minute session, so we will make sure they are addressed by the various content and regulatory experts at the conference. As you can see, I have many questions regarding HDTV and I look forward to the answers we will hear at the conference.
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